Screen resolution can impact conversion
I got to look at some heatmap data recently and it got me thinking about how we lead visitors around websites. Large ecommerce stores that have many product categories and thousands of pages really need to make sure that visitors can find what they’re looking for on their screens. This sort of thing can have a large impact on conversion rate and revenue.
So what do visitors see when they land on your index page? I found a couple cool tools and stats that can help you design and tweak your website to help visitors get on their way to making a purchase.
This screen resolution test tool let you show your website at different resolutions. It’s a free and simple test that lets you see the website through your visitors’ eyes. Is your site looking tiny and outdated? Or is it too wide and hard to find the main navigation?
I found some great info on the spectrum of screen resolution of internet users (of course, the people who visitor your website are a unique group and you should check your analytics tool to see how your visitors stack up), and I found this a little surprising.
In 2010, 96% of internet users have a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 or higher. First of all: Way to go, people, I never want to touch a computer with 800 x 600 screen rez again. Second: Designers can go wild(er) when building a future-proof website.
So use this data and use the tools to see what your visitors are seeing when they visit your website.
Image courtesy http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp
December 20th, 2010 at 9:28 am
I once saw a nice slide showing a client what proportion of a key page can be seen by diff screen resolutions and the % of visits with each screen resolution. This led to recommendations based on getting the call to action above the fold for the majority of visits. It was great, visual and leading to recommendations based on data. Great that is until I had the idea of applying some more data and discovering screen resolution had no impact in this case.
To your ideas above, I recommend that if you have a key site action (e.g. product page and want to see if the Add to Basket button is too low), to segment by screen resolution. If there is a correlation between the height of the screen and the completion rate (e.g. proportion of visits that create a basket having seen a product page), you know there is an issue which should be fixed. This tactic goes beyond looking for yourself at how the site looks in different resolutions to how visitors with different resolutions actually behave.