It is always a great idea for a website to have a ‘purpose’, in fact it is a perquisite for any site that can ever be truly said to be worthwhile and successful.
In many cases meeting this ‘purpose’ will entail reaching an analytics goal, which in turn means a visitor successfully filling out a form or making a purchase (which involves forms of course). It is the filling out of these forms that this blog is all about, it being a vital part of most web sites one way or another.
Maximising Conversions is Vital
It stands to reason that any website owner wants to get the most out of the traffic they get (after all they will have had to fight for it the first place) and that means maximising the conversion rate. It will come as no surprise to know that bad form design can seriously reduce the level of sales etc, one way of helping here being the idea of ‘One Thing Per Page’.
What is ‘One Thing Per Page’ all About?
Basically this is all about making things simple for the visitor, a good definition being it is about:
“splitting up a complex process into multiple smaller pieces, and placing those smaller pieces on screens of their own.”
So for example, rather than asking users to supply their address details on the same page as giving them delivery options and payment methods, we split them up pages of their own.
Improving The User Experience
Anything that improves the way that users interact with a site must be a good thing (especially if it is looked at by a Google engineer, as that could improve the sites’ rankings), and it has been seen to work in the past, but why does it work?
- It reduces the load on the viewers brain by reducing the number of questions they have to deal with at one time.
- You can more easily fix the errors, as normally you will only need to fix one error at a time, this making it more likely that users will ‘stick with it’ and go on to complete the process.
- The pages load faster (as they are smaller and require less server time to process)
- Tracking a user’s path (and thus being able to pick up and fix any failure points) is easier.
- It reduces the levels of scrolling, something that people in general hate. This is especially important when users are more likely to be using mobile device as their screens are smaller.
This approach is not always the best, but it is certainly worth considering, especially if a site’s conversion levels are lower than would be expected or where the carts and forms are being abandoned at a very high rate.
As ever, at Rouge we are waiting to discuss your particular requirements, so please do contact us.
