For modern businesses, it’s not only beneficial to have a strong online presence but essential to your continuing success. With statistics showing that around one-fifth of all retail sales are made over the internet, companies that fail to capitalise do themselves out of an awful lot of custom.
So how do you strengthen your brand visibility and profile online? The answer isn’t simple but has many different and multifaceted strands to it. Covering a range of essentials, from search engine optimisation to your social media presence, it includes among these factors a carefully designed and curated website.
One sector that knows how to use this to its advantage is the online gambling industry. We take a look at some of the most important tricks it can teach us about layout and design.
Easily navigable websites
To encourage customers to behave in a certain way, businesses must first make it simple for them to do so, and this means having an easily navigable website. Let’s take a look at Paddy Power and this page on how to play online poker from your home.
The overarching aim of it is to encourage player participation and, to facilitate this, its layout makes doing so as straightforward as possible. Everything is neatly listed and laid out, with prominent calls to action taking the user to other web pages with additional information.
Everything the player might need to know is easily discoverable so that they don’t become discouraged by having to navigate a difficult and unwieldy website. This principle of simplicity above all is something you should adhere to when designing your own online offerings.
Multiple calls to action
In addition to being easily navigable, the example webpage we linked to features several calls to action. That’s because repetition is key to encouraging certain behaviors, which is exactly what you want to do if you’re generating leads and/or sales.
For example, there are two separate calls to action encouraging users to play poker online, as well as two calls to download and install the company’s software. This ensures that visitors who are holding back are given a gentle nudge in the right direction should they need it.
The same principle can be applied when designing your website: don’t ask once and leave it at that. Instead, give your customers a second prompt to purchase from you in case the first falls upon deaf ears.
Relevant information is easy to find
According to Statista, roughly 88 percent of online shopping carts are abandoned pre-purchase, which means lots of businesses come close to making a sale and then fall at the final hurdle. One of the most common reasons for this cart abandonment is a lack of information, which leaves consumers feeling as if they cannot make an informed decision.
One way the online gambling industry circumvents this is by making sure any relevant information is simple to discover, whether because it’s directly displayed on the page or because there is a link to it for those who wish to learn more.
This is a box other industries should also be ticking, so make sure anything that might affect your customers’ decisions on whether to purchase can be easily found. Shipping costs, in particular, are an important one, with 25 percent of customers citing these as their primary reason for backing out of a transaction.
Isn’t it time you used these three top tips to improve your own online business offerings?