Chris Dayley is a digital marketing entrepreneur, speaker, and neuromarketer who uses psychology-based testing and analytics to help businesses understand their users.
In 2014, he started his conversion optimization agency, Dayley Conversion, which he later merged with Disruptive Advertising. Now, he acts as the VP of testing and optimization for the company.
On the podcast, Chris discusses ways to audit on your homepage and a test to apply right away.
Value Propositions for Your Homepage
When it comes to running a website, one of the most dangerous assumptions is to think you know what your audience wants. Therefore, Chris believes that value proposition ultimately comes down to “what are you offering that people care about?”
To make sure your homepage has value, you first need to make sure that it’s immediately clear what the user needs to do when visiting your website. In the same two or three seconds, the user should also know what your company does or sells.
One of the best ways for Chris to find out if homepages accomplishes this is through A/B testing. Once this is done, you can try to parse out which parts of the site offer the most value to the user.
If you’re a small business and can’t spend a lot of time setting up an A/B test, there’s a free tool called Google Optimize that’s easy to use.
Value proposition shouldn’t be confused with call-to-action, the latter being what you want people to do on the page. The former is what causes them to take action, such as a Black Friday sale.
Should Value Propositions Be Text or Video?
The answer is both, according to Chris, though it depends on the audience. This is another case where user testing is going to be important in order to figure out what your users are reacting to.
If you make a video, it needs to be short and sweet, so you don’t overwhelm users with too much information.
Whether your value proposition is a video or text, the question you ask yourself should remain the same. What do you have to offer and why should people care?
How Do You Make a Great Call-to-Action?
First of all, you need to have a clear idea of what your call-to-action is for your homepage. While Chris often finds that people spread their focus across several different aspects of the website (blog, shop, news) to draw attention, too many call-to-actions is a bad move.
You need to have a singular call-to-action.
Once you do, make sure it’s at the top of the page and is the only obvious button to click.
What Should the Content on Your Homepage Look Like?
When it comes to content, Chris believes in quality over quantity. It doesn’t matter how many images and fancy text you throw at people, if it’s not engaging, people won’t care.
What kind of content your homepage has—and how much—is going to depend entirely on your unique audience. Some homepages only need one video, while others need three. Some need a lot of text and no images, while others need a lot of images and very little text.
Your content may also depend on the nature of your product. A particularly decorative product may require more pictures than something that’s not.
Which Webpage Pitfalls Should You Avoid?
Theoretically, anything on your website that’s not necessary is a potential distraction from your value propositions. Just as with call-to-actions, you should never assume what a distraction is. Testing is the best way to figure out what works and what doesn’t.
On e-commerce sites, Chris has noticed that too many products can become a distraction. Additionally, having social media links where they don’t make sense has also proven to be unsuccessful.
In fact, Chris thinks you should hide your social media links, unless you’re focusing on building a large social media following.
What Could Be Causing Anxiety?
The surest way to cause anxiety with your webpage is to confuse your user. If they start to think, “I don’t know what to do” or “I’m not sure what will happen if I click on a button,” you’ve lost them.
Another way to cause anxiety is to add pricing to your page. If you do have a price, you need to justify it.
Focusing on responsiveness is a great way to quell anxiety.
A large part of responsiveness is making sure your website is properly optimized for desktop and mobile, separately. Both audiences want different things.
For example when designing the mobile version of your website, you may want to focus on a call button and limit long text passages.
What’s the One Test That Everyone Can Implement Tomorrow?
Chris suggests the existence test.
This involves removing content and figuring out what the distractions are. In turn, you’ll figure out a lot about your audience.
For example, if you removed a video from your website and noticed decreased conversion rates, you can deduce that the video is actually creating positive engagement. The next step is to test different video types to further optimize this media source and discover what could work better.
Once you know your audience, you can custom-fit the website to their tastes to tailor to their needs.
Where Can You Learn More About Chris Dayley?
If you’d like to learn more about Chris, you can visit his company’s site, DisruptiveAdvertising.com. You can also find him on the usual social media channels, such as LinkedIn and Twitter.
