How Good Website Design Improves Your Conversion Rates
Reading Time: 10 minutes Website design is extremely important from an aesthetic point of view because visitors are more likely to stick around if you dazzle them with some eye-catching details. The fact that you have approximately eight seconds to make a great first impression and capture your visitors’ attention perfectly illustrates the importance of creating a visually appealing website. This ultimately produces better conversion rates for the website.
Similarly, research studies have established that 55% of visitors usually spend less than 15 seconds on a website, so you really need to offer them something that will motivate them to explore beyond the front page and below the fold. When we’re talking about design, it’s essential to mention that it refers to usability, too.
As your ultimate goal is to make conversions, each element of your website has to be carefully designed.
Table of Contents
The less the merrier
When it comes to your home page, you need to keep it as simple as possible. Namely, many websites are too overwhelming as they offer too many options that visitors can choose from.
Although it may seem like a good idea that could engage your audience, it only confuses them and complicates their path towards conversion. Never forget that your website should be structured and created in a manner that subtly pushes your visitors towards converting which means that you need to remove all the obstacles and make that journey as simple as possible.
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According to so-called Hick’s Law, the time that an individual takes to make a decision is directly proportional to the number of choices they have.
In other words, by increasing a number of possible choices that visitors of your website have, you also increase the time they need to make a decision. Take advantage of Hick’s Law by applying it to the navigation bar and limiting the number of links to choose from, thus speeding up the decision-making process.
Basically, your homepage should cut to the chase and prompt people to take only the important actions which will positively affect your bottom line.
A great way to reduce distractions and declutter your website is by installing a full-screen welcome gate as it will focus your visitors’ attention on just one call to action. Each page of your website should have one main objective, and instead of flooding your visitors with tons of options, you should gradually increase them, one step at a time.
Less is more when we’re talking about good and highly converting website design. In terms of aesthetics, simplicity and minimalism should be reflected in stripped-down visual elements. This ascetic approach to design will allow calls to action to stand out and be the most prominent element on the page.
Many companies make a mistake and burden their websites by using various flashy visual effects, color gradients, and dramatic drop shadows believing that their visitors will be taken by that snazzy design, but they only reduce the visibility and conspicuousness of their CTAs.
The colors of these CTAs and backgrounds should be contrasting but yet complimentary, as that’s how you’ll highlight the buttons’ interactivity, thus prompting your visitors to convert.
Mobile optimization is essential for better conversion rates
Saying that people are dependent on their smartphones would be an understatement. It’s safe to conclude that a substantial part of the world’s population is practically glued to their mobile devices.
It has been estimated that in 2017 the number of mobile phone users will hit 4.77 billion. A survey has revealed that as much as 75% of Americans are reluctant to part with their smartphones even when they’re in the bathroom.
All these stats speak volumes about the importance of having a mobile-friendly or mobile-responsive design because it’s very likely that people access your website through their smartphones.
If your website isn’t mobile-optimized, they’ll leave without converting. Google has reported that more than 50% of search queries globally come from mobile devices, and this is a strong indicator that people expect to be able to browse the internet via their smartphones, and this functionality should be your priority.
Apart from mobile responsiveness, web page loading speed is another crucial parameter that can significantly affect your conversion rates. Namely, web pages that take more than three seconds to load are considered sluggish and users usually lose patience and bounce.
Since so much is at stake here, it’s essential to thoroughly research and plan what your new website design should be like and the Quikclicks website is a great place to get ideas.
Make your content visually appealing
Content is a powerful tool for driving traffic to your website and it has a significant role in engaging your audience. The catch is to understand their needs and offer them content that will address their common pain points in a helpful manner.
Your prospects want the content that will be relatable, helpful, useful, and entertaining. Still, even if you achieve all that, you need to jazz it up and make it visually appealing.
Adding some attractive images to your blog posts will definitely capture your audience’s attention. But, don’t limit yourself only to textual content, because videos has become increasingly popular recently.
For example, a survey has shown that 59% of executives say that if both video and text are available on the same topic, they are more likely to choose video. Another stat illustrates the effect that video has on conversion rates, as putting it on your landing page can increase conversion by a stunning 80% or even more.
Expanding your reach and presenting your content to a wider audience is crucial for improving your conversion revenue, and that’s where infographics can come in handy since those colorful images packed with stats are shared and liked on social media three times more than any other type of content.
Negative doesn’t always mean bad
In design, white space, or the empty on your website that doesn’t contain any elements, is important because it provides a much-needed balance.
Namely, without it, your website would be too cluttered and cramped, which means that it would be very difficult or even impossible to read anything. It’s also called negative space, but don’t jump to any conclusions about its value.
If we bear in mind that people usually just scan text and don’t read each and every word very on a website carefully, it’s clear that white space between paragraphs and text lines can make a big difference.
You have to make it easy for your visitors to find the essential information that you want to communicate to them because dense text can be both tiring and tiresome, and it tends to bury some crucial details within an avalanche of letters and other graphic symbols.
The more time they spend on your website, the more likely they will be to convert. Also, negative space is what helps your CTA to stand out, so use it cleverly.
Larger chunks of text should be broken into smaller and shorter paragraphs in order to make them more readable. Last but not least, smaller fonts require more white space between letters.
Effective navigation
This might sound superficial, but according to a survey conducted by Adobe, two-thirds of people would rather read beautifully designed than plain content if they were given 15 minutes.
On the other hand, no matter how beautiful the design of your website is, poor navigation and usability can undermine all your design efforts.
Navigation has a tremendous impact on transition rates because if a website isn’t properly structured and easily navigated, you can’t expect that your prospects will bother to stick around and try to figure out how to find what they are looking for.
Instead of wasting their time, they’ll simply leave and go to another website.
Every element should have its place and purpose based on its relevance and priority. User experience heavily influences whether a person who visits your website will come back.
In spite of the fact that drop down menus are popular and seemingly useful, it’s better to stay away from them. One of the reasons is that search engines can’t easily crawl and index them properly, thus diminishing the effects of your SEO and exposure. Secondly, research studies have established that drop down menus can be annoying and that they can slow down the decision-making process as they’re offering additional options to website visitors. Finally, experts have suggested that it’s best to keep the number of your menu items up to no more than seven, as it’s good for SEO, and that way you’ll avoid flooding your visitors with information.
Secondly, research studies have established that drop down menus can be annoying and that they can slow down the decision-making process as they’re offering additional options to website visitors.
Finally, experts have suggested that it’s best to keep the number of your menu items up to no more than seven, as it’s good for SEO, and that way you’ll avoid flooding your visitors with information.
Browser compatibility
This is one of the functionalities that is frequently neglected, and even some big and powerful companies tend to overlook it.
This is an issue that results in low conversion rates because many people prefer one particular browser and by building a website that doesn’t display equally well on all the most popular browsers you limit your own reach, traffic, and growth.
Make sure to check whether there are some inconsistencies in the way different websites interpret a website and fix any potential issues so that your website is correctly displayed at least on major browsers.
If your website isn’t compatible with your visitors’ browsers, you’re practically sending them to your competitors. This annoying issue is a surefire way to hinder your rates and revenue.
Moreover, this can spark customer loyalty issues because such neglect makes you seem unprofessional.
The color of money
Contrasting color schemes are of paramount importance when it comes to creating a user-friendly website.
It’s this principle that makes your text legible and your CTA more visible. Besides that, according to psychology, colors can influence our mind or set a certain mood, and that’s why marketers take advantage of certain colors and their combinations in order to influence their prospects.
For example, blue is used to evoke loyalty, dependability, trust, and trustworthiness. Lots of big companies and social platforms use blue as their main color in their logos and promotional stuff.
Green isn’t a corporate color in the sense that blue is, but it’s still it’s great for channeling balance, stability, and harmony.
Some websites make great use of monochromatic design, so using pitch black, as it promotes strength and elegance, or white which symbolizes simplicity, as your background colors might be a good idea.
Keep the information on a need to know basis
The process of scoring leads and obtaining contact information from people who come to your website for the first time is very important, but on the other hand, many companies tend to ask too many questions thus prolonging and overcomplicating the process.
When visitors realize that there are too many fields that they have to fill out, they simply leave without converting. Instead of asking some questions that go into detail, you should stick to basics, meaning that the name and email address will do. A study reported that four-field subscription forms performed 160% better than those that had eleven fields.
There’s no reason to ask too much information at this stage, even though the more you know about your prospects, the better for your marketing and sales efforts, but you can find out the rest later in the process.
The point is to prioritize and to ask only relevant questions that will allow you to start messaging your prospects.
You can be sure that your visitors will appreciate the fact that they can go through the whole registration process quickly.
Forget the practice of including captchas in your forms because that kind of anti-spam protection annoys many users, and it’s one of the main culprits behind poor rates.
The “Honeypot” captcha method is great, though, because it uses CSS to hide the form field that is supposed to be left blank, meaning that real people can’t see it.
Spambots, on the other hand, fill in even the fields that valid users can’t see so that it’s easy to spot spam without having to inconvenience your prospects.
Good website design can boost your conversion rates and improve customer experience, thus helping you grow your business.
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