A great website design can have a huge impact on how many sales a business makes. This means that tweaking your website design in the right way can greatly reduce the number of people who leave your site without making a purchase.
So, in this guide, we are going to look at 7 tips for improving your website design. Take these tips on board if you’re looking to reduce your site’s bounce rate and improve your bottom line!
1. Ensure Your Website Design Makes It Easy to Contact You
If prospective customers have a question or concern, they’ll want to get in touch. And if it’s difficult to do this, they’re likely to leave without buying anything.
If you don’t want that to happen, you’ll need to use various customer communication tools that can help you connect with your audience.
You could create a business email address that’s dedicated to resolving customer queries or a phone number for taking customer calls. You can also install a live messaging feature so people will have access to a representative of the company in real-time.
To ensure that your prospects are aware of these contact options, you’ll need to make them very visible when designing your website. You can do this by using eye-catching and bright colors for your contact buttons so people don’t miss them while scrolling through your site.
You could also design a separate webpage and then include all the available phone numbers, email addresses, or contact forms that can make it easy for customers to reach you.
Another tip is to use contact icons that people are familiar with when designing your website, so a phone icon or a question mark would work well for when people are looking for help. Most people associate those elements with making inquiries or asking questions.
2. Make Sure All of Your Calls-to-Action are Bright and Bold
A call-to-action (CTA) is a prompt that tells people what to do on a website. It helps to boost conversions because it guides people towards taking the required action that will move them through your sales funnel and turn them into customers.
Sometimes, it is appropriate to have multiple calls-to-action on one webpage, as website visitors might be at different stages in their buying journey.
Some might be on your website for the first time and others might be looking for more information that will influence their decision to buy from you.
So it will be beneficial to create several calls-to-action that can speak to people regardless of their stage in the buying process.
To give you some inspiration, let’s take a look at a company that always does a great job of making its CTAs stand out.
Slack is a communications platform that makes it easier for businesses to share information with individuals and as a team. On their homepage, they have 2 CTAs —”talk to us” and “try for free”.
These are boldly highlighted and their white buttons perfectly contrast against the dark purple background so they are immediately noticeable to visitors who land on the page.
The CTAs also speak to people in different stages of their buying journey — those who are ready to try the tool and others who need more information.
These CTAs are a great asset to the website in that they will encourage more sign-ups and then more sales.
If you want to replicate this for your brand, try to plan the color scheme of your website in a way that makes sure your CTAs won’t go unnoticed. And ensure they’re in a prominent spot, like next to your navigation menu or above the fold on your service pages.
3. Always Dedicate Space to Positive Social Proof
Another great way to increase revenue for your business is by displaying social proof on your website, so you’ll need to take this into account when designing it.
Prospective customers tend to pay more attention to word-of-mouth recommendations over other forms of marketing.
So, when designing your website, you should always dedicate space to displaying positive social proof. This could include customer reviews and testimonials, media mentions, and awards and accolades.
The best approach is going to depend on what kind of business you run, what your audience typically cares the most about, and what kinds of assets you have at your disposal.
To help you work out what kinds of social proof you should be incorporating into your website design, here are some examples of how different companies have decided to do it.
For instance, Excel Builders is a construction company that helps to build impressive homes and commercial buildings.
On their homepage, they’ve created a section that shows off some of the notable news sites and online magazines they’ve received mentions from.
They include the logos of sites like Forbes and The Huffington Post so website visitors can see that the company has some very famous fans.
This is a great way for the company to show that they have authority in their industry and it can encourage more sales from prospective customers.
So, if your business has been featured on the likes of these websites, consider whether you should include these mentions in your website design — it could lead to plenty more sales.
On the other hand, Chaikin LaPenna is a law firm that specialises in a variety of different practice areas. And, they’ve decided that their prospective clients will be interested in what kinds of awards and recognition they’ve received from industry bodies.
As a result, they’ve added an awards section to their homepage, where they highlight the fact that the company has been recognised by the New York Post, Super Lawyers, America’s Institute of Personal Injury Attorneys, and more.
This is a great approach for businesses in more serious fields, like law, accounting, and healthcare. Customers looking to work with companies in these areas will need a lot of information and reassurance to help them make their decision.
And, creating a section on your website that showcases all of the awards and accolades you’ve amassed can do wonders for earning your prospective customers’ trust.
So, if you run a service-based business like this, going down a similar route could be very fruitful and lead to a lot more sales.
Adding a customer testimonials section to your website design could also be a great idea. This is the route Hclinical has decided to take. They specialize in helping companies to conduct clinical trials.
For instance, on their clinical trials project management web page, they’ve shared a written review from someone they’ve previously worked with.
This testimonial shows how pleased the customer is to be working with Hclinical and it’s a great way to motivate other prospective clients into contacting the company to take on clinical trials— thus leading to more sales.
This approach can work for just about any business as people are always looking for assurance that the company they are about to do business with has provided great a great experience for previous customers.
So if you have reviews like this, it’s time to bring them out to display on your website as they can be a powerful driving force for getting new customers.
And, lastly, let’s take a look at how SocialPilot has chosen to include reviews in their content.
For instance, in their round-up of the best tools for Twitter marketing in 2021, they’ve included star ratings and written testimonials that existing customers have provided for the company after using their platform.
SocialPilot’s website design allows them to add reviews into relevant pieces of content like this blog post and that’s great because it gives people a chance to see these testimonials whilst reading about the features and benefits of each tool.
This is a prime example of how useful star ratings can be for customers who want to make a decision between several similar product options.
It’s really helpful because it gives prospective clients a chance to see what customers think of your business before they’ve even seen your service page.
Incorporating reviews into your content like this can provide plenty of context and lead the right people to your site and through your sales funnel.
So, when designing your knowledge base or blog, consider adding the option to include reviews of your products to replicate this.
4. Jump Into the Most Important Information Above the Fold
Most people won’t spend a lot of time on your website, so it’s important that you keep all of the most important information above the fold if you want to reduce your bounce rate.
And, by “above the fold,” we mean at the upper part of your web page where people can see information without having to scroll down the page.
When choosing which information should be above the fold, try placing emphasis on your unique selling points (USPs,) the benefits of your products or services, and any information on how people can learn more about your company.
To give you an idea of what we mean, let’s take a look at a web page that includes all of the most important information above the fold.
This should give you plenty of inspiration for when it comes to designing your own website.
Loganix try to practice what they preach by keeping the main information above the fold. For instance, on their web page for local citation building, you can see that they highlight the benefits and turnaround time before mentioning how the service works or the price.
This lets you know that you can get high-quality citations in less than 5 days, which should catch the attention of most website visitors without them needing to scroll down.
This will go a long way towards keeping people’s attention and encouraging them to convert.
If you also want to arrest your readers’ attention immediately after they land on your site, make sure you identify the benefits that your company can provide to customers and crunch them down into 1-2 brief sentences.
You can put this front and center on your webpage so prospective customers don’t need to go too far on the page before discovering what you can do for them. This should be enough to encourage them to read on and eventually spend their money with you.
5. Use High-Quality Imagery That Shows What Your Business is About
Manage your website design with high-quality images is very important, as it will give off a great first impression to customers, which can lead to a boost in sales for your business.
To ensure you get your customers excited, try to use images that show people like them using your products or services, killer product photos that demonstrate the best features of your items, and images that humanize your business so people feel a connection with it.
And when you’re including these into your web design, make sure you look out for the ones that need to be cropped or resized to fit into the overall look of your website.
Here are some examples of websites that use imagery well so you can get some inspiration:
For instance, American International University (AIU) does a great job of using high-quality imagery to get prospective students excited and encourage them to learn more about the academic programs at the university.
They use different photos to show current students in various departments and this allows prospective students to get an idea of what life would be like if they were to enrol in AIU.
These images can build up interest in future students and spark a website visitor’s imagination so they start thinking of what their life could be like at the university. And this would lead to more enrolments for the school.
A similar approach can also be used by product-based companies. For example, Stryker T-Tops uses aspirational and powerful imagery on its boat t-tops and accessories page.
You can see that they really know how to take high-quality images of their products. The images display their leaning posts, rod holders, and boat t-tops in action and they do a great job of inspiring people to buy these products.
They show exactly what the business is about and can even help people get excited about investing in the company’s equipment.
One thing that you can take away from these examples is that you need to invest in professional and high-quality images if you want to show people what your brand is all about. And this isn’t limited to businesses with physical products alone.
If you provide software or services, you can also create product demonstrations or tutorials to show your audience how you can help them. It’s all about getting people excited.
6. Make Your Website Design Responsive
You never know where a customer could be browsing from so you need to create mobile-friendly or mobile responsive sites to ensure that your website design will look great on any device. If you can’t guarantee this, you could miss out on a lot of customers.
There’s also the issue of Google’s Mobile-First Index, which gives priority to sites with a mobile version. So, not having a responsive design could actually affect your site’s indexing and rankings on search engines.
When creating a website with a responsive design, you want to make sure that you keep your website design as simple as possible.
You have to remember that some people will be browsing your site using mobile devices so creating complex designs and elements is going to create a bad experience for them.
If you want to read more about practical tips you can use to make a mobile-friendly website, Exabytes has this great piece on doing just that.
7. Focus On Creating an Effective and Intuitive Navigation
One of the key success factors for a business website that can improve your SEO and boost conversions is ensuring that your site provides a positive user experience (UX).
And one effective way to do this is by creating a clean and effective navigation.
If people can’t find what they want on your site, they won’t stick around, and this will signal to search engines that your site provides a poor UX. Plus, it can lead to you missing out on sales.
To create a good site navigation, you need to plan out the categories and subcategories your website will be divided into and then create these divisions effectively so people don’t get confused when browsing your site.
You can write out your site structure on a whiteboard or arrange it on an excel spreadsheet just so you can visualise it properly.
When planning your site hierarchy, try not to let your main categories exceed seven and make sure the sub-categories underneath really relate to them. This will help people and search engines to find information much more quickly and easily.
Also, try to use intuitive navigation principles that people are already familiar with. For instance, most internet users will expect the menu to be at the left or right-hand top corner of a website so they’ll naturally look there for direction.
Also, it’s common practice to place links to a website’s main pages in the footer so people will expect that as well.
Designing your site with these tips in mind can make life much easier for your website visitors and give them a great UX experience, leading to more sales for your business.
Summary
There are so many ways you can improve your website design to boost your sales and it can get overwhelming sometimes. But there’s no need to panic.
Simply start with tips like making sure your CTAs are bright and bold, displaying social proof, and using high-quality imagery.
Then you’ll be able to work your way up to implementing all these design tips so you can increase sales for your business.
And, if you would prefer to outsource your website design, you can always use the services of a professional website design service like Exabytes. They specialise in designing responsive, custom-made, and affordable websites you and your customers will love.
