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What is a conversion rate?

Conversion Rate is the percentage of visitors to your site that completes a desired conversion out of the total number of visitors. 

What is its importance to your business?

A high conversion rate shows that people want the things that you offer and they are able to get it easily through your website.

So how can you boost your conversion rate? Are there techniques or tips to increase your site conversion?

SEO, social media, creating lead magnets that convert are the common things that marketers use to boost their site’s conversion without realizing that an excellent web design is more than a pretty face but can make the conversion rate.

 

11 Web Design Principles To Increase Your Conversion Rate


How to Boost Your Conversion Rate with Design Principles

 

Below are important design principles that will give you a quick boost in conversions:

 

1. The Rule of Thirds

This is a popular photography principle that can be used to web design. You can visually divide a website page into thirds, vertically or horizontally.

 

The rule of thirds will give you nine equal squares. The four middle intersections are strategic places of interest that will give the most impactful design. In order to get people focused on the most important elements of your page, place it in the said intersections to boost your conversions.

 

2. Hick’s Law

This law states that the time it takes for an individual to make a decision depends on the possible choices he has. Meaning to say, by increasing your number of choices, the decision time increases as well.

 

In web design, you can increase your conversions by limiting the number of choices users have.

 

Here are few decisions that users have to make on your website:

  • Deciding whether to use the navigation bar or scroll down the page more
  • Choosing between making a purchase, reading reviews or browsing  products
  • Skimming the headlines to check which post to read
  • Deciding whether to share your post on social media or leave a comment

But there is a simple way to use Hick’s Law and it is to install a full-screen welcome gate on your homepage to cover the whole screen with a call to action. In this manner, user only sees one choice available at first and he needs to scroll down to see more choices.

 

Remember, the more you limit the user’s choices, the easier your website will be to use. And this would mean a high conversion.

 

3. The Use of Negative Space

In web design, whitespace is referred to as negative space that contains all of the empty spaces in between. Despite its name, negative space is a positive thing because without it, your website would be unreadable and unusable.

 

Negative space refers to the space between the larger elements on your page like the space between your header and content, or the space between your sidebar and your content. It also refers to the space between all the smaller elements such as the space between paragraphs, the space between lines of text, and the space between letters.

 

Giving extra attention to these forms of negative space on your site helps to keep everything legible, scannable and easy on the eyes that will definitely lead to high conversions.

 

4. Consider User’s Patience

People are most likely to get impatient when it comes to surfing the web. In fact, a study shows that a one-second delay in page load time results in a 7% reduction in conversions. (Isn’t it sad?)

 

Therefore every second counts when it comes to page loading speed. To check your page speed and troubleshoot some issues, run your site through these free tools:

  • KeyCDN
  • GTmetrix
  • Sucuri
  • Google PageSpeed Insights
  • Pingdom

Learn why you should update your website today.

 

5. Color

Color matters. It can play a vital role in usability, convey the meaning of a brand and the mood of the website.

 

When choosing a color scheme, choose a combination that tells the emotion that you want the brand to convey.

 

Once you already have a color scheme, do not forget to use contrast.

 

Use contrast to keep text, headlines and call to action buttons readable and noticeable. Your font and button colors should be in high contrast with the background. And the elements that you want to highlight should be in a color that stands out from the rest of your site.

 

6. F-Layout

A user’s natural behavior when browsing the web is reading the screen in an “F” pattern.

 

People first look from the left to right at the top of the screen and scan the page downwards, making small forays into the content. The area of a page that has the least amount of visibility is the bottom right.

 

If you want a high conversion, you can take advantage of this behavior and place the most important objects and call to action along the F-shape lines. Then place the less important objects in lower visibility areas.

 

7. The 8-Second Rule

You only have 8 seconds to get a visitor’s attention because that is the length of the human attention span. Might as well make these seconds count!

 

Here are tips to grab the attention of your visitor and boost conversions within the first 8 seconds:

  • Use power words to make your copy more enticing
  • Make use of animate exit pop-ups to re-engage visitors who lost interest
  • Include video, audio or other interactive content
  • Make signup buttons large, simple and clear
  • Use a large, benefit-driven headline that is brief and to the point
  • Use eye-catching imagery that tells the main purpose of your page

 

8. Do not forget to K.I.S.S

Keep It Simple and Stupid mantra can be applied to web design.

 

Simplicity is important when in terms of driving conversions. When creating a page, remember to have it as simple as possible to make it more aesthetically pleasing.

 

If we see too much stuff in one page, we usually get bothered and overwhelmed. Thus a low conversion.

 

9. Faces to Increase Familiarity

People love human faces.

 

Incorporate faces into your articles, testimonials and case studies, opt-in pages, and landing-pages to increase your conversions.

 

10. Gestalt Similarity Principle

The Gestalt principle is the law of similarity. It means that the human eye/brain likes to group similar objects together. It’s a mechanism that allows us to make sense of things, and to organize noisy environments.

 

This principle can also be applied in web design. You can group the items that you want to be associated with one another like testimonial boxes, conversion buttons, or images.

 

The law of similarity is important for the user experience. When you group all of the main elements of your signup form together, and keeping it far enough away from the other elements on your page, the user’s brain will be able to absorb the information quicker.

 

11. Source High-Quality Images

Low-quality images can drag down the quality of a blog post or piece of content. It can make or break a deal!

 

In fact, 60% of consumers are more willing to consider search results with images, and 23% are more likely to contact a business showing an image.

 

Also, you should avoid using lifeless stock photos that are irrelevant. If your content includes compelling images, you will have an average of 94% more views. How’s that?

 

Instead, use high-quality photos that give positive impact with your content and that feel personal because people like brands that they feel are similar to themselves.

 

So, which principles are you breaking?

 

Start fixing your web design by applying these things and you’ll never turn your visitors away.