Have you ever heard the saying, “don’t judge a book by its cover?” Yeah, well, it clearly doesn’t apply to websites. It takes just about 0.05 seconds for a visitor on your website to decide whether they’re staying or not—based on your web design. Moreover, according to Microsoft, the attention span of an average person is about 8 seconds, i.e., even less than that of a goldfish!
So, you’ve got about 50 milliseconds to catch a user’s attention and then about 8 more seconds to try and retain it—it should be easy, right? It’s not.
When it comes to web design and SEO, there’s tons for you to work on. For starters, your website needs to be a visual masterpiece because most people are visual learners. However, it’s important to remember that web design is more than just about visuals; it needs to be super responsive and easy to navigate and resonate with your target audience.
Here are some tips that should help you design a website with a low bounce rate and higher conversion rates!
Create A Clean, Minimalistic Design
Let’s be honest, with all the amazing options out there, it’s very easy to go overboard with colours and extra elements. But with an audience with an average attention span of mere 8 seconds, it’s important to give them just as much as they can handle.
So, make sure you stick with your branding, and the colours are consistent with your business’s other aspects. Too many loud colours, animations and stock images will create visual noise that will overshadow your web site’s other essentials.
Include Thoughtful Images
The photos you choose to include on your web pages can have a huge impact on your audience and the overall vibe of your website, so choose them wisely.
Ideally, it’s best to use original images instead of stock photos. However, if you do end up using stock images, ensure they are relatively unique and less generic. Also, try not to use the images as it is, but make them more in line with your website’s overall theme by photo editing and filters.
Also, every image should be there to tell a story. Using photos to simply cover up the white space won’t do.
Make Sure The Navigation Is Effortless
Your website may offer amazing products and services; it may even have great value-adding content for the reader, but what’s the point if your website’s visitors can’t find any of it? Your website navigation needs to be flawless; there’s no point in creating a treasure hunt.
As a general rule of thumb, design your navigation as if you’re designing it for a 5th grader—the buttons need to be as obvious as possible.
Also, don’t be overly creative and use simple, recognizable terms in navigation like About, Services, Contact and so on. Also, make use of breadcrumbs, especially if you’ve got lots of content for your users to navigate through.
It Has To Be Mobile-Friendly
Currently, 58.99 percent of web traffic is coming from mobile devices, so your website needs to be mobile-friendly. Everything needs to be optimized for mobile users, from the layout to navigation, so that they have a seamless experience and the visits lead to conversions.
So, for instance, you have to use more eye-catching fonts to make the text more readable, and CTAs buttons need to be accessible throughout. In general, if you take a more mobile-first approach with your web design, you’re likely to come up with a less complex and easy-to-use design.
Design Powerful And Clear CTAs
CTAs are key to conversion, whether it’s purchases, bookings, or even just subscriptions, so make sure your CTAs are obvious and powerful.
So, when designing a CTA, make sure your offer is clear right away. Moreover, make it clear to your users that they can back out any time (example: note that subscriptions can be cancelled at any time), and of course, the CTA has to be very visible, so choose the colour, and size and position of the CTA button wisely.
Keeping Accessibility In Mind Is A Good Idea
This isn’t something a lot of web designers are doing, so the idea itself should help set you apart from others. Accessibility basically refers to the ease with which people with any disabilities can use your website. These can be visual, motor or cognitive abilities, for instance.
So, while there’s a long list of things you can do to design a more accessible website, some basics to keep in mind are contrasting colours to help with visual impairments, keyboard navigation support and so on.
Use Heatmaps To Improve The Design
Heatmaps are incredibly helpful and can tell you exactly where your website visitors spend most of their time. So even once you’ve designed and launched a website, you can continue improving its design by using feedback from heatmaps.
From the heatmaps, you can figure out how to optimize the areas where users are spending most of their time while improving the elements that aren’t getting as much attention. You can also use the information to place your CTAs more tactfully and redesign your navigation.
Don’t Forget SEO
Of course, a great web design and good SEO practices go hand in hand. If you want your website to rank well, you need as much organic traffic as you can get with targeted keywords.
Also, you need to build a responsive design with relevant title and header tags, meta descriptions, and simple URLs, along with other key SEO principles integrated throughout your website.
These are just a few tips that may help you design a successful website, but if you want guaranteed success, it’s a great idea to get some professionals on board. At X Times More, we offer website design services and can help you develop a website with a high conversion rate and is SEO optimized.
As a sales funnel marketing agency, we also offer web design and social media marketing services.
Get in touch with us to learn more.