Web Users Crave Familiarity


The sad truth is, general Web users would love it if all our sites looked like Amazon.com.

They'd immediately be familiar with the interface, they would know how to find what they wanted, and they'd find it a breeze to check out and complete the purchase.

Or, if your site is crammed full of thousands of pages of content, make it look like Yahoo!. That's what FindLaw.com has done.

The trouble is, the creative spirit hates to copy the work of others. We want to make out own mark, do something different, be original. And the more creative we are as individuals, the greater that compulsion becomes. As a result, we build flash homepages, with unfamiliar scroll bars and use strange icons in place of familiar words like 'Home' and 'About'.

Or designers make a compromise and build a traditional homepage, but with a different look. They'll move the navigation links from the left side to the right side - anything to look different!

And writers are no better. We'll look for other ways to say familiar things in a different way.

Some writers say 'Entry Page' instead of 'Home', or 'Go to Checkout' instead of 'Buy Now'. Is this a problem? I don't have figures to prove my point, but my guess is that conversion rates drop off whenever you give a reader reason to pause. And when you say "Entry Page' you are giving your readers pause for at least as long as it takes for them to wonder to themselves, "I wonder if that means the homepage?"

But the issue of familiarity goes beyond the words we have come to expect on the Web. We should also keep in mind the many words and phrases that our prospects have grown to recognize from the offline world.

If you sell directly from your site - and that includes selling newsletter sign-ups and registrations - spend some time looking at the junk mail you receive each day.

Also, take a look at those small cards that drop out of the magazines you receive. Check out the language.

Limited Time Offer. Save. FREE. Reply now. Special Offer. Call 1-800-000-0000. Offer expires May 22. Free Gift. Trial Offer. Guaranteed. 30-Day money back guarantee. Subscribe.

And so on.

While you may not see all of these words and phrases in abundance online right now, you might want to try a few.

A sense of familiarity can cross boundaries between media. All of the terms above are also use successfully on TV and radio. So why not on the Web?

Learn from the hard-won experience of others and use terms and words that your consumers are familiar with, whatever the source.

When you do that, you speed up the decision-making process, you remove all those pauses when your prospects are figuring out what exactly it is that you really mean.

This is true for the look of your site, the navigation of your site and the copy you use to try and engage attention and close sales.

As much as we may hate to accept it, originality is usually the enemy of a smooth customer experience.


More Resources

Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting

More E-Commerce Information:

Related Articles


Website Marketing: 10 Resourceful Things You Can Do With A Product That Doesnt Sell
Do you have any product that has not been moving well?Would you like to learn what to do with it?Here are website marketing secrets to help you:1. Sell the reprint/reproduction rights to the product.
How To Eliminate Credit Card Refunds From Digital Thieves
Can you encounter the number of times where a Credit Card Sale was generated, only to receive a "Refund Notification" from your contracted e-commerce processor on behalf the "customer"?Welcome to the electronic world of "cyber-shoplifting".Unscrupulous surfers, disguised as potential "customers", systematically opt to ordering goods (using credit cards) in electronic form of delivery, only to request a refund minutes or days later after receiving the product.
Delivering Information Products Through Paypal Automatically
Paypal is one of the wonders of the web. Never has it been easier for individuals or small business to receive payments though the web & to be able to accept payment though debit or credit cards without having to own a merchant account.
Intranet Portals - Search and Taxonomies
Knowledge Management for beginnersKnowledge Management (KM) can be defined simply as the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets. Knowledge assets are often grouped into two categories:(1) Explicit KnowledgeGenerally, everything and anything that can be documented, archived and codified.
Chinas Online Shopping May Be Booming In The Next Few Years
Data from China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) shows that till June 2004 Chinese online user has reached 87 million, of which, 7.3% has experience of online shopping.
How To Stay Cutting Edge In Online Business
Let's face it, there's just way too much information out there for any one individual to try to keep abreast of. And yet, if we shut ourselves off from the world, we risk building our businesses in a vacuum and suffering on the bottom line.
The Check is in the E-mail
Have you ever had someone who owed your business money say, "the check is in the mail." Well now there is an answer to that old tired way of brushing you off and not seeing that check come in the mail week after week after week.
Saving Money On Your E-commerce Site
After building and transferring many e-commerce sites it still amazes me that owners of e-commerce businesses are still wasting money in three basic ways. For fear of stating the obvious, saving money is the same as making money $100 saved is $100 added to your profit margin.
Choosing the Right Online Shopping Cart
Are you a website owner or a web designer/developer? If either applies, I would venture to say that eventually you'll need an online shopping cart for one of your websites. In fact, almost all new websites today need some sort of ecommerce built-in, for the purpose of selling goods and services in the online marketplace.
Intranet Portals - Personalisation and Customisation
The key difference between an (old-fashioned) Intranet and a PortalWhat typifies a modern intranet portal is that there is a standardised user interface ("UI") with a built in system for user authentication. In other words, the user signs in to the portal rather than simply accessing it.
Ecommerce Solution for the Big and Small Business
First off, you need to know what an ecommerce solution is. An ecommerce solution can be defined in many ways.
How Measuring Key Performance Indicators Can Improve E-Commerce Strategy - Part One
The problem with most e-commerce marketing strategy today is that companies don't understand how they use things like web analytics. Most e-commerce directors or web marketers are given a budget and told to stick to it, and good analytics don't usually come cheap.
10 Second Internet Person, sound familiar?
Some people do not understand the Internet idea of online commerce, but then again some people do not understand themselves either. To fully understand Internet Commerce you really only need to monitor your "clicking habits" for a few days to see where you are going and what if anything you are buying.
Start doing online business using B2B Portals in Six Steps
I registered with a B2B site but what's next?This is a question many first time users of B2B marketplaces ask themselves. A few expect that the registration itself will bring them a number of new customers.
Home Sweet Home Page
"Your home page is the world's introduction to you and your company. Make it COUNT!" - Heidi RichardsThink of your home page as the cover of your brochure.
10 Compelling Benefits of Having A 3rd Party Merchant Account
If you have been wrestling with the idea of applying for your own 3rd party merchant account then take a look at the following compelling benefits of using a 3rd party provider to mange all of your credit card processing needs.1.
Online Shoppers Say They'll Buy from Small and Large E-Businesses Alike
As the holiday shopping season begins in earnest, consumers say they're just as willing to buy from small online retailers as they are from large, national e-commerce providers.In addition to this key finding, a new national survey of 2,500 consumers discovered extremely high levels of consumer participation in - and satisfaction with - shopping on the Internet, despite continuing concerns for security and privacy.
Getting Started in ECommerce - Part Two
In Part One we talked a little bit about what Ecommerce is, getting a domain name and setting up a merchant account. Ecommerce is more than that, much more.
Retirement Signature Frames - The Perfect Retirement Gift!
When most people think of a retirement gift, they think of a watch. It's the tried and true gift that companies give employees to say thanks for all the years of hard work.
What is SSL (the little padlock)?
SSL ("Secured Socket Layer") is a protocol used to encrypt the communication between the user's browser and the web server. When SSL is active, a "little padlock" appears on the user's browser, usually in the status line at the bottom (at the top for Mac/Safari users.