Strategies To Increase The Conversion Rate Of Your Website These few web design and web development strategies will increase the conversion rate of your website tremendously if you apply them properly
By Harnil Oza
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This article outlines some effective web design strategies to increase the conversion rate of your website.
Site Speed is Absolutely Important
You should do all you can to ensure that your site loads as fast as possible. Humans are generally impatient and at every given time, there are hundreds of online activities begging for their attention. That makes them even more impatient. So, waiting for a slow site to load is more like a punishment now.
An ideal site loads within 3 seconds or less and a site that takes about 7 seconds to load may still be considered but anything above 7 seconds is not acceptable. When potential visitors click the link to your site, they are likely to bounce off before it loads fully if it takes more than 7 seconds to load. So, you should consider speed first.
Balance Your Options
This is a very tricky one. People love websites that offer them a wide range of options but the problem is that the law of diminishing returns is applicable to this. It will get to a point where more options will lead to fewer sales.
To achieve this, you should reduce the number of menu items and focus on only one goal per page. That way, you will be able to guide visitors towards taking the decision you want them to take.
Keep it Simple
People often spend more time on sites that are simple to navigate. So, you should keep the design of your website very simple so that visitors will be able to find their way without any walkthrough. One way to do this is to remove features and functionalities that are not directly related to the purpose of the site.
A lot of sites have ditched sidebars. You may also do the same as it allows visitors to focus on a single centred column. Sidebars are distractions. Secondly, it is better to keep the most important links at the top. In fact, if possible, you should keep every link at the top of the page. Not every visitor will scroll down to the bottom of your web pages.
You should also create several routes to every information or multiple ways to carry out a task. Most importantly, there should be a search function. This will allow visitors to quickly search out what they are looking for. The idea here is to make it possible for visitors to achieve their aims on your website with fewer clicks.
Use Videos
For marketing purpose, you need to upload a couple of videos on your site. Videos are more entertaining, they attract more attention, they are more credible, and they pass more messages than picture and text so they generally yield higher ROI. In addition, search engines rank web pages with videos higher. So for marketing and SEO purposes, you need to upload videos on your site regularly.
However, it is important that they are brief. The longer the duration of a video, the less likely visitors will view it to the end. And ideal video should not exceed 60 seconds in duration.
Adopt the Right Site Structure
Most web designers are just concerned with the visual appeal of their website but the structure of your site is also important. Some structures are easier for search engine bots or spiders to crawl while others are difficult for them to crawl. If the structure of your website makes it difficult for search engine bots to crawl, then you are running your SEO techniques on a leaking bucket.
Pay Attention to the Colour Contrast
Some web pages on some sites have poor text-to-background contrast and this makes it difficult to read the text on these web pages. Yes, the issue could be on just one web page. The question is, what if that is the page a new visitor gets to visit first? He will bounce off with the assumption that other web pages are the same. So, you need to check the contrast on all your web pages.
Use of Chatbots
Nothing attracts potential buyers like an instant response to their enquiry. So, it is a good idea to man your website 24/7 so that customers' enquiries are answered instantly. The problem is that it will cost you some money to hire people that will man your website. This is why some people have turned to chatbots.
These bots market products, answer questions and also inform customers of promotional offers. To empower the bots, they are usually linked to a huge database of the answers to all the questions potential customers may possibly ask. Nevertheless, it is still possible for a customer to ask a question that these bots cannot answer immediately. In that situation, the bots will present the potential customer with a number to call and also send the question to the back-end team so that they can update the database with the answer to the question.
Advertise Benefits Over Features
Some websites are great but they have poor market copies. Every page of your website should have a clear purpose. When advertising their products and services, some sites focus mainly on the features of the products. This will not convert visitors because they really don't care about the features of your products. Instead, they are interested in the benefits of the products. So, you should always advertise benefits and not features. And if you have to advertise features, it is better to tie each feature to benefits.
Most importantly, you must also state why your products are better than competitor products. These are the two things potential customers are interested in.
Scrolling is Better Than Clicking
Instead of dividing information into multiple web pages, it is better to arrange them on one page in a logical order so that visitors only need to continue scrolling. Scrolling down a single page is easier than clicking multiple pages especially on a mobile device.
In summary, these few web design and web development strategies will increase the conversion rate of your website tremendously if you apply them properly.