Great marketers know that developing a website that converts visitors into customers requires good web design and messaging. To create a site that converts visitors into customers web designers and marketers need to work together to reduce friction or resistance and increase visitor’s motivation to use or buy a product or service.
Friction causes fatigue or confusion and stops visitors from moving forward. While motivation keeps a visitor engaged and pushes them to the next step in the sales cycle. As long as the motivation is bigger than the friction your users will move forward. However, if the web design of your website increases friction or reduces the motivation of your visitors your conversion rates will suffer.
In order to reduce perceived friction, we must first identify problematic elements and resolve them, using web design techniques that draw on human psychology. You can begin to identify friction on a website by asking yourself a few questions:
- Can visitors easily find what they are looking for?
- Can you identify the primary objective of the page?
- Do images effectively complement the objectives of the page?
- Is the content of the page easy to understand and visually appealing?
- Are registration forms too lengthy to fill out?
Once you have identified areas where visitors experience friction they can be resolved by taking the following steps:
- Streamlining the navigation and making it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for.
- Identifying who your visitors are and what their needs are. This will allow you to design a website that motivates visitors to take action and follow a specific path designed to fulfill their needs and solve their problems.
- Minimize the number of calls to action or action elements on the page. This drives attention towards a single desired outcome.
- Reduce the number of images that distract visitors from taking action. This will allow the visitor to focus on the content relevant to them.
- Reduce the amount of unnecessary or complicated content or information. Too much information overwhelms visitors and causes them to abandon websites. By reducing the amount of content or organizing it in a way that makes it easier to understand engages visitors and motivate them to take the next step.
- Reduce the number of fields required for registration. By reducing the number of fields it allows you to start a dialog, rather than stop one, between you and your visitors.
We apply the findings of think tanks like MECLABS to increase conversions through good web design and effective messaging. If your website prevents visitors from moving to the next step in your sales cycle we can help you refine your message, reduce friction and increase conversions rates through good web design. Contact us at 805-380-5494 for more information.
