Did you know your website design influences potential customers to perceive your brand in a certain way? The consumers’ preference for shopping online continues to increase, but competition for the online dollar is fierce. You’ll want to take advantage of every trick in the book to convince your visitor that you have the best solution for their needs. One crucial tool every business has is its website. Your site’s design can hold significant sway over how a visitor behaves when making purchasing decisions.
We’d all like to consider ourselves as rational beings, and we almost always convince ourselves that our purchasing decision comes from a place of logic and sound research… but things are rarely what they seem.
The Art of Online Persuasion
As discovered by a group of researchers, even subtle design changes like background color and images can influence selections. The phenomenon also appears to be immune to the viewer’s level of expertise, as novices and experts alike were swayed by the design choices used in the study.
Let’s look at how you can use web design to influence consumer behavior to your advantage.
Create a Professional Website Design
A poorly designed website can let down even the best content. This always results in a much lower user satisfaction level.
In simple terms, you need to make an excellent first impression, because you don’t get a second chance. The entire website design influences potential customers and you don’t want to add to their confusion with too many things to look at. Use expert designers to create compelling content and visually attractive pages. But what if you can’t create high-quality images yourself? Then wise use of pre-designed visuals offers an affordable alternative that will also save you time and money.
Strapped on a budget and don’t want to go through the process of hiring a professional designer? Editing design elements for websites are made more affordable when you use free resources such as Pixlr. This free online tool lets you create professional-looking images. Make use of the huge selection of free templates that they have on offer.
Your Website Design Must Look Good on All Devices
Google places great emphasis on mobile-responsive design, and for a good reason. A significant portion of your visitors will be viewing the site from a mobile device. If it’s not optimized to work well on a small screen, visitors will quickly decide to move on. Definitely optimize this because your website design can influence potential customers to stay or bounce.
Be Unique
Avoid clichés at all costs. What if your visitors experience the same tired old content they have seen dozens of other times? They will quickly lose interest in your message. Put more focus on your unique selling point (USP) to keep your reader’s attention.
Create A Strong Call to Action
Never leave your reader in doubt as to what you want them to do next. Furnish your website with strong calls to action (CTAs) at key points throughout your page so it can’t be missed. Disregard the idea of how much they choose to read. The call to action button color matters too! Unsure how to go about with choosing the right hue? Check out this easy to use colormatcher to decide on your website design palette.
Create A Value-Adding Proposition
You want your visitor on-side from the moment they land on your page. Use a professional copywriter. They’ll help to ensure your prose speaks to the reader in a way they won’t be able to resist reading more.
Good search engine optimization will bring visitors to your website for sure. But once there, you want to ensure you’ve used intelligent design choices to steer them towards the most desirable outcome. If you fail to live up to your readers’ expectations, they will leave your site and never return. These are our tips on how website design influences potential customers to make a purchase. Interested in reading more e-commerce business guides? Click here to explore how to adapt your business to your online customers.