Improve Your Website Design With These Essential Tips

Visit your website to do some investigating (don’t forget to put yourself in the shoes of your targeted audience). Within a few seconds of clicking on your site, would visitors be able to determine what your company is about? Would they be able to navigate through the site with ease? Does the layout flow? Is the content clear and concise? Does it seem engaging? 

If you find that you’ve answered “no” to several or all of the above-mentioned questions, then it’s a good time to take a cold, hard look at the way you have been doing web design and optimization. It goes without saying that you want to excel, so if your website is lacklustre, it may be time to revamp your existing web design. A website excels when its design caters to the user’s experience, when it’s functional, when it’s easy to navigate, and when it complements the content that it features. Once you have a website up and running, with the day-to-day hustle and bustle, it can be easy to neglect this crucial tool. 

How can you take your Liverpool website design to the next level and maximise the benefits that it can provide? By employing the following tips, which will be able to increase your chances of achieving the success that you desire – and that you deserve. For more information on improving your website design, you can read our web design guide here.

Establish a Plan

Once you have acknowledged that your website could use some improvements, the first step to take when recreating it is working your way backward and creating a plan that details how you’ll tackle the changes that need to be made. To do this, start out by assessing and mapping out your targeted audience’s journey, starting from the first time the land on your site to the time that they convert and become a client. 

When you’re establishing a plan for revamping your website design, consider the pages that your audience is going to view, the content that they are going to interact with, and the offers that are going to want to make them convert. When you take the time to understand these key things, redesigning your website that will improve its ability to nurture your leads right through the sales funnel will be a whole lot easier. Leadfeeder offers a great Customer Journey Map that you can use as a guideline. This map showcases what site visitors do when they’re interacting with a website, and discovers the types of commonalities that occur between visitors that convert and those who do not convert. 

If you’re having a hard time compiling this information or if you don’t have the CRM that would simplify doing this research, consider going the old-fashioned route and interviewing your existing customers. Reach out to a few of your loyal customers and ask them if they would be willing to assist you with compiling some important data by answering a few short questions. Use the information that you acquire from your customers to establish a strategy, which will allow you to identify the key touch points of the existing design of your site, as well as the areas that visitors currently interact with. 

Eliminate Distractions and Minimise Friction 

It’s pretty much guaranteed that there are going to be some elements on your website that are going to detract from the message that you are trying to convey and the value that you are trying to offer. Examples of these distractions might include obtrusive animations, long-winded content, images that are too “stock”-like. 

People have short attention spans; 8 seconds is the estimated average. That means that if you want to grab the attention of your visitors and you want to reduce the risk of having them click off of your site, you need to make it perfectly clear what it is that they are going to gain from the pages they are visiting. The design of your webpages cannot detract from this goal. You can start this by ensuring that your brand guidelines are consistent, and that you can work off of those guidelines. 

These brand guidelines should include the following: 

• Colour palette
• Font styles
• Imagery 
• Logo usage and placement 
• Iconography

Without these things, designing your website’s pages will be a struggle. You’ll probably start seeing random, non-purposeful colours, as well as random fonts that vary in regard to both their size and style. Believe it or not, these seemingly simple things can distract from the message that you are trying to convey, or they can impart visual confusion for those you are trying to convert. Likewise, it’s important to avoid using an abundance of on-page interactions and animations. When you’re scrolling through the pages of your website and you see that every button is pulsating or that an area of icons that have their own animations, you’ll likely notice how overwhelming these things are, and that they are distracting you from interacting with the key information. 

It’s important to determine where it is that you want to direct your visitors’ attention when they land on a page, and in what order you want their attention to shift. Examine what kinds of strategies that you can employ to do this; for example, what style and sized fonts, spacing, colours, graphics, and imagery. Individually, these details may seem insignificant, but when they’re combined and are designed to play off of each other, they can have a huge impact on the overall design of your website – and the success of your business. 

Incorporate Social Proofs

Today’s consumers tend to decide what products and services they are going to use based on the customer reviews. You probably do the same yourself; for example, when you’re shopping on Amazon, you probably naturally gravitate toward the products that feature a bunch of five-star ratings and glowing customer reviews. That’s totally understandable, as this instils trust in a product. 

The visitors to your website do the same thing. If they see that you have a collection of five-star ratings and that you have stellar reviews and glowing testimonials from real people, they’re going to trust you more. In fact, studies have found that consumers are as much as 58 percent more likely to purchase products or to work with companies that have acquired positive customer testimonials. 

How can you acquire testimonials that will improve your credibility and your trustworthiness? There are actually a few different strategies that you can employ; however, the first thing you need to do is take the time to think about the type of format for your testimonials that you want to incorporate onto your website: text or video. 

Research has found that videos testimonials have been more impactful. That’s because videos naturally attract and hold attention longer; they also establish a stronger, more meaningful connection, as viewers can hear human voices, see their facial responses, and see their actions. Video testimonials do, however, tend to be more costly. Text testimonials, on the other hand, can also be very impactful, especially when they’re properly designed and incorporated. 

Whichever option you choose, make sure that the content the testimonials contain is meaningful; that it paints your business in a positive light. Also, be sure that the testimonials are placed in locations where they can quickly and easily be viewed by your site visitors. 

Make Use of Calls-to-Action 

You’re definitely going to want to implement calls-to-action (CTAs), too. Once visitors have landed on your website, you’re going to want to guide them to specific and strategic locations on your website; locations that will help to nurture them through the sales funnel to the conversion. Unfortunately, today’s consumers tend to be a bit on the lazy side, so taking the aforementioned approach will make things easier for them, as they will be pointed in the right direction and they won’t have to guess where to go to find what it is that they’re looking for. 

One of the most effective ways to boost your website design with this strategy in mins is by using CTAs that are placed in strategic locations; at the top right of your navigation, underneath sections that require some type of action, or at the bottom of the pages of your website, for example. It’s important to note, however, that while employing CTAs is important, you shouldn’t let them lose sight of the journey of your buyers. Inundating users with bottom-of-the-funnel calls to action wherever they go on your site is easy to do, but most are going to view it as pushy and will get along, and it’s easy to see why. 

Instead of making this error, meet visitors where they are based on the pages they are interacting with. For instance, if they’re on a page that pertains to purchasing materials that can be used to remodel a kitchen, visitors are still in the learning process, so hitting them with a “contact us” or “call now” CTA probably isn’t the best bet; rather, use a CTA that will direct them to another area where they can find more information, while also pushing them a step ahead on the funnel.