There is Nowhere to Click
Posted on May 20, 2008
Filed Under 2 Point What?
What amazes me so much about so many professional (sometimes multimillion$) websites is how they forget to include a clear call to action.
In case you forgot - the call to action is what you want the user to do once they hit your (landing) page. What is your best case scenario for the user? This is your call to action.
The design of the page and the site need to made in a way to drive the user to this result. People that engage in PPC (pay per click) advertising know very well about call to action because they are paying anywhere from 10 cents to 10 bucks for each visitor - therefore they clearly optimize the result. Even if you are getting organic traffic- it is leaving money on the table not to do so. So let us now look at some sites and their ability to properly implement call to action. I will focus on a web 2.0 social site as that is my current project and I have had time to study the competition.
CASE STUDY:
UBER - Uber is a hosted make your own webpage social place thing for cool artsy people. Kinda like MySpace with a degree in Fashion Design. Upon hitting their front page everything above the fold drives me to the little red button that says ‘Start your Website’
(for you that don’t know - the fold is the place where you have to scroll down on a web page )
What about below the fold? They have some AJAX that will show you cool sites to browse if you click it - but for the purposes of our discussion that is irrelevant as we are assuming that you only get a split-second to capture a browser. Even so - these only show some handpicked editor pages - but there is no obvious (meaning there may be, but I didn’t find it) option for browse and explore.
Meaning that a first time browser to UBER only gets one choice in their split second. All they are allowed and recommended to do is ‘Create your own Website’ If they had no intention of creating their own website that day then they are lost. UBER is relying on the idea that people will come to the UBER site already pre-introduced by a friend or something and will show up with the need to create their own site.
FAIL
What UBER does not realize is that people like to browse before they buy. Meaning that the best way to get someone to create their own page is to give them tools and encouragement to browse others pages.
RECOMMENDATION:
Forget about ‘make your own website’ taking up your real estate - if people want to do this, they can look in the header or footer. Focus on exploration. I mean look at My Space with its horrendous design
But they are doing something right. The entire front page is devoted towards exploration. People want to waste time. By giving the users that tool go and explore- MySpace will have users asking to make pages in order to emulate those that they have already explored.
I picked UBER for this case Study because they have a fantastic tool for creating sites, but to put it this way - I have been to their site maybe 10-15 times and most of the time I just stare at the front page and then leave.
THERE IS NOWHERE TO CLICK.
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nice but is this look natural