11 Web Design Principles That Will Boost Your Conversion Rate

A great SEO plan gets users to your website. However, that is only part of the plan. Once users get to your website, you must keep them there until they take the desired action.

The desired action might be purchasing a product or service, filling out a form, signing up for a newsletter, requesting an appointment, joining a group, sharing to social media, and countless other actions.

If you have a lot of users coming to your website, but they leave before taking the action you desire, you have a conversion problem. You need to work on your conversion rate optimization (CRO).

Eleven Tips for Conversion Rate Optimization

There are many ways you can improve your website to increase conversation rates. Here are eleven easy ways to get users to take the action you desire when they view your website pages.

1.  Highlight Your Call to Action

Your call to action or CTA is a critical element of your website. Your CTAs encourage people to do something. You want someone to sign up, add to cart, get a free consultation, or book an appointment.

Therefore, your CTA needs to stand out. Use color, placement, font, and other elements to make the CTA immediately noticeable.

2. Maximize Loading Speed

Any delay, even a slight delay can reduce your conversion rates. Users are impatient. If your site is slow, they move on to another site.

Every second counts in terms of loading speed. Check your page speed periodically and troubleshoot any issues. Make sure that your design isn’t slowing down your website.

3.  Choose an Appealing Color Scheme

Color schemes can be overlooked as a way to increase conversion rates. If a color scheme is unappealing, users may not want to remain on your website. They move on to websites that appeal to them visually and conceptually.

Choose a color scheme that enhances your brand as well as evokes the emotion you want to convey with your brand.

A simple way to create a color scheme is to choose several photos that reflect your brand and vision. Upload those photos to Adobe’s Color Wheel. It creates a color scheme based on the image.

Make sure that you use contrasting colors for context and CTAs that are both readable and noticeable. If your text and CTAs blend into the color scheme, users may move onto another page that is easier to read.

4.  You Have Eight Seconds

A study by Microsoft Corp. found that the average person’s attention span is about eight seconds. That doesn’t give you any time for mistakes. If you don’t immediately catch a person’s attention with your website design, you lose them.

Some things that can help you grab the attention of users include:

• Creative color schemes
• Font and design schemes that are clear to read
• Power words that make content engaging and enticing
• Using color-changing or other hover effects for CTAs and buttons
• Improve your CTAs so that they grab attention immediately
• Use imagery that is enticing and catches the eye
• Use animated pop-ups

Remember, you are grabbing someone’s attention in eight seconds. However, if you don’t have engaging content, they move on to the next site.

5.  Improve Your Content

The best color schemes, headlines, and other design methods to increase conversation rates won’t help very much if your content is boring or useless. You need engaging and informative content that makes a user want to click on the next link.

Think about what your user is searching for and address that need. Answer questions and use internal links to help keep a person on your website longer. The longer they stay, the more they are inclined to act.

6.  Use the Rule of Thirds

It is an old rule, but a great rule. Users tend to focus on the center of your web page. Therefore, you need to focus your efforts on building that portion of the page to encourage users to stay and take action.

Divide the page into thirds horizontally and vertically. That gives you nine equal squares. Make sure that you optimize the four middle sections.

Check to make sure that you have a CTA, impactful images, strong headlines, and other features that promote your brand, product, or service.

7.  Use White Space

Some web designers cram as much as they can onto a page. However, that can make it much more difficult for a user to read. Users want to be able to scan the page quickly to find what they want, and white space helps them do that.

Cluttered websites have lower conversion rates. Make sure that when you design your webpages that use allow for white spaces in the margins, between images, in content, and around other elements.

8.  Remember Hick’s Law

Too many choices increase decision time, which can lower conversation rates. If you give users too much time to think about their choices, they may become bored and move on, or they may merely run out of time. Unfortunately, they may never make time to come back to your website.

Optimize your pages to focus on one product or service. Focus on what action you want the user to take and customize the page to get them to take that one action. Some designers use filters or drop-down menus to make it easy for users to locate the page they want quickly and efficiently.

9.  Make Sure to Use Breadcrumbs

If users become frustrated looking for pages they need, they are more likely to leave.

As you build your website, you could have hundreds of nested pages. You don’t want your users to get lost. You need to make it easy for users to go back to pages.

10.  Use Familiar Elements

Users expect certain elements on certain websites.

For example, when a user visits a website to purchase an item, the user expects a clear, easy to find CTA to add the item to their cart. Use the same CTA on every page that has a product.

Experimenting with CTAs can enhance your website. However, if you stray too far from the industry norms for CTAs, you could hurt your conversion rate.

11.  Convert Pages to an F-Layout

Similar to the Rule of Thirds, the F-Layout utilizes a person’s natural tendency to browse a website in an F-pattern. They begin on the left side of the page and move to the right side of the page. Their focus is at the top first and then toward the center.

They quickly scan through the page looking or what they want. The bottom of the page receives the least attention. Therefore, if you have your CTAs at the bottom of each page, move them up to increase conversation rates.

Conclusion

We hope these 11 simple tips help you increase your conversation rates. If you try these steps and conversion rates don’t increase, don’t become discouraged. You might need a little help from a web design specialist to enhance your site and brand to turn visitors into customers and clients.