How Website Design Affects Your Conversion Rate

Traditional SEO web design is closely tied to conversion rates, yet many business owners often struggle to understand how the two are linked together. Although it is common knowledge that a well-designed website is generally beneficial for your business, there are obviously going to be some aspects of design that will have a more significant impact on your conversions. We will explore how website design affects your conversion rate and what you can do to improve it.

What are conversions?

Let’s start by accurately defining some vital terminology. Your conversion rate represents the number of site visitors that perform your desired action. Visitors to your website will typically first arrive at your landing page. Unless you immediately manage to spark interest and get them to perform an action, users will likely leave your website. The action you want them to perform could be to sign up for one of your services, subscribe to your newsletter, or even buy one of your products. You can express the rate of conversions as a percentage of your total users. For example, if your website manages to sell three products for every 100 visitors, your conversion rate from website visitor to paying customer would be 3%.

Setting goals for your conversions

You should first define a few critical parameters when you want to track your conversion rate. Without accurate goals and precisely defined visitor actions, you could end up with skewed statistics. For this reason, we suggest separating unique visits from user visits which could signify multiple returns to your site by the same user. 

You should also note which conversion events you want to track since your desired action doesn’t necessarily have to be a product purchase. Of course, selling products and making a profit is the end goal of any business. However, there are multiple paths that you can take to reach this destination. Perhaps your latest marketing campaign is centered on building awareness for your brand or generating interest for an event that you’ll be hosting. In these situations, your desired action for website conversions could be for users to subscribe to your newsletter or register for your event. Your desired action will directly impact which conversion events you should track to get your conversion rate.

Ways to boost conversions with website design

Here is how website design affects your conversion rate and how to increase conversions.

1. Implement modern design trends

Users who come to your website will immediately be thrown off if your site has an outdated design. Because user attention is short in online spaces, you will have minimal time to make an excellent first impression. We suggest that you keep up with your competition and implement the latest design trends for 2022. If your website manages to stand out, users will spend more time interacting with it, and your rate of conversions will improve.

2. Perform Search Engine Optimization

Some designers get far too carried away with how website design affects your conversion rate that they forget that you need to have a way to get users to visit your site. Without website visitors, there can be no conversions. Therefore, we suggest implementing search engine optimization techniques and boosting the number of website visitors. SEO can increase organic traffic, which is always great for increasing your conversions rate. Website optimization includes:

• Improve loading speeds. Make sure your website loads quickly. Slow speeds usually lead to high bounce rates, totally decimating your conversions.
• Easy navigation. Users should find the areas of your site they are interested in without any issues. 
• Internal links. Another way to improve navigation is to include internal links which connect relevant parts of your website.
• Create interesting content. Any SEO marketing campaign will rely on quality content. Give users a reason to visit your website.
• Optimize specifically for conversions

If you have accurately defined your conversion goals, you can let them guide your web design choices. Run conversion rate optimization tests on your site and see which areas need improvement. You can custom tailor your site to the needs of your audience, but you always have to keep your end goal in mind. Here are the most important website elements to pay attention to:

• User experience. When users come to your website, you need to ensure that they have a positive experience. 
• Call to action. Your CTA button needs to send a clear message. Users should understand which action you want them to perform on your site.
• Offer value. Make sure that your website actively promotes what you are offering. We suggest frontloading your offer and giving users a taste of the entire experience.
• A cohesive visual design. Your choice of colors, layout, and font should all work together to give your site an appealing look. Use subtle visual cues to guide your users to important website areas.
• Empty space. Some web designers fail to realize that less can be more. They don’t understand how website design affects your conversion rate, and then they try to include as many features as possible. Leave enough room for your CTA to stand out.
• Include reviews and testimonials

Something that is often overlooked in web design is customer reviews. Show your visitors how many satisfied customers you have, and they are going to be significantly more open to performing your desired action. Don’t keep positive reviews tucked away in a hidden area of your site. Proudly display them, and you will see an improvement in your conversions rate. Customer reviews and user comments are also great ways to boost engagement, which will improve your SEO and bring more visitors to your site.

In conclusion

Now that we’ve looked at the most important ways how website design affects your conversion rate, it should be evident that a professionally designed site is always going to inspire more users into action. Optimize your site to include the design features we’ve mentioned and keep tracking its performance to see which aspects of your site could use further improvement.