What Are The Best Web Design Practices for Conversion Rate Optimization? {Updated}
Congratulations are certainly in order once you’ve reached your search optimization goals. Optimize your website with proven web design practices to enhance user experience and increase conversions. Learn top design tips that drive results.
After all that hard work to make sure your website gets a prime position in the search engine results pages, your pages are finally there on Page 1. And from all indications, people are clicking on your link and checking out your pages.
With ever-increasing traffic, conversions like subscriptions to your newsletter or robust sales will surely follow, right?
Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case. Far too many high-ranking and high-traffic websites are ending up with little to no conversions at all.
And with low conversion rates, all your SEO efforts and its supposedly positive results in terms of ranking and traffic will feel somewhat empty.
From the looks of things, what you need is better conversation rate optimization.
It can be a head-scratcher, having a website with decent rankings and traffic but low conversion rates. Then again, it happens all the time, and more often than not, the culprit tends do have something to do with web design.
Web design may have this reputation among the general populace that it’s primarily concerned with making a website look good, and they wouldn’t be wrong. However, one thing people often miss about web design is that it’s also crucial to lead generation and conversions.
There are certain aspects about a website’s design that could spell the difference between merely checking out your website to actually taking you up on your offer, whatever it may be.
Maybe a few adjustments that are in keeping with the best web design practices will do the trick.
Here are some of the top web design practices for optimizing your conversion rate.
An attention-grabbing landing page
If your web design doesn’t have an awesome landing page, then waste no time in creating one now.
A landing page is designed to attract people and turn them into leads that will eventually convert for you in one way or another.
As long as it has a strong headline, a high-quality image, and your offer, you will have an effective lead generation tool that will, over time, produce the conversions you need.
Also, don’t put too many distracting elements on it. Resist the temptation of adding popups, two or more CTAs, and other elements that only confuse the visitor and don’t contribute to conversions.
Short contact forms
Contact forms are necessary for lead generation, but they tend to turn people off if they’re too long or complicated. No one likes filling out overly long forms, both online and otherwise. Besides, people are too busy with their lives to have time to indulge your request for too much information.
You don’t need a form that suspiciously looks like a CV in terms of length. A short contact form that only asks for a name, an email address, and a zip code should be enough information to ask from strangers who are checking out your website.
A clear-cut, well-written offer
It’s possible that people click away from your site because they simply cannot understand what your offer is. As mentioned above, people lead busy lives, and they don’t have the time to try and figure out what your offer is trying to say.
In anything that you write, clarity is extremely important. So if you’re making an offer, make sure you perfectly convey the value you’re offering by using only simple sentences, creative adjectives, and strong verbs in your pitch.
Highly visible call-to-action (CTA) buttons
A call-to-action (CTA) button is pretty much useless if people can’t spot it right away. If anything, a CTA button must be highly visible, so put it someplace where it’s easy to see, like anywhere above the fold.
To make it even better at catching attention, make your CTA red or even orange.
Mobile-friendly pages
You can’t be serious about wanting a higher conversion rate but having a website that doesn’t display well on mobile devices.
Everyone knows that mobile users have long outnumbered desktop users, and the gap seems to be widening with each passing day.
Add to that the fact that most mobile users do most of their online shopping on their smartphones and tablets now, and you have a perfectly good reason to do everything you can to make your website mobile-friendly.
Responsive web design is the best way to make your site mobile-friendly, so if you’re serious about getting more conversions, make your site responsive now.
Videos
Videos now make up more than half of today’s web traffic worldwide. Experts are also predicting that by 2020, that figure would go up to 80 percent.
In a world where they hold sway over the Internet-using population, videos are surefire ways of boosting engagements by a significant margin.
A brilliantly-written article is good, but a 3-minute video tackling the same topic is much easier to digest and will always be more engaging.
Videos also make people stay longer on your page, which should do wonders for your bounce rates.
Great UX
Simply put, great user experience or UX is all about making it easier for users or visitors to your website to find whatever they want or need.
Easy navigation is one sign that your site provides good UX. The absence of too many annoying popups that can make people bounce off your site is another.
And since most people scan, not read, websites these days, more scannable content like infographics contribute to improving the user experience as well.
Testimonials
A previous customer will always be in the best position to tell the truth about certain products or services, and that’s why a testimonial—an authentic one, that is—is a very good thing to feature on your website.
So if you get feedback from former clients thanking you for your service or raving about your product, don’t be too shy about sharing them on a special section on your website.
Genuine, positive testimonials can catch the attention of your visitors, and could contribute to making them your customers too.
These are just some of web design practices that can help boost your conversion rates. They don’t necessarily guarantee an immediate avalanche of conversions, but they’re a good place to start your conversion rate optimization efforts.
*Additional Tip
Ideally you will be doing all of these things once the site is built. Top properly plan everything leading up to this point, consider find a website launch checklist that works for your goals. There are a lot out there, but we suggest this website launch checklist.
Looking for more great web design best practices?
7 Essential Web Design Tips That You Should Know
5 Ways Your SEO Can Benefit From Responsive Web Design
