Have you ever been deceived by the external appearance of something? For instance you see a beautiful multi-million dollar home but when you enter you find the owners have trashed the place. Another example is observing an externally beautiful person who has no character. He or she may look beautiful on the outside but haven’t developed their inner character (ie love, honesty, integrity).
These examples are similar to website owners obsessing over their search engine rankings. They may receive high rankings for specific keywords (external) but their website looks stale. When people arrive at their website they are put off by the design (internal) resulting in lower conversion rates.
7 ways to improve conversion rates with a site redesign
1. Use plenty of white space
A cluttered website makes it difficult to read online. Most computer users scan web pages so if there is plenty of white space between the elements it increases readability.
2. Use headlines and sub headlines
This draws attention to the most important elements on the page and also helps the search engines to find your content. For instance an H1 tag should be used for your main headline. H2, H3 tags should be used for sub headlines.
3. Break up content into short paragraphs
Content should be divided into paragraphs containing approximately 10 lines. Use bullet points to break up the content within paragraphs.
4. User-friendly navigation
Fancy navigation (ie flash navigation buttons) may look nice but visitors may not be able to view your pages (ie if they don’t have adobe flash installed or have javascript turned off). Instead design your navigation menu using CSS (cascading style sheets).
5. Create fast loading pages
Having too many images, videos or flash on your site slows down the loading time of your web pages. Visitors will leave your site for another if it doesn’t load within a few seconds.
6. Emphasize the benefits
You only have a few seconds to capture your visitors attention. When they first arrive at your site they want to know “What’s this site about and how will it benefit me.” Your first paragraph should encapsulate what your site is about. Succeeding paragraphs should outline the benefits. Instead of trying to say everything all on one page link to the rest of the content on another page.
7. Get multiple opinions
Before deciding on the final redesign of your site get several opinions from your friends or relatives or find a friendly forum online to review your site’s redesign.
There’s great value in getting first page rankings for relevant keyword phrases however many website owners still need to be convinced that there is more to marketing than rankings and traffic. Getting traffic to your site is not that difficult however converting that traffic into buyers is what matters most.
Related Articles
Landing Page Conversion: 7 strategies to improve conversion rates
How to Increase the Conversion Rate of Your Sales Page
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