“We saw a 40% improvement in the conversion rate of our funnels” – Martyn Cook, Noobru
By: Amna
Ecommerce dominates the retail world, and it’s not hard to see why. The ease of shopping online has led to a boom in the industry, with more and more people choosing to shop online instead of in brick-and-mortar stores.
According to the latest stats, 18% of retail sales worldwide are now generated online. This number is only going to grow as more and more people become comfortable with shopping online.
Landing pages, eCommerce stores, and product pages are critical to the success of any online business. These are the pages that users will visit when they’re interested in your product or service.
This is where conversion design comes in – a term that 90% of businesses often mistake with web design and have a vague idea about. The rest of the 10% of businesses know about it, implement it, and as a result, they get 2-5 times higher conversion rates from day one.
Let’s explore what it really is, how it works, what benefits it can bring to your online business, and how you can start implementing it today.
Conversion design is the systematic use of design principles, techniques, and persuasion principles that have been scientifically proven to increase the percentage of visitors to a website who take the desired action on that site.
In other words, it’s the process of designing your website to encourage visitors to take the actions you want them to take – whether that’s making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, downloading a white paper, or anything else.
The most important thing to understand about conversion design is that it’s not about pretty pictures or flashy graphics – although those things can certainly help. Instead, it’s about using proven design principles based on human psychology to guide visitors toward taking the actions you want them to take.
Many businesses, in fact, 90% of the businesses referred to above, often mistake conversion rate optimization (CRO) with conversion design. They are NOT the same thing.
Let’s clear things up.
Conversion rate optimization is the process of increasing the percentage of visitors to a website who take the desired action on that site. CRO is a traditional data-driven approach that uses analytics and user testing to identify areas of improvement on a website and then makes changes to the site based on those findings.
CRO is reactive – it looks at what’s already happening on a website and tries to optimize it. You can think of it as a “fix-it” approach to conversion.
Now, let’s take a look at conversion design. As we mentioned earlier, conversion design uses proven design principles based on human psychology to guide visitors towards taking the actions you want them to take. In contrast to CRO, this proactive approach starts with designing the user experience before a website is even built.
It seeks to design a website from the ground up with conversion in mind. You can think of it as a “build-it” approach to conversion.
Conversion design is about using proven design principles to create a conversion-friendly website from the start. This proactive approach can save you a lot of time and money in the long run, as you won’t have to constantly be making changes to your website based on data findings.
Conversion design is a relatively new field, and it’s becoming more and more popular as businesses realize the benefits it can bring. In fact, some of the biggest brands in the world are already using conversion design to increase their conversion rates because they’ve realized that it’s the most effective way to increase online sales.
Following are the points to differentiate the two further:
Now that we’ve clarified the difference between CRO and conversion design, let’s look at what a conversion-friendly website looks like.
A good conversion design creates a picture in the visitor’s mind of what they need to do next, how they can do it, and why they should do it.
Following are the pictures:
So, these are the three main pictures that a conversion-friendly website should create in the visitor’s mind. And remember, the goal of conversion design is not just to increase the number of visitors to your website but to increase the number of visitors who take the desired action.
Conversion design is a relatively new field for businesses. Still, it’s quickly gaining popularity as more and more businesses realize the importance of having a website designed for conversion from the start. If you’re looking to save time and money, want to see a clear ROI from the start, and want to create a conversion-friendly website, then conversion design is the way to go.
Do you want to learn more about conversion design? Check out our blog for more articles on this topic. Or, click here to join Conversion Rate Academy and get access to our conversion rate optimization classes where you can learn from the experts.
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