A good website stands or falls with a clean design. Competition on the Internet is greater than ever, and every little detail of your web page or web shop determines your sales. Setting up a Web site so that visitors place an order is a psychological process. As a web designer, you want to know exactly how visitors and customers are thinking, and where they could potentially drop out. Within marketing, there are two main concepts for this: conversion rate optimization (CRO) and user experience (UX) design. Both are crucial to designing a good Web site. You can read about what these two concepts mean here.
Conversion optimization
No matter what kind of webshop or landing page you have, the goal is almost always the same: You want something from the visitor. An order, a purchase, or a request for a quote. Your website must increase sales and make money, and the visitor must do something for it. Converting a visitor to customer is called “conversion optimization.” This is a kind of catch-all term for various activities that prompt the visitor to take action. This involves converting a visitor to a customer. Your website should pull out all the stops to lead the visitor step-by-step to an order.
It is important here that you make the most of your website’s design to generate sales. Every little detail matters, from the product images on the landing page to the colors of the headers. Each conversion – actions such as click-throughs, requests, downloads – bring the visitor one step closer to a purchase. Here, it is important that your website be user-friendly. The content should be easy to understand and the design nice to look at.
Sebastian Smeenk
Business developer
With tools like Google Analytics and Hotjar, it is possible to analyze just about every interaction of a Web page. This makes it possible to see exactly which pages are well visited, which products are viewed, but also, for example, at what point visitors drop out. The latter is perhaps the most interesting. Does your web page give too little information, or too much? These are things you need to pay close attention to as an entrepreneur. Having thousands of visitors a day is nice, but this says nothing if no purchases are made. You want to optimize every visit from your website: preferably through an order, or through a second customer visit.
To keep your website’s conversion rate as high as possible, a clean design is key. The visitor walks a walkway on your website, so to speak, and the route should be as pleasant as possible. This is where UX design plays an important role.
UX Design
Literally translated, user experience means “user experience.” It is a psychological game in which Web designers can employ subtle designs and tools to lure the visitor to an order. You want to know what is going on in the mind of the user/visitor while visiting your website. It is relevant to know where visitors go first from a landing page, how they navigate the website and which pages are visited first.
The concept of UX design goes beyond website design. Ultimately, the goal is for the route from the landing page to the shopping cart to have a natural flow. It should be clear and easy to use. Of course, design is key. Searching for a product or requesting a quote should be fun, like walking around a store with a nice feeling. Website visitors are always looking for something. The UX designer’s job is to make this search as fun as possible.
Have you ever noticed that certain buttons on website stand out overtly? Those blue buttons with “Sign me up” or “Add to cart”? These are Call to Action (CTA) Buttons. By playing with such a brightly colored button, visitors are subconsciously triggered to take action. A very effective strategy!
Good use of UX design also affects a website’s findability and SEO statistics. This is because the design of a Web site affects the loading speed of your Web page. Google and other search engines factor this into their rankings. In addition, a few seconds difference in loading speed can be crucial to sales. Because honestly, how many times have you cut off a website visit because the site was loading too long? Competition is huge, so visitors drop out if they have to wait.
Essential concepts
So there is a clear difference between conversion optimization and UX design. The conversion rate of your Web site is largely determined by the design of your Web pages. Without a well thought out UX design, you run the risk of lower conversion rates. So you need one for the other.
Not every entrepreneur is familiar with the best strategy and designs. So it is also not a bad thing to outsource this kind of task to entrepreneurs who do have experience in this. Wondering what the website builders at Dusver can do for you? Contact us without obligation to see what we can do for you!
