Most companies create their website with user experience in mind—they make it easy for visitors to do what they want—but they miss the opportunity to create a site to guide the visitor into doing what the company wants. The goals of the visitor to a website are not necessarily the same for the visitor and the company. The visitor may be looking for information, doing research for a future possible purchase. The company, on the other hand, wants to make a sale, collect data, or provide a service. How can you turn a website visitor into a customer? Through good design.
Let’s take a look at four main criteria we can use to judge whether a design will aid in turning a prospect into a customer.
Content
- Is your message clear? Interesting? Does it speak to the visitor?
- Do you offer clear pathways for the visitor to follow?
- Do you offer clear calls-to-action to take additional steps? Do you give the visitor multiple options (such as “Learn more” and “Sign up today?”)
- Is the language appropriate? Is it gender biased? Could it offend?
Experience
- Is the site easy to navigate? Are terms understandable and unique?
- Are calls-to-action similar throughout the site? Is like content grouped by function?
- Is the site responsive? Can it be navigated on phone, tablet desktop?
- Is the site free of visual clutter? Is content organized in digestible “screens?”
- Is the site navigable in adverse conditions? The visually impaired? Screen reading?
- Is the content searchable? Is it well-organized? Tagged? Categorized?
- Can the visitor make a direct connection to your company?
Technology
- Is the technology you’re using appropriate for the visitor?
- Does the site require technology that is not universal?
- Is the site manageable by your staff in a timely manner?
- Is it secure?
- If you’re collecting visitor’s data, do you have a privacy policy that outlines the scope of what you do with the information?
Aesthetics
- Does the site appeal to your prospect?
- Are the images appropriate? Unique? Identifiable as your brand?
- Are the colors and fonts used identifiable as your brand?
- Do the colors and fonts aid the visitor in doing what you want?
- Can the visitor scale the fonts (in case of the visually impaired)? Do the colors work for someone who is colorblind? Is it ADA compliant?
- Do you prioritize information content and flow on smaller devices?
How does your online communication stack up? There are always trade-offs to be made in creating a website. A page that is aesthetically appealing might sacrifice legibility of the content to a certain degree, but in the end the site may be more effective. We call this disfluency.
Disfluency is the act of making something less clear, of slowing down the process of interacting with a page, in order to attain longer interaction and greater retention. Disfluency is just one of the tools we can use to help turn prospects into customers. To find out more, contact Studio 23. We’re ready when you are.
