Someone may think that just the fact of having a website helps to improve online sales or contacts. That’s not true. Your business’ sales will improve only if your website quality is immediately perceived by the users, and they are encouraged to have specific behaviours while visiting your website.
A utterly important factor, in this context, is Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO), whose aim is to understand visitors and customers’ behaviour to give them what they need, and this by improving the site elements. When everything is done properly, this will generate higher profits.
As often happens, the devil is in the details. The truth is that if you want to achieve a top-performing sales funnel, all conversion points on the website must be perfectly optimised, so when someone is visiting the website is encouraged to follow a specific path.
The starting point has to be your audience. Studies show that 96 percent of site visitors are not ready to buy. This means that you have to convince them that you can help them providing a good service or product.
Another crucial factor is that your website must provide high quality content and User Experience (UX) to lead your audience closer to the sale. We are talking about exceptional and bespoke design as well as smooth and easy navigation to keep your site visitors engaged.
CRO is related to different factors; our focus, in this article, will be on how to improve CRO (and, consequently, sales) with good web design in Northern Ireland.
How to improve sales with Web Design
In terms of web design and CRO, there are two main factor you should be acknowledged of: User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX). User Interface focuses on how the website looks like, while User Experience on how easy is to navigate and
While it is useful to talk about them as two different things (especially if you want to make an analysis to get the best results from your website), they are deeply connected, and sometimes they could even merge.
Anyway, what we have to know is that a good web design includes quality UX and UI at the same time.
Design
It won’t take too long for your visitors to have an impression on your website. And you have to be sure the first impression is good.
It takes approximately 50 milliseconds, for a user, to form an opinion on a website based on a visual appreciation.
If your page is poorly designed, this will increase the bounce rate (which is the percentage of users that exit after visiting only one page).
But if your website is well designed, the chances they navigate it will improve. There are many factors that help in that sense:
- bespoke and eye-catching website design
- consistent branding
- high-quality imagery and videos
- clear and easy to read titles and text
- good use of colours, with the right contrast
Navigation
When users visit a website, they could have different purposes. Visitors could be interested in buying a product online, or learning something more about a specific topic, or even they could be there because they need a service that you offer. Obviously this depends on the purposes of your website and, more generally, of your business.
For this reason you have to be sure that everything is clear. If you sell a product, make sure that all the informations and prices are there. If you have a blog, make sure it is well written and useful for those who read it. If you offer a service, make crystal clear how this service can help the people.
To put it simply: make sure the navigation is as easy as possible.
To sum up: providing quality design and navigation is fundamental to ensure a conversion focused web design. You must be sure that the best practices are applied to your web design to turn your site visitors into paying customers. This is how conversion rate optimisation (CRO) works when applied to web design.
How Web Design factors can Boost the Sales
1. High Quality Web Design
Ok this sounds pretty obvious. Nonetheless, it is still worth mentioning it as first factor. An eye-catching, bespoke web design, with quality visuals and photos, tailored to your brand, is simply the minimum you should aim for. A high-quality web design is an investment that will last years
2. Provide a Responsive Design for Mobile
Nowadays responsive design for mobile devices is a must, as half of the worldwide online navigation is provided by smartphones. So you have to be sure to provide high quality and navigation not only on desktop but also for tablets and smartphones
3. Provide Fast Page Load Speeds
None likes a slow website! Users expect the website to load in 2 or 3 seconds. After that, the chance they will quit the website will improve drastically. For this reason, one of the main targets for a web designer should be to balance design and speed. Videos, animations, complex structure could be nice, but if you want to use them, be sure your hosting service is fast and reliable and the pages are optimised for the highest performances.
4. Clear Navigation
We already mentioned User Experience (UX). This is fundamental when you have to think about your website’s navigation. Simply, provide an organised navigation that is easy yo use. This will help people to find your products and services faster.
5. Provide a clear Call To Action (CTA)
We cannot stress enough in terms of how good and bespoke design is essential in terms of branding and online identity. But even in this context, you have to be sure that your main CTA button is always clear and easy to see. This button is the direct path towards a conversion. So make sure it is clear to see, strategically placed to be sure that visitors can easily click it if they want to. A good idea could be to use a specific colour for your main CTA – obviously aligned to your branding’s palette colour.
6. Homepage is your online store window
Most of the times users will be landed to your homepage. For this reason be sure that this page is perfectly designed and provides the most useful information and CTAs for the users, especially in the top sections. This will help to convert visits in contacts and/or sales.
7. Use white spaces
Someone could think that white spaces are passive areas, and reducing them to be helpful to provide more informations. The truth is that white spaces are active elements in a good web design. Our eyes get confused when there are too many elements to focus on. White spaces help in balancing the elements, leading the eye to focus on those you want to. Helping the visitor with this kind of “visual breathing” will help to ease the navigation towards your website.
8. Showcase Trust
There are many factors that help the user to trust your website. Be sure your website showcases them. Placing a consistent logo where’s needed (on the menu, on the footer, the favicon), security or sector-related badges, testimonials from you clients, awards, partnerships: these are factors that will help to improve the trustfulness of the people visiting your website.
Conclusion
Website Design impacts hugely in terms of a wider Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) strategy, as will help the customers while visiting your website.
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