One year ago I got quite a big surprise when looking at the statistics of a newly launched website: out of 2,000 visitors, 32% clicked a link leading them to the page they were already on. But why?
Goalless page
Well, the page in question was a long, high-quality article about how to differentiate your business in today’s cluttered marketplace. After reading all the way through the article, the readers wanted something. They wanted to read more. However, because there was no information or call-to-action after the article they started scrolling up the page again. Here, a set of “Quick links” (links to other articles) would meet the visitor in the sidebar. However, since there was only one article on the site, the only link in this sidebar was a link to the current selected article.
Now, despite the fact that this link had the exact same anchor text as the headline of the 8000-characters long article they had just read, one-third of all visitors still clicked this link. The identical headline and link were even placed right next to each other, 32% clicked the link in the hopes of getting a new article.
Fatal mistake. Obvious solution
The real goal of the page was to get people to sign-up for a newsletter (which would inform them of new articles), but the newsletter form was placed on a separate page you could only arrive to by clicking a “newsletter” link in the navigation. Only 0,58% signed up for the newsletter. Clearly a lot more people actually wanted to sign-up.
Our mistake was obvious. And so was the solution: have the newsletter sign-up form right at the end of the article.
Placing this sign-up form at the end of the article increased sign-up rate by 274%.
This change increased the sign-up rate by 274%, from 0,58% to 1,59%. Think about that: a 274% increase in conversion rate by making such a simple (and obvious) change.
Conclusion
You need a goal on every page, and you need to test that goal and track how people are using the page in general. Don’t think that a prominent link in the navigation menu is enough: always put a clear call-to-action (in a sensible place) on each and all of your pages.
Have you experienced something similar yourself?
