Don't Get Cute With Your Navigation Buttons

Target Marketing
Tip of the Week
December 1, 2005

If you want online shoppers to "click here," tell them to "click here," advises Mark Wachen, CEO of New York-based Optimost, a technology and services company specializing in online multivariable testing. According to Wachen, Web retailers make two common mistakes with their navigation buttons: They try to get cute with buttons that read, "your path to savings" or "follow me" because they want to be unique, or they make the buttons too small, too hard-to-find, or too unusually designed so it's not clear they are supposed to be clicked on in the first place. By changing its navigation buttons from "Get X Now" to "Click Here to Try X," one online retailer was able to increase sales by 10.5 percent, says Wachen.