Your website is a crucial element of your digital marketing campaign. For many businesses, a website acts as an online store, selling a company’s products and services, and if a website is not fully optimized, then you’ll struggle to see a surge in sales and customer satisfaction. While every business owner wants a website that encourages sales, very few know how to go about it and what a good website entails. For ways on how to increase conversion rates through great web design, consider the following.

Aesthetics:

The way your website looks is highly important. Creating an appealing website that’s both pleasing to the eye and attractive not only builds authority and trust, but it also looks professional. When you’re building the aesthetics of your website, you need to think about your demographic and the customers you’re hoping to attract.

• The color of your website can determine the overall message and effect of your business. While the color of your website should complement your company colors, you should also think about the psychology of color. For instance, brown is a strong color that consumers usually associate with dependability; yellow is cheerful and great for grabbing your customers’ attention; green is organic and natural, ideal for businesses with a green and environmental agenda; and white relates to clarity, simplicity, and wholesomeness.
• Less is more. Having a cluttered layout can cause chaos within the eyes (and minds) of your customers. If someone clicks on a website, but the images and text is too busy, they are sure to click off the page as soon as possible. Nowadays the simple layout of less is more is a continuing website trend. Rather than try to create a website that’s filled with garish colors and crammed, website developers are designing minimalistic websites.
• No stock images. The reign of stock images is slowly dying, with many businesses replacing free images with photography that’s more attractive and more relevant to their business. Buy your photos from a professional; the cost will surely bring in a return on your investment.
• We’re living in the age of video, where more people are prone to watching a minute long video on something rather stop to read a bulk of text. While you should still focus on the content of your website and have a blog, you should also consider uploading video as some companies have admitted that video has caused as much as a 144 percent increase in sales and conversions.

Functionality:

Your website’s aesthetics can only do so much. Without a website that’s easy-to-use and functional, your customers will click off and turn to your competitors.

• Think about the journey. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. What’s the best pathway for them to take, or where would you like them to go? You should be leading your customers towards the checkout button. However, you need to think about how to get them there first. For instance, can people easily search for the product or service? Can they click on a navigational bar and find a drop-down menu that’ll lead them? Also, is there an ‘add to cart’ button clearly visible whenever a customer is looking at a product? Your customers’ movements should be fluid; they want the journey to be as easy as possible. Lay the breadcrumbs to improve your website’s navigation.
• Be mobile-friendly. More than half of a website’s visits come from a mobile device, surpassing desktop computers. Therefore, if you wish to catch the attention of mobile users, you need your website to be mobile-friendly. Ignoring how your website looks and acts on mobile devices will result in shopping cart abandonment, and shopping with your competitors instead.
• In this day and age, people are becoming increasingly impatient when it comes to getting results. Rather than call up a company for answers or sending them an email, they want to send a quick message that’s going to be answered instantly. Chatbots can, therefore, provide a high-level of customer care and keep your customers happy when answering their questions.

Designing a website is no easy task, however, finding the right layout, color scheme, and images that’ll lead to conversions is incredibly important when it comes to the survival of your business. To keep your customers happy, and for them to keep returning, you need to have their interests and desires in mind. A poorly designed website can lead to a lack of sales, resulting in the failure of a business.