Why is Paypal giving web page design & SEO advice?
That’s right. Paypal has made it their business to provide web page design & SEO advice.
Use this link to check out their article.
So, why do you think Paypal would involve themselves? What is their gain? Simple. Paypal makes money processing orders — a few percentage points on every sale a merchant processes through the Paypal system. So, it is simple math.
The more sales a web page generates the more money Paypal makes. So, the quality and functionality of a web page is of intimate concern to Paypal.
Admittedly, the appearance of being helpful can be of benefit to Paypal. I’m sure the marketing boys and girls are happy to use this to enhance the company image. However, the fact of being helpful is of even greater value to the bottom line. So I trust that they did not dredge up miscellaneous waffle to parade in front of webmasters. I believe Paypal either paid for the best advice they could find, or turned an in-house team loose on the challenge of finding their five design element suggestions.
Below you’ll find Paypal’s five points with a few comments from myself.
5 Design Elements that Can Boost Sales
1. Do make calls-to-action obvious
Make your shopping cart link easy to find on a page. Use contrasting and/or bold colors to call attention to CTAs, which allows them to stand apart from other elements and get noticed.
As with all good suggestions, this seems obvious when it is brought to our attention. Of course you want to have your call to action visually distinct from the general hubbub of your page. You want your call to action to stand out and either scream “here I am” or at least respectfully declare in a louder voice “give me a look.”
Notice the suggestion to use contrasting and/or bold colors and the absence of a suggestion to use a different font face. Too many web designers use too many fonts in an effort to establish variety on the page. This is not a good idea. Is much better to use color, font-weight, and font-size.
2. Do use an action color for buttons.
People respond differently to different colors. Cool colors like blue and green have a calming effect. Warm colors like red and orange inspire passion and impulsive actions. Using red (or other warm colors) for your “add to cart” buttons will help increase clicks on those buttons.
The existence of action colors is something that you may or may not already be familiar with. Yes, there are colors that tend to elicit (draw forth) certain reactions. These action colors are partially determined by heritage, and they are partially determined by environment. That means that the effect these colors have can be attributed to a combination of how we are built and how we are trained. Thus it is possible that in some future warm colors could be replaced as the key action colors. Who knows with the massive fascination with Green This and Green That, it could become an action color.
At the moment, my money is still on warm colors as the action color of choice. And the fact that Paypal (or whatever high priced consultant they hired) agrees supports my own observations.
3. Do use the principle of proximity to group related items.
For clarity, place descriptions and buttons near the products they’re associated with. Make sure each product, description, and button group is separated from other groups in some way to avoid confusion.
Read point 3, then point 4, then point 3, then point 4, then point 3, then point 4. Do this until it really sinks in. These two points are totally linked. You want a product image, description and call to action (“buy now” button) for each product. AND, you want them visually distinct on your page so that any half-witted, over-stressed, in a hurry, no time to study, gotta get in and get out quick, browser can instantly discern which piece of real estate on your page contains the image, description and buy me button for the product they are interested in.
4. Do control the flow in your design.
Show your product image, then your product description, and then your “buy now” button. Organize design elements to follow the buying process that goes through the customer’s mind.
Actually, to be honest, I’m not a 100% sold on the necessity for the ordering. I accept 100% the need to have all three of these elements grouped into a single piece of web page real estate. But, I believe given proper grouping it is possible to put the “buy now” button near the product name/title.
Oh, perhaps this would be a good place to mention my own modification of the above law of three (image, description, cta). For clarity’s sake I divide this into image, product name (or title), description, call to action.
A small modification I grant you. But an important one. Each product really does deserve its own name or title. And, as a design element it should be considered separately from the description. It will typically have a different font-size, color, or font-weight. Also, in my opinion, you will want to use h2 or h3 for the product name.
5. Do use whitespace.
Allow your design to breathe. Whitespace helps elements on a page get noticed, communicated the desire action to users. Whitespace also improves usability, is aesthetically pleasing, and increases comprehension.
Why would Paypal mention the use of whitespace? Well, it is nice to have 5 Design Elements that Can Boost Sales rather than 4 Design Elements that Can Boost Sales. Five is a better number than 4. But, setting aside that trifle of marketing cynicism, I think there is something much more significant being said by the above point #5. There are far too many pages that fail when it comes to proper use of whitespace.
A suggestion to use whitespace is necessary because people are not using it — or at least not using it well enough. I’m sure we are all guilty to one degree or another.
There are far too many pages with failed usability because of insufficient whitespace. There are far too many pages that look like dog do because of improper use of whitespace.
And as for comprehension, when is the last time you asked yourself, “Hmmm, I wonder how comprehensible my page is?” I think more than adjustment of whitespace might be required here. However, proper use of whitespace is a good place to start.
In Closing
I’m not suggesting that Paypal actually cares about you and your website. They may, or they may not. However, they definitely care about their bottom line. And, since they make money from your sales you can bet they are motivated to do whatever is possible to enhance your sales and their bottom line.