When you are thinking about your website, you will no doubt spend time looking for inspiration on other websites. All web designers have different opinions on how to increase engagement and conversions.
Web design, just like everything in life, is all down to what people like the look of. What looks great to one person or company may look utterly hideous to the other.
A website design helps its users understand your business and engage with you online, but at the same time builds brand credibility. It’s therefore a good idea to have a few website design tips under your belt to help increase engagement and conversions, and reduce your bounce rates.
These are the top elements you need to incorporate into your website to get the best out of it.
- Website speed is a top priority
- Try to use images with feeling and meaning, rather than typical stock images
- Pay attention to what’s above the fold
- Hick’s Law is important to take into consideration
- Customer reviews are great on a website
- Use a good call to action
- Scrolling is better than clicking multiple times to different pages
- Make scrolling worthwhile for the user
Website speed is top priority ⚡
Do you have the patience of a saint? Possibly not and your users probably don’t either, so having a slow website is guaranteed to lose you business. Website speed optimisation is a complex subject, especially as websites these days are complex creatures. At Design Hive, we build custom WordPress websites and we are always thinking about website speed as we build a site. Are all your images optimised? Are you only using the bare minimum of plugins required? Have you deleted all unnecessary themes? Are you using tools to help you identify what is slowing your site down?
Ultimately, if your site is slow, your overall SERP ranking will go down, so it’s not only the user that suffers, your business does too.
Use images with meaning
So many times, we see the use of really bad stock images being used across websites. We are not against using stock images as there are many beautiful images out there, but be selective. Try not to use the typical cheesy stock images that have no meaning, go for images that reflect your values, your business, your brand and show authenticity. Images speak a thousand words, so use the power behind them, you will find your conversion rates will increase as a result.
You can view ‘Our 7 Top FREE Stock Photo Websites‘ blog here to get you started.
What’s above the fold
There are many people that would prioritise everything that is above the fold as a key feature on a website and we have to agree that this is a critical element on a website. In the image below, you can see where the fold lies and everything above the fold.
This is generally the first thing users will see on your website, so if everything above the fold doesn’t give them the information they need, then you are likely to have a high number of visitors leaving your site quickly. Get this 100% right and you will engage the user. Think about whether everything above the fold on your website tells the user who you are and what you do. Use descriptive and clear headings and keywords where you can.
Videos, animated graphics and powerful images are essential. Get this right and it will really impact how people feel when visiting your site.
Of course, it goes without saying that you need to have a clear and visible call to action.
Hick’s Law
Hick’s Law state that when a person is presented with too many options, it takes them longer to conclude or make a choice. You must be thinking about how this law is relevant when it comes to your website.
Your conversion rates are far more likely to increase when you start presenting limited options to users. Let’s understand with some examples:
- Keep things clean, simple and uncluttered to stop users getting confused
- Go for one goal on each page
- Keep to less tabs for better clarity
- Keep your social media channels up to date and you don’t need to display every single channel on your website
- Prioritise one call to action at a time
- Reduce the number of fields on your forms
- Use scrolling to the right when you have lots of services or products so that it reduces the amount of information presented to the user at one time
- Less is more. Only show customers with the facts, do not present them with a bible about your business….as tempting as it is 😜
There are many other ways in which you can apply Hick’s Law to your website. This way, you are guiding the user to what you want them to see or do on your site and ultimately encouraging them to take action.
Customer reviews
Gaining customer reviews on your website seems like an obvious tip, but it can be challenging getting reviews as people lead busy lives. Try making the process of leaving reviews as simple as possible. Put a form on your website or links to your Google reviews (here’s ours….cheeky!!! 😜) or other social platforms. We have a page on our website that displays a few reviews, but also sliders showing our Google and Facebook reviews. Then a call to action linking straight to Google and Facebook for customers to leave us reviews.
We also ask customers to leave us reviews once big projects are completed. Gaining Google reviews is great for your SEO (search engine optimisation), so they should be a top priority for your business.
Use a good call to action (CTA)
Call to actions are essential on a website and can be the difference between success or failure, gaining you leads or leaving you with nothing. CTA’s give your audience motivation to act now and take steps towards becoming a real customer. Whether you want your user to visit your blog, fill in your contact form, download an e-book, subscribe to an email list, or contact you, you must help them to take this action with a well-placed CTA.
The easier you make it for the user, the more likely they will become a customer. Not only this, but it makes for an all-round better user experience. Don’t be tempted to keep them guessing about the next step as you will ultimately lose them to a competitor. Facilitate a smooth buying experience and your user will love you for it 🥰.
Scrolling is better than clicking
Years ago, the trend was to keep everything above the fold, rather than letting people scroll. We’ve also seen the single page website trend. But it’s 100% proven that scrolling is better than making the customers website journey all about clicking from one page to another, to another or from one tab to another. Users prefer scrolling, a bit like scrolling down through a book with your eyes, it’s very natural to us humans 😜.
Making scrolling worthwhile for your users
Have you recently taken a good hard look at your website to check the content on your pages? If not, it’s worth doing this regularly. You are aiming to make every single piece of information deserve its place on your website, so that your users actually want to scroll and have worthwhile content to scroll to. If your website is full of fluff just for the sake of bulking up on content, it’s not going to engage your user and make them want to scroll.
Always have in mind how you will convert users to conversions and to customers. If you can add a piece of content or make some alterations to your website to help this happen, it will really give your business a boost. Just one hour a month if you are struggling for time is better than nothing at all.
Takeaways
We hope this has shown you the importance of how these tips can impact the user’s website experience. Go back to your website and take time to reflect on how you can improve your user’s journey and conversion rates.
If you need professional help, don’t be afraid to ask. We work with businesses between 2-50 employees who need help with their branding or website so that they can feel confident in their brand and attract bigger business. We are open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm by emailing info@designhive.co.uk or calling 01278 783273.
