All websites are created with a purpose in mind. It may be to attract purchases for products from your e-commerce store, to educate your audience on a topic and draw attention to a cause or to conduct brand engagement.
These goals are termed as “conversions” within web design, and you should always be mindful of them. This is especially so when you look to change or edit your website, as it is easy to forget about the goals of your website and instead get lost in all the details.
A question then arises: How can you gain the confidence of your customers so that they will convert on your website? This answer naturally varies depending on your goals, but there are standard practices that are employed by good websites. By actively including these practices and changing them for your needs, your website can become a powerful tool in your business.
Possibly the most critical aspect of a converting website is its content.
Content Practices
Content is king even within the world of websites. For those in sales, you would be familiar with the concept of selling your idea, product or service. It is not just about shouting out your brand name and the properties of your product, instead your audience requires much more convincing before they take action. This applies to content on your website; choosing the right content and structuring it is critical to communicating with your users.
To aid you with placing content on your website, we are opening our playbook and demonstrating the use of our 3 PEs:
- Problem – Educate
- Proof – Expertise
- Promise – Execution
Problem – Educate
Contrary to what many business owners seem to think, users do actively read content provided so long as it is educational and beneficial to them. An easy way to think about this is that a potential customer probably has a rough understanding of his or her needs. As such, the user would search for and enter your website. However, this does not mean that he or she fully comprehends the issue or cannot be given value through content.
Website owners should then always aim to provide some form of value add to audiences. In essence, you should always fully explain the following:
- The problem that your audience would have
- Issues with existing or other solutions on the market
- What solutions should they look for
- How your product or service provides these solutions
By fully explaining the problem and educating users on the solutions provided, you would be strongly engaging with them. Even in the event that the user does not immediately take action, they are likely to recall your website when their need is urgent.
Proof – Expertise
One of the toughest questions that you will have to answer is why should the user on your website trust what you say or offer. After all, they have never met you or tried your product. Therefore, the challenge of proving your expertise and the value of your product becomes critical. Fortunately, there are a number of different methods that can help you achieve this.
A classic medium for proving your trustworthiness involves listing your past clientele. Naturally in this case, you would do well to select the most well known or flashy of clients. The idea here is that people are attracted to familiarity, as such if they recognise a client’s logo, then they are more likely to view your brand positively.
Closely related to your list of clients would be testimonials provided by them. Testimonials add a human aspect to your website that can help connect with your audience. When realistic and detailed testimonials are given, they synergise well with the logical reasonings provided, thus making your offer all the more compelling.
Thirdly, case studies allow you to go in depth with your solutions. The central idea here is to be highly descriptive in order to provide possible commonalities with the user. When users spot problems or solutions that match their solution, they are likely to have greater confidence in your ability to satisfy their need.
Fourthly, if possible, you should create explainer videos in order to give a rich experience to users. Videos help users comprehend problems and solutions quickly without hassle and thus are favoured in user-centric websites.
Promise – Execution
Having fully explained a problem and demonstrated your expertise, it is now time to get the user over the final hurdle and convert. To do this, we recommend boiling down your unique selling point and all enticing offers into a simple promise to be made to the user. Ultimately, this is what your user will get out from immediately converting on the spot.
Another idea for you to experiment with is the creation of urgency in your offer. On many websites, you often see countdown timers for discounts and freebies in order to entice an immediate conversion. Alternatively, using a freemium model, you could attract the user to take action by giving a free or limited time model of your product. This is a tactic that allows you a foot in the door and a direct communication channel with the user from that point forward.
Over time, as you continuously edit and update your website, you will find an ever increasing amount of clutter appearing. This is something that you should be careful to guard against as it distracts users, frustrates them and reduces the effectiveness of your key messages. As a rule of thumb, you should constantly question yourself if the content that you are adding is beneficial in helping users make their purchase decision.
Over the many years of being in the web design industry, we have seen many websites that are sub-optimal for conversions. In large part, many of these websites started out as a clear and easy to understand value proposition to users. However, over time, they would become overly convoluted. It is at this time that you should actively look to remove unnecessary content and ensure that your key messages are clear to the user.
Choose Mediaplus Digital as your Web Design Partner
Mediaplus Digital is a web design Singapore agency with more than 10 years experience.
Our website design Singapore team provides mobile responsive websites that are both intuitive and attractive to users. As a premier web design agency, we pride ourselves on providing sound advice to clients and effective project management.
