I ran into a guy at a meetup the other day in the Cincinnati area that I was really impressed with. He’s the owner of a company that does web design Cincinnati and, although I only maintain my own website, I was fascinated by the information I gathered from him. Incidentally, those guys also do SEO Cincinnati in case you’re looking to get your website ranked in the search engines. Enough so that I recorded the conversation (with his permission of course) and decided to write this post about some of the more interesting things he told me.
Design for Conversions
This is a big one that he stressed to me over and over again. He said most clients contact him wanting a pretty website that’s going to blow people away when they see it. You know, the types of websites that win design awards and you can be super proud to call your own. Unfortunately, he says those websites are generally the worst thing someone can have built unless their only goal is to win a design award. He told me the problem with those sites is that what looks pretty is not necessarily what makes a potential customer do what you want them to do (submit a lead form, call you, or purchase something on your e-commerce site).
And this is an important point…he mentioned direct response marketers as an example. Have you ever received an advertisement by mail that was just mind-bogglingly beautiful? I sure haven’t, and I’m sure most of you haven’t either. Direct response marketers (the guys sending you advertisements in the mail) have been perfecting the art of getting people to buy for over a hundred years. And you know what they realized long ago? That pretty designs don’t sell products/services. Instead, what sells is presenting the prospect with the information he or she is looking for, addressing objections, and making it brain-dead simple to navigate the website.
Any deviation from this formula will reduce the number of calls/leads/sales you get. So his point was that, while a pretty website may impress your friends, your friends aren’t who you’re selling to. You need to design with your prospects in mind, and in nearly all cases, the less fancy the design, the better.
Don’t go super cheap
I just said that simple designs generally convert better than complex designs, but please don’t take that to mean that simple designs are cheap. Sure, a simple design will generally be a bit less expensive than some over-the-top eye-popping website design from an award-winning design firm. But properly done, a high-converting website takes a good deal of planning and organization to ensure that it’s as well-optimized for conversions as possible.
Sometimes this involves user testing or eye-tracking tests, which can be done on larger projects. On smaller projects, a thorough understanding of who the prospect is, what his level of technical expertise is, what he’s looking for, and what his objections are is vitally important. This is NOT something any old fly-by-night web designer can understand, which is why you shouldn’t buy the cheapest website you can find. In nearly every case it’ll cost you more money in lost sales than you’ll save on the design itself.
You don’t have to like it
One thing that really stood out during that conversation was that my new contact said some of the best converting websites he’s every seen are also the most plain websites he’s ever seen. He says the reason for this is when you remove all the glitter and sparkle, a website is quite a simple thing. Every unnecessary design element you add to the site reduces the likelihood that the prospect will call or purchase.
My contact said one of the biggest mistakes he sees people make is that they get a design proof and judge it based on their own asthetic ideas, when in reality all they should be concerned with are 3 primary questions:
- Is the design simple and professional?
- Are there any unnecessary elements on the page that can distract the visitor from the primary goal of the website?
- Is there a clear path from the point the visitor arrives on the site to the point where he/she takes action (submits a form, calls, or purchases)?
- Is the information on the website accurate (e.g. address, phone, etc)
That’s it. If you answer yes to all these questions, for God’s sake, approve the design! The only other question you should be asking is, “Could this website be any simpler?”
I learned a great deal from the guys at Cincinnati web design, so I hope this article was informative for you as well!