Businesses today are under immense pressure to generate leads and sales through their website. Since covid, this has only become more difficult, as brick-and-mortar businesses have been forced to move online.
Nothing is more frustrating than putting all your efforts into driving traffic to your website, only to see that traffic leaving without taking any action. This is where conversion design comes in.
The point is not to simply get visitors to your website, but to get them to take the desired action, whether that’s signing up for a newsletter, downloading a white paper, or making a purchase.
In this article, we’ll explore what conversion design is, why it’s so important for businesses today, especially in the post covid world, and why using the principles of conversion design can help you increase leads and sales.
What is Conversion Design?
We will just briefly touch on this, as we have a whole article discussing what conversion design is. In short, conversion design is the practice of designing your website to get visitors to take the desired action. This is based on the tried and tested principles of persuasion and human psychology that have been proven to increase the likelihood of website visitors taking action.
Now, we know what you’re thinking. You’re probably thinking that all website design is focused on getting visitors to take action. And you would be right. All website design should be focused on this goal.
According to the latest insights, around 80% to 90% of businesses fail online, and only 10% succeed. The reasons for this vary, but a major contributing factor is poor conversion design. If a visitor lands on your landing page but can’t figure out what to do next or is simply not persuaded to take the desired action, then you’ve lost them.
So, let’s see why conversion design is so important for businesses.
Why is Conversion Design Important for Businesses?
As simple as the concept of conversion design is, many businesses still don’t invest in it or simply don’t know how to go about it. This is a big mistake.
There are many reasons why conversion design is so important for businesses, especially in today’s digital world. It really comes down to the bottom line. If your business website is not generating leads and sales, then it’s not doing its job. Here are some of the most important ones:
1. First impressions matter
Most probably, the first interaction your potential customers will have with your business will be through your website. This makes a strong first impression vitally important.
Your website homepage or your business landing page is often the first touchpoint a customer has with your business, and it needs to make a good impression. You will lose that customer if it’s cluttered, confusing, or simply not persuasive enough.
Imagine if you walked into a store and it was messy, the shelves were empty, and the staff didn’t seem to care. You would probably leave pretty quickly, right? The same goes for business landing pages.
Take this example:
Shisha Quality is a landing page for a shisha delivery service. The above the fold of their landing page (the part that’s visible without scrolling) wasn’t very well designed, and as a result, it doesn’t make a strong first impression.
It had way more than white space, which resulted in the font of the copy being really small. Also, the CTA button was placed too close to the form field, which created a cluttered look.
Check there the screenshot:
Do you see? The font of the heading, subheading, and CTA is small, making it hard to read. After they had a free audit session with ConversionsWise, they worked on the design and used these suggestions we made.
This is what their landing page looks like now:
Do you see the difference? They reduced the white space, increased the font size, and placed the form and CTA buttons in a way that didn’t look cluttered. Now the CTA “Shop Now’ is much better, bigger, and stands out more. Also, they placed it further away from the form field to create more space. The result is a much cleaner and more effective design that makes a strong first impression.
2. Improved ROI
Investing in conversion design can have a significant impact on your business ROI. In fact, even a 1% improvement in conversion rate can have a massive impact on your bottom line.
Let’s say your landing page generates 10,000 visitors per month and has a conversion rate of 2%. This means that you’re generating 200 leads per month. We are just talking about a small improvement if you can improve your conversion rate by just 1%. But that would increase your leads to 400 per month, which is a 100% increase!
Now, imagine if you could improve it by 5%. That would give you 2,000 leads per month. Just think about the impact that would have on your business.
Check this ROI calculator by ConversionWise to see how much you could potentially increase your ROI by improving your conversion rate. You can use this to understand and calculate how just a 1% or 2% improvement in conversion rate can have a massive impact on ROI.
Conversion design is not a one-time investment. It’s an ongoing process that requires continuous optimization and testing to get the best results. However, even a small improvement can greatly impact your business’s bottom line, which is why it’s so important.
3. Human Psychology
If you want to persuade someone to do something, then you need to understand human psychology. This is because we make decisions based on emotions and psychological triggers.
Conversion design is about understanding how people think and what motivates them to take action. The principles of persuasion, the Zeigarnik effect, social proof, and anchoring are just some of the psychological triggers that can be used to increase conversions, and conversion design is all about using these triggers to influence people.
For example, some landing pages use social proof by showing how many people have used their service. This helps to increase conversions because it creates a sense of trust and credibility.
Check out ConversionWise home page’s last section:
Do you see the social proof? WooCommerce, Sticky.io, Shopify, and Konnektive are some of the big names that we’ve worked with.
People trust these brands and showing that we’ve worked with them helps increase our credibility and, in turn, our conversion rate. Also, notice the 192 reviews on TrustPilot with 5 stars. These are examples of social proof, a powerful psychological trigger that can be used to increase conversions.
4. Increased Revenue
Conversion design is all about increasing conversions which leads to more sales and revenue. If you can increase your conversion rate by even a small amount, it can greatly impact your business.
For example, does your landing page is mobile-friendly? Does it have a good design? Is the speed fast? Is the copy well written? Are the CTA buttons effective?
All of these factors play a role in conversion rate, and if you can improve even just a few of them, it can have a big impact on your business.
You can use tools like Pingdom.com to test your website speed and get insights on how to improve it. You can also use Google’s mobile-friendly test to see if your site is mobile-friendly and get tips on how to improve it.
Check this screenshot:
Many factors play a role in conversion rate, and conversion design is all about improving these factors to increase conversions and revenue.
Do you see?
Conversion design is important because it can greatly impact your business. It’s all about understanding human psychology and using persuasive techniques to influence people. It’s an ongoing process that requires continuous optimization and testing, but even a small improvement can make a big difference.
If you want to read more about conversion design, use the principles of persuasion, or get tips on how to improve your conversion rate, then check out our blog. We write about all things related to conversion rate optimization and conversion design.
Or, if you’re looking to learn all about conversion rate optimization, click on the link and join Conversion Rate Academy, our free online course.
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