I spent a half hour watching a video on designing webpages for conversion; new software is also going to be introduced to help website owners do this and you can signup to find out about it by going to the link above and watching the video.

However, I'm not writing my post about that - it's more about the idea, suggested in the video, that a human being, by evolutionary design, only sees about 2% of the visual scanning field (what their eyes can scan) at any one moment - and when we sit in front of a computer - the screen/monitor takes up 20%, perhaps, of our visual range - so we're only seeing 10%, at most, of the screen at any one moment - and the rest of the screen/website we're looking at is blurred.

Nothing new here, and it follows very closely what GrokDotCom and other Conversion Rate Specialists suggest - that making it easier for people's eyes to scan (easier for the brain …too) can add up to 25% to you conversion rate.   In other words - if you normally got 3 out of a 100 visitors to convert (whatever that is for your site) making your site easier to scan will get you the 4th conversion.

That's pretty interesting - because you can only go so far with Web Analytics - but if you see a page has a high bounce rate - then you still need to tell someone (your client/stakeholder) what could be improved.

I guess I'll try out the software but just looking at the video I was able to pick up a couple of problems in one of my current SEO clients - and that's before we get into the content itself - which is another story.  Once you watch the full video, it's obvious what's wrong with this site - and why it has a high bounce rate (I know that because I've done the analytics for over 2 years).

The content itself - house plans are a tough sell now - with a glut of built homes that are empty - and while I'm not sure how many of the architects I've dealt with are doing in any detail, I believe, given the economic circumstances - it can't be that good.

Which sorta suggests that design can only do so much - and that part of the other story might need to be the content/offer itself - maybe that needs to be switched or improved, as well.

Which reminds me of the post on The Online Business Measurement Quadrant posted by Dennis R. Mortensen (a friend and fellow member of my WAA Social Media Committee, BTW, and one of the owners of the IndexTools Web Analytics Platform).

Web Analytics only captures part of the story of what's going on based on what there is to measure (see chart below - which I still think is incomplete, BTW) -

In this chart a hierarchy of measurement is implied, with Sentiment on the Y Axis and Content on the X Axis.  Of course, there's no place for the kind of measurement in the Stomper video, so that's where it might be incomplete.   But the idea that you can structure experience, structure measurement is what makes it possible to even attempt to answer the questions of what people who visit are doing on a site and why - and what tool to use to gather that data.

So, in a way, what the Stomper Video addressed was 25% of the online experience (perhaps more) that a user could control, just by placement, by chucking data together, by finding eye tracking patterns.  It doesn't address what the content is or even if the offer is any good.

Which gets back to my client again - certainly measurement can be enabled - chucking of data and improvements in navigation are needed - but unless they also modify the content itself - in tune with what the feedback from the Web Analyst (me, in this case) provides, that work is a waste of time.

Unless we have a framework to experiment with, and actually do the experimentation, we're probably not doing actionable Web Analytics.

But I'll end this post with one more thing I learnt in France this month - and I don't recall where I heard it, perhaps at the French Blogger Dinner - (French Blogger Dinner - and at the last minute), that converting clients happens out of trust - you pick something small first, that you can verify, can change, can measure, a battle you can win first, and once  you are successful in that - you can, in some cases, get buy in to larger changes.

If there's anything I failed with in this client, and some of the others, it was here.  

And I'm learning - when you want to gain success - start with small goals, small triumphs; once proven, you can get buy in to do the larger changes.

And that's one of the things I'll put into practice more in 2008.