Onsite conversion is something people don’t often talk about but take for granted when planning their business website design. Designing a website is more often than not, more about sleek, stylish design elements with a bit of functionality that allows customers and clients to perform the functions your site is meant to. But the real purpose of any website is conversion. Conversion means different things, of course, to different businesses. Perhaps your ultimate goal is to grow your blog’s readership. In that case, conversion for you would mean a sign-up to receive alerts about new content. In many cases, of course, conversion means a purchase (of products or services). And, of course, sometimes the ultimate goal of a website is to get your site visitors to reach out to your business directly via an online form or phone call to start a process beneficial to the acquisition of a new customer or the generation of new revenue. Whatever, your definition, however, the fact is every website is published to promote conversion of some kind.
The problem with website design is oftentimes businesses don’t consider what elements need to be in place to optimize the site for conversion. Here are several key elements of good conversion optimization you should consider when planning the design of your business’ website.
- Provide Easy, Organized Access to Information: People tend to have short attention spans online. When you visit a website to evaluate a business or brand, you want quick and easy organized access to the information you need to adequately do that. When you visit a site that doesn’t take that into consideration, it makes the experience frustrating and can likely lead to a quick and easy exit to visit a competitor site. Providing well laid-out menu trees and seamless access to key pieces of information one would likely need to make a decision on your brand, your services and rates and how you may compare to competitors is the best way to keep customers happy and get them on their path to convert quickly without frustration or confusion.
- Chat Functionality: Providing a chat option is a great way to optimize the site for conversion just because of the ease at which one might get any questions answered, particularly questions your content doesn’t immediately address. While email forms give some level of comfort, chat bots give the feeling of instant gratification. Even if it’s impractical to staff a chat tool consistently, giving the option to leave your questions via chat, and assuring an answer in a minimal amount of time seems to offer a more customer-friendly solution than a form that may take days to generate a response. Quicker service lends itself to conversion.
- Limited Menu Options and Dropdowns: Website menus packed with options may seem organized, but in reality, they’re anything but. The whole point of organization is to provide limited options for your users ordered a logical groupings that help people get to where they need to go quickly. Stuffing your menus with endless options will only add to the confusion. Keep your menu options tight (and that includes dropdowns) and opt instead to add quicklinks to the footer of your website and on menu pages for less popular pages for your website.
If you’re searching for a Chicago website design solution that can grow your brand through conversion optimization and brand-boosting website design, feel free to call Proctor Digital at 773.664.5819. We’d love to help!