The overall design of your website is extremely important in creating a satisfying experience for your visitors. Websites that are difficult to navigate drive visitors away and negatively affect conversion rates. When it comes to your business, your website is often the first thing your clients will encounter. And as the saying goes, you only get one chance to make a first impression. By incorporating these tips, you can improve the usability of your website and create a wonderful experience for your visitors
1. Make An Emotional Connection With Your Visitors
Most businesses feel websites are for telling visitors all about their business. This is not why visitors come to your website. They come to satisfy a need they have for a product or service. Unconsciously people first have an emotional reaction to your site, and then they look for reasons to logically support those emotions. If you create a positive emotional feeling with your visitor, then subconsciously they will look for reasons to do business with you.
2. Make Sure the Theme or Topic of Your Website is Clear
Many website owners wrongly assume the intent and message of their content is easily understood by visitors. If people can’t understand what you’re talking about or selling, they’ll leave within seconds of landing on your site. Make sure to grab your visitors’ attention right away by giving them the information they’re looking for. This lets them know they’re in the right place.
3. Keep Distractions to a Minimum
If your focus is on lead generation or customer conversion, you’ll need to provide a clear call to action on your web pages. This should be the most important element of your website. Keep sidebars and links to a minimum; you want to make sure your visitors’ attention is focused where you want it to be.
4. Ensure Content is Easy to Read
Long, complex articles can be overwhelming to website visitors. Avoid jargon, and break your content up using subheadings, bullet points, and lists. This makes the information easier to digest, and helps visitors identify important ideas. You can also play with font size, color, spacing, and contrast to improve the appearance of your pages. You want to make your pages as easy to scan as possible.
5. Responsiveness
Try to make your website as responsive as possible. Web pages that take a long time to load can cause you to lose visitors quickly. To improve the loading speed of web pages, avoid cumbersome plugins like Flash.
6. Keep Forms Simple
Website forms should be kept as clean as possible. Remove any unnecessary fields; long, complicated forms can be a deterrent.
7. Make it Easy for Visitors to Contact You
Visitors don’t want to have to do extra legwork to get in contact with you. Make sure your contact information is clearly visible on every page of your website. Buried or hidden contact information sends a message to clients that you don’t want to be bothered with their inquiry. When you do receive a message or request, make every effort to respond as quickly as possible.
When your website makes an emotional connection with your visitors, and offers clear, well-presented information and user-friendly navigation, visitor satisfaction increases. This keeps potential clients on your site and helps boost conversion rates. By including the above tips in your website design, you ensure a satisfying experience for your online visitors.