One of the biggest factors affecting your conversion rates is the design of your pages.
The layout, structure and overall user experience (UX) play a critical role in influencing your visitors’ actions. To maximize conversion rates, you need to optimize the design alongside all the other important elements, like copy, offer and call to action.
Here are 5 design principles that are proven to work.
1. Limit users’ decisions
Often referred to as Hick’s Law, this design principle involves simplifying the user experience, so that users don’t get lost. With fewer options and distractions, users are more likely to complete your desired conversion actions.
2. Use the Rule of Thirds
Often used in photography, the Rule of Thirds is a web-design principle that places your most important elements (i.e. a button) in the center horizontal third of the viewable page. By placing calls-to-action here (and removing distractions from the other two thirds), users are more likely to navigate to the right place.
3. Incorporate more white space
White space—or “negative space”—is basically the “empty” space on a page. But despite being empty, that space is critical for UX design. More white space makes the page easier to absorb and navigate, thus increasing conversion actions.
4. Follow the F format
Heatmaps, which trace how users interact with a page, have found that most visitors will read pages in an F-shaped pattern: Left to right, then down, left to right again, and so on. This pattern provides insight on how to layout the page in the order that you want users to see different elements (particularly for content that scrolls below “the fold”).
5. Use color and contrast
Your site’s color palette is more powerful than you might think. Beyond how it looks, it also affects how users feel and interact with your content. If the color doesn’t mesh with the emotion or subject matter you’re trying to express, they’ll be more likely to drop off the page. Similarly, use contrast to help divide the page and call attention to your conversion elements.
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