Homepages that work: Amazon.com

Amazon.com is America’s largest online retailer with over 50 million visitors a month. With so much traffic, how do they tailor to each user and convert them?

Goals: sell online & offline products, sell user’s content & items, sign up new users, extend website’s reach

Audience: consumers, sellers, writers, businesses, developers and advertisers

Clear, consistent navigation.

The header of the homepage features the logo that doubles as a home button, a left hand navigation bar, an expanding search bar, a shopping cart button and a login for returning users. All of the elements remain consistent throughout the rest of the site, even the left hand navigation bar which condenses into a drop down on subpages to allow for underlying content to fill the full width of the page. Read the rest of this entry »

How well does your website convert users?

Maybe you already have a website or maybe you are planning out a new one. In either case, you need to spend some time and thought on defining conversions.

What is a conversion you ask? A conversion happens when a user on your site takes an action that you intended. If you have an eCommerce site, and a visitor makes a purchase on your site, that’s a conversion.

Light vs Heavy

Now that we know what a conversion is, let’s talk about Heavy Conversions and Light Conversions.

A Heavy Conversion is an action that takes a lot from the user, such as a purchase, filling out a contact form, or becoming a member of your site. Typically, a Heavy Conversion requires the user to give something up, such as money. Read the rest of this entry »