The Top 7 UX Design Tips for Gaining Better Conversions
Everything about your website — from the colors you use to the placement of your buttons — ties into your conversion rates.
The experience your users have on your website will not only determine your conversion rates, but may even be the difference between whether visitors choose to stay on your site or bounce away. You likely have spent a lot of time and effort getting traffic to your website, so the last thing you want is to turn those visitors off.
In fact, for every dollar your site invests in UX improvements, you could see between $10 and $100 in returns. With that high of a return on investment, paying closer attention to conversions is worthwhile.
Here are seven UX design tips that will help you gain better conversions:
1. Improve Your Page Speed
Website visitors are more impatient than ever. They expect sites to load within mere seconds, and many will bounce away if a site takes even two seconds longer to load than they expect. In one study, that mere two-second delay increased page abandonment rate to 87 percent.
Have you ever noticed how sites such as Amazon load at lightning speed? They invest in the servers to allow this, because their internal studies show the impact slow loading pages has on shoppers. One of the best things you can do for your UX is to pay for the fastest and most reliable server you can afford.
2. Put the Focus on the Goal
What is your goal for your landing page? One thing you want to do is put the reader’s focus on that CTA button or link. The best way to do this is to limit how much you put on your landing page. The focus should be very narrow, and the reader’s eye should naturally be drawn to the action you want him or her to take. You’ll need to deploy white space strategically to give the eye a rest, and bold images and colors to attract attention where you want it.
3. Offer a Strong Contact Form
When people visit a website, they often look for a “Contact Us” option. A prominent link to your contact form shows your site is open to customers getting in touch and lends a level of trust and reliability to the equation. After all, the customer doesn’t know you and has no idea if you are a good company with solid service or not. However, seeing a way to get in touch can help alleviate those hesitations.
Make sure you create a form that has strong features. You should also offer confirmation that the form has been submitted, so the user doesn’t have to wonder whether you’ve received the message.
4. Mobile Responsiveness
The use of mobile devices to access the Internet continues to grow steady from year to year. Some estimates place mobile Internet usage via smartphones at 2.6 billion people in 2018. If those numbers don’t impress on you the importance of making sure your site is responsive to smaller screens, maybe Google’s algorithms looking at mobile responsiveness as one of the measures for rank will.
If you aren’t already thinking about how to design for mobile devices, now is the time to implement some changes and ensure you reach readers on both desktops and phones.
5. Scannable Content
Since so many people are accessing websites with mobile devices, as mentioned above, and others are just crazy busy, they are looking for quick information that is easy to digest. Make sure your website content is scannable. Even though you might have added some longer, more in-depth articles to improve your rank and reach more readers, you still need to make this material easy to digest.
How can you accomplish this? You need to add sub-headings, bullet points and set off major elements in boxes or with quotes. This way, you’ll satisfy the reading habits of both skimmers and those who want to stop and read in-depth.
6. Clear up Your Call to Action
Do you have a clearly stated call to action? Remember that a call to action, by its very definition, is asking your site visitor to do something specific. So, if your goal is to convert visitors into newsletter subscribers, you don’t just want a button that says “Click Here.” Instead, you want to explain exactly what they’ll get by clicking on that button — “Download Your Free Guide” or “Subscribe for More Tips.”
At the same time, you want to keep your CTA short and to the point. There is also a whole psychology behind the colors you use on your CTA button. Red and blue seem to be the most popular colors, but play around with different colors, shades and wording, doing some A/B testing to see which version plays best with your particular site visitors.
7. Fix Broken Links
Over time, links on your website can break. Perhaps you redesigned and forgot to change a link on the main page, or maybe a file is corrupted or an outside link no longer works. Whatever the case, when a visitor clicks on a broken link, it is a real turnoff. While you want to avoid 404 errors, there are times when you can’t.
Fortunately, there are a couple of things you can do to fix broken links. First, if you’re running your site on a WordPress platform, install a broken link detector plugin to notify you of broken links, so you can fix them. Second, create a custom 404 redirect or page. One of the biggest problems with a 404 page is that visitors feel lost and don’t know what action to take. Redirect them to your homepage or give them a custom 404 that takes them through your sales funnel.
Tweaking and Testing
Every website is different with different visitors. What works statistically for some websites may not work for conversions on yours. The key is to figure out what speaks to your audience, and implement it. Doing so requires trying different user experience elements, then testing to see which ones convert and which ones don’t. You should continue this process throughout the life of your site.
About the author:
Lexie is a freelance UX designer and writer. She enjoys conducting A/B testing and sending off prototypes to clients. She manages Design Roast and can be followed on Twitter @lexieludesigner.
