Learn/Design-Your-Website-for-Conversion
Revision as of 04:34, 24 October 2010 by Aliza Earnshaw (talk | contribs) (→Design your site to convert)
By Ethan Tan on October 26, 2010
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Ethan Tan is an online entrepreneur who has built - and built traffic to - two UK sites that compare phone plans, MyPhoneDeals.co.uk and EMobilePhoneDeals.co.uk.
Websites used to be little more than online corporate brochures. That’s no longer the case. Your website is more like a virtual employee, your ever-present point of contact with potential customers. Every time a visitor comes to your site, you have an opportunity to build a relationship with that person.
If you consciously design your site to turn these visitors into customers, you can dramatically increase the number of visitors who 'convert' – that is, make a purchase or perform some other action you desire. That will contribute directly to your bottom line.
Design your site to convert
- Know your goal
- Lead visitors to the goal
- Speak to their emotions
- Make your site persuasive
- Use a strong call to action
- Know Your Goal
What is the primary action you want visitors to take? If you don’t design with a primary goal, you’ll end up pulling your visitors in several different directions, and won’t make much progress in any one of them.
Examples of primary actions are:
- Purchase your product
- Subscribe to your newsletter
- Follow you on Twitter
- Download your demo or free introductory product
Design all interactions on your site with your primary goal in mind.
- Lead them to the goal
Make it obvious where the focus should be on your site. Use design and wording to emphasize that focus. You have just seconds to catch someone's attention, so you want to pull their eyes immediately to the most important thing on your site.
Here are some ways to draw attention to your goal:
- Color
- Size: Make it big
- Position: Our eyes go naturally to the upper left of the page
- Contrast: light, dark, different shapes
- Images: Especially of people, or people interacting with your product
- Arrows and other directional cues
- Whitespace: To lead the eye
- Headlines and bold text
Your eyes can’t help but go to the download button:
