Want a Sale? Make the Next Step Obvious

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You have traffic coming to your blog or website.  You’re using social media to network and build relationships.  A person comes to your landing page on your site, ready to purchase — credit card in hand — but there are too many choices.  They’re not sure what to do next.  So they give up and leave.

Think this isn’t happening to you? Take a look at your analytics and see how many people are getting to your landing page (they’re interested) and how many people are actually going through with the sale (sales or thank you page).

Now, there may be other things people don’t like — maybe the offer wasn’t clear or the price is too high — but oftentimes they just don’t know what to do next.

It happens time and time again.  Often when I look at the usability on a client’s website, especially the sales funnel, and I start mapping out the pages involved, I get this horrible mishmash network of links going every where.  There’s no clear path to a sale.

Take a look at your landing page.  Do you have a clear call to action — a clear next step? Is it above the fold (top part of the page)? If your copy continues down the page, do you have your call to action repeated every so often?

Make it as easy as possible for people to understand what the next step is when they want to purchase from you.  Getting people to your landing page is half the battle.  Don’t stop there! Increase your sales by helping people buy from you.

Copyblogger has a great list of tutorials on landing pages.

(image by House of Sims on Flickr)