Rethink your Website User Experience (UX) to Get More Clients

Rethink your Website User Experience (UX) to Get More Clients
On average, you have about 15 seconds to capture the attention of a new visitor on your website. It is therefore essential to create an optimal user experience (UX) if you want a website that converts. Website conversion can include prospects subscribing for a special offer, signing up for an email list, making a purchase or becoming a new client. 

 

Below are essential tips for making a great first impression on your website to build trust and increase your conversion rates and overall client base.

Simple Navigation
Have you ever been to the Cheesecake factory? Their menu is 21 pages long and has over 200 items! How easy do you think it is to make a decision with that many choices?  Offering too many options can paralyze your potential customers. Psychologist, Barry Schwartz, has coined this as choice paralysis. Indecision can lead to feeling stuck, stagnant, or frustrated and that is not the type of customer experience that converts to new business. Check out Barry Schwartz’s Ted talk around the paradox of choice. 

Customers are more likely to take action when they have less choices.
It’s important to decide on the most critical items for your navigation bar and avoid too many drop down options. The simpler, the better. What is the purpose of your website and what are visitors looking for? Highlight what is most relevant to the client’s needs in your navigation. 

Trust Building Visuals
With so much competition in today’s market, it’s critical to stand out. If your website isn’t visually appealing, you’ll instantly lose website visitors. Overused and generic stock images and videos will not cut it. Show your brand and your unique personality and positioning through original, high quality images and videos.  A study by High Rise, showed that adding a photo of a happy woman increased conversion rates by a whopping 102%. What emotions do you want your customers to feel? Let that be expressed through your images, video, and design. Can your customers relate to the images? Can they see themselves or what they want within the images? Remember to also ensure the images display properly across all user platforms including mobile use.  

Content Strategy
One strategy to attract prospects is using search engine optimization (SEO) which involves incorporating keywords and phrases into your content to improve your ranking on search engines. While this is a key strategy in driving traffic to your website, it is also important to ensure the content itself is of a high enough caliber to convert prospects into new customers.  The website content should be designed for the customer, by the customer. One important and easy way to ensure your content will convert clients is to start with gathering research and feedback around the client needs and user experience.

What are your client’s feelings, needs, struggles or barriers? Don’t just guess what they need. Instead, call clients and ask for feedback or send out a survey. Don’t skip this step as it’s important your client’s voice is reflected in your content. Next, let’s explore headlines. Since they are often what first catches a reader’s eye, they need to be engaging and speak to your audience. It’s worth your time investment to research, test, and craft appealing headlines (and content) that appeals to your audience.

There are also several headline analyzers out in the market that score the effectiveness of a headline as well like Sharethrough and CoSchedule. Another content strategy that is highly effective is storytelling. Think about how you can showcase your employees or customer stories in a way that would appeal to your wider audience. Perhaps an employee story can illustrate the evolution and growth of your business, or a customer story can show how your product or service solved a problem or changed their life in a positive way.  

Testimonials
Testimonials are an easy and effective way to build trust and credibility and should not be overlooked. In a survey conducted by Dimensional Research, 90% of customers reported that reading testimonials positively influenced their decision to make a purchase. Try getting video testimonials or add a photo of the customer providing the review to add even more validity. 

Call to Action
Lastly, do you have a call to action on each page of your website? Beyond simply adding a call to action button, and perhaps experimenting with the colors to draw attention, you’ll also want to think about the user experience. How much information must a customer gather before they are ready to take action? Make it easy for a client to learn more or make a purchase by incorporating a button, pop up or link into your content. 

Rethink your Website User Experience (UX) to Get More Clients
We hope this content was valuable. If you’d like additional support on getting more clients, please contact the Coastal Web team for a free website analysis.