Every day millions and millions of people head to Google and do searches in hopes of filling a need or a desire. Our desire is to show up when they are doing those searchers. However, unless we have a website that will convert the traffic, it does us no good.

There are a lot of little things that can make a big difference in a website design, for example;

Placing testimonials on the right-hand side alongside of the order form has been shown to increase conversion rates.

Using Arial 12 point will increase readability and help in conversion.

Using 20 point Tahoma font for headers and adding quotation marks around the header has been shown to increase conversion.

Using negative headlines will increase conversion.

Using a blue buy now button converts better than a red buy now button.

These are all small changes that can make a big difference when it comes to designing a website.

Red is a conflicting color.

It is the color of passion and love as well as anger and hate. To make it worst it’s also a color that is hard on the eyes. If you stare at a red background for moment and look away from the red background and stare at a white wall your eyes will take a moment to refocus and readjust.

However blue is a color that builds trust. A light blue background converts better than just about any other color you can come up with other than light grey.

When trying to build the perfect site that will convert the best there are a lot of things we need to look at.

According to Grok the top ten best converting sites online are;

1. Proflowers.com – 14.1%

2. Coldwater Creek – 13.3%

3. FTD.com – 13.0%

4. QVC – 12.8%

5. Office Depot – 12.4%

6. eBay – 11.5%

7. Lands’ End – 11.5%

8. Tickets.com – 11.2%

9. 1800flowers.com – 10.0%

10. Amazon – 9.6%

We also need to keep in mind that when dealing with companies that are able to spend millions on off and online advertising, conversion will always be higher because of brand recognition.

Keeping that in mind let’s take a look at some of the things these sites have in common.

I will start with proflowers.com

We have a small header with the logo and the phone number on the left hand side. Most sites have the phone number on the right hand side so I thought that was a bit different then what I normally see.

We have the need it now banner in the header. It lets people know that we can get your order out today if this is a last minute decision. Under that is the navigation and under that is a banner for Birthdays. I’d think that when there are no special holidays that would be their biggest seller.

Too the right we have a call to action that is changing, showing different items for sale. Under the main banner we have two more call to actions and another banner showing when the next special holiday will be.

It’s hard to believe that PayPal would increase conversion but we have no credit card logos on the page yet we do have a PayPal logo.

Now onto http://www.coldwatercreek.com/

We have the logo in the middle of the header with no contact information on the page, other than a link for live help and another for customer service.

Clicking on customer service we can find the email address and contact number.

It’s interesting that they give the email address and not a contact form.

The layout is pretty much the same.

Header with logo, menu under that and banners with a call to action under that. Little to no text on the page.

http://www.ftd.com/

Logo in the top left of the header, phone number under the logo, navigation main banner on the right instead of the left like it was on proflowers and the call to action in the banner.

The colors and look of the sites may change but the layout for the top three conversion sites all have about the same layout.

And http://www.qvc.com/ and http://www.officedepot.com/ are the same way.

A small area in the top for the logo, navigation under that, large banner under that with a call to action in the banner and a couple smaller banners under those with a call to action as well. You can take what you want from this but it would appear to me that a pretty picture is better than words.

Making a living online is a difficult thing to do and it’s something that 98% of businesses that are currently online are not successful at. There are a lot of reasons for this and those reasons increase when websites leave the US.

To start with websites outside the US do not have as many people purchasing items online and for this reason the marketing and the website design have to be much better than those in the US.

A website needs to build trust, guide the visitor in the direction we want them to go and help them to make the purchase.

A major problem in any country is finding a web designer that understands marketing, web design, graphic design, programming and most of all conversion.

Let’s take a look at asicamericas.com.

The website was designed for smaller browsers which are rarely used today and what makes it worse is that the design is not centered. It hangs in the top left corner of the screen like it’s scared to be seen.

Every time someone is forced to click the mouse to find information there will be a percent of visitors that will leave the site never to return. By not having contact information on every page of the site we force visitors to click links and hunt for information.

If it’s a real business then the phone number and contact information should be in the header of every page. And the header and design of the site should tell me something about the business before I ever read the first line of text.

You’ve got less than 3 seconds to get me interested in your product and this is done on the graphical side of the website.
And colors will affect my reaction and the action I will take on your site.

Red indicates anger. It’s a strong color that conjures up a range of seemingly conflicting emotions from passionate love to violence and warfare. Red can have a physical effect, increasing the rate of respiration and raising blood pressure.

Blue would have been a better color to use. It is often associated with depth and stability. It symbolizes trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, truth, and heaven.

Blue is considered beneficial to the mind and body. It slows human metabolism and produces a calming effect.
Another problem with the site is the scrolling text; it causes your eyes to be pulled in that direction and forces us to read the information at the speed the website decides.

The website has no call to action and in no way tries to get me to purchase any type of product.

On the SEO side of things the website has less than 8 links pointing to it and not meta tags. Meta tags are used by search engines like MSN who will be spending $100 million on advertising their search engine. By ranking on their search engine you get some of the benefit of the 100 million they are spending.

Java script and other coding was left on the site, it should have been pulled out of the code and placed in external folders to make it easier for the search engines to read and understand the site.

It doesn’t take long to come to the conclusion that this site has never made money online.