Website Design Principles That Can Increase Your Sales Conversions

Did you know that there are four web design principles that can change the way your visitors view your website? By making sure that your website adheres to these four “golden” principles, you’ll feel like you have the Midas Touch when it comes to your sales conversion rates.

You’ve been trying to increase your conversion rates, haven’t you?

As an eCommerce entrepreneur, you live and die by how much you sell. And if your conversion rate is low, it’s a lot harder to stay “in the game” when you’ve not broken into the black.

However, we have good news for you. You can learn to create pages that convert! If you will learn to use the four design principles we alluded to just a moment ago, you’ll see that your users will become more engaged and will want to use and/or trust your services and products – which means more sales!

That’s what you want, right?

Then keep reading because these four principles are going to change the way you design your website and/or eCommerce stores forever.

Principle # 1: Design For The Audience

As a freelance designer, it’s easy to get caught up in the design aspect. The desire to impress the client drives the design and/or layout when it should be geared towards the audience.

The client is not going to be buying their own products. Instead, the visitors will be the ones who will be buying the products of your client. Therefore, focus on catching the eye of the buyer, not the client (they are different).

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, what is the audience looking for? If you’ve done your research, then you already know a great deal about the company and what they have to offer. Now you have to figure out the best way to get the visitors engaged.

• Will a call-to-action work best?
• Will an opt-in form work best?
• Will an introductory video work best?
• Will listing all the prices work best?

This is where you can show value to your client. Your job as a freelance designer is to make sure that your client understands what you are doing, and how our design is built for their audience, and not for them directly.

Let’s look at the Oberlo website. Oberlo is an eCommerce solution that helps dropshipping businesses get up and running fast. Look at the screenshot below … what do you see?

Example of an Audience Targeted User Interface from Oberlo

They quickly explain who they are and what they offer, they ask for the sale immediately, and all of the relevant information is above the fold.

For them, the call-to-action is one of the most important parts of their messages, but they make sure that the visitor understands what they do and that there isn’t any risk in trying them out.

If you also look at the page on their dropshipping guide and resources, you will see a minimalist, clean and catchy layout that directly shows what they want their visitors to access.

As you scroll down, you’ll find other sections are neatly and similarly laid out so they’re easy on the eyes and visitors will find finding resources on their site a pleasant experience. You can also use wireframe tools online.

Now, is your website this clean, simple, and direct?

Principle # 2: Design For An Audience On The Move

Next, you need to make sure that your website is optimized for mobile users. A study recently revealed that 57% of users wouldn’t recommend a website to their friends that wasn’t mobile optimized.

That’s a lot of visitors that you could be missing!

While most websites are built mobile-ready, they aren’t optimized for the mobile platform. Data shows that most mobile websites can take up to 20 seconds to load completely. That is ridiculous!

If you aren’t sure how long your website takes to load up, you can go to GTMetrix and type in your URL. Their online tool will tell you how long your website takes to load, what is slowing it down, and even offer suggestions to improve your WordPress or website’s speed performance. help speed up your loading time.

Remember, if your website isn’t mobile ready, you could be losing the audience that is on the move. Are you designing for right now or for the future – mobile use is not expected to decrease in the coming years.

Principle # 3: Create Content The Audience Can Trust And Share

Again, focusing on the client versus the audience, you cannot create content that is tailored to your client. Your job is to create conversions, which means you may have to talk with your client to help them understand this … don’t be afraid to object to their requests.

Freelancers have heard this over and over … content is KING, and it’s absolutely true. The best content gets the most attention and the most shares. Content that is shared is read by many people, even people who weren’t initially interested in whatever was being advertised (indirect marketing).

But you have to create content that the audience can trust and will share. This will take more time and effort but can pay off greatly. The audience already knows what the “generic fluff” is and they’ll quickly identify if you are providing actual value or just more “fluff”.

You do not want to give them “fluff”, you want to give them value. Create your buyers’ personas by doing the following: research the niche, understand the market, find out what other websites and businesses aren’t answering, and provide valuable content to the audience.

Principle # 4: Don’t Be Late To The Party

And finally, don’t have a slow website!

If your website design takes a long time to load, there’s a good chance that the audience will bounce well before they’ve had time to see the call-to-action or engage with the website.

As we said before, you can use the GTMetrix tool mentioned earlier to see how slow/fast your website is loading. The higher your score/lower your loading speed, the better off you’ll be. Here’s an example of eBay’s website audit using the GTMetrix tool.

As you can see, they have some work they could do. But here’s the kicker …

The reason that they can afford to have slower loading speeds is that they’ve developed a following of people that trust them – they followed the principles listed above to create value and value convinces audiences to trust, use, and recommend to others.

Now It’s Your Turn

You have the knowledge to create websites that do much more than impress your client, now you can impress the audience which will create websites that will convert. A website that converts will always be more impressive than a website that makes your client smile.

Using these four “golden” design principles, you’ll be able to create a user experience that will give the audience value, help them to trust you, and ultimately make them want to use you or purchase from you.

If your conversion rates have been low, it’s time to see if you’re following the four “golden” design principles. If not, it’s time to make a few changes.