Your website needs to be clear, inviting and easy to navigate in order to help entice people to buy what you have to offer. All too often, people think of their website as an extension of their marketing campaign and fill it full of features to “attract” potential customers instead of converting their visits into sales.
Effective sales conversion is built around impressing your potential customers, not overwhelming them with glitz or distractions that will only dissuade their interest and have them moving somewhere else. What follows are simple, effective web design techniques that will improve your sales conversion by creating a more inviting website that customers will feel more comfortable in purchasing your products.
Call to Action
One of the oldest techniques in sales conversion is also one of the most effective as well. A call-to-action is where you ask, almost demand that they purchase the product. What may seem overbearing or too much in terms of sales is actually quite effective because a call-to-action is really asking a person to buy what you have to offer.
An effective call-to-action demonstrates why a person should buy and why they should do so right now. It’s okay to be a little demanding, but in demonstrating why someone needs what you have to offer, a call-to-action can be the difference between making the purchase or going somewhere else.
You can also augment your website by including call-to-action buttons as well. These buttons should have links where customers can click and go directly to purchase the product which will cut down on any potential confusion. These call-to-action buttons should be strategically placed for maximum effectiveness so that customers are more likely to click and purchase.
Simple Navigation
Another basic concept of online sales conversion is making your website as easy as possible to navigate. The last thing you want is a potential customer who is all ready to pay not find the checkout area or worse, become confused at what step they should take next. Once that happens, you can kiss that sale goodbye.
Once your website is created, get your family or friends to go through the website to see if they can make a purchase, stopping just short of actually paying for the product. You need to ensure that your website is as easy as possible.
Presentation
How your content is presented can make or break a sale as well. The way your content is presented in terms of text information, images, video, graphics and other elements must work seamlessly together in order to pull the visitor in and help turn them into customers.
This means breaking up paragraphs, using sub-headings, lists, bullet points and other small ways to break up the information into easily digestible chunks and avoid a thick block of text which will intimidate and frankly turn away visitors is desired.
White Space
The old saying “white space increases readership” may seem rather ironic, but the truth is that effective use of your white or empty space adds to the aesthetic nature of your website. The surrounding white space you offer text, images or photographs can add to emphasizing their impact to the reader. This means using a careful balance of just enough white space to make a point without too much empty space which may make your website look rather thin in terms of effective content. You can look at other, effective websites to see how they balance their white space in terms of font size, images and other content.
Good Contrast
Using effective colours is a natural part of good web design technique, but there is also having good contrast between interesting backgrounds that separates your business from the competition while offering excellent readability of your content.
All too often, people go a little overboard on the background which results in text that is harder to read. This means checking your contrast on different devices as well to insure that it reads well, so it is generally better to brighten the text and de-emphasize the background so that your readers will have little trouble seeing the content.
Judicious Use of Graphics
When used sparingly, graphics can add to the uniqueness of your website without becoming an unnecessary distraction. This is especially true of 3D graphic designs or other, similar eye-catching works that add, but do not overwhelm the visitor. A singular graphic over important content, images or even the menu bar can add a practical effect as well as an aesthetic one to your website.
Add Extras to the Mix
Your website will need to present in a clear manner plenty of extras that help tie in the visitor to your website by making it easier for them to follow what you do. Here are a few examples:
• RSS feed
• Social Media buttons
• Blog
• Landing pages & more
These extras are now a necessity as having your customers subscribe or follow one or more of these marketing services mean that you can create repeat buyers of your products. The best customers are one that have purchased your products before and have enjoyed your services. So, you’ll want to keep them as close as possible with one or more of these extras.
Keep in mind that the majority of the people who find your website through Google or other search engines are not going to buy the first time they visit your website. But many of them will connect via RSS feeds, social media and the like. This means that for the ones who don’t buy right off the bat, you will have created a connection to pull them back again.
When taken together, your web design will be both unique and familiar to visitors when they see the products or services you have to offer. Effective web design is the key to sales conversions and attracting leads to create even more sales in the future.