Ever stuck on why your website doesn’t have a high conversion rate? Is your web design easy to navigate through? Is your website designed specifically to cater your target market? Are there clear paths to reach the end conversion goal?
This article will take you through some web design tips that will surely put your low conversion rates to a halt.
- Easy Navigation and Accessibility
Having a simple, concise and clear layout when designing your website is essential. The idea is to make your conversion points easy to discover and access, and thus enhance the user’s experience. To do this, the user should feel naturally guided to your call-to actions. So, your first step should be to ensure your web design matches the desired needs on your targeted prospects.
For example, if your website’s goal is to sell expensive kids sneakers, then perhaps your most viable audience is busy middle-aged parents with a high socioeconomic status. Accordingly, make the imperative information (quality, size, price) easy to access, and the purchasing process easy to navigate. In this particular example, your prospect is busy, so don’t bore them with unnecessary information – cut straight to the chase!
Simple ways to increase user friendliness:
- Ensure your font is a decent size and readable. How big? A good rule of thumb is that 16px text on a screen is about the same size as text printed in a magazine or novel.
- Only implement sentences that will move your prospect forward
The point is, understand your audience, and make your web design compliments their lifestyle. It is good to experiment with designs until you find your hot spot.
- Increase Momentum
Now that your site has less friction, why not increase the time it takes for complete the conversion. This is called increasing momentum, and not only does it make for a more positive user experience, it’s something not enough web-designs consider.
Ways you can do this include:
- Bullets: Just like this bullet point, it should be getting higher readership than average. People appreciate the straightforwardness and simplicity of a bullet point – and since they stand out visually, it’s a great place to reiterate or itemize key value propositions… which is what I will do right now. Increasing momentum will increase the success of your conversion goals.
- Regular subheads: Since most web readers are expert scanners, it’s crucial to have phrases that stand out that aid in directing them to their end goal. Subheads should highlight the main purpose of the section they’re attached to – resist the urge to use mysterious rhetoric here.
- Alternating paragraph lengths (or letting your images tell 1000 words): It’s oldest saying in the book, and it’s because it’s proved us right time and time again. We say have the right balance between image and text, and if paragraphs are the best way to get your point across, vary both the sentence and paragraph length. Repetition is highly correlated with uninteresting, so be sure to encapsulate a varied pattern. It will make your text more engaging.
- Clear paths to conversion
Let’s remember what a conversion path actually entails. It is the description of steps taken by your targeted user to arrive at yours (and their) ultimate goal. Unfortunately, a common mistake in many web designs is the focus is too constricted to a great landing page. Of course, your landing page is paramount, but your inner pages are just as important. A good user experience is when their time on site is high and their bounce rate is low. These statistics will only appear outstanding if you focus on making your inner pages just as effective as your first.
When planning the conversion path, you intend your prospect to follow there are two salient elements to keep in mind:
- People read left to right, top to bottom. Make sure your steps appear logical and complement your users eye path.
- Ensure each step is informative and easy to achieve, you want to bring your user closer to your goal whilst giving them a sense of satisfaction
- Benefits over features
It is sad to say that they majority of web designs are very feature focused. Let the first page your user lands immediately inform them on how you can solve their problem. The messages should convert your user immediately, and make them eager to know more about the benefits you can provide.
Once a copy dedicates to much attention to irrelevant special features of your brand or boasts about your success, it answers the question: Why is my conversion rate is so low?
Keep the focus on your user and not you. Remember, if they have landed on your site they are purely interested in their problem and finding a solution. Your target audience, needs to be at the center of your focus. Keep them in mind whilst re-designing, it will save you a lot of time in the future.