Marketing: How to Optimize your Conversion Rates

It’s time for an introduction: Higher conversion rates, I’d like you to meet increased sales and customer satisfaction, sometimes we like to call it bigger profits for short. Conversion rates are holding hands with its best friend, web design.

In a “Web Credibility Research” study performed by Stanford, they found that 75% of users make judgements about a company’s credibility based on their website.

Furthermore, the first impressions of users on a website happen in just 1/20th of a second, and 94% of them are based on design. That’s not much time to make a valuable connection with consumers.

Let’s take a look at how better web design will attract, interest, connect and engage with our online audiences while increasing our conversion rates at the same time:

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Navigation Necessities

 

Most web users want to get as much accomplished with the fewest number of mouse clicks as humanly possible.

Clicking through page after page of content when attempting to make a purchase, subscribe to a service or download information will only alienate users and drive them to your competitor’s website. Streamline these processes as much as possible.

When it comes to navigation, include a sitemap, it may seem redundant, but many users appreciate this type of quick layout.

Since all the information available on a website can’t possibly be squeezed into a single home or landing page, if a customer can’t find what they are looking for quickly and easily, they will often refer to these maps as a quick fix to an otherwise lengthier search.

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Images are Imperative

 

The importance of using visuals, images, photos and especially videos, cannot be overstated, they are simply “must-haves” on any website. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is good for a million.

Thanks to YouTube, we don’t have to waste valuable webspace and bandwidth by hosting our own videos, so use them often.

When it comes to images, try this (free) online tool for resizing, cropping and optimizing photos. It will give your image the perfect size and configuration for whatever the purpose you’re using them for, product pictures, personal profile, backgrounds, etc.

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Color Challenges and Hue Hazards

 

As you can see, while green and red is perfectly wonderful at Christmastime, it is a poor choice for this text when placed on this background. Here is another great tool available online to experiment with background and text choices. This Accessibility Color Wheel will help to compare color combinations.

The text and background colors on a website should be easily readable to people, even those with less than perfect vision.

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Clear Cut Call to Action

 

Using more color psychology, make the proper color choices for call to action buttons that really grab the reader’s attention.

Don’t bury your “buy now,” subscription and download text links in a sea of content. Make them loud and proud, but no so much that they are overbearing, a nice balance between “here I am right here,” and finding a needle in a haystack.

While there’s no one-size-fits all approach to better web design and methods used to increase conversion rates, keeping these design options in mind, implementing the best choices on your website, and tracking their effectiveness over time will keep customers happier. And happier customers ultimately means raising revenue.

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