Smart marketers know that a web design can either boost or drop conversion rate.

Although it is true that SEO and social media marketing are vital for conversions, having an excellent design can make all the difference.

All digital marketing components matter. However, web design can make or break conversion rates. In a Stanford University study, 46.1 percent of people stated that their top measure in distinguishing whether a company is credible or not is web design. With that in mind, the design of your website is vital, and it must look professional.

Aesthetically Pleasing

The aesthetics of your site can also play a role in conversions. Two-thirds of people would consume content and stay if the site is beautifully designed, according to an Adobe study. That said, your site has to look attractive if you want your visitors to read your posts.

In that case, you cannot overlook web design. You can hire a freelancer or employ a designer to ensure that your site is aesthetically pleasing.

Here are some web design tricks that can give you a sustainable boost in conversions.

1. Refer to the Hick’s Law

The law states that by increasing the number of options, it also increases the time it takes for an individual to make a decision. This law is frequently referred in web designing. In this study, researchers found that more is not always better because a table that displays fewer varieties of jam attracted more people than a table with 24 types of jam. People were likely to purchase when they see a small display.

To apply the law in web design, you need to limit the number of options you have for your visitors. On your website, evaluate what is in your navigation bar. It is the best place to go to find what you can get rid of to lessen the number of options. The more links your visitors can choose from, the more your users will lose interest in your website.

Apart from the navigation bar, you should also look into the other elements on your website that visitors will have to decide when they are on your site. These would include determining whether to allow readers to scroll down the page more or use the navigation bar; deciding to download your eBook or share your post on social media, or choosing to read a product review or browse more products.

Because there could be various places on your website where you can cut back the number of options, you might want to install a welcome gate on your homepage. In here, your visitors will see a welcome message that covers the entire screen, and it comes with a single call to action. With that in mind, visitors will only have one choice when they visit your site. If they wish to see more options, they can scroll down, thereby minimizing distractions on your homepage.

When you apply this law, however, it is vital that you consider the actions that are crucial to your bottom line. Remember that each page on your site has to achieve one primary objective. Then again, the fewer choices your visitors have, the easier for them to use your website, which may increase your site’s conversion rate.

2. Speed up Your Website

Your visitors are impatient when they surf the web. A second delay can result in a 7 percent reduction in conversion. There are several tools to check your page speed and know more about its issues. You may use PageSpeed Insights of Google, Page Load Speed Analyzer by SEO Chat and Pingdom, among others.

Remember that you have eight seconds to get your reader’s attention. In that case, you have a minute amount of opportunity to attract your visitors after landing on your website. If your website is slow to load, they leave and will never come back.

Besides speeding up your website, you should consider having a brief headline, eye-catching image that can communicate the purpose of your page or draw the visitors’ eyes to the primary call to action. Make sure that your signup buttons are large and simple. And ensure that your copy is enticing.

3. Follow This Photography Principle

The rule of thirds is a photography principle that web designers can implement. In this rule, you need to divide your web page into thirds, so that it gives you nine squares with equal sizes. The four middle squares are places of interest. Any object you place at these points can have a huge impact on your website, thereby, boosting conversions.

You may place your most important call to action button in these areas. But don’t place your navigation bar in those places. In this way, your visitors will focus on the primary call to action on your web page.

There is no need to redesign your entire website. Instead, you can use the rule of thirds as a way for you to place the most important parts of your site. First, you need to take a screenshot of your site above the fold. Then, divide it into nine equal shares. From there, you can decide whether you wish to tweak your website or not.

In those areas, you may place your video, audio and other interactive content. Consider having hover effects on your call-to-action buttons. In that way, your visitors will be more enticed to click. Then, add some animated exit popups. They’re vital to re-engage your visitors when they lose interest.

4. Leverage Negative Space

Negative space is the whitespace in web design. This space is a positive thing as it makes your site more readable and usable. This space is not just the space between the elements on your page. Rather, it also refers to the space between the small elements on your page, like the area between the paragraphs or lines of text.

You must pay attention to the negative spaces on your site because they make your site easy on the eyes, leading to an increased conversion. Depending on your web design, you may use a ton of negative space on your homepage. In that way, your visitors will focus on the primary call to action.

To have enough negative space, you may use a smaller font to have more space in between letter. Then, the line-height should be 1.5. If you choose to have smaller fonts, you should have more line-heights.

Then, break those large blocks of text into smaller paragraphs to boost negative space in between paragraphs, thereby, making the posts more readable. Don’t forget to use margins and padding to add white space between the large elements on your site.

5. Get Rid of Sliders or Carousels

Why? They can only hurt your conversion rates. They were exciting before. But now, they become pet rocks. Furthermore, sliders slow down your site because of the large images used. They are also distracting as they don’t allow visitors to consume your content.

These elements are confusing because of how human eyes react to the environment. Human brains are designed to detect motion in a static landscape. Back in the day, it was helpful to track mammoths across a tundra. But this response makes people pay more attention to the movement of the sliders and ignore conversion points that you want them to focus on.

Furthermore, sliders will not make sense when your visitors navigate your site through a mobile device. And that is why people find it easier to scroll than to swipe. Remember that the easier for your visitors to navigate your site using their mobile device will give you higher conversion rates.

Sliders will also cause too many H1 tags to your site. You may think that they are great for your site, but web crawlers despise them. The reason for this is that they confuse the hierarchy of information on your website. Because web crawlers hate them, they can significantly affect your page ranking. Thus, make sure to avoid them as much as possible.

Instead of using sliders, opt to have a static image with a forceful headline.

6. Consider the F Pattern

In various studies, researchers found that most users browse the web to read a post in an F pattern. That is, they look from left to right at the top of the screen. After that, they scan the page down and make some readings into the content. Rarely do they reach the bottom right of a page.

How can you use the F pattern in boosting your conversions? Place those critical calls to action and objects along the F-shape lines. Then, insert those objects of less importance in areas with low visibility.

Since the left-hand side of the page is where your visitors will look first, consider placing the primary call to action in this area. Then, place headlines down the left-hand side of the page. Now, for your sponsored ads, you may put them in the sidebar on the right part of your page. Anything that does not need to be visible but essential for web crawlers should be placed in the low right-hand part of the page.

7. Choose the Right Colors

Since colors can evoke emotions, you must choose the color combination that conveys your brand’s personality and compels people to take action. Remember that people will make their purchase decision from an emotional place. That said, the color combination you choose for your website will play a significant role in optimizing conversion rates.

One suggestion is to curate a Pinterest board with some photos that reflect the vision of your brand. Use Adobe’s Color Wheel to create a color scheme based on the colors in those photos. But you can tweet the individual colors by moving the selections around.

After creating a color scheme, make sure to use contrast as it can also make or break your conversions. Contrast can be used to make headlines, text, and call to action buttons more readable and noticeable. The front and button colors must be in contrast with the background and the other elements that you wish to highlight, like subscribe buttons. They must be in a tone that truly stands out from the rest of the page.

In a test by Hubspot, it found that red buttons are better than green buttons. Then again, before you consider red buttons, make sure that red is not the dominant color on your page. Else, it will not create more contrast.

As mentioned earlier, you may use the color wheel to pick a complementary color, which is a color that is a complete opposite of your dominant color.

However, before you choose the right color combination, you must understand that people look at colors differently. The colors always depend on how they match your brand. That’s why you need to pick a color that matches your brand’s personality as it affects the purchase decisions of your visitors.

For example, if your brand is rugged or masculine, you must not opt for a pink call-to-action button. Instead, opt for a big orange button.

How colors impact conversions will depend on the context. For example, since blue is a commonly used color in web designs for hyperlinks, then people always associate them with hyperlinks. Thus, they know that if the text is in blue, they can click on it.

It is also true for CTA buttons. You don’t need to choose blue. However, bear in mind that whatever color you pick for a button, it will be associated with an action. Use that color consistently for all CTAs on your site. But avoid using the same colors for items that are not clickable. Also, don’t use different CTA colors on the same page.

8. Keep it Simple

The “obvious always wins” in web design. That’s why flat, minimalist design improves conversion rates. The reason for this is that it focuses on the most vital elements. A clean design emerges over other dramatic visual effects. By focusing on the fundamental elements and getting rid of those embellishments, this approach can be helpful in creating an organized layout that can surely optimize conversion rates.

Furthermore, a minimalistic design allows having more space on your website for relevant CTAs, thereby, preventing the page from having non-essential elements.

Even though the minimalistic design is great, you should not overdo it as people will lose interest. For instance, in CTA buttons, people are used to seeing buttons with depth or dimension. These characteristics are indicators of interaction.

If you have a flat button, however, your visitors can easily overlook it when they scan through your page. For that reason, make sure that you use a contrasting button color. And choose a location that makes buttons visible.

Thus, every time you create a page, you must ask yourself if there’s a way to have a simpler version. By keeping it simple, you can expect better conversions and more aesthetically pleasing design.

A simple design caters to people who can handle less information at one time. If your visitors see a lot of stuff on one page, they get overwhelmed and leave. When you provide your user a great experience on your website, make sure to get rid of those elements that are non-essentials.

9. Follow the Gestalt Similarity Principle

It is a design principle that tackles the law of similarity. In here, the law states that the human brain likes to group same objects together. This mechanism allows humans to make sense of things and help them organize noisy environments.

When you follow this principle, you need to group similar items or elements that can be associated with one another. These would include conversion buttons, images, and testimonial boxes.

For instance, you can have an amazing testimonial to your opt-in form to boost conversions. Although testimonials are not designed for lead magnet, the visitors can associate them as they are still in proximity.

10. Add Faces

When humans see another human’s face, they are triggered to empathize with that person. That’s why when you convey a problem, your visitors may understand or feel a connection with it. For that reason, experts recommend incorporating human faces in the articles, opt-in pages, and case studies, among others.

If you have an endorser of your brand or if you are the face of your brand, you need to get a photoshoot done. Ask the photographer to take horizontal shots with a lot of negative space on one side, where you can place a CTA or text.

For a real estate website, one of the secrets of real estate photo is to add a human face and not just the image of a house or a part of the property. You may hire models or just use stock photos. However, make sure that the face you pick represents your brand accurately. By using faces that reflect your target demographic, it can help in increasing your site’s conversion rate significantly.