If you are a business owner who wants to create a website that turns visitors into paying customers, then you will want to keep reading. The process of converting visitors into clients is called – you guessed it – CONVERSION!
Yes, many factors and dynamics influence your visitors to decide to buy your product or service. However, website design is probably the most influential factor in your potential visitor’s decision to follow through on a transaction.
Research shows that the average visitor takes about 90 seconds to assess your online business from your website. Not only that, the average attention span of most visitors is only 8 seconds.
If you don’t catch their attention with those 8 seconds, you will most likely lose that customer. The numbers don’t lie. About 72 percent of visitors will judge your business simply by your web design.
As in most cases, most people visiting your website are just shopping around, not ready to buy anything yet. They are in the comparison phase. Looking at other businesses like yours, to see who is the best fit.
This is why it is important to know how you compare to your competition. Do your research on other businesses in your industry, then innovate.
Here are 10 web design tips to take into consideration when thinking about your website design:
Set up your website.
First, you need to purchase web hosting, which is the space on the internet where all your website files will reside.
It is important to find the right web hosting provider and service plan. You want to make sure your website runs fast, performs well with no downtime, and provides you with all the tools needed to get your website online.
I recommend BlueHost as a web hosting service as it is low-cost and reliable. It is used by millions of people around the world and has been around for decades.
Once you have purchased your web hosting, it’s time to choose a domain name. This is your web address such as yourwebsite.com. This needs to be carefully chosen.
If you are providing a specific service, you may want to add the keyword of your service to your web address. It will help with search engine optimization. Just don’t make the web address too long or complicated.
BlueHost
Whether you’re looking to create a website, blog or online store, Bluehost has a hosting plan tailored to your specific needs.
It’s 2023. You need to think about mobile first. Don’t have your visitors pinch and expand content, scroll long pages to find what they are looking for, or try to figure out how to use your navigation menu. Make everything intuitive and easy to use.
The best way to do this is to use a content management system such as WordPress, as this platform allows you to create beautiful websites using professional-looking themes that are 100% mobile-friendly. I highly recommend the Astra theme.
The Astra theme not only makes your website look great, but you can install the popular website builder called Elementor to help you build your website with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. No coding is required.
Make people want to stay on your website, click through it, and want to see more of what you have to offer. So many websites are boring, and cluttered and don’t make people want to engage with the website. Don’t be that type of online business.
The use of the right colors
Studies have shown that when you change your call-to-action button from red to orange, it can result in a 22 percent increase in conversion rates. One of my clients changed their CTA button to orange from red and it increased their conversions by 5.5 percent.
It seems that orange CTA buttons are the ones that most people find trusting, as opposed to red. When people see red, they think DANGER. You don’t want to invoke that emotion in your customers. The other thing to consider is your audience.
If you are targeting women, for example, focus on colors such as light blue, green, or purple. For a male audience, black, blue, and green work best. Of course, these are just generalizations. You still need to experiment with colors to see which works best for your target audience.
If you look at some of the most successful companies, you will see that they all have specific color schemes they use all the time for not only CTAs but for branding purposes as well.
Your potential customers will be accustomed to seeing a certain color associated with your company’s brand. Make sure you incorporate that into your website’s color scheme at all times.
Videos and motion graphics
Just look at the popularity of YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. Videos rule the internet. When you have a product, videos of that product tend to increase conversions and sales by a whopping 125 percent! Businesses often use videos to promote their companies and show what makes them different than their competitors.
A new trend is daily vlogs showing the way the company operates, like giving people a glimpse into the company. This has been a very successful marketing strategy used by Gary Vaynerchuk with his DailyVee vlog. Take advantage of every video option available for maximum exposure. Not just YouTube.
Facebook Watch is new and becoming very popular. They can one-day rival YouTube, so get on this as soon as possible.
Instagram provides a 60-second video option in their posts and you can also use their Stories feature.
Other video options are Vimeo, Twitter, and Snapchat.
Have a clear mission or business strategy
Do you have a mission or business strategy? If not, how is anybody going to know what you are about and how you are different from the competition? Take the time to think about what you can offer that makes you stand out and make it prominent on your website.
This is how you will establish your brand. Google rewards businesses that offer a solution to problems and answer questions that many people have. This is your opportunity to grab people’s attention and attract them to your online business.
Having a business strategy or mission statement not only helps define your business to your audience but also allows you to stay focused on your own business goals.
If you take the time to think about your business strategy, you will be more likely to create a plan for that strategy. Many people don’t take the time to think about their business strategy, which results in an unfocused business in the long term.
Trust and online safety
What do I mean by trust and safety? Examples of trust and safety are putting badges like Paypal, Norton, or McAfee on your website. Let people know that when they use your website they will be safe. If they make an online transaction, let them know that their payment will be secure.
Another very important safety feature is to have an SSL certificate on your website. An SSL certificate is a green lock and HTTPS you see in the location bar in your browser. This not only puts your customers at ease but you will also get rewarded by Google.
Google ranks websites higher that have an SSL certificate. So, this is a great investment for any website. Make sure your website has this feature and install it on your website right away!
Offer things for FREE
Who doesn’t like free stuff? I know I do. If you want to catch people’s attention and get people in the door, give them a sample of what they can get if they choose your services.
This can be in many forms, from information to downloads, to actual product samples. This is a good place to incorporate a newsletter into your online strategy. When someone subscribes to your newsletter, give them something for free.
This is your way to get their email so that you can send them promotions, offers, and company news. A great tool for this is MailChimp. They make creating newsletters simple and easy.
When talking about offering something for free, you can also think about giving away knowledge and tips for free in the form of blogging. Take the time to create various content that you know people are looking for.
This can be “How To” articles or videos, review articles or videos about products, or anything that makes your visitors feel like you are giving away valuable information for free. Many successful businesses have been doing this for a long time. Why? Because it works.
Keep your forms short
Your visitors want to get the free download you offer. But, they don’t want to give away too much of their personal information like their postal code or any other sensitive information. So, keep the form short and sweet. Keep it limited to First Name and Email address.
This is also part of the trust factor I mentioned earlier. You don’t want your visitors to think you are trying to steal their identity in any way shape or form. People are very wary of scams and giving away too much personal information.
Remember, the goal is to build an email list. Once you build that email list, you can then send out emails to your subscribers. This will keep them informed about your business and will give them a reason to contact you when they need your services.
Always add a phone number
Yes, you can do most interactions these days without ever directly communicating with anybody. But, many people are still old school. They want to talk to a person, and not just to a screen. Always provide a way for your customers to pick up the phone and call you.
When they call you, make sure you return their calls promptly. This can make the difference in whether or not your potential customers decide to go with you or not. The key here is to establish a personal connection with your customers.
Let them hear your voice. Let them know your personality and that they are dealing with a person. This builds and increases trust. Believe me, it makes a difference.
Keyword rich headlines
Do your headlines answer any major questions you know your potential customers have when searching for your services? Make sure your headlines grab your visitor’s attention right away. If you are selling a product, create a headline that asks if they need something that your product solves.
If you provide a service, ask if they have been looking for something that your service does. But, don’t be boring with it. Make your headline attention-grabbing and use the keywords that your visitors use to search for your product or service.
When building your website, you need to always be thinking about Google and search engine optimization. Google rewards content that focuses on user intent. This means creating specific content that people are looking for. As opposed to simply keyword stuffing which Google penalizes.
Always create a clean design with white space
So many amateur website owners fall into this trap. They have a great product or service. They have a plan for their website. They start putting their website together, then everything looks cluttered and cramped with too much content.
They want to make sure everything they want their customers to know about the business is there, but they do it in a very disorganized way. It will make your website look ugly and unattractive. Having too much on a screen can confuse and overwhelm people.
This will result in nobody wanting to read it or browse through it. They will leave your website right away. You need to let your content breathe. This is what’s called white space.
Create a page that spaces out text content neatly and organized it in small paragraphs, separated by images or videos. When it’s easier on the eyes, people are more likely to stay on your website.
Conclusion (Summary)
Long gone are the days of static web pages that you need to create and edit in simple HTML. These days everybody is using WordPress, or some other content management system, to design their websites.
Using a content management system (CMS) like WordPress simplifies the web development process by not only letting you manage the content of your website through a backend editor but also giving you amazing professional themes that will give your website a modern up-to-date look.
More importantly, WordPress has powerful plugins that you can install that will allow you to do just about anything you can imagine. Giving you the ability to create a very professional website with eCommerce features and functionality without even knowing how to code or program.
Also, nowadays if your website is not mobile-friendly you will be left behind. WordPress themes are all responsive to every screen size so that your customers will be able to view your website regardless of the device they happen to be using at the time.
As you can see, creating a successful website is a complex process. This is just an overview of what it takes to create a website in 2018. But, if you use these 10 tips I outlined in this blog, I guarantee your website will be on the fast track to success.
As always, my goal is to provide you with as much value as possible. I hoped this article helped you. Thank you for your time. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me anytime. Take care!
by Fabio Peters
