Website Design For Visibility and Higher Conversion

Important Website Design Points

These are some important things to keep in mind when you're putting your website together.
  • Each page should have a purpose and a goal. If it doesn't then why is it there?

  • People are first interested in benefits, and then in features. Reach out to why I want or need your services. Not so much what is my problem, but what do I want to achieve? Example: if I need a chiropractor I don't care about adjustments or my bone structure; I want to be able to go hiking or play ball with my kids.

  • Don't write long paragraphs. Instead, break them up and insert bulleted lists, photos, and white space. Nobody wants to read a long white-paperesque block of text. Put in something to break it up. You'll be surprised at how much the interest level increases.

  • Photographs are important and help break up the page. People need something to give them a little variety. Studies have shown that having a photo on the page, even if it has nothing to do with the subject, increases conversion rates and page dwell time.

  • Bulleted lists are easy to read and attention-getting. Bulleted lists let people quickly get to the heart of the matter in nice small easily-processed pieces.

  • Research your visitor’s goals and harmonize your goals with theirs. The more you understand what your visitor's end goal is, the easier it will be to establish a connection with him or her.

  • Focus on the needs of your audience. In addition to identifying end goals, there are often many unrealized or secondary needs. Give your visitors additional reasons to value you.

  • Make everything on your website easy to use and understand. Ever been on a site where the links don't work, the subject of pages is unclear, or the number of clicks needed to find anything is astronomical? Someone has to be desperate to come back and most won't. Contrast that with your favorite websites and look at why you like one and hate the other.

  • Try to stay away from persoanl observations unless they are positive and supportive. In particular, negative remarks or rants are an immediate turn off, even if the person secretly agrees with you. They immediately say that you are unpredictable, unprofessional, and a loose cannon.


Design to Meet Your Visitor’s Needs

It’s much more important to have a website that meets the needs of your visitors than one that looks pretty. Aestetic design is nice and can directly impact the level of conversions from visitor to client, but if the site's a mess from a usability standpoint, you might as well never put it up in the first place.

A case in point is the website for Commercial Steam Team. According to Russ Zachariesen, CEO of Commercial Steam Team, the CST website has resulted in double the number of prospect closes than their previous website. During a recent two month period the website had connected so effectively with their prospects that approximately a third of their new clients chose Commercial Steam Team solely due to the website.

Why? The CST website doesn't represent an investment in appearance. If anything, some people might consider it to be too plain. Instead, it allows the visitor to concentrate on the aspect that CST wants them to: the people.

Preliminary work – Make Your Website Search-Friendly

  • Make your website visitor-friendly.
  • Do not place important information only in images, animations or video.
  • Don't put important information in iframes.
  • Have easy-to-follow text links on each page.
  • Avoid frames when possible.
  • Make sure that you have valid content on your website.
  • If your site is larger than 10 pages, install a site map.

META Tags

Some META tags are still important, but in most cases not nearly as much as they used to be.
  • Title – Here is where you put the words that appear in the Title bar at the top of your web browser. This is the most important META tag. Google usually reads about 90 characters of your Title Tag.
  • Description – Still used by some smaller search engines - 25-30 words should be fine.
  • Keywords – These are the words and phrases that you expect people to enter on a search engine to try to find something – In this tag list only those terms that apply on the page. This tag has no impact on actual search ranking, and is only used as a starting point.