If you’re having great success getting visitors to your website, but then see a breakdown when it comes to conversion rates, it may be about your website design.
Websites have come a long way, even in the last few years. It’s no longer enough to provide an online commerce site for customers; your website design needs to be an active participant in your marketing and growth strategies, turning casual visitors into customers and eventually, brand advocates.
You might be saying, “Whoa…that’s a lot to expect from a website.” Or is it? If your website design doesn’t have features and tools that drive leads to each step in the buy cycle, you may be making one of these common mistakes:
Slow Loading Times: Nobody is nostalgic for dial-up. Nobody complains about a red light that’s too short. It’s all about instant gratification, and there may be no place where humans demonstrate less patience than with a website loading time.
When is the last time you visited your site? Time your web pages loading, and if they are longer than one or two seconds, it’s time to revisit your website design. There are some quick changes that can speed things up, such as adjusting graphics.
Your Whitespace is…What Whitespace? Your page may be overwhelming your visitors, causing them to make a quick decision to exit. The use of whitespace and the placement of graphics and text to match the way a visitor’s eyes travel in an F formation across the page is critical for keeping visitors interested.
When it comes to whitespace, visitors may be leaving without knowing what it is that bothered them about your site.
Multi-Device Formatting: If you’re still counting on visitors to wait until they get to their desktop to browse your site, it’s almost guaranteed it’s costing you customers. People search for and explore products and services from tablets and smartphones, and they’re engaging in these behaviors waiting in medical offices, in the grocery line, even around the table at Thanksgiving dinner.
If your visitors have to keep shifting their screen around or enlarging it to read your tiny print, don’t be surprised when they bail out for your competitors’ mobile-friendly site.
We Go Further with Website Design
Correcting these common mistakes is just the beginning. There are search engine optimization (SEO) strategies and content marketing techniques that are effective at prompting your visitors to each next phase in the journey towards a purchase.
With the right website design, you’ll not only keep your visitors longer, but they’ll be ushered on to the next step toward making a purchase. By the time they are your customer, they may describe their time on your site less as buying something and more like having an experience.