Most businesses today recognize the importance of having a great website, but not many know how to achieve the interactive design and great user experience that can increase customer engagement and result in more leads and sales. 

A poor website design will negatively impact your marketing ROI because what’s the point of getting more visitors to your website, if none of them buy your product or service? In other words, the more engaging your website is, the more visitors are converted into customers. 

It doesn’t matter whether you sell online products or provide any kind of service, improving your web design will definitely help you increase conversions. In this article, you will learn how to make your web design more appealing, and consequently boost your lead generation.

1. Keep it simple and use a ‘clean’ style 

Providing a simple, easy-to-use and clean style in your web design will contribute to making your visitors spend more time navigating. This is a key area that new web developers and people without experience can fail to do, because it’s incredibly easy to become overwhelmed by the amount of choices available. Some people just want to include it all, but you gotta be strategic.

Keep the font styles to a maximum of three throughout your website. This will help your visitors differentiate the key aspects of your content. An example can be a consistent style for your headings, one for your body content, and the third can be for highlighting important information on the webpage.

Don’t overload your web pages, leave enough white space, don’t insert unnecessary widgets, buttons or boxes, avoid broken links, especially to images and videos.

2. Choose your color palette

Choose your website’s colors wisely. You can use them to represent different elements on your website, including the background, the navigation menu, or even fonts used throughout the website. 

Your color palette gives your website and brand a consistent and storytelling picture to your customers. Think very well about what kind of story do you want them to see, is it fresh, young, luxurious, technological, charitable, etc…? Your colors will have a big impact on this matter.

Complementary colors help create a balanced and visually appealing website which increases user’s attention. Additionally, you should use contrasting colors for your text and background in order to make it easy for visitors to read the information clearly.

3. Well structured contact forms

A contact form is crucial for your website for many reasons, but mainly because it is your main tool to collect data directly from your visitors. With an adequate layout, easy to understand and custom fields well organized, you just need a CTA to make your visitors engage and decide to fill out your contact forms.

Don’t limit yourself to placing a “Contact us” page, place different kinds of Forms throughout your website, where visitors can leave contact information. However, make sure that you offer something valuable in exchange, since their personal information is also very valuable. Invite your visitors to subscribe, comment, answer polls, rate services, leave reviews, etc. by submitting well-designed forms, and you will have an amazing and well crafted database of leads to nurture, with the possibility of adding new information.

4. Mind your speed

Everyone hates a website that takes too long to load. Users just click the back button if a website takes more than 3 seconds to display in full. Contrary to what you would do in your car, you should take your website to the fastest speed possible by using visuals that aren’t big in size, compressed images, short or embedded video clips, few or zero widgets, avoid pop-ups, etc. 

You might be tempted to upload images that are the highest resolution and best quality possible, but these images can lead to longer loading times. Hence, it is better to reduce the file size of your images to improve your website speed. Add widgets and other features like live chats in a strategic manner, checking the location, relevancy and occupied area of such tools.

5. Optimize for mobile devices 

Pretty much everyone is using their smartphones to browse the internet. Therefore, not having an optimized website for mobile devices will negatively impact your lead generation and overall performance. 

If someone clicks on your website from their mobile device and they see the desktop version of it, be sure that no one, or very few visitors, will take the time to constantly zoom in and out and scroll through to find what they’re looking for. Most of them will just leave your website and probably check your competitor’s. If your competitor’s website is mobile-optimized, then your business will be in trouble.

6. A clear Call To Action

You need to choose one major call to action for your website. Of course, you should add several CTAs throughout your website, however there’s one that should be front and center and will be your main source of leads. Common CTAs include: subscribe now, request a free demo/consultation, talk to an expert now, have us call you, buy now, etc. You can get very creative here.

However, overloading your visitors with too many CTAs and buttons is not a good practice, and will result in less action being taken which directly impacts the lead generation process. You need to make it crisp and clear, telling exactly what service or product you are offering on the website with the help of a CTA that takes the user to your product, service or purchase confirmation page.

7. Include Social Proof 

Social proof involves showing your potential customers what other users, just like them, have to say about your business. They can also provide guidance and context for what they should expect from your product or service, the need that led them to get it, and how they rate your solution. 

You can do this by gathering and presenting testimonials, reviews, endorsements, case studies, and many more. This helps you show that your business is legit, that people can find a solution by doing business with you, that your business has experience, and it builds a community around your brand.

8. Include a video on your website

Text is important not only for visitors who prefer reading, but also for the search engines who process your content by evaluating relevant keywords. However, too much text is likely to hurt the user experience, which can reduce your lead generation. Long text is useful only for blog posts, articles and comprehensive pages.

A video is a good alternative to complement long texts or aspects that you want people to pay more attention to. Videos are beneficial for your website since they help you give a human face to your brand, building unprecedented levels of trust, but also convincing and converting undecided customers. Just keep in mind to adjust a video that doesn’t affect your website speed.

9. Make your product or service easy to understand

A new visitor may know nothing about your product or service, while some of them might be more or less familiar with it. In any case, you have to make sure that anyone can easily understand what you are offering. Your product or service pages should be concise, straight to the point, transparent and easy to understand. Avoid using industry-specific terms, but if they’re necessary, make sure you explain its meaning.

Additionally if you have a massive variety of products or services, categorize them and present relevant information about each category. Add filters and a search bar to make it easier for people to browse through your catalog, add a shopping car, a wish list, allow them to bookmark some as favorites, etc. All these options will help you increase your lead generation and, subsequently, your conversion rate.

Conclusion

As you can see, web design plays an important role to boost lead generation for your business. You need to keep it simple for everyone, use a consistent image with your brand and yourself, improve User Experience as much as you can, which includes making your website mobile-friendly.

Calls to action are also necessary, but you have to be measured with them. Include well-designed contact forms, which should consider your specific business needs and request only the strictly necessary information. Remember, forms are your number one lead generation tool.

Finally, use visuals strategically, divide your space on screen in order of priorities and make all your information easy to browse and understand. Apply all these tips and you will see your lead generation strategy boost. If you don’t, then probably your competitors are already testing it out.

About the author:
Bryan Osorio is a Blogger, SEO enthusiast, Content Marketer, and Digital Marketer with 3 years of experience within the Tech and Digital Marketing Industry. He likes to read, write and talk about Science, Technology, AI, Video Games, World News and more. He studied Psychology at the National University of Colombia and enjoys writing about leadership, remote work, team motivation and others.