Ways to Optimise Your Website’s Conversion Rates – Part 1
Increasing the number of conversions for any website is surely the goal, right? Good design and effective copy combine to create a website that converts which seems so straightforward on paper but in reality is takes hard work. Finding the right approach to creating and combining these two elements can be tricky but this is what is required to achieve the optimal conversion rate.
In the first in a three part series, we look at a few techniques you can use to get people so excited about your website, they can’t help but convert.
INCREASE CONVERSION RATES BY KEEPING IT SIMPLE
Flat, minimalist design can help improve your conversion rates so try to keep things as simple as possible. Aim to keep the design and content down to only the most vital of elements. With dramatic drop shadows, gradients, and other “realistic” visual effects removed, a clean and simple two-dimensional design emerges.
Avoid embellishments and focus on the fundamentals and aim for a two-dimensional approach which helps in creating an orderly layout which, in turn, will lead to optimising conversion rates. This leaves space for ‘Call to Actions’ (CTAs) ensuring that they don’t become overcrowded and overlooked.
Don’t go so minimal you lose affordances.
Buttons are what people have become accustomed to and add depth and dimension. Through years of designer effort, these characteristics have become “affordances” — indicators of interactivity.
Flat buttons can easily be overlooked, choose a contrasting colour and a location that encourages interaction. Your goal is to lead your visitors’ attention to the CTA.
BUILD LOGICAL LAYOUTS TO MAXIMISE CONVERSIONS
It is important that your content has logical placement even with a minimal aesthetic. Moving from one idea or concept to the next should be straightforward. The rule here is to follow the F-pattern with layouts that adhere themselves to how humans read.
The blog VWO gives a great example of a redesign following the F-pattern that led to a 35.6% increase in sales.
Structure your website around the action that you want people to take and logically walk them towards to action with minimal resistance.
OPTIMISE BY ADDING CONTEXT TO CTAS
When we browse the web we are usually looking for something specific rather than just “general” reasons. We are aiming to solve a problem so recognising this is your design is just common sense.
Travel companies need to use pages for specific destinations with clear CTAs and not something that is too general. “Daily flights to Florida” paired with a button reading “Book a Flight” is too broad.
Adding a second CTA reading “Fly to Orlando for $58” grabs your attention far more and a company called Nature Air used a similar approach with a page for Tamarindo which resulted in a whopping 591% increase in conversions.
Go that extra mile to make a connection. Don’t ask people to make mental leaps for you — do it for them.
