This post originally appeared on Entrepreneur.com - #Growing Your Business
An attractive site is half the battle.
3 min read
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Wooing online shoppers can be tricky. While your website may look professional and include social proof and trust badges, you could be overlooking less obvious design elements that can affect conversions. But don’t worry; you don’t have to be a web designer yourself to understand and implement these four simple fixes.
1. Pick the right colors.
When choosing colors for your website, you shouldn’t simply pick your favorite. Instead, you need to consider the emotions each color will convey and if that emotion matches your brand. It’s commonly believed that certain colors affect the way we feel about a business, including whether we decide to make a purchase.
The color blue, for example, is thought to evoke feelings of trust, strength and dependability, which is why companies like Dell, Ford and American Express use it. On the other hand, companies like Lego, Nintendo and YouTube chose red because it tends to evoke excitement and youthfulness.
Related: Use These Web-Design Tricks to Grow Your Business
So consider what your website’s colors are conveying to your audience. Do you sell healthy lifestyle products? Then think about choosing green to evoke peacefulness and growth. And also bear in mind that using high-contrasting colors helps the most important elements, like call-to-action buttons, stand out.
2. Consider typography.
Just like colors stir specific emotions in people, so do fonts, so you need to choose typography for your website that represents your brand accurately. For instance, if your business makes hand-crafted furniture, you might consider choosing a font that tells your audience that reliability and comfort are important to you.
Additionally, creating enough spacing between lines of text will make your content easier for users to read. The magic line-height (the space above and below lines of text) is 150 percent of the font size you’re using.
3. Use negative space.
Negative space (or whitespace) refers to the space between all of the different elements of your website, such as that between header and content. Lots of negative space on your website is actually a good thing, allowing you to focus on the most important elements — like an eye-catching main image and call-to-action — and overall readability.
Related: 10 Tips for Web Design That Drive Sales
4. Choose an F-Pattern.
The F-Pattern refers to the way our eyes move when we read content online. People typically scan from left to right at the top of the screen, then their move eyes scan further down the page, scanning towards the right again, but less so than they did at the top of the screen. So, the area of the page that gets the least visibility is the bottom-right. This eye movement ultimately resembles an “F” or “E” shape. When implementing your F-Pattern, put your most important elements and calls-to-action in the areas that will get seen the most. For instance, if you put your call-to-action at the top left of your website page, it will stand out to your visitors and get more clicks.
When designing your company’s website, you can’t only think about what your business wants or needs. Rather, you need to think about what’s best for your visitors. Use these simple design tips to improve the way users consume the information they need most, and an increase in conversions is sure to follow.
