Design & Usability

The design of your site can impact the conversion rate you get through your website. 

A heavily designed website may look great but may load slowly due to too many images, graphics, and icons or not having the right information in the right places because the design has become too important.

The best websites are simple. They look great but have the right elements and information in the right places. They are easy to navigate and have the right calls to action where they should be.

This is where great design and UX come in.

Here are a few common mistakes I see across sites that can be easy to rectify

Make sure all your important elements are above the Fold

With most people working on Laptops or mobiles these days, this means your main navigation, your headline, and your call to action should all be easy to see without scrolling

Massive images with no clear USP or information are a waste of space. They take up a lot of real estate and also slow down your page. 

A simple 2 column header or centralised header will always outperform a page that the user has to scroll too far for

Here are a few examples….

Simplify your navigation

Having a crowded navigation bar jam-packed with every page on your site can be detrimental to your users.

Too much choice means people usually make no choice. 

You want to highlight the key services that you want to sell and push everything that’s fluff to the footer.

Examples of this privacy policy, blogs etc

Ideally, you want the main things your site offers within 5-6 navigational headings so you can make your nav text bigger and more prominent

Design for the natural eye movement

Our eye is trained to move from left to right in a z-pattern – So when we first look at a site, we go to the logo first – scan left across the navigation 

Down and left again

EXAMPLE

This is true for other pages not just your homepage so it’s important to keep this pattern with your content and calls to action. 

Colour Contrasts 

Use colour contrasts to pull the eye to the main areas you want people to pay attention to. 

This is where a contracting colour will work well. Your site should have three core colours

Primary

Secondary

Contrast (CTA)

Any other colours can be used, but these should be subtle and used in specific areas or pages to highlight a different service

Calls to action

Consistent 

Always have a call to action in the top right corner – This comes back to our natural eye movement. Left to right

EXAMPLES

Make them different colours to other content and buttons so they draw the eye.

Include them more than once – if you only have it in the header and they scroll down, the user won’t see them again

Images

Images can help your users to recognise what your business does quicker and subconsciously build trust

Relevant images to what you do, if you are a coaching business, then images of you working with people or people in a group setting help highlight this.

If you’re a landscape gardener, before and after pics, nice gardens

Kitchen makeovers, same thing etc etc 

Having your own images is always better. Getting a photographer in to take images of your team in the business doing what you do can be very affordable nowadays. You could probably even do it with your phone camera they’re that could now

But this isn’t always possible, so stock imagery can be used. The quality of stock images has massively improved, so finding images should be easier. 

Here are a few places to get stock imagery

Pexels

Adobe Stock

Big Stock

Real people looking happy or content has been proven to boost conversions 

Also, images directing people to key areas can help you to convert more

Video 

Video is a powerful tool. It’s engaging and can tell a story way quicker and easier than reading text. 

Videos, especially when used as background elements or large background videos, can significantly enhance the visual aesthetics of your website. They add a sense of motion, depth, and interactivity that can make your site visually remarkable and memorable.

Where Video comes into design is the use of background videos

These can be used with no sound but help show that your business is real

Cleaning company showing the steam cleaning, branding up and interacting with customers

Travel company showing clips of inspirational trips

Events – Showing highlights from the last event

Almost all videos can benefit from this