How should the [Big Buy Now Button] in the right gutter be linked?

Question

I'm redisigning my website and would like to know how the "Big Buy Now Button" in the right gutter should be linked. This button will be available on every page of the site.

I sell two software products and each product has two purchase options:

Product A (Download Only) [sales=85%]
Product A (Download & CDROM) [sales=14%]

Product B (1 User Download) [sales=1%]
Product B (10 User Download) [sales=0%]

I do not have an add to cart situation, it's a single purchase type process.

My current site does not have a big "Buy Now" button on the home page but my new site will have this button in the top right gutter of every page.

I intend to have a buynow page on my new website that that lists out my products and prices with separate buy now links for each product. These links goto the my 3rd party payment processor page. (This is how my current site works). I plan on having the buy now section of the top navigation link to this page, as well as any links from content copy elsewhere in my site.

Here is the basic layout:

+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| LOGO                                                                                |
|                                                                                     |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Navigation                                                                          |
+----------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------+
|                                                          | [  BIG BUY NOW BUTTON  ] |
| Main Content Section                                     |                          |
|         |                                                |   Right Gutter Content   |
|         |                                                |            |             |
|         |                                                |            |             |
|         |                                                |            |             |
|         |                                                |            |             |
|         V                                                |            V             |

So, I'd like to know your thoughts on linking the "Big Buy Now Button" directly to the payment process page for Product A (Download Only). This product generates approximately 85% of my sales.

The alternative is to link the "Big Buy Now Button" to the buy now page on my site and have the visitor make another "decision" and "another click".

Answer 1

Are you suggesting to link the Buy Now button to the payment page for the download-only version of Product A, regardless of the product/version being described by the rest of the content on the page? Because that doesn't feel right to me. If I'm looking at the single-license version of Product B, I'd expect the Buy Now button to allow me to purchase that product.

As far as having your button and your nav item link to different pages, I think that's acceptable. The standalone button is part of the page content and relates to that content; items in the nav bar, assuming they're present and identical across all site pages, generally are not and do not.

Answer 2

Our company is re-designing our site right now and has encountered a scenario similar to yours. We have two main products, and one of them generates a good majority of our revenue, like with you. In our case, and maybe yours too, both our products do essentially the same thing but deliver different value to the customers and are accessed/utilized differently.

When funneling traffic into a conversion (a sale, for example), you'll want to provide them with enough information to be comfortable but not enough to be distracted. To answer our scenario, our new site will focus on the one area of expertise we specialize in, but the big "Buy Now" action buttons take them to a page to start a free trial of our more popular product right away.

In your case, I think as long as customers know what they're doing, that button should directly take them to a checkout/download page or a page to start a trial of your most popular product.

So fundamentally, the purpose of your site is probably to market and sell your products. Period. On the front face, it probably has little-to-no functionality or behavior, and so its purpose is focused on selling the user to that product. Once your site has accomplished that task and the visitor is interested enough, that button is there and ready to step in and finish the conversion. If the site is well-designed, the user will clearly know sooner than later what that button ultimately does for them.

Answer 3

A frictionless process to purchase your product is always better (take as an example the '1-click buy' option from Amazon).

So I'd advice to give the user the option to purchase right-on with a pretty simple and apparent purchase form when clicking on the "Big Buy Now Button".

Then also keep a less noticeable option for the other products in the same page, in case the user is unsure and still wants to see other options before purchasing, in which case he will make the effort of fishing (looking around) a bit on the same page and will notice the other options.