Many pundits like to say that your website is your digital shopfront, but that’s only half true. The real value of your website is as a conversion funnel. Displaying the things you sell is good, but actually generating cash is much better.
But how do you build a website that converts? That’s the question.
In this post, we find out. Here, we take a look at some of the rules you’ll need to follow for a website that converts and really makes a difference in customers’ purchasing decisions.
Reduce The Number Of Options Available
Giving customers too many options can actually be a bad thing. Yes, you want to provide them with some choice, but you don’t want to overload them.
British psychologist William Edmund Hicks first noted this correlation, which later became known as Hick’s law. He saw that if you increase choices in any given situation, it makes it harder for individuals to make a decision, and they take longer.
In brick-and-mortar stores, this is an issue. But when it comes to online interactions, it can lead to higher bounce rates.
Try cutting the number of options available. Or, if you can’t do that, get visitors to provide you with information so you can funnel them into the right sales channels.
Keep It Simple
Website designers for small business pages know that keeping it simple is paramount. The less clutter a page has, the more new visitors engage with it.
This principle is particularly important for new brands. Consumers don’t want firms to bombard them with too many options or graphics if they aren’t yet familiar with what the brand has to offer.
Keeping it simple means paring back what you offer. Try to keep it to a couple of sentences or less, and then use pictures and videos to explain the rest. If you must use SEO content, find ways to hide it on the page, or put it at the bottom so it doesn’t contaminate your main message.
Grab Attention In 8 Seconds Or Less
When a visitor arrives at your site, you have around eight seconds to grab their attention. That’s a small window of opportunity to get someone into your sales funnel. Therefore, you’ll need to design your web pages in the correct manner. Here are some of the things you’ll need to do:
- Use a large title that grabs attention immediately
- Add power words to the copy to make it more engaging
- Include images that directly relate to what visitors want or will get from you
- Use multimedia, particularly videos explaining or showing what you do
- Use micro-interactions, such as hover effects when users’ browsers hang over call-to-action buttons or other elements on your site
- Use exit pop-ups to re-engage visitors who click out of your site
Be More Gestalt
Lastly, use the Gestalt principle. Make sure that your website’s objects work well together and don’t clash. The human brain likes categories, not disorder, so make sure that you have a unified design in place.
