Designs That Influence Behavior

Hey folks who like improving conversions-

Thought this article at 37Signals was quick and valuable.

http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1496-design-decisions-the-new-highrise-signup-chart

I’ve always had a tough time wrapping my mind around design as it relates to offer pages. I’ve been focused squarely on conversion through copywriting, offer creation, and price testing for the last 5+ years. I haven’t made a focus of Design as I should have to become a better marketer.

The last few months have been trial by fire in a few areas and new tests.

This 37Signals article has some quick usable chunks around design optimization in offer testing. Most of all, I like how they share their reasoning and thinking behind WHY. There are a few top level design considerations that have led my thinking.

Top Level Theories/Approaches That Guide My Marketing Design

• Remember “Readability”
• Less is More (Paradox of Choice, simplicity in one-decision marketing)
• Use only a few Dominant Visual Elements
• Customers respond more when design emphasizes BENEFITS and OUTCOMES
• Great converters can be created with little or NO GRAPHICS- with great copy
• Use Social Proof elements as Secondary focus (testimonials, “as seen on”, user stories)

If you read the 37Signals post, you caught a few of the theories they used to guide their iterations.

I think 37Signals should also be thinking hard about the dramatic impact relative pricing, upsells, and downsells have on conversion. I haven’t tested a ton of design iterations to say this with 100% confidence, but I’ve seen tens and hundreds of cases where no design changes and big changed to these other areas I mentioned created 2, 3, sometimes 15 to 20X conversion rates in one fell swoop.

That’s not to say that design isn’t a major piece of building the overall CONTEXT of your offer.

Besides, I don’t think the 37Signals guys are looking ro radically change their pricing and test (at least openly). Obviously they have a great community, lots of attention, and seem to value transparency for themselves and others. Price testing is rarely a crowd favorite.

Good times ahead, as I’ll get to test some new design iterations over the next few months across a pretty large scale of 6-7 figure impression numbers.

I’ll keep you posted on learnings.