Web design is far more than just an aesthetically pleasing picture. You can not build a great website if you do not take usability and user experience into consideration. You can argue that these things are important but not vital, but the fact is - your online business can survive ugly design with great usability, but it will not survive a beautiful design which has zero usability and breaks every UX principle.
In this article, we will look into scientifically proven ways to use user experience to make your conversion rates skyrocket. We will cover colors, fonts, the importance of website speed and how to make sure your users love the redesign.
What color is best for conversions?
This is one of the most popular questions, of not the most popular one when it comes to website conversions. Which color converts best? Is it green, red, or maybe blue? If you read a lot of articles on the color theory you most probably will argue for red. If you read other articles on website conversions you would probably argue that blue is the most converting color.
Yet, Amazon uses the orange call to action button, Facebook uses green and even grey! for their buttons, and eBay uses blue. And all these websites convert like crazy. So which color is the best? Or don’t they read the color theory and UX articles?
The truth is there is no one color that does wonders for conversion. The secret is in the contrast. All these mentioned above website do one thing in common - they make their calls to action stand out from the rest of the design using contrasting, or simply more prominent colors.
If your background has the red color scheme, a red CTA will do nothing for your conversions, but a white or green one might actually do wonders. This is the whole secret behind colors for conversions - a call to action that stands out the most will convert the most.
Want some science behind this? Well, all of the above is explained by Sensory adaptation. To make it brief and simple - people have a tendency to tune out the stimuli (smell, sound, visuals) we are familiar with. Basically, if we’ve seen it for a while, we eventually stop noticing it. So by making your CTAs stand out you break up the familiarity and make the users notice the call to action. And this is what boosts conversions.
Which font is the best for conversions?
Every designer has a favourite font or a number of prefered ones. Some love fancy serif fonts, others prefer simpler typography. But almost every web designer I know has something to say about typography and which font is the best, usually, there is no consensus among the designers.
But the questions is - is there the best font, which will increase conversion rate? The truth is - your website visitors do not care which font you use. They want it to be readable and easy, which means simple and big.
So when you create your next online project, suppress your designer instinct and opt for a simpler font which is at least 16px in size and your users will be happier and more likely to convert.
The importance of website speed
In a quite recent study ordered by Microsoft Corp., scientists tested people with electroencephalograms and came to the conclusion that the attention span of mankind is rapidly declining. According to this study today we have the attention span of 8 seconds, as opposed to 12 seconds in the year 2000.
You might think this has nothing to do with your web design work. But just take a second to consider these facts:
- 1-second delay in website load might cause a 7% loss in conversion rate.
- 3 seconds delay is likely to cause 40% of users to abandon the website altogether.
- 51% of users say that slow website speed is the reason they abandon a purchase.
Of course, there are lots of factors that influence website speed, but web design is one of the major factors here. Poor design with the excessive code will definitely throw your conversion rate back to zero. So make website speed a cornerstone of your designs, follow the Google speed suggestions and your users will be grateful.
Make redesigns less stressful for the users
No matter how awesome your new design is, most of the users will complain. Why? Because people are naturally averse to any change. There is a research that proves this, people prefer an older and familiar structure, even if the new one is much better. But this does not mean you have to forget about redesign if you want to keep the conversions at the high level.
Weber’s Law of Just Noticeable Difference is a great answer to this problem. “Weber's Law, says that the size of the just noticeable difference is a constant proportion of the original stimulus value.” Basically, if you make the changes small enough no one will notice.
All you’ve got to do is do the redesign in small stages, make the changes barely noticeable and let your users gradually adjust to them. Granted, this way you will have to dedicate much more time for the redesign, but it will pay out in happy customers and as a result - much-desired conversions.
Responsiveness
I am sure responsiveness is not a new concept to you by now, it has been a must for at least a couple of years. Still, since we are talking about user experience and conversions here, and there is a disappointingly high number of unresponsive websites, I decided to include this point here.
Responsiveness allows websites to smoothly adjust the layouts according to the screen resolution the user is viewing it on, be it desktop, tablet or smartphone. It assures that your website looks and works perfectly on any device.
Statistics show that the number of mobile purchases continues to grow. So if your website is not responsive or optimizes for mobile in any other way, you might lose potential customers who are shopping on the go.
You're welcome to take a look at these web design templates.