Conversion Centered Design: Principle 1 – Attention

In a nutshell, conversion centered design is a design strategy that drives a user toward one action. Every web page you view typically has multiple actions you can take. With all these possible actions, how can you influence users to take the one you want them to the most?

Enter Attention, the first principle of conversion centered design. Attention is fleeting. Human beings have a rabidly declining attention span (are you still with me?). So to capture attention, conversion centered design looks at attention ratio. Attention ratio is what actions you can take on a page compared to what you should do. Ideally, you’d want the ratio to be 1:1. But that seems to be like the unicorn of web pages. Looking at most home pages of a website, there could be 20, 50 or even 100 possible clicks! But a website’s home page is rarely designed around conversions.

The best example of reducing options and driving action is a landing page. A landing page provides an offer: content, demo, consultation, pricing, etc. When you design a landing page, you are doing so to generate leads. There’s nothing you want more than for someone to complete that form and give you their contact information. This person is interested! So what is going wrong that they don’t complete the form? Is the problem too many other possible clicks?

You may think your landing page is only providing that one possible path to action. But what else is on the page? Social media icons? A link to your home page? A full menu navigation? If you look at all these possible distractions, you’ll see that your ratio is skewed. Unbounce did some great A/B testing on the attention ratio, basically proving the theory that the lower the attention ratio, the more conversions.

If your main goal is to convert, then conversion centered design is a great option. It can also be applicable on more than landing pages, but don’t strip down all your links and instantly think it will be a conversion bonanza.

We’ll be covering the other six principles of conversion centered design in upcoming blogs. Stay tuned!