Designing your site to attract visitors and increase your traffic is great — but it’s not enough if those shoppers don’t become buyers and subscribers.
Your design should help you promote your business website and boost your conversions, so you can get more value and revenue out of each visitor, lessen your customer acquisition costs, and more.
You need microinteractions to help users feel connected and personal towards your interface and stay longer on your website.
Here are seven web design elements to jack up your store’s conversions.
1. Neat Product Display
Display your products neatly, so your visitors can browse your catalogue more smoothly. Surround your product photos with lots of white space to emphasize the items.
Ideally, exhibit three to four items per row. Also, limit your product choices in your store and those shown on your homepage and every product page.
With only a few products to choose from, your customers can decide more quickly on what to buy, preventing indecision and boosting your conversions.
Take a look at Ryder’s product page:
Ryder features three items in a row, surrounded by negative space, and at most 20 products only in each apparel category and page.
Many ecommerce platforms, such as Shopify and Magento, let you arrange your products neatly like Ryder did. Explore your platform’s features to do the same for your store.
2. SEO Orientation
Make your site SEO-friendly to improve your visibility in search results pages and capture more conversion opportunities.
First, target keywords that reflect what your customers are looking for and frequently enter in search boxes. Use keyword research tools such as Rank Ranger.
I typed in a sample phrase, “cheap luxury watches,” and got these results:
RankRanger suggests keywords and shows their performance by search volume and average cost-per-click (CPC). Sprinkle your chosen keywords in your content, meta descriptions, etc.
You should also optimize your photos, videos, and images, install just enough plugins, and check other elements that can consume your site space.
When that happens, your loading speed slows down, which wrecks your page experience and Google search ranking.
3. Compelling Video Content
Exhibiting your brand and products through high-quality videos is one of the best ecommerce marketing strategies.
People love watching their favorite brands’ videos to know them better. 84% of shoppers also claim to have been persuaded to buy their products after consuming the video content.
Use videos to introduce your store, demonstrate the best use of your product, highlight its features, share customers’ testimonials, reveal your product boxes, and more.
You can also include videos clips of your tutorial videos on your website to encourage sign ups to your online courses. Some of the best online course platforms like Kajabi, Teachable, or Ruzuku even offer marketing features that let you promote your content easily on your website.
Crossrope, for instance, plays short loops on its homepage that show various adults cheerfully exercising with their jump ropes:
Crossrope also publishes blog posts on why jump rope is a great cardio exercise, how a customer at 40 stays fit with jump rope, simple home workout tips, and others.
In one of its blog posts, Crossope writes a beginner’s guide to jump rope training and includes a demonstrative video, “How to Hold Your Jump Rope Handles,” a tutorial video on basic jumps, etc.
You can also create video content through other formats, such as GIFs, microvideos, etc.
Streamline your video creation and publishing process using creative project management software that helps you brainstorm, communicate, and collaborate efficiently with your marketing team.
4. Sticky Navigation
Sticky navigation refers to the menu bar at the top or side of your site’s page that remains visible and in the same position as you scroll up and down.
Sticky menus help boost your conversions. It lets visitors click on your CTA button or other menus quickly without going back up the page and searching for it.
Some web designers and store owners doubt whether sticky menus help conversions or harm them since customers can find it annoying, ruining their page experience.
To use sticky menus and preserve your user experience, select only specific parts of your menus to “stick,” minimize the bar when scrolled up and down, and make it look discreet.
Take a look at Unconditional’s sticky menu:
Unconditional’s menu bar, including its logo, and CTA, log-in, social, and other buttons, are originally at the top. Scrolling down, you’ll see only the categorical menus.
On the other hand, Jack Erwin retains all the menus, but keeps the bar clean through simple fonts, white background, putting enough negative space, and others.
5. E or F Layout
Adopt a website layout that follows the E or F reading pattern. Heatmaps show that visitors typically view websites in these formations.
Lightbox Jewelry, for instance, has an E pattern:
It places its menu crosswise at the top (starting from the left, toward the right), with its banner horizontally filling up the space below it.
The CTA buttons and captions are at the left portion of the homepage, and the subject of the photo (diamond earrings) are at the right aspect.
On the other hand, Happiness Abscissa follows an F layout.
Its menu is at the left and banner photos taking up the other two-thirds part of the homepage (center and right portions).
By aligning your content, CTA buttons, and products with your visitors’ reading direction, they can follow those elements effortlessly and respond to your offers faster.
This will also help you optimize your website for mobile-first indexing, improving your SERPs ranking and search visibility for wider audiences particularly mobile users.
6. Human Faces
Display photos with faces of real people, so you can connect with your customers more effectively. Use photos, models, etc. appropriate to your target audience and message.
For instance, to tell your visitors how your organic beverage is beneficial to their health, feature experts or life coaches smiling and holding your product. Then, caption the photo accordingly.
You can also feature faces of persons that represent your ideal customer. Thrive Causemetics shows us how to do it:
Through faces of women in various ages and skin complexion, Thrive Causemetics illustrates how its vegan products, such as the HD primer, are perfect for everyone.
By showing photos with human faces, your visitors can better empathize and resonate with your brand, and respond to your offers.
7. Directional Cues
Whether you’re running a portfolio, subscription, or an ecommerce website, it’s crucial to include directional cues for easy and intuitive user navigation.
Point your customers’ eyes to your CTA buttons or elements you want to highlight through directional cues. By telling them what to look at, you compel them to explore and respond.
Here’s how Pet Plate did it:
Pet Plate used an arrow to lead customers to the photo of a clean, filled pet food bowl.The arrow in its CTA button also prompts them to begin their subscription.
Frank Body used a different technique: speech bubbles.
Because speech bubbles have tails pointing to the object, they can also grab your customers’ attention and direct it toward the product.
Leverage directional cues (but don’t overuse them) to highlight your offers, desired actions, and product photos, increasing your conversions.
Skyrocket your conversions with these design elements
Study your site, along with conversion rate audit and analytics tools, to see how to tweak your design with these and other elements.
Experiment, monitor, and refine each improvement continually to get the best possible results and reach your conversion and performance goals.