Think of your website in its most basic terms. What is it? It’s an online advertisement. It’s a listing that others can use to find your products or services. These tips for improving your web design will help to increase your conversion rates and your Google ranking.

Like any advertisement, the focus should lie in the type of return that it is able to generate. With web design, you are making a long-term investment that will continue to pay off for years to come.

When paying for web design, your focus should always be on creating a design that is going to result in conversions. Whether those conversions are signing up for your mailing list or purchasing your product – you need to make sure that when you invest in a web design for your business that’s worth it in terms of sales.

There are many small steps that can be taken to improve the conversion rate of a website. Too often businesses will get caught up in their own feelings about how a website looks without asking themselves a basic question – how does it perform?

Here are a few tips that we put into action when we’re designing websites for clients to ensure that they enjoy a positive return on their investment.

Direct the User Visually

You have to assume that when a user lands on your website that they know nothing about how your website works, where they need to go to get to where they want, or what you provide. You should take every effort to guide the user visually.

Some simple steps that you can take to make that more apparent include:

• Leave proper spacing. Although traditional marketing will tell you that every pixel matters, particularly above the fold, proper spacing on a website helps to direct the user’s eyes down the page to the appropriate locations where they can input their information or buy a product. Make sure that you are not overwhelming your users or they may be more likely to back out.
• Include arrows where applicable. Nothing tells a user where they need to go quite the way that an arrow does. Use arrows to direct your users to data capture forms, BUY NOW buttons, and other important areas of the website.

Giving the user visual cues on where their eyes should go is important for directing the reading flow of a web page. Although you do not want to be too persistent with pointing them in the right direction, sometimes just adding some space between elements of the page can be enough to give them a subtle push toward your call to action.

Every Page Has a Purpose

Every page on your website should have a well-defined purpose, whether to increase conversions or simply educate the visitor about a critical aspect of your product. Either way, you need to make sure that each page has a defined role and a call-to-action at the end of the page to convince the user to take that specific action. Pages without a purpose might fill your website out with content, but most likely are not contributing any profitable interaction.

Site Speed

One of the most overlooked but critical components in your visitor’s conversion is the speed of your website. This is heavily influenced by the web design on the page. Designs that are heavy on images will be slower to load and could lead to higher bounce rates. Any website that hopes to sell products should be both appealing to the eye and quick loading. Site speed also affects your ability to rank highly in the Google search results pages.

Remember: Site speed plays a critical role in your ability to keep people on your page, which plays the biggest role in securing sales.

Responsiveness

Web site responsiveness is a huge issue in the web design world today. Not only do you have to ensure that your website loads properly for any of the dozens of different browsers that users could potentially use, but you also need to account for different mobile devices, operating systems and other variables that could affect how your website displays to your users.

Launching a website without proper compatibility testing is like throwing money out the window.

Benefits, Not Features

Good Copy plays a critical role in how your products are perceived by your audience. Your copy should focus on the benefits that users will receive, not so much on the features that you provide. Of course, it’s tough to mention the benefits without mentioning features because the two go hand in hand, but ultimately the customer wants to know how your product or service will solve the problems that they have.

If you would like to learn more about how your company can improve your website’s conversion rates, please contact us today to schedule your initial risk-free consultation.