Many, many moons ago I mentioned that one simple conversion trick is to put the goal for the page as the first hyperlink in the main content area. This largely works because Internet browsers will almost reflexively jump on anything that is underlined in blue. Anyhow, I was reviewing my printable bingo cards page yesterday (that one is a real link) in CrazyEgg and realized that the first textual link was to… Adobe Acrobat. And they were happily profiting from my largesse, with 10% of the visitors to the 2nd most trafficked page in my site going off to download Acrobat Reader. That was a moment of forehead slapping stupidity.
I made a quick fix to include a link in the first paragraph to the free trial, and now approximately 10% of the visitors are banging on that instead. Lets do the math: 8,000 pageviews for that page a month, 10% now see free trial page, 80% of visitors to free trial page download, 2% of downloaders purchase… that works out to be about 13 extra sales a month, give or take. (Assuming the one day result of 10% clicks on that link holds up, that those clickers are equally motivated, etc, etc. That estimate is probably on the high side, but work with me here.)
Not a bad minute’s work, and it’s a minute’s work that is made much, much easier by seeing obvious visual clues like a huge dead zone on your heat map with a bright red island over a graphic that doesn’t even link to your own site.
