Are you looking to boost engagement on your website, increase sales or generate more leads to your mailing list? If you look at what the search engines want from a website, we know that websites should be easy to use and navigate, load as quickly as possible, and provide high quality content that your target audience is looking for. When it comes to interacting with your target audience, giving them the content that the search engines expect, while trying to build an engaging website that keeps visitors happy can be a challenge. This article is going to cover five time tested web design secrets to help increase sales, opt-ins, and user engagement.

1. Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS)

KISS was a design principle originated by the United State Navy back in 1960; however, it is completely relevant to website design today. The KISS principal says that systems tend to work best if they are build simple, rather than with a lot of complexity. The goal with KISS is building and designing with simplicity. I’m sure you have visited sites that have had a bunch of useless and unnecessary information on it. I bet it also made finding the information you were looking for pretty difficult to do. If you want to abide by the KISS principal, it is important to display your relevant information in a layout that is easy to navigate so that your users do not get frustrated and click that back button to look elsewhere in the search results. When this happens, it will negatively impact your website listings in the search results as this increases your website’s bounce rate and reduces the site usability score.

2. Making Use Of A Headline

Studies have shown that when people visit web pages, the headlines are consistently the most viewed items. If you want to know why this is the case, just think about how you normally navigate a website that is new to you. If you are looking for something specific, you do not want to read an entire page just to get details on one specific area of an article. Headlines provide a quick and easy synopsis of what a specific section of a web page is going to cover. When creating your headline, be sure to use larger text, as well as a bold font so that it stands out to your audience. When looking at things from a developers point of view, using H1, H2, and H3 tags can be helpful for headlines, as well as other important text that you would like to stand out.

3. Leverage Social Proof

Gaining the trust of a potential customer is extremely difficult. Why should someone who knows nothing about you hand over their hard earned cash for your product or service, versus going with someone else? Social Proof is a means to build trust with people who are new to your brand. The best form of social proof comes from reviews and testimonials. If you look at a lot of sales pages on the Internet, you can bet that a majority of them will include at least one testimonial from a current customer, an industry expert, or even a celebrity endorsement. Other ways to build social proof would be to link to your Yelp page which would show reviews that you are not in control of.

4. The Psychology Of Directional Cues

Marketing has used directional cues in advertising for years. Science has shown that using images that are pointing or looking in a specific direction tend to push viewers to look in that direction subconsciously. The same thing can be done on your website using your own images. The use of people pointing or looking at specific content on your website will generate more eyes looking at that very information. Using arrows is another way to get people to look at something specific on your website.

5. Use The Fold Wisely

For many years, it has been believed that the most important content that you want a viewer to read should load on the screen without the need for the visitor to scroll. Things like videos, buy button, and opt-in forms are typically seen above the fold. With the advance of mobile browsing, this methodology is harder to follow as content in a mobile browser gets shifted and does not appear above the fold for mobile devices. It is still recommended to place an eye catching headline, and a good video as well as an opt-in form or product information that explains the value proposition of your product or service above the fold. Some people only look at what they see right off the bat. If the don’t like the design or layout of your site, they do not bother scrolling further and tend to hid the back button. You want to avoid that with everything you have as it hurts your site rankings, plus you are losing out on valuable traffic. Providing people with the information they are looking for, and giving them quick and easy access to it by placing it above the fold is highly recommended.

The above mentioned tips are something the web design team at WebVantage Marketing use on a daily basis when analyzing, reviewing, and developing websites for our customers.  If you think you can benefit from a website review, or redesign we are happy to assist.  If you are just getting started and want a brand new website build, our experts can assist you with building something that meets your goals and functions great starting with a solid foundation from the ground up.