Constantly improving your website design is an essential part of running an online business. It’s great for shaping customers’ first impressions and providing them with a pleasant browsing experience. When done right, it encourages buyers to browse your site longer, which typically leads to more sales.
Without implementing necessary design measures, you risk losing potential customers due to poor user experience. Not to mention that 44% of shoppers admit to telling their peers when experiencing poor site performance, meaning bad word spreads fast.
This article will share seven web design characteristics that can drive more sales and bring more profit. We’ll cover all essential elements, starting with providing clear navigation to displaying customer reviews.
Let’s get started.
Website Design Tips for Driving Sales
Let’s look at the most necessary elements you need to include in your web design for a high-converting business website.
1. Improve Site Loading Speed
Site speed plays a significant role in driving sales. In fact, speeding up your site’s load time can increase conversion rates up to 74%, as visitors expect a page to load in two seconds or less.
If your website takes longer to load, it can increase the bounce rate(check-in Google Analytics) and lose nearly half of your visitors.
Other than providing customers with a pleasant experience, fast loading speed will also improve your ranking on Google.
Here are five ways to speed up your page’s load time:
Include a trailing slash. Instead of www.yoursite.com/aboutme, your URL should read www.yoursite.com/aboutme/. This tells the server that the page is the final destination and there are no other file directories to search.
Compress images. Save files in PNG and JPEG files as they are the easiest to compress.
Use a CDN. Content Delivery Network brings your site’s content closer to the geographical location of those accessing it. Thus, it accelerates your site speed and displays content faster.
Limit extra elements. Limit add-ons and third-party apps to the essentials.
Utilize caching. Caching saves copies of your pages, so users don’t have to start from scratch when returning to your site.
2. Upload High-Quality Images
The visual aspects of your site affect users’ first impressions, as the human brain processes image 60,000 times faster than text.
In addition, a well-developed visual style can help you stay in consumers’ minds. A good visual identity helps all customers remember you better, even those who are first-time shoppers at your store.
Therefore, images play a big role in how visitors consume and understand information on your site.
Despite this, be mindful of the images you use. For instance, avoid adding irrelevant images and limit the use of overused stock photos. Instead, the visuals on your site must be high-quality and representative of your brand.
When shopping online, buyers look for ultra-detailed photos because it’s different from in-person shopping – they can’t feel the material or touch it to check the quality. Thus, people rely on images to make a decisions.
High-quality images should be high-definition and have no jagged lines or blurry pixels. In other words, they must be clear and pleasing to the eye. To make sure your product images encourage visitors to make a purchase, consider these tips:
- Provide multiple images. Online shoppers prefer online stores with numerous product images. Less than 1% of consumers are okay with a single product photo, while 33% prefer to see multiple images.
- Thus, take multiple product shots from different angles, allow customers to zoom in on small details, and make sure the product is properly lit and positioned.
- Clean background. Ensure there are no distractions around the products so customers won’t miss any product details. A common way to do this is by using an all-white background, which you can do with a background remover tool or Adobe's background transparent tool.
- Show 360° product images. 60% of online shoppers prefer to have a 360ยบ view of the product, as it can boost your conversion rates by 27%.
- Small file size, proper image size. File size and image size are not synonymous. The larger the file size, the longer it’ll take to load the image, so keep it around 2MB. The image size, in contrast, needs to be optimized – the regular dimensions are 1200x800.
3. Ensure Clear Navigation
Clear navigation provides visitors with a pleasant browsing experience. It makes finding products and information straightforward and intuitive. When done right, this converts visitors into buyers and increases sales.
On the other hand, poor navigation creates roadblocks for potential buyers, which frustrates them and finally leads to a high bounce rate.
That said, straightforward navigation is essential to drive sales on your website. Follow these tips to improve your site navigation:
Standard placement. Provide familiar navigation that shoppers recognize. Place menus and buttons in standard places where people expect to find them.
For instance, put the main navigation bar at the top of the page and the cart icon at the top right corner.
- Optimize search. Provide features such as autocomplete, spellcheck, and category suggestions so shoppers can find what they are looking for faster.
- Enable filters. This helps users narrow down your catalog into options that best match their preferences.
- Categories and subcategories. Organizing your menu with categories and subcategories will offer clean and simple navigation for visitors.
- Fat footer. Include links to the most important pages on your site, so your visitors can find what they’re looking for quickly and easily.
4. Prioritize Responsive Design
A responsive design is responsible for providing an optimized viewing experience across different screen sizes and resolutions.
In other words, responsive design ensures your site looks great on all devices. This has become essential for increasing sales because mobile commerce is on a constant rise.
For instance, tablets accounted for the highest conversion rate in the second quarter of 2020, while 53% of consumers rely on their mobile phones for shopping online.
Aside from driving more sales, a responsive design also helps websites rank better on search engines. Thus, increasing your site’s visibility and traffic.
To provide visitors with a seamless user experience on whatever device they are browsing from, look into these aspects:
- Larger buttons. Make sure controls are thumb-sized, so mobile users can click on them without any trouble. Keep the buttons at least 48x48 pixels wide and tall.
- Responsive fonts. Use web-safe fonts and make sure they are readable across all devices. Try keeping the smallest font size to 16 CSS pixels.
- Resized images. Use CSS rules to adjust the image dimensions to fit the users’ screen size.
- Responsive layout. Set up different layout options for elements such as the header, sidebar, and footer.
- SVGs. This refers to vector graphic files, which can scale infinitely while maintaining their image quality.
Once you’ve implemented all practices, test whether your site is mobile-friendly using Google’s mobile-friendly test. After that, check out how your website performs on different devices using a tool like the Responsive Test Tool. You can also use an internetetsecurite VPN for checking your website design in another country.
5. Use Purposeful Call-to-action Buttons
A call-to-action button acts as a signpost that lets users know what to do next. When done right, it encourages shoppers to move down the sales funnel. In a study, a single-focused CTA boosted clicks by 371% and increased sales up to 1,617%.
Without a clear CTA, users will likely leave the site without performing the action you expect them to do. To avoid that from happening, pay attention to these aspects when creating CTA buttons:
- Size. Buttons must stand out and be highly visible, so make sure they’re large enough to spot and click on.
- Color. Use contrasting colors to make sure the buttons grab the visitors’ attention. For example, if your website’s background color is white, consider using a black or red button.
- Wording. Use actionable words such as order, buy, or shop to encourage visitors to take action. Additionally, keep the wording short and straightforward to clearly state the button’s purpose.
- Placement. Consider using a heat map tool to find the best placement for your buttons. Alternatively, add multiple or sticky CTA buttons to increase the chances of conversion.
Popular CTAs for conversions include:
- Add to cart
- Buy now
- Checkout
- Add to wishlist
What other Reads?
6. Remove Distractions
A distraction-free website allows visitors to access information easier and navigate the site faster, which is key to driving more sales.
To make sure your website is clutter-free and encourages people to take action, let’s take a look at the elements of minimal web design:
- White space. White space helps direct visitors’ attention to specific elements. This is beneficial to draw attention to important areas of your website, such as the product image or a CTA button.
- Images. Add balance to your website by adding large and vivid images. Consider adding them to your site’s banner or other relevant sections. That said, ensure the images have a focal point to maintain a clean, distraction-free look.
- Typography. Keep the fonts readable and complimentary. To do that, limit your font choice to no more than two font families.
- Visual consistency. Stick to the same color scheme across your website to stay consistent with your branding.
7. Display Customer Testimonials
Displaying testimonials and customer reviews is great for building trust, which leads to more sales. In fact, a survey shows that 92% of potential buyers read reviews before making a purchase, and 88% of people say reviews directly influence their purchasing decision.
If you’re just starting out, it can be challenging to collect reviews. Here are some strategies to help you get customers’ testimonials:
- Live chat support. Aside from answering questions, live chats also encourage buyers to share their feedback.
- Place feedback forms. Consider placing feedback forms on relevant pages on your website.
- Leverage social media. Use keywords and tags to find customers that talk about your product. Once you see a review, acknowledge them by replying or liking its post.
When asking for feedback, make sure to keep the forms short so customers can complete them in a few seconds.
Additionally, avoid asking for personal information such as their phone number or address to keep the customer's trust.
Conclusion
Using the right web design practices is crucial to successfully driving more sales to your business.
By following the strategies mentioned above, you’ll be off to a great start and ready to build an online store that converts.
Here’s a recap of the tips:
- Improve site loading speed. Visitors expect a site to load in less than three seconds, increasing conversion rates up to 74%.
- Upload high-quality images. High-definition visuals have no jagged lines or blurry pixels.
- Ensure clear navigation. Visitors should be able to find products and information fast.
- Use responsive design. More and more people shop for different devices such as tablets and smartphones.
- Use call-to-action buttons. Strategically place them by considering their size, color, wording, and goal.
- Remove distractions. Shoppers should be able to browse your clutter-free website and purchase faster.
- Display customer testimonials. It can help to build trust and encourage potential customers to make a purchase.
- Take these measures to provide customers with a frictionless shopping experience and get ready to drive more sales. Good luck!
