HOW GREAT WEB DESIGN CONVERTS THE BEST CUSTOMERS

Did you know your website design impacts conversions to your business? How users experience your site influences their desire to buy.

You’ve heard that people buy on emotions. That’s true for your website. How site visitors feel while they are on your website influences their decision to buy.

The best experience transforms prospects into buyers. Your website must be a great experience for the best customers. To get your site great for your best customers, you must first understand those customers looking for a great experience.

That’s not always easy. Many web designers say, “We can’t measure site visitors. It’s all based on emotional response and we can’t track that.”

You must understand the metrics that convert your web customers into actual buyers. To achieve great conversion metrics, your business needs to build a website that feels good for your best customers.

This article walks you through the best website design practices to reach and appeal to your customers.

Web Design Principles That Will Boost Your Conversion Rate

From your home page to your product listings to blog articles to calls to action (CTAs) to navigation, each element on your website contributes to your site visitor’s emotional experience.

You’ll need to optimize each website component so they all work in concert to create a positive experience for the consumers who come to your website.

Whether a site visitor arrives from organic search (SEO) or from paid advertising (PPC) once they arrive, your website conversion optimization will make a difference.

A conversion-focused web design applies design principles and tricks that convince users to take action on your site.

Psychological triggers, minimizing distractions, and optimizing for user experience can drive conversions and sales.

What Is A Website Conversion Action?

A conversion is an action taken by a visitor to your website in response to your call to action (CTA). Calls to action can include making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, watching a video, or taking any other action you want your visitors to take.

Conversion optimization considers a series of factors (all called conversion hurdles) to make a decision about how to direct visitors to take action on your website.

Different tactics will enhance the likelihood of engaging your visitors, increasing their likelihood of converting. Your website’s conversion objective goal is the action you want your visitors to take. You might have a CTA button for a free consultation, one to join your newsletter, or one for a direct purchase.

Clicking on any of these buttons invites the user to act. When users take an action, it counts as a conversion.

The core principle of conversion-based web design is Calls to Action (CTAs). Your web design will focus on getting the user to respond to your call to action. Also included are the layout, color, text, and images on your site.

Why Conversion Based Design Is Important

As a website owner, you probably want to create an amazing-looking website. But, the catch is that what you think looks great may not look great to someone else. If that someone else is your customer, you’re turning them away instead of inviting them to take action.

Everyone has their own tastes and preferences.

However, design experts have examined what works with the public. The findings depend on evidence and scientific explanations as to why people respond a certain way to a color or layout.

Layout

Because of the findings, most websites follow the same layout:

On the top is a navigational menu followed by a copy, and the call to action is prominent on the page. As well as trust badges, most websites include verification of customer satisfaction like testimonials for social proof.

This standard layout keeps things simple for the site visitor. This standard is part of their user experience (UX).

This layout is familiar to people, and it makes it easy for them to find what they’re looking for on your website.

If you try to reinvent the wheel and put everything in different areas of your site than what people are accustomed to, your visitors (users) will search longer to get what they want.

And if they have to search for what they’re trying to find, chances are they’ll leave your site before finding what they want.

Design is important to keep in mind for your website. When you create or update your site, think about what every element is designed to do.

Ideas to Improve Website Conversions

A set of actions to take to engage and convert consumers who visit your website are clear. Using these tips will help you set up a website that won’t confuse or disappoint visitors. With these actions for your website design, you will increase conversions.

Be Bold Above The Fold

The first step in enhancing conversions on your website is to keep important elements above the fold.

The content displayed when a page is first loaded is above the fold. When a person scrolls, what appears next is “Below the fold.”

What appears above the fold depends on your visitor’s device and the dimensions of their screen. This means that the screen layout is different from the smartphone screen, laptop screen, and tablet screen.

First, you want to clearly state and show the purpose of the page. In sales, this is called the Unique Value Proposition (UVP). It’s the one thing about the page. The thing your site visitor will use (see, read, click) on the page. Usually, this is the headline for that page on your website.

Then show the action you want your site visitor to take. On a landing page, a brightly colored, clickable button for the action. It could be a video to view, a downloadable PDF, signup for your newsletter.

Whatever it is, the call to action is clear and easily visible.

Content

For informational pages like blog articles and white papers, use the inverted pyramid. It’s an old newswriter form, that puts the important information first and then follows up with details.

Create A Consistent Message

By combining copy and design, you can be consistent with your messaging and get traffic that’s ready to convert.

Each page of your website focuses on a topic and related topic synonyms. Supporting design elements like images, infographics, or videos echo the topic and reinforce the message.

Additionally, search engines like Google understand the topic of each page and the topic’s relevance to your business.

The consistent message automatically drives more traffic to your site. The better part is that you’ll receive free organic traffic that’s looking for exactly what you have to offer.

With this clear message, your site visitors are likely to convert.

Use Minimalist Design

A clean, simple website design makes it easy for your site visitor (user) to understand where to go and what you want them to do.

You may be tempted to cram information about your business onto each page. But keep your website simple.

? Follow the inverted pyramid information on each page.

? Stick to one topic on a page. If you have more information, create another topic-focused page.

? Write clear, easy-to-read copy in natural language (no jargon)

? Be consistent with two to three colors across the website

? Create straightforward, simple navigation

? Show what your product or service does simply

A messy, difficult-to-navigate website turns away visitors. You’ll optimize for conversions with a minimalist design.

Luxuriate In White Space

White space is your friend if you want to drive conversions. It’s the space around text, images, boxes, and buttons. That space allows your site visitor to isolate each item and connect. White space eliminates distraction so your site visitor can focus.

And with text, white space allows your visitor to consume your information one chunk at a time. According to neuroscience, people remember small chunks better than large amounts of text.

Even if your page is rich with information, white space lets your site visitor focus on the information one section at a time.

White space gives your reader room to breathe as they navigate your web page.

Keep The Focus On Your User

Having a pleasant experience on your website makes your visitor more likely to return.

And user experience plays a big role in web design. Search engines like Google place the greatest importance on user experience (UX).

Because user experience is important, for users and search engines, you’ll need to make sure you give them the best experience possible.

Stay Relevant

Your content should match what you offer. If your content is all about organic products but you’re selling non-organic products, users will be misled. They won’t find what they’re actually looking for which leads to bad UX.

Deliver on what you promise.

If your site ranks for keywords that do not pertain to your brand offering, you are misleading both search engines and site visitors. Search engines like Google will show results for your competitors because your user experience is off the mark.

Make Information Accessible

Make everything easy to find. Create a specifically worded navigation menu.

On your home page, have a box with a clickable link to purchase your product or service. Support your statements with social proof testimonials so your user knows your business helped other real people.

Use white space to set apart your call to action. Make the button big and visible.

The bottom line is whatever you want to emphasize, don’t make your site visitor search for it.

Fast Loading Site

Speed is important for conversion. Site visitors don’t want to wait for your site to load. If they have to wait, they leave. You won’t have a chance for conversion if they leave before your site loads.

In these days of instant gratification, consumers expect a fast-loading site. Optimize images and use minimalist design on every page so the loading time feels like instant results.

Users expect a loading time of three seconds or less. Test each page for loading speed so no matter where your site visitor goes on your website they will have instant access to the information you create for conversions.

Make Offer Page Appropriate

Have you visited a website where a popup came up before you could even see the page you wanted to visit? If you want conversions, don’t do that.

When you think about offers think of them as specific calls to action. If you have a product on sale, put the sale offer on the product page. Then add a small but visible and clickable sale announcement on your home page.

When your offer relates to the information on the page, you have a better opportunity for conversion because the site visitor is already interested. Then the offer makes sense and is an incentive to make a purchase now.

Optimize Your Content Page

At first, your contact page may seem like a no-brainer, but small tweaks can increase conversions.

Once a site visitor decides to contact your business, you don’t want them to have to stop and think, search for your phone number if they want to talk now, or try to find your address if they want to come on over.

Indicate your contact preference, for example, phone over email or vice versa. Make the phone numbers click-to-call and email links clickable, so your visitor doesn’t need to copy and paste. If your business is brick and mortar, include a map.

Make your form simple and easy to fill out. Many people are on mobile devices and need a way to fill it out easily.

Simple tweaks on your contact page can increase conversions. Make it easy. Make it quick. Help them connect with you.

Analyze Your Traffic

Measure your site traffic to understand how site visitors respond on your website. You’ll want to know a variety of indicators that can help you optimize your site for more conversions.

? Are you attracting the right visitors? If not, you’ll need to focus on the topics you cover.

? Test your Calls to Action (CTAs) for placement and wording to gain more conversions.

? Measure how many conversions come from your best products.

? Discover your best-selling products and put them front and center.

? Make sure the content you write matches the search intent of the topic (product) you are targeting.?

Start with Google Analytics to measure how visitors respond to your site. The analytics tool helps you:?

? Understand how your customers interact across your sites and apps throughout their entire lifecycle.

? Uncover new insights and anticipate future customer actions with Google’s machine learning to get more value out of your data.

? Take action to optimize marketing performance with integrations across Google’s advertising and publisher tools.

? Quickly analyze your data and collaborate with an easy-to-use interface and shareable reports.

Measure and test often to implement changes that result in more conversions.

Make Your Website Clean, Clear, Inviting

As tempted as you may be to tell your site visitor everything, make each page on your website count.

Follow the principles of minimalist, easy-to-understand content on each page rather than cluttering one page with so much information the visitor doesn’t know where to focus.

At Erfolk, we design websites for conversions. We’ll measure and analyze how site visitors perform from arrival to that final click to convert.