Website design that attracts and converts customers

If you already have a website or are thinking about having one - what are you going to do with it? What will be your strategy? The ‘build it and they will come’ approach is a common and misguided strategy (if you can call it a strategy!) This series of articles discusses the problem that your business will face when it comes to designing or re-designing your website, and offers practical advice on how to attract, convert and retain customers.

Part One - Overcoming problems with Intelligent design

The problem: Who is the website for?
A website can have many goals, but at a very simplistic level it should either make or save money for your business.  As more and more people search the internet to find out about companies and their products and services, how does the design of your website stand up to your competitors?  What does it do for your customers?  More importantly, what can it do for your customers?

Many problems stem from not putting yourself in the position of your customers - this is why we are really here right?  Starting with first impressions, your typical website visitor gives you around 10 seconds (maximum) before clicking the back button to return to Google (that is if your website is even in the Google index!).  Can your customer easily identify; The main navigation? Your contact details? Important content and messages?  Relevant call to actions?  Choosing the right web design company is important as you don’t just want a glorified business card - we need to go beyond the predictable web pages we currently have (the royal we!) and consider a more intelligent approach.

What is intelligent design?
Identifying the simple and basic elements of a website (listed above) causes constant problems for users.  How many times have you been on a website and you cannot find what you are looking for?  How does this make you feel?  Let’s just say that negative experiences don’t lead to increased enquiries and customer conversion.  The real question we should be asking ourselves is ‘how can we create a positive experience’, so that when a visitor sees your website:

• they have a great first impression
• they get a professional feel from your business
• they make an enquiry or buy a product/service?

Some usability models start from the bottom up and ask the first two fundamental questions:  What do we want from our website and what do our customers want from our website?  These fundamental questions give us the building blocks of the site and guide our decisions about how we can meet both these sets of needs, making both the business and the customer happy!

Once you know what your customers are looking for, your content, navigation, design and entire site strategy is more targeted and is set up for achieving results.  Match these with the needs of your business and you’re onto a winner!   If you can answer the question ‘does this element of the website meet a need?’ (whether for the business or a customer), you can make an intelligent decision on what to include and what not to include.

From another perspective
Successful retailers will walk into their shops as if they were a customer, absorbing the experience so they can enhance and improve the customer’s journey.   Trying to guess how your customers will use your website can seem rather a daunting task, but such information could help shape your design and even give you some ideas to better meet their needs.

Why not ask your customers?  They won’t bite!  Whether you work in a marketing department, run your own business or are working with a design agency, carrying out at least a small amount of user research could unearth some gems of information.  When speaking to your customers, pay attention to the tone and language used when they refer to your services and products.  How would they find you if they were looking for your service through a search engine? What do they want to know about your business? What is important to them?  The field of user research is large but even the smallest amount can pay dividends.

Part two of this series will talk about practical tools and approaches you can take, giving your website the edge over your competitors whilst giving your customers a positive experience. Part 2 - Tools for designing successful websites.

Category: what's happening...
Tags: attract customers, user experience, web design