For anyone with a creative or commercial online presence, a website is, of course, a must. These days, small endeavors normally begin on social media. But there is no way to really find online success without the use of a website.
Websites are not difficult to create. In fact, many small ecommerce ventures or artists typically make their own to begin with. However, one of the signs of growth and success is to get a professionally designed website – not just a website that looks great and is easy to use, but a website that plays to your particular strengths.
The reason this is a good marker of growth is that it takes money – normally – to do this, and it shows a business can make the necessary investments in presenting its products or service. At the very outset of any commercial endeavor – and especially before sales begin – funds are usually tight.
Practical Concerns
Of course, a good website isn’t only one that looks attractive; it’s one that works well too. Consider how many times you have found yourself on a visually stunning website, only to find that it is pretty hard to navigate or to extract the information you need amid all the flash.
One of the major concerns is conversion, and this can be an issue even with professionally designed websites. Conversion is when a visitor completes a desired action on the website, such as making a purchase, subscribing, watching a video, or reading a blog. As you can tell, it is a real marker of a website’s success, and it’s really the end result you should expect from website design.
If you aim at conversion, then you are aiming the right way. Nevertheless, the proof of conversion is always in the pudding, and you will not know that a website converts until it is life and has attracted visitors.
Nonetheless, you can learn from professionals. Sacramento website design firm Peak Design says that there is actually a pretty clear progression of steps to create a website that looks well, works well, and converts well.
Top Website Design Tips for Conversion
Some of the steps involved in creating a website that converts could require expertise that you don’t have in order to implement. For many small organizations, it’s necessary to hire a professional. However, by learning about these steps you not only glean useful tips and tricks, but you can also learn what to expect from any web design professional.
Here follows some of those tips:
Keep Things Simple
There’s a good rule of thumb here: the more choices you give people, the longer they’ll decide on a selection. With a new visitor to your site, this could be just long enough for them to abandon the endeavor completely. Always be sure to err on the side of less, not more and directly lead visitors to where they need to be as quickly as possible.
Use Negative Space
And, if you’ve followed the previous tip, there should be plenty of it. Negative space is aesthetically important, but it’s also important for leading visitors in the right direction. A blank space can make it very clear what the visitor is to do if there’s only one option occupying it.
Arrange and Format Copy
You should do this before the copy actually arrives. Even if you’re using lorem ipsum at first, it’s useful to know how the headline looks, where the links will go, and what space the text will occupy. Then it just needs to be inserted.
Website conversion is all about making things easier for visitors and remembering the age-old dictum of less is more.