3 Steps to Increasing Conversion with Design

This is a guest post from Alex Sobieski. 

When I was just starting out after college, I started a little screen printing business. I knew a little about internet marketing (emphasis on little!), but I had a few misconceptions.

My initial strategy was to sign up for all the free directories I could, followed by a series of paid advertising programs (pay-per-click and banner ads). It made sense. A lot of people do this, and there’s nothing wrong with that approach.

$600 later, something was missing (besides 2 weeks of pay that I had to earn from a part-time job to cover the loss).

One sale. That is all I got. A whopping -67% Return-on-Investment. Ouch.

I could not figure out what was wrong. I paid for advertising. Why wasn’t it working? The truth is that it was KIND OF working. My web traffic and page views went up (not $600 worth!), but where were the sales? I trust you’ve asked yourself this a time or two.

#1 – Eliminate Clutter to Focus Your Visitor

The fact is, I experienced a bump in traffic, but what did the traffic do on my site? I pointed all my marketing to my home page. (Instead of a specialized landing page)

My home page had everything on it: link to a blog, paragraphs of text explaining how awesome my company was, links and pictures of brands I carried, a logo, lots of stripes in the background, a long side-bar filled with links to other pages and stuff I did. I didn’t want people to miss any content, so I made sure to put it all on the front page.

The irony is that people got frustrated and left. I had an 87% bounce-rate, an average time-on-site was about 23 seconds, and 3 page-views per visitor. I changed my home page to include basic navigation, a primary and a secondary goal, some concise text and bullet points, and eliminated some superfluous design elements.

It was great. It was as if my site could breathe again! but still not much of a lift in site metrics. What next?

#2 – Utilize Contrast to Guide the Eye

The human brain, by design, picks out patterns and looks for contrast first. My new site design became so uncluttered and vanilla, that there was no place to focus. It was tasteful, but there was no sense of purpose.

Fig. 1

Notice how on the left, the clean, vanilla website looks well balanced and fine. On the right, the red in the logo contrasts the rest of the design. The same red (or contrasting color) is repeated in the side-bar, and it pulls you over to the sign up area — you ignored the body text at first.

Granted, each page has its own goal. Maybe your goal is to get people to read your content. Maybe your goal is to make a purchase, or sign up for a newsletter.

Positioning your primary “call-to-action” (the initiation we, as marketers, give a customer to complete a desired task) in a color that contrasts or stands out will lead your visitors’ eyes straight to the sweet spot.

We get good at ignoring clutter and large blocks of text. Poorly converting websites often have an unclear action or path for the visitors to follow. Guide them with contrast. I learned this, the $600 way.

#3 – Remove Choice

One of the biggest mistakes I see (and again, I’ve been guilty of) is that we provide too much choice. Expanding off of the first point about clutter, it’s really easy to say, “I’ll just add a page that does X” or, “I’ll just include my Facebook feed, Twitter feed, Google+ button, LinkedIn button, YouTube, RSS, blog archives, recent comments, blah blah blah”

There are appropriate pages for that (to a degree), but not on your landing page.

Back then, my website’s side-bar had probably 20-30 links on it. On every page. Yes, even the sales pages. My analytics software revealed that people who would make it to my products page would generally follow one of the other enticing links (At least they were enticing, right?), assuming they didn’t leave.

When a customer is ready to sign up, purchase, request more info, or any other business-generating action, it’s time to make only one choice happen: Complete the action. Don’t lead them to your social media or email list. Let them buy if they want to.

Fig 2.

Let’s assume Fig 2 is an example of a landing page where you are driving your online marketing. The page on the left is an example of what we business owners do all the time. We want customers to see our full product line, cross-sell, engage with us on social media, and see how popular we are via social feeds. The other page, by contrast, gives you 3 options. Buy the TV, Buy the TV + Stand combo (for the up-sell), or scroll down to the footer (where one might put the page navigation, if any at all).

Increase your ROI: Putting it Together

So you’ve done it. You reduced visual clutter and simplified your design, you used contrast to draw your customer’s eye to a call-to-action, and you’ve eliminated extra choices and distractions at the time of close (either on a landing page, or a sales page).

Awesome! NOW you have a page that is designed to be a killer…or at the very least, you know that you will NOT be sabotaging your marketing efforts by driving all your traffic away. No $600 lessons in ugly pages for you!

Photo Credit: kirstyhall via photopin cc

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About the Author

Hi, My name is Alex Sobieski (@alexsobieski), founder of Cult Status Creative Studio (Facebook.com/CultStatusStudios). I’m creative and entrepreneurial, I’ve assembled an AWESOME team, and we are ready to be your Highly Creative, Business-Minded, go-to people to solve your internet woes. When I’m not working on web design, marketing, SEO, or website optimization, I can be found playing with my kids. I’ve been know to be a Real Foodie too! Let’s talk!

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