As website creators and creatives by nature, we know that all companies and brands must invest in improving their online visibility – and all because of consumer behavior.
We are in 2021 and, more and more, people use their smartphones and the internet, in general, to learn more about products or services, becoming highly independent buyers.
So, without even going to your physical store, your potential customers will search – and probably find out – everything there is to know about what your company sells.
With the growth of brand-sponsored searches or the search done by users looking for information about their brand, services, or products, the opportunities to sell more are infinitely greater for those who have an effective presence in the digital world.
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Gaining more and more power with mobile devices, consumers are more curious, demanding, and impatient than ever.
Consumers in the Care Era
According to Google, as you can analyze more thoroughly in this article, today there are at least three types of consumers:
- The curious consumer: buyers are almost obsessed with research. They want to make sure that, with every purchase they make, they have all the information available and that the decision-making is well-founded, to the point that there can be no regret after the purchase.
- The demanding consumer: people want to find familiarity in the digital environment and products that seem to have been made to their measure, highly personalized, even if they never quite verbalize or materialize these demands.
- The impatient consumer: with the increase in the use of smartphones and a constant connection to the internet, latent impatience in potential customers has also increased. Many buyers do research, read reviews from other buyers, and look for more information about the product or service on the way to purchase it.
These characteristics influence consumers’ expectations in the way they interact with your brand. Therefore, it is your company’s responsibility – relying on professionals such as Indigit – to provide a smooth but persuasive, perfect, and trouble-free user experience. That way, you will be able to convince more visitors to your website to buy your products or hire your services.
Now, let’s analyze some factors that can improve the functionality of your company’s website and its performance, optimizing the experience for your visitors and the platform at the same time.
Factors to Prioritize in Web Design
Clear Navigation.
The navigation structure on your brand’s website should allow users to easily go from one page to another, regardless of the starting point. Not all visitors start from the homepage or follow a predictable path. They must be able to locate a specific product or a particular tab from the first page they visited.
Prevent visitors to your website from feeling overwhelmed by ‘breaking’ browsing in groups of five or seven options. The fewer options you present, the more you keep users focused on your goal – and thus help them make decisions faster.
Hick’s Law, a very popular principle when it comes to creating websites, tells us that the more choices presented to users, the more time it will take until they decide to go to practice and make the purchase. The problem is that the visitor may lose interest in a disorganized website, eventually leaving the page.
Still, this law will not apply to all parties that make up a website. Some pages will have more content than others, such as product pages, for example. In this case, you can give more prominence and visibility to a product, a promotion, or an option that you want the visitor to select.
The “search” feature is another feature of clear navigation that can never be forgotten. A bar for the user to search for a keyword or product must follow the rule of three clicks – a principle of web design that tells us that a user will leave your site if it requires too many clicks or actions to find what you want.
Page Speed
We can also talk about the loading time of a website; the fewer seconds the page takes to display, the more attention you will get from the potential customer – especially the most impatient. The speed of the pages is a very important feature in any device where your website is displayed, but it has infinitely more weight in its mobile version.
A report on this topic, relative to 2019, shows unequivocally that slower sites reduce the chances of a buyer visiting them again. More than 20% of users of mobile devices admit to closing a slow website and 14% say that this fact leads them to visit competitor pages.
Google has a free tool that allows you to diagnose the speed problems of websites.
The page loading speed is also an important point in the SEO ranking. If your website is fast, its visibility on search engines will be higher. This helps you gain a favored position to generate more traffic, convert visitors into leads, and, consequently, into customers.
Visitor Friendly Layout
It is called user-friendly. In addition to speed and navigation, the website layout also affects the conversion rate. At first glance, the website must be simple and intuitive. This offers a comfortable reading experience to the visitor, preventing exits from your page.
The main purpose of your brand page is to make the content as readable as possible. If your website is not readable enough, it will not trigger any action on the visitor. Digital users are always in a hurry, so they will hardly have much time to read a full article or the entire content of a page.
According to the UX Myths website, people don’t read content on websites, they just scan their eyes – that is, they can very quickly. Using this behavioral characteristic to your advantage is one of the main goals of web design and even digital marketing.
The F pattern is very common among the fastest readers. Typically, people read the first part of your content to get an idea of the main topic. Then, they look downwards and always oriented to the left side, to search for any point of interest.
This pattern can help you create a layout with a good visual hierarchy, resulting in content that is easily assimilated by visitors.
The key to capturing users’ immediate attention is to establish the purpose of the page very immediately in the first two paragraphs and to use powerful headers, which are extremely straightforward to the point.
Cover only one idea per paragraph and use dots
- ever
- what
- possible.
Make specific stops and break long stretches of text with images, in addition to the appropriate use of negative space.
Create a Strong and Clear Call to Action
Finally, an easily identifiable call to action button is required on all of your pages. This feature will encourage visitors to respond, which will take them further when visiting the website.
Your call to action (CTA) doesn’t always have to involve a purchase. You may have to anticipate your readers’ needs by recommending relevant content to them. Thus, the CTA of your website can invite the visitor to another blog post, related to the one just read, or to download files that can help solve problems.
Critical points that you should never forget at any time: are the location of the button and the color of it. Place it in a highly visible area of your layout. You can always follow the three-thirds rule to give more prominence to the elements of the page, such as the CTA button.
Above all, of course, it is essential to prioritize clarity in the ideas presented and ease of use when designing a website.
The landing pages should also make a simple relocation process from one page to another as to which purchase intent or visitor display is changing.
In this way, your website will always facilitate the progress of the potential customer, so that you can accompany them throughout each step taken on the website.
Never forget: designing a user-friendly website that offers a good browsing experience to the visitor will always generate more leads and convert customers. Expert word!
