Four web design tips to turn visitors into customers 🖥️👨‍💻

As website builders and creatives by nature, we know that every business and brand should invest in improving its online visibility. The reason is simple: consumer behaviour. It is 2020, and more and more people use their smartphones, and the internet in general, to learn about products and services. This makes them highly independent buyers.

So, without even setting foot in your physical shop, your potential customers will research, and probably find out, everything there is to know about what your business sells. With the growth of brand-sponsored searches, and of people searching for information about your brand, services or products, the opportunities to sell more are far greater for anyone with a real presence in the digital world.

As mobile devices give them more and more power, consumers are more curious, demanding and impatient than ever.

Consumers in the age of assistance

According to Google, as you can read in more detail in this article, there are at least three types of consumer today:

1. The curious consumer: buyers are almost obsessed with research. They want to be sure that, for every purchase, they have all the information available and that their decision is well founded, so there is no room for regret afterwards.
2. The demanding consumer: people want to find familiarity online, and products that feel made to measure and highly personalised, even if they never put those demands into words.
3. The impatient consumer: as smartphone use and constant internet access have grown, so has the underlying impatience of potential customers. Many buyers research, read other buyers' reviews and look for more information about a product or service while they are on their way to buy it.

These traits shape what consumers expect when they interact with your brand. So it is your business's responsibility, with the help of professionals such as Indigit, to provide a smooth but persuasive user experience, seamless and free of hiccups. That way, you will convince more of your website visitors to buy your products or hire your services.

Now let's look at some factors that can really improve how your business website works and performs, optimising the experience for your visitors and the website at the same time.

Factors to prioritise in web design

• Clear navigation.

The navigation structure of your brand's website should let users move easily from one page to another, wherever they start. Not every visitor starts on the homepage or follows a predictable path. They should be able to find a specific product or a particular tab from the first page they land on.

Stop your visitors from feeling overwhelmed by 'breaking up' the navigation into groups of five to seven options. The fewer options you show, the more you keep users focused on their goal, and so you help them make decisions faster.

Hick's Law, a very popular principle in website design, tells us that the more choices you give users, the longer they take to act and complete a purchase. The problem is that a visitor can lose interest in a disorganised website and end up leaving the page.

Even so, this law does not apply to every part of a website. Some pages, such as product pages, will have more content than others. In that case, you can certainly give more prominence and visibility to a product, a promotion or an option you want the visitor to choose.

The "search" feature is another part of clear navigation that you must never forget. A bar where users can search for a keyword or product should follow the three-click rule: a web design principle which says that users will leave your website if it takes too many clicks or actions to find what they want.

• Page speed.

Then there is a website's loading time. The fewer seconds a page takes to appear, the more attention you get from a potential customer, especially the impatient kind. Page speed is a very important feature on any device your website is shown on, but it matters far more on mobile.

A 2019 report on this topic shows clearly that slower websites reduce the chances of a buyer coming back. More than 20% of mobile users admit they close a slow website, and 14% say it makes them visit competitors' pages.

Google has a free tool that helps you diagnose a website's speed problems.

Page loading speed is also an important SEO ranking factor. If your website is fast, it will be more visible in search engines. This helps you earn a better position to generate more traffic, turn visitors into leads and, in turn, into customers.

• A visitor-friendly layout

This is what we call user friendly. As well as speed and navigation, a website's layout also affects its conversion rate. At first glance, the website should be simple and intuitive. This gives visitors a comfortable reading experience and stops them leaving your page.

The main goal of your brand's page is to make the content as readable as possible. If your website is not readable enough, it will not prompt visitors to do anything. Online users are always in a hurry, so they rarely have time to read a full article or all the content on a page.

According to UX Myths, people do not read content on websites, they skim it: they do a very quick scan. Using this behaviour to your advantage is one of the main goals of web design, and of digital marketing too.

The F-pattern is very common among fast readers. Typically, people read the first part of your content to get an idea of the main topic. Then they look down the page, always towards the left-hand side, searching for anything of interest.

This pattern can help you create a layout with a good visual hierarchy, so visitors take in your content easily.

The key to catching users' attention straight away is to state the purpose of the page within the first two paragraphs and to use strong headings that get straight to the point.

Cover only one idea per paragraph and use bullet points

• whenever
• you
• can.

Add deliberate pauses and break up long stretches of text with images, and make good use of negative space.

• Create a strong, clear call to action

Finally, every page needs an easy-to-spot call to action button. It will encourage visitors to respond and take them further into your website.

Your call to action (CTA) does not always have to mean a purchase. In fact, you may need to anticipate your readers' needs by recommending relevant content. So your website's CTA can invite visitors to another blog post related to the one they have just read, or to download files that can help them solve a problem.

There are critical points you must never, ever forget: the button's position and its colour. Place it in a highly visible area of your layout. You can always follow the rule of thirds to give more prominence to page elements such as the CTA button.

Above all, of course, when you design a website you must prioritise clear ideas and ease of use.

Landing pages should also make it easy to move from one page to another as the visitor's buying or browsing intentions change. That way, your website will always help potential customers move forward, and you can guide them through every step they take on the website.

Never forget: a friendly website that offers visitors a good browsing experience will always generate more leads and win more customers. Take it from the experts!