Human behavior online is predicatable and consistent, so by knowing how your eyes work to interpret what you and your visitors see online.....you can make simple changes that have a pronounced impact on bounce rates and buy conversion rates.

Video: Natural Site Design Success - Part 1 of 4

Video: Natural Site Design Success - Part 2 of 4

Takeaways

Put the buy [or add to cart] button right beside or below the price - as this is the last thing most purchasers look at before completing their buying decision process.

Make it easy for your visitors to buy. EASY is better than good, better or smarter. Rational decision does not factor as highly as EASY.

A visitor forms an impression on whether it will be easy - and that means:

Site Template
Navigation Bar
Layout
Typography
Color Scheme

Add Headings to Long Navigation Lists - your visitors like structure and small packages. Have no menu item more than 7 items from top or bottom. Better still, keep links per heading group to a maximum of 7.

Video: Natural Site Design Success - Part 3 of 4

Consider eye distance a visitors eyes must travel to get the information they want from your site.

Contrast - add perceived contrast with white space, changing font size or color. Make heading in nav bar high contrast.
Repitition - chunk your content in groups - repeat the same layout format in multiple blocks of information - the visitor gets used to the format and can find and read information faster.
Alignment - use indentations to change parts of a text block - for instance, between heading and body. Keep sections of web page separated by white space and aligned vertically and horizontally.
Proximity - not too close, but not too far. Consider transition distance.

Use faces in banners - people associate them.

Video: Natural Site Design Success - Part 4 of 4

Whitespace matters - put a lot of it around what you really want visitors to see.

Boring can be a good thing on checkout pages, it avoids the visitor getting distracted from making the final action in the buy process. Keep the Checkout button the LAST ACTIONABLE ELEMENT on the page.

Design you page as a visual roadmap

Use High Contrast, High font size, headings
Faces
Blue underline links
Whitespace
Pictures
Picture Captions
Flash or other multimedia

Human behaviour is predictable and consistent.

This Click Fu Series features StomperNet product Scrutinizer, downloadable here!

Things You Can Do with the Scrutinizer

Simulate eye tracking in different task scenarios
Assess the ease of use of multi-step processes
Provide a fresh pair of design eyes
Test the appeal of your visual grid
Evaluate your site’s contrast levels
Add learnability to your page template
Optimize button locations

...more information on how to use Scrutinizer