Creative Industry Related Information for Graphic Designers & Web Designers!
Graphic Design Business - Start a Freelance Design Business Today!

Leave a Memorable First Impression: Increase Conversions on Your Website With UX Design

Posted: June 14th, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: Design | Tags: , | No Comments »
User Experience Design

Do you trust your intuition? In other words – do you rely on your inner feeling when you first meet someone or do you believe that we all really only have those famous “seven seconds to leave a good first impression“?

If the answer to all these questions is – yes, then you should know that the situation is the same with websites! You’ll often have only one chance to impress (and keep) people who visit your website for the first time.

Therefore, in the first few seconds, you should please them with the following features of your online presentation:

  • Charm
  • Innovation
  • Humor
  • Uniqueness
  • The amount of useful information

First “Strike“ Is Over, What’s Next?

If you manage to get through that first “strike“ and keep visitors on your website, you mustn’t stop there. You’ll additionally grow in their eyes if you also have original illustrations/infographics or use interesting special effects in the interaction.

So, from the first contact with your website, you should (metaphorically speaking) take the user by the hand and take him/her on a tour of your website or e-commerce, in order to:

  • Explain what you do and describe who you are
  • Demonstrate your knowledge and skills
  • Prove that you’re an expert in your business
  • Explain to him/her in detail all your products/services
  • Explain how you can solve the problem or provide an answer to a particular question

Yes, you could look at your website as a kind of tunnel through which visitors should go from the landing page to their destination. Therefore, don’t create too complex structures in order not to cause users to leave your website. Instead, strive to create a flawless user experience (UX design) and a functional user interface (UI design) thus, contributing to an increased conversion rate.

UX practitioners or companies can do a lot of things to improve the user-friendliness of their website via hosting. Choosing the right type of hosting is one of them. The type of hosting that has been chosen will affect the user experience pretty much. And just as not all websites are created equal, not all hosting packages are equal, too.

You can start with shared hosting but when a website gets sudden surges of traffic, it will need dedicated or cloud hosting, plus CDN, to scale quickly in order to meet this unpredicted spike. For example – MySQL hosting. Carefully tested options based on these servers can endure a huge amount of traffic and a huge amount of queries. The best of these hosting plans have MySQL databases configured in a way to hit high limits in traffic for their servers.

Now, we come to the essence. How can you use the principles of UX design to positively influence the achievement of set goals and increase conversions on the website?

What’s Conversion on the Website?

If, for example, you sell handmade jewelry through your website, you’ll calculate conversions based on the visitors who made the purchase in relation to the total number of visitors to your website. For example, if you have 10,000 visitors during the month, and 1,000 have made a purchase, that means your conversion rate is 10% per month.

So, when we say conversions on a website, we’re talking about potential customers that you have transformed into those who have completed the desired task. The bonus is, of course, if they keep coming back to your website often (and not to a competitor’s website) and become your loyal customers.

If you try to make your website as high quality as possible, rich in useful information, clear and easy to use, you can easily achieve that. We’re talking here about people who noticed that your product can help them and then, they gained trust in your brand and realized that they can buy from you with confidence over and over again.

We’re also talking about those who may have signed up for your mailing list for no special reason but who were then delighted with the inspiring, original content that you send to their e-mail every day. Thus, they learned that they can use a secret promotional code that will save them a lot of money just because they are your subscribers. It also applies to the percentage of people who click on your ad during a paid campaign on Google (Google Ads).

Each of these and similar situations leads to an increase in the conversion rate.

Who’s Your Target Group?

We come to another important item, and that’s research related to the target group. Do you know the path that your potential customers or clients are going – from the problem you solve with your product to the search for solutions, finding you and your competitors, and the final decision on which product to choose?

Here are some quick guidelines to keep in mind during the UX research phase, which can help users decide for you:

  • Clearly define the target group
  • Create a so-called buyer personas to help you manage your research process
  • Explore their habits and online behavior
  • Find out what problems they encounter most often
  • Make sure you incorporate the solution to these problems into your digital product

We recommend that you rely on the principles of the so-called Design Thinking method during the research process, which includes empathy for users, understanding their problems, finding as many ideas as possible about potential solutions, creating design prototypes, testing prototypes among the target group and, finally, finalizing the digital product layout.

Carefully Create the Structure of the Website

Once you have completed the research phase and clearly identified the target group, learned what the needs of users are and their habits and expectations, you should dedicate yourself to information architecture.

This part of the website development process is intended to lay a quality foundation for later upgrades. Proper setting of the website structure, creating a site map and navigation menu are just some of the steps you need to pay attention to within the information architecture.

In addition, the steps include:

  • Determining the hierarchy of structural data
  • Categorization of content on the website
  • Determining website page types
  • Organization of the structure of individual pages
  • Determining the layout of elements on pages
  • Creating wireframes, sketches, and website models

To create a functional and useful website, you should pay special attention to each of these steps. In doing so, each step expected of a website visitor should be self-explanatory and follow a logical sequence, so that the user knows exactly where he/she is at all times, how to go back, how to correct a potential error, and how to realize his/her original idea.

It’s always recommended that you keep detailed documentation for each project, as this will facilitate the work of the entire team involved in the web design process.

Create Unique Landing Pages

Once you have a firm foundation for your website, it’s time to dedicate yourself to creating individual pages. Landing page design is something you need to pay special attention to, and within that, a few items in particular.

A landing page is any page on your website that users reach by organically searching for terms they are interested in, or by clicking on one of your paid products, or with a desire to learn more about a topic you’re an expert for, even if they want to contact you directly through your website.

The landing page can be, among other things:

  • Home of your website
  • Page with the portfolio of your works (if you are, say, a freelance designer)
  • Each individual page with a description of the product (if you are engaged in e-commerce)
  • Product/service ordering page
  • Contact form page
  • An article page on your blog

Special attention should be paid to each of these pages and, depending on the goal of the website, it should be designed to contribute to better user experience and increase conversions as well.

How to Create Profitable Web Pages

Content design and layout of elements on the page are very important components of UX and UI design. On the sales page, in the part that’s visible before scrolling above the fold, there should be exactly what you need.

If, for example, it’s a page with the product you’re selling (whether it’s a lesser-known brand or a world-famous product), it should contain the following:

  • Striking product photo
  • Short description
  • The price
  • Well-marked purchase button

But that’s not all. Whatever is that you sell online, you should provide users with enough information, in a creative and original way. Everything must be in accordance with your brand, described in detail, with photos from multiple angles, video content, complete technical specifications, and – it’s recommended – with a transparently displayed price. In that way, you instill trust in people and provide enough relevant information on the basis of which they will make a purchase decision.

Respect Your Users

The first and most important guideline that UX design needs is – respect. A very important thing about respecting users is the commitment to the protection of personal data and the proper use of forms on the website, pop-ups, banners, and promotions. It’s always commendable if you’re willing to offer a discount or allow website visitors to download interesting and useful reading for free but try never to abuse it.

1) It’s not recommended that pop-ups, ads, and discount coupons be too intrusively presented on the website. They shouldn’t occupy the entire website, they shouldn’t deconcentrate, or in any way interfere with the use of the website.

2) You shouldn’t use unrecommended actions that will fraudulently entice someone to leave their email address, which you’ll later abuse for aggressive advertising and sharing with third parties.

It’s recommended that you:

  • Always collect only as much data as you really need in the forms
  • Be transparent and don’t abuse the trust of your users
  • Explain exactly what data you’re collecting and why
  • Don’t rely on default consent but give users the opportunity to decide whether to agree to something or not (this is, after all, prescribed as an obligation by the Law on Personal Data Protection, as well as the European regulation GDPR)

Conclusion

When it comes to users who come to your website for the first time, you’ll often have much less than seven seconds to leave a good first impression. Even when “acquainting“ goes well, no one can guarantee that users will want to stay. You have to do your best to impress and keep every visitor on your website and thus, increase the possibility that soon they may become your loyal customers or clients.

Comments are closed.