Designing a Website that Converts: 9 Essential Website Design Elements

Do you find yourself wondering why you get traffic but no appointments or sales?

It could have something to do with your website design. People take a few seconds to look at your site, mentally process the website design elements, and make an unconscious judgment.

The judgment they make is the decision whether they trust your business and will contact you or not. What does that mean for you? Your website could be hurting your business more than you know.

Keep reading to learn the top website elements you need to have on your site to turn your site into a conversion machine.

1. Site Speed

You know that people are generally impatient. Do you know how impatient? They’re so impatient that they’re not going to wait more than three seconds for your website to load.

There’s a link between conversions and site speed. The faster your site speed is, the higher your conversion rates are.

How can you make your website faster? The first thing to do is to measure the problem by checking out the Google Page Speed Test.

You’ll get results that show you what is slowing down your site. A couple of common problems are that sites don’t compress images or they use too many plugins.

2. Important Information Above the Fold

Newspapers and magazines always did their layouts according to what would appear above the fold. These are the areas on the front page that people would see first because the newspaper would be folded.

Magazines would be stacked on shelves, which is why important headlines would appear at the very top of the magazine.

You can apply these concepts to your website design by thinking about how much of your site appears on a screen without scrolling.

You want to make sure that someone can visit your site and understand who you serve and how within the first five seconds.

3. Easy for Mobile Devices

With that in mind, you also need to remember that most of your traffic may not come from desktop devices. Mobile devices drive a lot of traffic and sales.

You have to keep your design simple so that the smallest screens have an easy time reading your content.

It helps to utilize web design services that can turn your site into a responsive one. 

4. Good Use of Whitespace

One of the best ways to simplify your website is to incorporate whitespace. It’s a website design element that is empty space.

You might wonder what the benefits are of having empty space on the page. It draws attention to specific elements of the page, like images or a headline. Whitespace also makes your site much more readable.

5. Consistent Branding

Are the visuals of your brand aligned on your website and other marketing materials? People might see one look at your brand and visit your website.

If the branding isn’t similar to your website, they can get confused and leave. People expect to see the same look and feel through all of your marketing.

One example is to use a particular color and font for your Instagram posts and Pinterest pins and then have a completely different color scheme and font on your website.

It’s a little jarring for first-time visitors. People like and trust consistent branding, which is why it leads to higher sales for companies that do it.

6. Clear Calls to Action

Analysis paralysis is a term that describes a person who can’t make a decision. They have too many options and they overthink the decision.

As a result, they don’t make a decision at all. Your pages should be designed to drive one action. That action can be to get people to sign up, have them schedule a consultation or get a quote.

Make sure that there’s only one call to action and it’s very clear as to what they should do next.

7. Make Content Easy to Read

The best thing you can do for your readers is to make your site easy on their eyes. They shouldn’t have to squint to read the text on your page.

That just means you’re trying to tell them too much. Make sure the text on the page is at least 18px on desktop and mobile devices.

8. People Can Your Content

People read about 20% of the content on your page. They look at the headings and images and then move on.

When you deliver a lot of text without breaking it up, you’re killing the user experience. You can have a great article, but people have to read the important parts in a few seconds.

9. You Measure Your Results

The only way to tell if your website is actually generating results is to measure. You need to measure the traffic to your website and where it’s coming from.

You can then measure how much of that traffic converts to sales and contacts. Dig a little deeper into your analytics and find out which traffic source is driving the results. That will help you decide where you spend your marketing dollars.

You might find that you get a lot of traffic from social media, but they leave your site after they read a blog post. You might find that SEO is giving you a much higher conversion rate.

Use These Website Design Elements for More Conversions

Your website design can cost you more business than you know. Once you know the website design elements that make the most impact on conversions you can change them.

It always helps to look at your site like someone visiting your site for the first time. Then you can list the issues with your site and work to change them. You can always work with a web design company to make the changes for you.

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