First impressions are hugely important. When a visitor accesses your website for the first time, they will make a split-second judgment about whether to continue or look elsewhere.
Your company’s credibility is based on that first impression, so it’s hugely important to get it right. It’s essential to follow website design best practices that directly impact conversions.
You don’t just want your website to look beautiful, you also need it to function well.
Here we look at some of the things you should consider when launching a new website.
Use consistent branding throughout the site
94% of first impressions are based exclusively on design. Before your visitor reads a single word of copy, he or she already has an impression of your company. 75% of users admit to judging a company based on the design of their website.
Don’t overlook the landing page
Most people know this as the HOME page. And these pages play a massive role in the promotion of your business, and even customer retention and acquisition, so they need to be spot on.
This will more than likely be the very first page your online visitors will see, it’s the first interaction they’ll have with your business and brand, and sadly all too often, here many opportunities can be missed. You should strive to turn visitors into customers from the get-go, so here we will share some top tips on how to drive conversions through to potential sales.
Be creative with your headlines
On average, five times as many people read the headlines as the body copy, so it’s key to get this right. Look for optimisation opportunities in your headlines, by testing the tone to see what drives more conversions. Make your headlines clear and consistent, by offering a value proposition.
Use great images
Statistics prove that people who hear information are only likely to recall 10% of it three days later, however pairing this information with a great image, will bump retention to 65%. You should consider experimenting with different hero images, (main image on the page at the top of your page). Use animated options, such as a slider, which will give you the opportunity to showcase several images or a video.
Body Copy
Write the body copy with thought, using a combination of relevant data and but also keywords which will help with your SEO.
Consider breaking body copy up with clear and bold section titles to make it as easy as possible to skim read.
Always be concise but clear.
CTA’s (Calls to action)
Experiment with different designs to make the CTA button pop; contrasting colours work well. Also, consider positioning well on the page. You need to clearly see the call to action almost immediately, consider the F-pattern layout. Scientific studies have shown Internet users naturally scan web pages in an F-Pattern. A good designer will implement this design theory while planning out the visual structure of a website.
Compress your images as much as possible
The ideal website load time is just 3 seconds. However, based on industry averages, most websites load much slower than that. Attention spans don’t allow for long load times, so if you want to boost conversions, you need to find ways to reduce page load times to improve speed.
Add breadcrumbs
Make the site easy to navigate back to the previous page by leaving a trail, if visitors want to click back to a previous page, they can do so.
Once the site is launched, test, test and test again. Learn how your visitors react, move around and where they exit the site and refine where necessary.
It is important to keep measuring, improving and evaluating how your website is performing as well as your overall Digital Marketing Strategy and always be on the lookout for ways to do things better or even to stop activities that are not working.
We work with our clients every month to agree and deliver measurable efficient digital marketing strategies, whether that be the creation of a new website or tweaks to your existing digital marketing.
We do this in 3 keys ways:
Plan – We consult with you and plan activities based on meeting your business goals.
Implement – Between us, we implement our digital marketing plan, measuring all of the time.
Refine – We refine the approach, learn from our successes and focus on what works.
Contact us to find out how we can help to enhance your website for better conversions or for information on our Total Digital Marketing Packages.
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