Imagine if your website visitors were players in a videogame.
The game is: going through your website and get a crystal clear idea of what you do and who you do it for, what’s in it for them and then, final objective, to buy from you.
If you ever played a videogame, you are familiar with gameplay difficulty modes. You usually have easy, normal and hard.
Well, most websites out there (those who don’t do the work of understanding their audience), force their visitors to play on hard mode every single time.
What if you gave them easy mode instead?
They would land on your homepage, read your value proposition and immediately think you’re reading their minds. They would get curious, excited even, and your page would clearly highlight the ideal path for them to find the bits of information they need to learn about you.
And ultimately, they would crush the final boss (buying!) without breaking a sweat. Easy mode, 100% game completion.
That’s why most games define easy mode as the best way to enjoy the storyline. There are no distractions and little to no friction.
It should be the same on your site.
This came to mind as I was reading a recent post by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits (“How to Put Life on Easy Mode”). His way of defining what makes life easier? A few points that seem to be taken out of a user experience book.
Things like doing one thing at a time, putting space in between things, cleaning as you go, doing less, eat slowly, move often, doing things as simply as possible, having focus sessions etc.
Important things to keep in mind both in business and life.
Next time you think about how to improve your website, ask yourself “How can I give people the “easy mode”?
But don’t overdo it. Some commitment is still required to filter out the bad apples.
After all, when using cheat codes are you truly enjoying the game?
Speaking of making life easier, I just launched my UXTeardown Chrome extension on Product Hunt.
Go give it an upvote (just a click) if you can. It would be awesome!