Website Design: A Path to Growth
A new website is an investment in your company’s growth. However, convincing your team to undertake the project might be challenging. Whether you choose to hire a professional design team or work with your in-house marketing and graphic design team, investing time and resources into redesigning your website can be intimidating.
The good news is that a well-designed website can significantly increase your bottom line.
The key is to approach the redesign process with a focus on increasing sales.
Designing With Sales in Mind
To design a website that effectively brings in leads and sales, it’s essential to focus on three crucial design aspects.
Simplicity
Your website’s primary goal should be to boost sales, not to have a visually appealing homepage.
Instead of prioritizing aesthetics, aim for a simple, clean website design. A professional design conveys credibility, which builds trust among your customers, making them feel more comfortable buying from you.
A simple, minimalistic approach often results in an aesthetically pleasing design anyway, reflecting the beauty in simplicity.
To achieve a professional, clean aesthetic, follow these tips:
- Eliminate clutter: A clutter-free website design gives a professional impression. Avoid having too many links, pop-ups, graphics, or unnecessary apps as they damage your credibility.
- Use white space effectively: Too little white space makes your content look cramped, while too much makes the page appear needlessly long. Find a balance.
- Use a maximum of three colors: A good website design takes into account color psychology. Your designer should choose colors that convey your brand message effectively. Using too many colors can be overwhelming, so stick with two or three that reflect your brand’s personality.
- Choose the right font: Use a large, readable font that is not overly stylized, making it easy for your viewers to read your content.
Your aim should be to make the sales experience as comfortable as possible for your customers. If they do not trust you enough to give their credit card information, they will not buy from you.
Usability
The primary objective of your website should be functionality. Make it as easy as possible for your customers to buy from you.
A simple, professional design enhances usability. Here’s how:
Too many options can overwhelm customers, causing choice paralysis. A simple website design can help you avoid this. You don’t want customers to be confronted with numerous links and no clear direction. That can be overwhelming and scare them off.
To enhance usability, follow these tips:
- Consistent, clear navigation: Your website should be easy to navigate. Your customers should find the information they need and make a purchase quickly. Keep your navigation tabs in the same place on every page, and ensure your navigation structure is logical.
- Allow product comparison: Allowing users to compare products makes your website easier to use. If you were choosing between two products, would you prefer to flip back and forth between multiple windows or compare them side-by-side?
Content Marketing: The New Era of Marketing
Traditional advertising is becoming a thing of the past as content marketing takes center stage. This modern marketing technique is revolutionizing the industry, bringing businesses higher returns at lower costs than old-school marketing methods.
- Boost Traffic and Maintain It with Quality Content:
Content is king. Establish yourself as a credible source of information by using high-quality blog posts, videos, and other content. This will keep readers coming back for more, and help drive traffic to your site.
- Improve Search Rankings:
Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important part of a successful content strategy. Optimizing your content with the right keywords and phrases will help your site climb through Google’s rankings, helping you reach a wider audience and market your product more effectively.
- Convert Readers to Leads:
A strategically placed call-to-action will encourage readers to take the next step towards becoming buyers. Don’t miss out on this powerful conversion tool.
If you’re redesigning your website, make sure you incorporate a content marketing plan into that redesign. This will help you achieve the highest possible return on investment for your business.
Customer Feedback: The Key to Success
It’s crucial to get feedback from potential and current customers. You can use surveys or user testing tools to invite your customers to share their opinions with you. After all, the customer’s opinion is the most important. If they find your website hard to navigate or there’s a feature they really wish you offered, you need to know.
Getting feedback from your users can help you avoid design pitfalls and improve your overall customer experience.
Use Analytics to Drive Your Design
Your analytics software can give you invaluable insights for your redesign. Analytics data will tell you which pages your visitors view the most, which blog posts people find the most helpful, how people are navigating to your product page, and much more.
When you know what works, you can focus on highlighting those elements and fixing the ineffective ones.
Test Your Design Thoroughly
The importance of testing can’t be overstated. Test continuously, throughout the redesign process and afterwards. Start with these important tests:
- Usability testing: this tells you how easy your site is to use.
- A/B testing: this shows two versions of your site to similar viewers to see which works best.
- Quality testing: this looks for bugs, typos, and other errors.
Incremental Changes Lead to Big Results
A major website redesign can have a huge impact on your viewers. This can be good or bad, so why gamble? Try making incremental changes instead. Redesign or introduce a few features, and get feedback. Use that feedback to inform future changes. This way, you avoid shocking people by changing everything at once.
A great website is always updating and changing, without losing the well-loved aspects your customers count on.
If you’ve been shying away from a redesign because you see it as a money sink, then you’re viewing your website wrong. Your website is a powerful asset for your business- it should be making you money. If it’s not, then your website isn’t successful and it’s time for a redesign.