Many times marketers focus all their efforts on SEO to rank higher, building a social media presence to broaden their reach, and creating lead magnets to build their email list.
Because of this, they tend to neglect one of the most crucial aspects of growing a business — converting their audience into paying customers.
A highly converting website is how you become successful.
Highly Converting Website
After all, if no one subscribes, you can’t market your brand and encourage people to buy. And if you can’t get people to buy, you won’t make any money.
If you want people to take action on your website, whether it be to read your blog, subscribe to your email list, or purchase a product, invest some time into your website’s design.
Since 94% of people’s first impressions are formed based on design, it’s a good idea to follow these web design best practices if you’re looking to create a high-converting website.
Aim for Speed
Besides the fact that 40% of people will abandon your site immediately if it fails to load within 3 seconds or less, studies show that even a 1-second delay in site speed can result in a 7% reduction in conversions.
That means optimizing your site to load as quickly as possible should be one of your main priorities.
To find out how fast your desktop and mobile sites load for site visitors, use the free online tool by Google called PageSpeed Insights.
Page Speed Insight
After analyzing your site, Google will give you a speed score and some suggestions for improvement.
Some of the best ways to optimize the performance of your site and increase its speed include:
- Enabling browser caching
- Using a reliable web host
- Compressing images into smaller files
- Minifying CSS, JS, and HTML files
- Reducing server requests
- Using a CDN to deliver content globally
Monitoring your site’s speed and performance is one of the easiest and most effective ways to ensure you’re providing an exceptional user experience.
Being able to guide people to different parts of your website is a good way of keeping them “hooked.”
You may want them to read related blog posts after checking out a newly published piece. Or, you might want them to click on your product pages and make a purchase.
Better yet, you might just want to make it easy for them to get in touch with you when they have questions or concerns.
No matter how you plan to get people to dig deeper into your website, you have to make it easy on them.
This means creating a navigation menu that is easy to understand, fully functional and requires the least number of clicks to get to a final destination.
In addition, try adding breadcrumbs to your website, especially if it has the potential to be complex to navigate, even with a simple navigation menu.
For instance, if you run a home goods eCommerce shop you might have breadcrumbs like this:
Home Goods > Furniture > Bedroom Furniture > Mattresses
Based on how they arrive on your website, your site visitors will still be able to find relevant pages on your site with the help of your breadcrumbs — especially if they’d want to explore your website further.
Letting people know where on your site they are when they arrive will help guide them to the next webpage on your website that interests them.
Use Consistent Branding
If you want to establish yourself as an authority in your industry and build trust among site visitors, be consistent when it comes to your site’s branding elements.
This is especially helpful if you run an eCommerce shop that depends on your marketing strategies to get people to your online shop and buying what you have to offer.
If your branding is different across multiple channels, people won’t recognize you and come back for more, despite how well you promote your products.
To start, if you have a business logo, make sure the same one appears throughout your website.
Adding to that, use the same color schemes, slogans, and font styles to prevent confusion with people that see you on different channels such as social media.
If you need help creating a professional looking logo for your business that can be used in many places, try Shopify Logo Generator.
Logo Generator website of Shopify
After choosing an industry and visual style, and inputting your website or business’ name, you’ll be able to pick which channel you plan to display your logo on.
When you finish your logo and download the file, you’ll receive a package that includes:
- High-resolution logos that can be customized
- Favicon
- Facebook images (profile and cover photo)
- Instagram profile
- Twitter images (profile and banner)
- Pinterest images (profile, board)
- LinkedIn images (profile, profile banner)
- YouTube profile image
This makes having a consistent branding easier for you.
All you have to do is create a custom logo and use it to promote your brand on multiple channels.
Keep Forms Simple
Having a high-converting website is not all about enticing people to buy from your online shop.
In fact, a conversion is any action you want people to take on your site that they actually perform.
For example, filling out a form, downloading a PDF, requesting a quote, making an appointment, and even sharing your content are all ways people can convert on your site.
That said, when it comes to the forms you have on your website, the key to avoiding form abandonment is to make things as simple as possible.
According to Quick Sprout, limiting the number of form fields to 3 will guarantee a minimum conversion rate of 25%.
As the number of form fields increases, your conversion rate continues to drop.
For help making super simple forms on your WordPress site that get the job done, use a form builder solution like WPForms.
WP Form
You can add or delete form fields as needed, and only require those that you have to have from site visitors. This will help boost conversions and prevent form abandonment.
If you don’t use WordPress, there are other form solutions such as Wufoo or email service providers such as MailChimp that have form building capability.
Use Responsive Design
With nearly half of all internet traffic coming from mobile devices, and the implementation of Google’s mobile-first indexing, using responsive design is now more important than ever.
It’s your responsibility to create an excellent mobile experience, no matter where your visitors access your site from.
After all, if people can’t navigate your site on a small mobile device, the chances of them converting are slim.
It’s also your job to boost your SEO efforts by having a mobile-friendly site that ranks well for the right people.
To find out whether your site is mobile-friendly, put your site’s URL into Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
Mobile Friendly Test
With this tool, you’ll receive a straightforward answer whether your site is mobile-friendly or not.
From there, use Responsive Checker to see how your website actually loads on different mobile devices.
Responsive Checker Site
You can also use this tool to navigate your site’s web pages in real-time to make sure not only your homepage renders the way it’s supposed to, but also the rest of your website.
Using responsive design, ensuring site functionality, and improving the user experience through design helps boost conversion rates, grow your email list, and generate more revenue.
Use High-Quality, Optimized Images
60% of people are more likely to consider visiting a website found in search results if they feature images.
That’s why adding high-quality, original images to your site is so important.
Such is especially the case for those who have a dropshipping business, the way to get people to convert and buy is to make the buying experience as enjoyable, informative, and seamless as possible.
After all, people who shop online cannot physically see or touch what you’re selling, which means you have more work to do when it comes to convincing someone to buy.
If you run a dropshipping business, use a popular eCommerce platform like Shopify and integrate it with a dropshipping management plugin like Oberlo to make creating your product pages easier.
With Oberlo, you have access to in-depth product statistics, so you know the items you add to your shop will be popular among customers.
This, alone, helps boost conversions.
But more than that, you have easy access to your product pages so you can customize and optimize the following:
- Page titles and meta descriptions so people using Google see what you’re selling in search results
- Product descriptions so you can provide keyword-rich information about your products, so people know what they’re buying
- Image attributes so your products rank higher in search results and your target audience clicks to buy
Make sure to use images of your actual products, rather than stock images, to give people an accurate view of what you’re selling.
And the same is true for those that don’t run eCommerce shops but still want to add visual appeal to their websites in the form of images.
Stay away from stock imagery as much as possible. And if you do use stock images, make sure they’re relevant and personal.
Not sure where to source high-quality images?
Check out some of our favorite places to source high-quality images:
- Pexels
- Unsplash
- Gratisography
- Picjumbo
Grabbing people’s attention from the minute they land on your website using beautiful imagery is one of the easiest ways to boost conversions.
It also happens to be a simple web design technique that anyone can do regardless of skill level.
Final Thoughts
If you’re looking to boost conversions on your website, you might not need to look any further than your site’s design.
People are visual by nature and expect to be able to navigate websites with ease.
And they will not willingly hand over their email addresses or hard-earned cash and increase your conversion rate if they’re not impressed.
So, focus on the tips mentioned above and see what kind of impact the changes have on your site visitors’ behavior.
You are likely to be pleasantly surprised when more people start subscribing, and you start securing more sales.