How Great UX Design Can Increase Website Conversions

Ahh, the holy grail of websites. Conversions. If you’re looking to increase your website conversions, you need to make your website easy to use. Sounds stupidly simple right? Well, you’d be amazed at how often the user experience is overlooked and how often it’s not ‘great’.

Here are some simple steps to make sure you’re on the right track.

1. Start off on the right foot.

Getting your design fundamentals right from the kick-off will save you loads of time in the future. Well-known user experience expert Paul Boag, adheres to these 5 points.

1. Accessible: Make it easy for the user to find the content they need.
2. Relevant: If content isn’t relevant to the user, then doesn’t matter how great, persuasive or even usable the site is.
3. Usable: Make it easy for the user to find the answers to their questions.
4. Personal: It has to be personal to the user and address their specific circumstances and needs.
5. Persuasive: It must be persuasive.
   

Pssst: check out his recent podcast here, which covers all of this in more detail.

2. The detail matters

Detail often gets overlooked when creating a website. Did you know 25% of users will leave if the page they’re on doesn’t load within four seconds? A 1 second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions!

An e-commerce site making $50,000 per day could potentially lose $1.25 million sales every year from that 1 second page delay.

Get on top of those details, make sure your images are properly optimised for web (article on that soon!), and your website is as slick as can be.

You can use Pingdom to test your website speed.

3. A/B test as much as you can

When you have your own website, split testing should be your best friend. In a nutshell, it’s all about choosing a specific design/content feature on your website and testing it against an improved or different version to see which performs better. It’s a big part of data driven conversion rate optimisation.

You might have the most fabulous website imaginable with every new-fangled, sparkly marketing feature. BUT if your website isn’t speaking to your users or appealing to your audience then you’ve got a problem.

Sidenote: We’ve written a post to showcase ‘20 things you can split test on your website today‘. You’ll find loads of useful examples to help you get started.

4. Trust

Trust is everything. Being open, honest and forthcoming is the best way to get your users to build a relationship with you and your product. Show off your human side, a real story about how you started, and why you’re doing it show’s customers who they’re buying from in a personal light.

Here’s a few things you can show on your website to build trust with your customers:

• Customer Reviews
• Testimonials
• Social media accounts
• Accreditations
• Security and/or payment methods you’re using

There’s a great article over on web designer depot outlining some things you can try today to get you started.

5. Speak to your customers

Truly knowing what your customers and target audience want is a key component to nailing that user experience. Usability testing is crucial to improving conversions, getting the low-down on people’s problems, struggle points, and frustrations will really help you make your website as easy to use as possible. Speak to as many of your customers as possible about their interaction with your website. Perhaps send them a feedback form, and offer them a small reward for filling it out. Have you ever noticed how many times online shops ask for your feedback post purchase? There’s a reason for that.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this, feel free to let us know what we’ve missed, and how you tackle user experience in the comments below.

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