Are You Killing Your Conversion Rate with These Web Design Mistakes?

Have you ever visited a website while searching for a particular product or service, but found the design of the site so off-putting that you couldn’t complete your purchase? You’re not alone—and you could be part of the problem.

When it comes to web design, everyone has something to say about using it to increase your conversion rate, from including three calls to action on each landing page to split-testing absolutely everything; the first step toward getting the most out of your website design is establishing that not all the advice you hear is good advice. Check out the most conversion-killing design blunders below and make sure you’re not making any of them yourself.

Too Many CTAs

The point of a call to action (CTA) is to draw your visitors’ attention away from the rest of the page, toward the small segment that tells them to act now, buy today or subscribe right away. While it can be tempting to put multiple CTAs on a single page, particularly if the page in question requires some scrolling, the professionals at Search Engine Land state that this is 100 percent unacceptable.

Everything in Flash

Flash can certainly make an attractive website, but flash-based sites are the opposite of user friendly. When building a site entirely in Flash, you need to accept that you’re trading things like speed and function for aesthetics, which can ruin your chances of converting a lot of visitors. With mobile traffic accounting for more than 20 percent of all web browsing today, a flash-based site could be leaving you dead in the water for potential customers using smartphones that aren’t yet Flash compatible.

Bad Navigation

According to iMediaConnection, confusing or unclear navigation is to blame for the majority of high bounce rates. Make sure that your navigation is user-friendly on multiple levels, including clarity, ease of use and visibility. Navigation should also be styled in such a way that it’s inviting, so avoid stacking too many links in the menu. If it’s too hard to understand, hard to find or features even one dead link it could give visitors the impression that the site is poorly constructed or even broken.

Too Much Text

A landing page, or any page designed to turn a visitor into a conversion—whether that’s a click or a purchase—should be primarily image-based. Let your product, service or brand speak for itself! Too much text makes a page look overly complex, intimidating, and difficult to understand. If you absolutely need to include a great deal of text beyond the initial hook and body text, such as a legally required safety warning or age restriction notice, you can place it in the footer of the page or collapse it into a tab or segment that can be manually opened with a click if visitors are interested. Otherwise, keep it short and sweet.

So long as the focus of your site design is the user experience rather than one person’s preferences, you shouldn’t run into any of these issues. However, it’s good to take a quick refresher periodically to be completely sure your site isn’t part of the problem. After all, fewer mistakes means more conversions!

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About 4 Step Studio

4 Step Studio is an online marketing agency that specializes in website design and redesign, SEO, social media and more. Our team of experts focuses on helping small business get found online, while educating them on what will make them successful in the digital world. To learn more about what we can do for you, visit our website at www.4StepStudio.com