People are more internet savvy now than they’ve ever been. That means they will decide within a few seconds of landing on a website whether or not they think it’s reputable and trustworthy. This initial perception dramatically affects your website conversion rates. Whether they’re “right” or “wrong” really doesn’t matter because their perception of any given website is the only thing that counts.
So what does that mean for you? Well, it means that if your website doesn’t come across as professional, credible, and user-friendly, your visitors will click out of your website and move on to another one they think is. Therefore, you must ensure your website contains the most likely features to make your site appear credible and appealing in every way. If you don’t, the chances your website will be successful are minimal.
Here are seven ways to make sure your website attracts visitors and leads them to take action on whatever it is you want them to do.
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- Website Design
- Perception of Credibility
- The Use of Pop-Ups
- The Importance of Whitespace
- Usability Factors
- Offering Comparison Tools, Content, and Graphics
- User Opinions and Testing
1. Website Design
The way you design your website will weigh heavily on its success in your overall website conversion rates. In most cases, keeping your design professional yet simple is key. You don’t want to overcrowd any of the information to the point the site is hard to read and navigate. Additionally, you don’t want to stuff so many links on your page that you’re creating a negative experience for your readers. To ensure a good design, you will need to implement user testing protocols, install Google Analytics so you can measure every aspect of what your visitors are doing on your site, and perform plenty of A/B split testing to see what’s working, what’s not and why.
2. Perception of Credibility
Your visitors will be presented with a wide variety of websites from which to choose once they enter a search term. And if once they click on your website, it doesn’t appear to be credible, then you’ve probably just lost a customer. If you want your website to appear credible you should include the following:
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- FAQ’s
- A professional and logical site design
- An archive of past content
- Credible contributor credentials
- Frequent content with reference citations
- Helpful links to tools and outside resources
- A Privacy Policy
- An About Us page
- Website trust signals and security seals
3. The Use of Pop-Ups
For years, webmasters have been using pop-ups as a way to build their email lists, and that is seemingly a good thing. However, this technique has been used and overused to the point of exhaustion, and it’s now creating a negative experience for website users. People are growing weary of constantly being bombarded by pop-ups every time they visit a website. Therefore, you might want to consider eliminating all pop-ups, annoying graphics, or anything else that interrupts a visitor’s experience. The last thing you want to do is to annoy your visitors.
4. The Importance of Whitespace
Whitespace is the area on a page that doesn’t contain content of any kind. Whitespace helps keep your visitors from becoming distracted and makes your page easier to read and digest. However, exactly how much whitespace should be allotted is a bit of a mystery. You want to make sure your pages have enough whitespace that they are easy to scan and read, but you don’t want so much whitespace that it makes your pages seem way too long to bother reading at all. The best way to determine what will work best for your particular website is to rely heavily on your user testing and user opinions about your site.
5. Usability Factors
How easy your website is to navigate and use is extremely important to its success. And there are a wide variety of factors that contribute to just how user-friendly your site is.
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- Logical navigation
- Website design
- Accessibility
- Page layout
- Scrolling
- Headlines, titles, and other labels
- Links
- Lists
- Screen-based controls
- Graphics, images, and multimedia options
- Content
- Search functions
It’s important to understand the usability factors and ensure you’re implementing as many as possible. Then you need to continually user test your website to identify and correct any potential issues or flaws.
6. Offering Comparison Tools, Content, and Graphics
A website can be cumbersome at times. You are presenting your visitors with a plethora of information, usually on several different pages. This is what makes it hard for someone to compare what you have to offer easily. Or to compare what you have to offer versus what your competitors are offering.
Therefore, it’s in your best interest to include a comparison option on your website. It can be a graphic, a tool, comparative pricing boxes, or a section of pros and cons for each product or service. Whatever makes the most sense for what your website is trying to achieve.
7. User Options and Testing Website Conversion Rates
Throughout this article, we’ve mentioned that user testing is imperative if you want your site to be successful. There are several different ways you can go about obtaining user opinions and/or implement user testing methods. Of course, your testing should always begin with you and your team testing and using every aspect of your website to ensure it’s functioning properly from entry to exit. However, you should also employ other user testing methods as well.
You can use a tool such as User Testing to provide you with videos of real people and their thoughts as they use your website. Another great option is to use a permission-based exit survey and offer the participant something of value in exchange for their opinion. And, you could always hire a focus group to give you honest feedback about your website and how user-friendly it is, as well as other valuable input.
There are plenty of other testing methods you can use as well, such as Google Analytics that will give you your bounce rates, time on site, where your traffic is coming from, and other valuable insights that will help you optimize your site and increase your website conversion rates. It would help if you also had a method of A/B split testing everything you do to see what’s working and what’s not.
The Bottom Line
Website design is not an exact science, and every website, its products and services, and corresponding demographics will vary, requiring different presentation methods. Therefore, for each website, you might need to have a separate layout and design, as well as its own set of testing and optimization methods, because web design is not a one-size-fits-all proposition; it’s an ever-evolving landscape that can change in an instant. Interested in learning more about how website design can help increase your business’ website conversion rates and win more customers? Visit LOCALSYNC Training to learn more, or contact us to get help.
