[Revealing] Designing Your Website to Turn Visitors Into Action Takers

As a savvy business owner, you would know that social media marketing is about engaging potential customers / clients and bringing them back to your website or landing page. It’s not the other way around! First you put your great content on your website then link your social media marketing back to the relevant content on your website. And it goes without saying, only publish your best content on your website.

Once visitors arrive on your website, the quality of your website design has a lot to do with turning visitors into action takers. Sure, your website must have a great looking design, however that in itself is not enough. An awesome looking website or landing page doesn’t guarantee that your visitors will stay, engage and take action.

Great website design helps to CONVERT visitors into action-takers however, you need to make sure the design will keep them there and entice them to stay and dig deeper, and then wanting to know more. It’s like leading them down a pathway (or funnel) which keeps leading them.

Here are a few design and conversion tips to help you maximise the traffic that reaches your website, and turns them into action takers.

Make sure your website layout and ease of navigation are first class, as well as your pages content. When planning your colour pallette, make sure that the color and images you’re using are stylish and meaningful to yuor business and your prospects. By doing this, when you drive and direct traffic from a blog post, webinar, Pay per Click or SEO there’ll be no mismatch or inconsistency.

Keep your website pages professional, relevant,  clean and free of too many offers and clutter. Aim to simplify each page, delete anything that’s not relevant to that page and keep the messaging to the point.

Within the design layout, make sure you have a lot of clear space around your offers that you want visitors to take action on as this highlights them and draws more attention to them.

By keeping your messaging clear,  your visitors are able to work out what your web page is all about within a few seconds. If this is unclear, chances are they will leave your site and in all likelihood, will not return. The idea is to make it easy for them!

If you are taking advantage of the benefits of a good SEO strategy, not only do you lose your visitors if they leave without browsing (by the way that is reflected in your “bounce rate”) – your SEO rankings will suffer. Google measures your bounce rate, and if it’s too high, Google will penalise you in rankings as it will be seen as irrelevant to your visitors.

If your bounce rate is high, your ranking will decrease as Google pushes your site further down the organic search list. If your bounce rate is low and visitors are staying on your website, Google will reward you and push you up the page rankings and in the organic search.

When people visit a website, they tend to read it on screen in an “F” pattern, so make the most of this basic of human behaviour by:

• Putting your logo branding top left.
• Putting your best-converting offer above the fold (near the top navigation area or on a side bar that’s prominent at top-of-page).
• Put your best offer in a floating side-bar, so that as you scroll down a page it will stay static at the side of the page.
• Consider using a left hand side bar as conversion research shows that a left hand side bar converts higher than right hand side bar. (Personally we don’t like the look of a left side bar.)
• Make sure you have trust-building content including social proof and credibility elements regularly displayed on your website.

Use the colours that evoke the right emotions within your target audience – the emotion that they’ll want to experience as a result of what you deliver.

Big brands choose colors because it’s a reflection of what their brand stands for. For example:

• Cadbury, Hallmark = Purple (Luxury, Sophistication).
• 2XU, Nike = Black (Power, Performance ).
• Coke, Ferrari = Red (Energy, Courage, Strength).
• Fanta, Nickelodeon = Orange (Fun, playful).
• Facebook, American Express = Blue (Trustworthy).
• Greenpeace, BP = Green (Natural, Earthy, Friendly).
• Apple, Mercedes, Rolex = Silver (Neutral, Calm, Classy).

When you are deciding on your colour pallette for your website and branding, remember the old saying that “Less is more.” – use a limited color palette and don’t forget to use white in the background.
Aim to keep our site looking simple and stylish. a simple color palette is much more striking and memorable than something that’s full of noise and a nightmare for the eyeballs.

A lot of websites that we look at make the fatal mistake of having an obscure call to action. You want to make it VERY, VERY clear what you want visitors to do and the next step that you want them to take.  Try having the call to action in a contrast color to the rest of the site so that it stands out and make sure there’s plenty of clear space AROUND your call to action, so that it really stands out on the page. The colour is not important, regardless of what you may have read, just use a contrasting colour that stands out and looks good!

The images you use in your content and on your website are extremely powerful, because as people we are visually orientated. Make sure you’re tapping into that power and utilising relevant, quality imagery of a high resolution.

Use images that are relevant to your target market and ensure they are large, where possible, for maximum impact.

When it comes to your website and maximising onsite conversion, the name of the game is first impressions and difference.  Try to avoid being like everybody else. Avoid poor quality and uninteresting stock images and visual clichés that don’t say much. Spend time ensuring the images you use are impactful and really portray what it is you are wanting to impress upon your website visitor.

When it comes to your article posts, invest the time in selecting and developing quality design for your posts images. Often an article post may be the first contact you’ll make with many of your prospects and they have the potential to make people take the time to stop and read your content. Bland, mass-produced images can make your best content almost invisible, as can irrelevant images.

If you’re building a personal brand website identity, then invest in a professional photo shoot and get some photos of yourself that truly and positively represent you and your personality. It is well worth the invetsment as you want to make sure that you are putting  a professional foot forward.

Consider installing live chat message and push notification sign up on your website, and be sure to put your phone number on your site to make it easy for people to contact you. This is just the cherry on the cake because your website should have a sales funnel in place, even if it’s as basic as this one like this for example:

• Send traffic from Social Media, PPC, SEO or email to…
• Quality content on your site (your article posts.)
• That leads them to a FREE OFFER (LEAD MAGNET or SURVEY)
• That leads to a thank you page, with a video of you saying thanks and then lead people into the next step of your funnel
• That could be a free strategy session. Free trial, Free Webinar, Free event, etc.

The purpose is to take people from a cold lead, to a warm lead, to a hot lead and ultimately to a customer or client!

Social proof is your clients / customers letting people know how good your products and services are, instead of you saying how good you are! Be sure to add this in different pages of your website and keep updating these as you get more.

Social proof can take many forms including videos, images, case studies. Use numbers, such as the number of customers you have, the number of followers on Facebook, the number of projects completed this month, etc..

Ensure that you place your credibility elements on your pages above the fold. This can be the logos of people you have worked with or places you have been featured in. Keep them subtle so they don’t compete with your ‘Call To Action’.

A professional ‘website copywriter’ will make your website’s words appeal to your prospects because they understand that your prospects only care about ‘what’s in it for them’. It’s not about you, it’s all about them and rightfully so. We have seen a lot of websites where business owners have written their own website content and it often is about them instead of what they can do for their prospects. In saying that, you need to make sure that the writer you chose is a good match for your style and your target market.

Someone new to your website can be skeptical and sub-consciously asking themselves things like…

• • Do you have a SOLUTION to my problem?
  • How will I BENEFIT from your offer?
  • Do you have PROOF that your solution works?
  • Are you CREDIBLE and TRUSTWORTHY?
  • Who am I buying from and do I like you?
  • Where are you based and how can I CONTACT you quickly?
  • HOW MUCH is your offer?
  • What guarantees do you offer?

All of the elements above need to be strategised, developed and designed in a way that so that your website has a good structure that is intuitive and easy to navigate. This needs to be designed in a way so that the emphasis is on the elements you want to stand out, such as your Call to Action, so that they are not competing with other elements on your site.

Every part of your website needs to work in harmony with the others and designed around the main purpose of your website, so that it appeals to your target audience, psychologically influencing your visitors to take action. You should not leave this to chance or an amateur designer, that who does not focus on website strategy up front.

Your website is never complete and can always be improved and should evolve as your business evolves. So be sure to test different Call to Actions, update your design every couple of years and be sure to be testing and measuring by paying attention to your numbers and analytics.

Have a look at your current website right now and be honest with yourself. Does it have all of the elements above and are your visitors taking action? Are visitors engaged or enticed to take the next step? If not reach out to us here at Success Stream and let’s strategise. We’d love to help you =)