subject: What Web Design Mistakes Are Hurting Your Conversion Rates? [print this page] Have you ever considered whether elements of your web design work is actually hurting the conversion rate of a website? Believe it or not, this is entirely possible and can lead to many visitors looking elsewhere for your products and services, meaning that you see a considerable drop in revenue. Often, this is due to a mistake or two in the design, and it is very easy to fix them up and start seeing a boost in your conversions once again. So, what are some of the most common of these mistakes?
Placing calls-to-action below the page fold
When visitors view your web design for the first time, theyll give it a very quick scan and judge whether it is worth their while or not and all this takes as little as 5 seconds. If your call-to-action is placed below the page fold (which is the name given to the area of the design that visitors can see without having to scroll), its likely that they wont even see it. Make sure that you place calls-to-action where they can be seen.
Underestimating distractions
Whilst your promotional banner or headlining images may look really cool, they could actually be distracting your visitors from the information that they need or you want them to be reading. Your website design needs to be structured in a way that improves eye flow and does not distract visitors from the most important information on the page. Try to avoid animated images or large photos that are quite busy.
Choosing to be cool over being usable
It is an occupational hazard of working in web design that you will want to be creative and innovative with your work. You must be careful, however, that you dont break usability standards in the creation of your cool designs, as this can lead to visitors becoming confused by the purpose of your website. When you come up with some great new way of doing something, have someone else test it before you decide to use it.
There are, of course, a number of other mistakes commonly made during the web design process that have a detrimental effect on your conversion rates; the three outlined above, however, tend to be the most common and the most damaging in terms of revenue. You should also be wary of using large blocks of text, variations that dont vary enough, and a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to your next designs to ensure that your conversions are right up there.
