generating and Driving traffic

Most website owners I speak to are much more concerned about traffic volumes than they are about conversion ratios; but if you think about it increasing the conversion ratio on a website from 2% to 3% will have the same effect as increasing the traffic coming to the site by 50% but it's almost certainly much cheaper and easier to increase the conversion ratio.

 

The vast majority of conversions involve a web form — here are 10 ideas for improving the design of your web forms which I've found increase conversion rates.

 

1. There should be only one form on the screen at any one time.
2. Always let the user know what they are committing to. Show the steps at the top and identify where the user is in the process.
3. Try to keep the number of fields on the form to a maximum of 10.
4. Always use radio button or checkboxes rather than free text where possible.
5. If you have a 'Country' field on the form use GeoIP or similar to set a default.
6. Vary the length of text boxes to show the users how much information is being requested.
7. The form should be accessible using tabindex attributes and label tags. This will make it easier to navigate for all users.
8. When validating the form make it obvious which fields are wrong and make sure the user does not have to re-enter the information.
9. Don't include a 'clear' or 'reset' button, that just causes confusion.
10. If the process is really complicated and just can't be simplified then it might be a good idea to change the conversion form into a 'contact us' form and then have a sales person call the customer back to talk them through the process.