Introduction
How long does it take for your website visitors to determine what your website does? If you are saying it takes more than 5 seconds for them to determine that, then you need to take a look at your site’s design once again.
A good website design should contribute to its user experience, and functionality, and suitably match its content.
It’s all too tempting to dismiss these features as the lowest priority on your website’s to-do list, but a great website that has both high-performing content and an amazing user experience must strike a balance.
Creating fantastic content for your blog or service pages only to have it go unrecognized due to design errors, navigation challenges, unclear layouts, or missed conversion possibilities, should be the last thing on your mind.
The umbrella of website user experience encompasses a lot more, and it might be difficult to grasp everything while determining the most critical items to address.
That’s why we have created a list of the most crucial tips that can help you upgrade your site design.
Without further discussion, let’s get to these tips.
Acknowledge Change
You need to acknowledge first that your website needs a redesign. The best way to get that done is by adding a heatmap to your website.
Heatmaps will allow you to learn more about the buyer’s journey. You can check how people visiting your website are performing. That is: What tasks they are performing and how long they are taking to perform those tasks. This will help you analyze the hiccups you are having on your website.
When you have enough data available on the site, the next thing to do is to make a plan to improve your website design.
Make a Plan
Once you’ve admitted that your site most certainly requires some enhancements, it’s time to go backwards and devise a strategy for addressing them.
Begin by outlining your client’s journey from the first time they visit your website to the point at which they become a customer.
To map out your site’s customer journey,
The best way to start the customer journey map is by interviewing your customers. Request 15-30 minutes of their time to ask them some questions (you can even reward them with further discounts or gift cards). Interview as many customers as possible to understand how they are reaching your website and converting.
Reduce Bumps & Hiccups
Find out what elements on the site are making it difficult for your visitors to convert? Your heatmap reports will tell a lot about the site conversion journey.
A few elements on the site that can create bumps are complicated animations, excessively extensive materials, and “stocky” website graphics.
With an attention span of only eight seconds, you must make it crystal apparent to your users what they will learn on the page they are seeing, and your design must not detract from this.
It’s also vital to avoid using too many on-page animations or interactions. If you’re scrolling across a page and see every button flashing or a section of icons each with its own animation, it might feel overwhelming and distract you from reading what’s on the page.
Always Include Social Proof
How can someone browsing your website trust you? They will need some recommendations, some references, and some testimonials to know if your services are well worth it.
To fix that issue, add social proof to your website landing pages. You can do that in the form of awards, credentials, certificates, testimonials of clients, and even ratings and reviews that you receive on third-party b2b rating platforms.
Think about Amazon. People only buy those products that have a few reviews on them. The more reviews a product on Amazon has, the more people will buy it.
The same scenario applies to your website service pages. If service seekers can’t trust your site, they won’t avail of your services.
See what people are saying about Drift on social media. This is a simple Twitter tweet section that you can easily add to your website with an embedding code.
Implement CTAs Properly
Using strategically placed call-to-actions in locations such as the top right of your navigation, below portions that demand action, and at the bottom of your website pages is one of the greatest methods to improve your e-commerce web design with this in mind.
However, don’t lose track of the buyer’s trip. It’s simple to bombard consumers with bottom-of-the-funnel (BOF) call-to-actions everywhere they go on your website, but if they’re not ready to buy, they’ll likely take no action at all.
You should segment your content pieces into all three: TOF, MOF, and BOF. This way you can target each customer according to the stage they are in.
For example, if a person on your website is learning about the Color Tones used in a logo design, they are not likely ready to buy your logo design services.
The next step, in this case, will be to provide them with an ebook about colour tones or a whitepaper about industry-specific color tones.
You can even create a table of industry-specific color tones and their impact on different segments. Their present issue is to know about more color tones not to get to your service. So, just offer what they are looking for. If they want your service, they will get back to your site sooner or later.
Use Better Images In Your Website Design
Always use original images on your website. But if that is not a choice available to you, then use stock photos that you have purchased. You can even create better graphics on the website by merging the stock photos available to you.
Stock photos save you time from creating your own graphics, many websites use imagery that is overused. You’ll also notice that a lot of other websites may be displaying the same images and it can hurt your reputation in the long term.
The best way to go about this situation is to ask your graphic designer to merge graphics and make a quality design. Also, check the images that your competitors are using and try not to use those if they are available as stock photos.
One program that you can use to find who else is using a particular image is TinEye reverse image search.
Make Your Homepage Your Landing Page
Do you know most SaaS websites get the most conversions directly from their homepage? Why? Because they have the right content explaining their products right on the homepage. This is not the case with the majority of the service websites because they think that customers rarely visit the homepage.
Check out WPEngine’s homepage.
They are the bestselling cloud hosting solution right now and their homepage has over 12 folds.
Everything is placed strategically with CTAs in appropriate places. They ensure that every visitor's journey leads to a conversion.
Nielsen’s 2018 study suggests that people scroll to the first five folds on the homepage before either bouncing off or moving to the next page. This is almost 50% of the homepage of an average site. So, don’t be afraid to add content below the first few folds on your homepage when optimizing it.
Optimize Website Design for Mobile
Today over 70% of the traffic coming to your site is either coming from a mobile device or a tablet. If your website is not properly optimized for mobile, it will be losing this much traffic.
Moreover, search engines have stopped indexing websites that are not properly optimized for mobile devices. So, not having a mobile-friendly website won’t even deter visitors from directly visiting your website but it will also lead to a heavy blow to your organic traffic stats.
Make sure that you make your website fully responsive at the earliest.
Pricing Where People Can See
Add a pricing table either on the homepage or on a page that is clearly visible to everyone. This page should be available on the Top Navigation menu, and on the bottom menu, and should be highlighted in all places necessary.
Another point to note: Make sure that you have the best package clearly highlighted on the pricing page.
People are more likely to buy the highlighted package because they think it offers the most value. After all, shiny things draw attention. It is a simple human psyche.
Test, Iterate, Repeat
Last but not least, test different site designs to ensure that you have the best one selected. Testing two copies of a website against each other might indicate whether particular regions are causing problems for your users. In certain circumstances, your pages may work well yet contain out-of-date information. A/B testing the page can show you how big of an impact the content has on conversions.
Ready to get your website redesigned?
We hope that this article has helped you learn about crucial tips that you can implement to improve your website design.
If you need help with your site’s redesign and don’t have the right team at your disposal then our website design experts can be of service.
At Unique Logo Designs, we have the best custom web design experts that have years of experience in website customization, development, and design. Contact us today to discuss your website redesign project.
Author Bio:
Mack Chris is an SEO specialist with more than 5 years of experience in promoting and marketing brands in the digital world. He loves to read and share his digital marketing experience with the rest of the community. In his spare time, he enjoys drawing, sketching, playing football, and going swimming.
