Optimizing dental websites is vital for boosting online visibility and patient engagement. Employing strategic SEO practices, such as using patient-centered content and building high-quality backlinks, can substantially enhance organic reach. Regular technical audits optimize site performance, while implementing HTTPS guarantees data security and improves search rankings. Mobile responsiveness and simplified navigation enhance the user experience, making it easier for patients to access information. Local SEO fine-tunes these efforts by incorporating location-specific keywords and fostering community trust through accurate directory listings and positive reviews. By focusing on these best practices, you can effectively elevate your dental practice’s digital presence.
Optimizing a dental practice’s online presence through dental SEO is paramount in today’s digital landscape. As the dental industry navigates a competitive marketing environment, leveraging emerging technological trends becomes essential to maintain an edge. Dental SEO strategies are no longer optional but a necessity to guarantee practices remain visible and enticing to prospective patients.
A patient-centered content focus is crucial in crafting an online presence that resonates with current and potential patients. By emphasizing relevant and informative content, dental practices can address patient concerns and build trust. This approach not only attracts new patients but also fosters loyalty among existing ones.
Moreover, implementing cost-effective marketing strategies through dental SEO enables practices to maximize their reach without exorbitant advertising expenditures. This is achieved by optimizing website content and local listings to enhance organic search visibility, attracting more patients at a lower cost.
Reputation management considerations are also integral to dental SEO. Positive online reviews and a strong digital footprint contribute to a practice’s credibility and attractiveness. By managing and responding to patient feedback effectively, practices can enhance their reputation and appeal in the digital sphere, ultimately driving patient growth and retention.
An array of key optimization techniques can markedly enhance a dental practice’s online presence, making it more discoverable to potential patients. Firstly, ensuring mobile responsiveness is indispensable. With an increasing number of users accessing websites via mobile devices, a responsive design ensures that a dental practice’s website is easily navigable and visually appealing on any screen size.
Secondly, implementing robust security protocols, such as HTTPS, not only protects patient data but also boosts search engine rankings, as security is a ranking factor.
Technical audits are another essential component, as they help identify and rectify issues that may hinder a site’s performance. Regular audits ensure ideal website functionality, speed, and search engine compliance.
Consider the following techniques to enhance your dental website:
Enhancing user experience on a dental practice’s website is essential for converting visitors into loyal patients. A mobile friendly design guarantees that users accessing the site from various devices encounter seamless functionality and aesthetics. Prioritizing navigation simplicity allows visitors to find information quickly and effortlessly, reducing bounce rates and boosting user satisfaction.
Visual hierarchy plays a pivotal role in guiding users’ attention to important elements, such as appointment scheduling and contact information, thereby streamlining the conversion process. Content readability is paramount; using clear, concise language and well-structured content helps users absorb information easily, fostering trust and engagement.
Engaging visuals, such as high-quality images and informative graphics, capture attention and effectively communicate the practice’s values and expertise. These elements together create an extensive user experience that can drastically impact patient acquisition.
For dental practices looking to enhance their online presence, considering professional dental web design services can ensure a user-friendly and visually appealing website that aligns with modern design standards and SEO best practices.
| Key Element | Benefit |
| Mobile Friendly Design | Seamless access across devices |
| Navigation Simplicity | Quick information retrieval |
| Visual Hierarchy | Focus on key conversion elements |
| Content Readability | Easy understanding and engagement |
| Engaging Visuals | Enhanced communication and appeal |
In the competitive landscape of dental services, local SEO strategies are vital for practices aiming to enhance their visibility within specific geographic areas. Effective local SEO not only involves optimizing a practice’s website but also ensuring that the practice is prominently featured across various online platforms.
Directory Listings: Ensure that your dental practice is accurately listed on major directories like Google Business Profile, Yelp, and local dental directories. Consistency in NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) details across all listings is essential for search engines to validate your practice’s presence and location.
Online Reviews: Encourage satisfied patients to leave positive online reviews. These reviews not only influence potential patients but also enhance your practice’s credibility and visibility in local search results. Responding to reviews, whether positive or negative, demonstrates engagement and customer care.
Local Content and Keyword Localization: Develop content that resonates with the local audience by incorporating location-specific keywords. This could include blog posts about local dental health concerns or events. Additionally, building robust backlink profiles from reputable local websites can greatly boost your practice’s authority and search engine rankings.
For specialized dental practices, such as orthodontists, implementing targeted SEO strategies for orthodontists can help attract patients specifically seeking orthodontic treatments in your local area.
While local SEO strategies are instrumental in establishing a dental practice’s presence within its community, evaluating the effectiveness of these efforts is equally important to guarantee sustained growth. Measuring SEO success involves a thorough analysis of website performance indicators, which include organic traffic increases, bounce rates, and session durations. These metrics provide insights into how well a website engages visitors and retains their attention.
Conversion rate optimization is another vital aspect, as it directly links SEO efforts to tangible business outcomes. By analyzing the ratio of visitors who become patients, dental practices can fine-tune their strategies for improved patient acquisition. Link optimization strategies play a pivotal role as well, with the quality and relevance of backlinks significantly impacting search engine rankings and authority.
On page optimization metrics, such as keyword usage and content structure, should be regularly assessed to ensure alignment with current search engine algorithms. Additionally, competitor analysis insights offer valuable benchmarks, enabling practices to understand their position in the local market and identify areas for improvement.
Utilizing tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console can provide valuable data on website performance and search visibility. For practices seeking expert guidance, partnering with a specialized dental SEO company can offer in-depth analysis and strategic recommendations tailored to the unique needs of dental practices.
By systematically measuring these components, dental practices can adapt and refine their SEO strategies to maintain a competitive edge and foster continuous growth.
As the digital landscape evolves, staying ahead of emerging trends in dental SEO is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge. Here are some key trends to watch:
For dental practices looking to stay at the forefront of these trends, partnering with a specialized dental marketing agency can provide valuable insights and implementation strategies.
A dental website should undergo a website content overhaul and search engine optimization every 6-12 months. This includes evaluating responsive web design, hosting provider selection, and updating the content management system to maintain ideal performance and visibility. Regular blog updates and minor content refreshes should occur more frequently, ideally on a monthly basis.
Common technical issues impacting dental website optimization include sluggish mobile site performance, poor website loading speed, ineffective search engine optimization tactics, inconsistent content marketing strategy, and flawed user experience design, all detracting from engaging and retaining potential patients. Regular web development for dentists can help address these issues proactively.
Dental practices can protect patient data by implementing data encryption strategies, adhering to HIPAA compliance requirements, establishing patient consent policies, conducting regular website security audits, and utilizing secure cloud storage protocols to guarantee robust online data protection. It’s crucial to work with web developers who understand the unique security needs of dental practices.
Social media enhances dental website optimization by implementing a social media content strategy, boosting user engagement metrics, integrating dental reviews, and supporting search engine optimization through targeted ad campaigns, effectively increasing visibility and attracting potential patients. Social media platforms can also drive traffic to your website and improve overall online presence.
Achieving website accessibility in dental websites—akin to opening doors for all—entails adhering to compliance standards, enhancing user experience through screen readers, and ensuring mobile optimization. These elements are vital for inclusivity and effective engagement in digital spaces. Implementing features like alt text for images, keyboard navigation, and proper color contrast can significantly improve accessibility.For more in-depth information on dental SEO and marketing strategies, be sure to check out the Dental Marketing Guy blog. If you have specific questions or need personalized advice, don’t hesitate to contact a dental marketing expert for guidance tailored to your practice’s unique needs.
Whether you are selling services or products (physical or digital) your goal is to convert visitors into paying customers. You’ve heard many times that content is king, and while that is true, great content isn’t enough. You can write valuable information but it matters a lot how you deliver it.
The design of a website is the first thing that the visitors see before starting to read a single word. If they don’t like how it looks then they won’t stick around to evaluate the content.
For this article, we wanted to find out more opinions so we reached out to 80 web designers and internet marketers and asked them the following question:
Keep reading to find out what they had to say.
Spotlight Your Unique Selling Point
Your site visitors must immediately understand what you’re all about, and what sets you apart from your competitors. If you communicate your unique selling point well, you’d be conveying the value of your company and showing customers that you’re aware of their pain points. Both of these are good for increasing conversions.
Save the Best Designs for the Crucial Pages
Whether it’s that extra spark of color, motion effects, animation or a mouse scrolling effect, make sure you save the best for the most important pages. Pages conveying your unique selling point or your services should be the most eye-catching.
Top-Notch Copywriting Matters
Not everyone will read every word of your site, it’s true. However, it’s important to think about the approximate 10% of prospects who comb through every inch of your site.
Invest in good copywriting for all areas of your site. Use catchy words, power words or buzzwords to capture and hold attention. Write with a sense of humor to help humanize your brand.
Include Testimonials
I insist on testimonials appearing before the sign-up form. Testimonials give your potential customers a vote of confidence, and speak to the authenticity of your skills and ability to deliver.
Improve Your Page Load Speed
Your good content and excellent designs will go to waste if your page load speed is not up to the viewers’ expectations. Slow sites will have high bounce rates, and that can negatively affect your conversions.
Make sure to optimize your images and keep the number of installed plugins to a minimum.
At LAD Solutions, we’ve designed and developed many websites across various industries, and all have the below design tips implemented in them to help with conversions.
1) Choose the right colors and make sure your color palette matches your logo colors. Also, make sure that the color you use for your CTA buttons is eye-catching and contrasts with your main colors.
Green is generally a good color for CTA buttons since it reminds people of either money or “go” signals. Similarly, we recommend avoiding “red” since that reminds people of “stop”.
2) Add CTAs like phone numbers or buttons on the top right section of your header. Studies have shown that the eyes start at the top left corner, and end on the top right corner after reading in a straight line so having those CTAs there will help increase the chance of someone calling you or filling out a form.
3) Make sure your website has a good user experience and is designed to be responsive on mobile phones or tablets. CTAs should be easily visible on phones so that the user can take immediate action if he or she desires.
4) If adding a banner image above the fold, make sure the image is high quality, engaging and has a CTA button on it. Avoid sliders if possible as many tests have shown that websites with static images convert better than ones that have sliders.
5) Make your menu navigation simple and easy. We recommend creating a user-friendly sitemap layout of your site first and then matching your menu to it. It is best to limit the number of menu items to between five to seven.
6) Improve your website loading speed and make sure things above the fold load first and fast. Studies have consistently shown that websites with fast page speeds have a much higher conversion rate than those that do not.
If you want to turn your website visitors into leads, make it easy for them to find what they need, understand what you want them to do, and then do it. The key areas to focus on are layout, navigation, and content.
The layout should be simple with minimal widgets, pop-ups, or unnecessary movement. Remove anything that distracts your visitor from finding what they need.
Minimize the number of calls to action. The more choices, the more likely your visitor won’t take any action.
Navigation should be intuitive and help guide your visitor towards what you want them to do. Menus should be easy to find. Make navigation sticky so visitors don’t need to keep scrolling to the top.
The content layout needs white space to make it easier to read. Add space around images and graphical elements. Shorten your paragraphs, use simpler words and take advantage of bulleted lists when possible.
Finally, test your website design and layout for mobile users. Make sure your website is responsive and the layout collapses properly on a mobile device. Include easy-to-click call-to-action buttons and simple forms.
Just like with any business, it is important to make it as easy as possible to convert. Meet them with content that best answers their questions or gets them over the hurdles they may have to come to visit.
Some people know exactly what service they need while others just know what their problem is. You should have content addressing each of these types of issues or questions.
Whether it is cost, payment process, or even the reason why they should come to you over a local competitor. That information should all be there for them and be easy to find. You should have content addressing each of these types of issues or questions.
Provide options for schedules that fit their different personalities. Some people are phone call people while others like to do to it all online.
Give them those choices and provide as little friction as possible to get them into your office. Some people know exactly what service they need while others just know what their problem is.
When it comes to designing websites with conversion optimization in mind, we stick to several key principles:
1. Calls to action above the fold
2. Show, don’t tell–especially above the fold
3. Make sure the site is stupid simple on mobile devices
Failing to adhere to these simple rules will most assuredly tank your on-page conversions.
Follow the habits of the users. I’m all for new ideas in web design, but visitors have common habits.
For example, they know contact links are often in the footer. They know a shopping cart is usually in the top right.
When you alter things to be uncommon, you will get people who have no patience for the change. A competitor who has a better, common usability is only a click away and ready to steal your business.
Ongoing CRO (conversion rate optimization) campaigns are not nearly as popular as they should be.
CRO helps your revenue, your brand stickiness, and even your SEO (so much so that we force it into all our SEO deals as a default function of the service).
Don’t design a website based on hunches. Design it with data from your users.
When we get a design project, we’re always looking at how to do things better. If we have the freedom, we’ll use WordPress; otherwise, it’s whatever platform the client wants to be on. We look at the right coloring; what colors give the user warm fuzzies, and which push them away? We want to know that.
Does the F pattern work in the white space? From the top of the page down, is it easy for the user’s eye to track down the page? Is the important information showing in the top 1/3 of the page?
Is the navigation understandable and does it make sense? Navigation is a huge plus; it has to make sense to the visitor or it’s not much use.
Last, but certainly not least, how do those golden CTAs look? What about placement? Are they hidden? Do they draw the eye? Is the expected action clear?
I’m sure I’ve forgotten several things here – designing sites isn’t for the faint of heart – but for me, those are the top areas to look at.
When people are presented with too many options, they can become overwhelmed and not be able to make a choice.
A good conversion strategy is to limit the number of available options to two or three. That way the user can easily compare each offer to each other without getting confused.
When designing for this type of conversion strategy, it’s best to use a table format with columns for each choice and rows that display the various benefits included in each option for making easier comparisons.
The color of your call-to-action (CTA) buttons are also important for conversions. You want them to stand out on the page and not blend in.
My recommendation is to always use a contrasting color for the CTA buttons to the user cannot miss them. For example, if your website design includes a lot of blue on the page, then an orange CTA button would be a good contrasting color choice that stands out to the user.
Stock photos with people always look fake. And anyone can buy and use them on a site.
Consumers are smart and tend to ignore stock imagery because they know those pictures are not authentic to the website.
You can increase conversions by using real photos with real people that don’t look staged or altered with Photoshop. The more real the image looks, the more your visitors will trust its authenticity.
It’s kind of like on social media. You know when a post with an image is an ad because it looks too perfect to be real and you scroll past it.
But if the post includes an image that looks like it was taken on a phone, then you immediately become more interested and willing to stop your scrolling to look at it.
The more fields you have on a submission form, the fewer people will fill it out.
To boost your form conversions, only include what’s absolutely necessary to start the lead genre process. Ask yourself, “Can we get by with just a first name and email address and ask for other details on the phone?” If so, limit your form to those two fields to get more submissions.
Pop-up forms that take up the entire web page are intrusive and don’t give the user the ability to opt-in at a later time. If the person clicks out of the pop-up, they can’t revisit the form.
Therefore, it’s better to use a slide-in form that only takes up a small portion of the viewable screen. Slide-in forms make their presence known while also letting the visitor read the contrasting on the page.
And if that person does want to opt into your offer during their session, they can easily still do that through the slide-in form that’s still available.
One of the things I focus on to increase conversions on websites I develop is what I like to call “reducing friction.” And by reducing friction I mean, make it easier for your audience to perform your desired action.
Therefore on sites I develop, I will be sure that there is always a click to call button shown on mobile phones as a call lead is so valuable to businesses.
And on desktops, I will always ensure that visitors do not have to take multiple steps to fill out a form to get in touch. They click a button to “get started” and a pop up is instantaneously available with a form to fill out.
By making it easier for your website visitors to contact you, then they are more likely to do so.
Stop new visitors leaving your website without connecting with your business by adding a relevant and clear call to action to each web page, whether it’s inviting people to sign up for a free newsletter, book a demo or buy something.
The design and placement of call to action buttons directly impact conversions. Use a contrasting colour so the button stands out and think about how design elements such as arrows or empty space around the call to action can help to draw attention.
Let people know what they stand to gain when they click on a call to action button. For example, instead of “Order information”, try “Get information”. The first is something they have to do, the second is something they’ll receive.
Test different versions to see which attract the best conversion rates. Change one element at a time – e.g. colour, position, size, wording – to pinpoint what works.
My top tip to increase website conversions— get rid of the paragraphs of text and testimonials. Replace them with stories of patients on vertical video.
Nothing convinces patients more than seeing and hearing other patients just like them. Instead of a testimonial, which is clearly a one-sided self-promotional view of the company, flip the angle to feature THEM.
Talk about more than their teeth, gum health, your equipment, and your staff. Instead, talk a little their dreams, favorite coffee shop in town, their interests, and their family.
There are a ton of dentists within a 10 minute drive. Same for real estate agents, mortgage brokers, lawyers, and other service providers.
Repurpose this content to your social media channels and turn the stories into blog posts.
This is how you stand out.
The things I keep in mind related to website design in order to increase conversions are the following:
1) Use the best colors for the industry. Most of my work is in the senior care industry. Therefore, I always suggest to my clients to use colors like blue and orange. This avoids brilliant colors that can be too vibrant.
2) Optimize the website for mobile. I like to work with websites that have good speed. Also, that they are responsive with simple forms, and call-to-action buttons that are visible and easy to understand.
3)Use enough white space: A website clutter is confusing and won’t convert. It will have even more issues in mobile. Therefore, white space is key in the design.
4) Place Your Website’s Elements following the F Pattern. Users look at a website in an F pattern. The top left corner of a web page is where users start to look.
Therefore, I make sure the design offers relevant information at the beginning of the top left corner and continue to the middle part that forms the letter F pattern.
5) Finally, a tip that always works is to keep simple navigation. This will keep things easy to find. It also allows you to make them do what you want with very little effort. Remove the confusion from your website if you want to increase conversions.
When people land on your website, it should be immediately clear what you do and who you serve. As a dentist, you may think this is fairly obvious. You provide dental services. But that’s too general. And it’s a sign you don’t have a clear brand, which is slowing your business growth.
Take the time to think about what differentiates you from other dental practices in your area. Maybe you work primarily with children. Perhaps you have a relaxing atmosphere. Or you could offer specific expertise others lack, such as having an oral surgeon on staff. What sets you apart?
This is what you need to communicate at the very top of your home page. Be concise. Get it down to 8 words or less. Then support that text with a large image that also communicates this message.
And finally, include a direct call to action to book an appointment. When built correctly, this will be the most powerful section of your site.
There are many design factors that play into increasing website conversions but the most important is an obvious, purposeful CTA (call to action).
Yes, color, spacing, copy, images are all important for conversions but the one item that can immediately ruin your conversion rate if you do it wrong is the CTA. Every page on your website should have a strong, consistent CTA.
At The HOTH, we spend a lot of time thinking through our customer journey to determine what next step we should push them to in the CTA.
The key is to not overwhelm the user with options. You need one, clear, distinct big bright button on your page that makes the user think “This is obviously what I have to do!”
For example, on lead generation landing pages, the only CTA is to download our guide so we can collect their email. If it’s a webpage for someone whos already given us their email, the CTA could be Create Your HOTH Account Now.
If it’s a landing page for someone who already created a HOTH account, the CTA could be Schedule A Strategy Session With Us Now.
The goal is to always be moving your lead up the ascension ladder until they purchase. And the best way to do that is with an obvious and purposeful CTA.
There are a few super simple things you can do to boost your website’s conversion rate.
Firstly, make your CTA (call to action) clear. Ideally, use a button that stands out and pulls people towards it. Try to use a single word or at most two for the text. E.g. “Learn more”, “I’m in”, “Let’s go”, “Buy now”.
The simpler and more obvious your CTA is, the more likely your prospect is to take action.
Second, test everything. I know this sounds like cheap advice you’d read on any other blog, but it’s true. Aim to test one item each month. With CTAs, for example, you could try different copy, text colours, fonts, font sizes, and even the location of the CTA.
Third, use a heat map tool to see where your potential customer gets stuck or gives up. These tools are a superb way to understand how your visitors use your website, allowing you to gather data and informing the A/B tests you could run.
Fourth, talk to your customers. The more you can do to get in the mind of your customer, the better. You can use the information you gather to inform how you design your website, offers, and CTA.
The best design tips for increasing website visitors’ relies on the UX design which is also known as UX design.
UX design is one of the most important rely on to determine your website brand and trust to your visitors.
Also, there is something that is called load time.
If you have a huge graphic that is not optimized for the web your visitor will leave your website and go elsewhere. You can have the best website but if it doesn’t load fast enough it doesn’t matter.
Make sure all your images are optimized correctly for the website which is 72 dpi, RGB color, and jpg or png format.
Now there are several others that help as well like colors, optimize for a mobile or responsive website that adapts to a visitor’s device like desktop, cell phone, and tablet.
User navigation is a good one too if your visitor can’t find where to go or what they want they will leave.
Minimal design, more white space, 1-2 colors as a color palette is preferred this makes you look professional.
By using these simple techniques your visitors will stick around for a better experience and higher conversion.
One of the best ways to increase website conversions is by using live chat or a chatbot. Live chat can be operated by your internal team or a third party, while a chatbot can be built and optimised over time.
Again and again I’ve seen this strategy work tremendously well with service based businesses (like dentists!) all the way through to eCommerce based businesses.
Think of live chat as a concierge service where your job is to steer possible customers in the right direction through solutions based selling, and aim implement that same philosophy into a chatbot.
Focus on how logical copy and design work together.
Labels and microscopy (those little bits of text surrounding different design and action elements) can help a reader greatly in understanding what they’re reading about, where they can and should do with a certain user interface, be it a website, app, or other forms of UI.
Not to mention button copy for conversion flows. You want the reader to know what will happen after they click on a button. If I click a button that says “Book” I want to know if I’ll get charged immediately.
If you show me prices, then maybe changing the button copy to “Check prices and availability” is much less committing and people will click on it more.
So, what does this mean?
In our experience at Briefer Copy, we realized that having a clear idea, conceptualization of goals, and planning of user flow, helps us grasp how SEO, content, and copywriting messages should come together on a certain page, or entire interface (website, app, etc), thus laying the grounds for designers to build their part of the product.
To increase website conversions, I recommend using both text-based and image-based call-to-actions (CTAs) sporadically throughout content such as pillar pages and blogs that are designed to convert.
These CTAs should ideally be the opposite color of your website theme (based on the color wheel). Ie, if your theme is blue, your CTA should be orange to make it stand out from the rest of the content on the page.
I also recommend bespoke related links to relevant information and a CTA image in the right-hand side margin on blog posts.
Internal linking is another important method to guide users around the site and lead them towards the desired goal.
Finally, and these can be controversial, but in many cases, on-exit popups work well to increase the conversion rate. This is especially true for the goal of getting users to subscribe to a newsletter.
Of course, all conversion rate optimization needs to be split tested. What works for one site may not work for another!
My design tips for clients looking to increase website conversions are informed by two different techniques. The first is to go back to the start and take a really deep dive into your target audience.
Who is your most likely consumer – who is your ideal consumer? What is the ‘pain point’ they are looking to solve when they come to your website?
For example, their pain point may be that they need to buy a new swimsuit, but they’re a normal-sized woman, not a tiny model, and most online swimwear retailers focus on perfect figures and skimpy designs.
How does YOUR brand and online store firstly understand, and secondly solve this pain point better than any of your competitors, and how can you convince them that you do?
What do they love and what are they drawn to outside of your own category? What are their priorities?
You need to completely inhabit the mindset of the people who will be visiting your site, to really understand what they want, then weave this throughout the design and 9critically) the copy.
The second tip is to go through your website ‘blind’ – by this I mean, imagine you’ve never visited it before, and land on the homepage. Begin there. Do you know where to go from a cold landing like this? Does the website draw you in?
Do you feel there’s a logical path, are recommendations and other automated features ‘on the money’ or not? Which hurdles are in your way from landing on the homepage to checking out?
Typical hurdles include navigation issues, illogical groupings of products, illogical recommendations, pricing too high, shipping price too high or complicated, checkout process too long, website overall messy and cluttered, poor photography (or insufficient photography), too many pop-ups and non-brand widgets, a design which doesn’t appeal to your target audience in terms of age, gender, likes and dislikes, etc.
Remove every barrier you can find, make your website flow and ensure it presents your brand in the best light, solving your customers’ problems neatly, easily, and attractively.
This is the essence of increasing website conversions from a design perspective.
Every visitor on your site operates from one of two systems of thinking that influence decisions. System 1 operates quickly and without much conscious thought or control, system 2 involves deliberate, mental activity to reach a decision.
I always prefer designs that cater to both systems: stripped of all distractions with just one clear CTA, that will keep the mental effort to a minimum (system 2), with subtle visual cues to point towards the one thing you want your visitor to do (system 1).
It’s a straightforward and perhaps obvious principle, but I see a lot of sites still overwhelm their audience with choices, without guidance to conversion.
To increase conversions I recommend applying the next tips.
Websites must be optimized for voice search
Voice user interface allows users to interact with websites through voice commands so it adds usability and functionality to your site making it more accessible to all users
Content quality and length matter for rankings
Web pages that contain long high-quality content get more visibility and shares so becoming that trusted source and influencer with timely and helpful answers to questions get rewarded quickly
Mobile UX determines your ranking
In a mobile-first world, you have less time to grab people, attention spans are shorter than ever so video will be used even more to boost rankings.
The world is moving to mobile-first or mobile-only, with fewer people accessing the web on big screens so everyone is tailoring their site, message and content accordingly.
Better use of bold colors and white space to stand out from the competition.
The trend toward simplicity and minimalist design means less is more in the new year as the world becomes crazier and technology gets smaller, faster and more complicated, people are finding new ways to simplify their lives more than ever.
With every website that we take on – whether it’s a new business or a website redesign – we always focus on 4 major things to increase website conversion.
1: Call to Action above the fold
2: Phone Number on the sticky header
3: Simple layout
4: Mimic your GMB’s hierarchy (if applicable).
Having a call to action above the fold is important and it’ll let visitors take action right away. Whether that CTA is calling a phone number or filling out an online form to generate a lead.
On website redesigns, we often see absolutely no call to action anywhere on the site over and over again; which leads us to believe most businesses or web design companies understand the value and importance of conversions.
Along with having a CTA above the fold, having a phone number in the sticky header is an easy win (make sure you track it in Analytics) that allows someone to connect with that business at any time during their site visit.
Having a sticky header allows that part of the site to always be visible no matter what page you are on, or how far you’ve scrolled down.
With everything, keep it simple. We don’t like to complicate or create designs that make it difficult for visitors to navigate through. At the end of the day, make sure you design with your audience in mind.
Bonus points: If you are a local business owner or have a Google My Business setup, then make sure to keep the hierarchy of your GMB copied over to your website.
Almost every business owner that we speak with doesn’t understand the importance of GMB. Google actually prefers their own properties to help with a ranking over any 3rd party site (yes, our own websites).
When you incorporate things such as driving directions, site hierarchy, service pages, and other relevant information that you can grab from your Google My Business profile… you’ll see some magic happen.
I usually follow a certain number of rules when it comes to design and increasing website conversions.
That’s it.
Website design is important to increase website conversion. Here are 3 things to consider
1. CTA’s that POP:
It is important that along with strong “call to action” text, your buttons are a distinct colour that stands out from the rest of the site. Your visitors need to know where to click and why.
2. Just Be Real (Images):
Your images should be of your actual business or product. The main image should show your product or service used with success. This way site visitors can easily relate to the success and say “I want that!”.
3. Design & UX:
Based on research websites are scrolled and viewed a certain way. These frequently or first viewed areas need to be taken advantage of. Call to Action buttons should be placed in the top right corner of the site as well as prominently throughout the home page.
Professional design is important to improve the trust of your business and increase conversions.
To optimize for conversions you’ll need to consider these tips:
Design is one of those things that can make or break the success of your website. Good design will draw more traffic and good conversions. Bad design can have the opposite effect.
Crowded and messy web pages are one of my pet peeves. Without a doubt, a poorly designed webpage will directly affect your conversions.
Although I am not technically a web designer, I am an eCommerce expert and digital marketeer and I have built many websites for both my own businesses, affiliate sites, and friends’ businesses websites.
I have a non-negotiable rule for web design, which says that user-centric design is the cornerstone of the website.
The attention span of the average online user is around 8 seconds. Therefore the site must be easy to use, easy to navigate, easy to read, and it must be easy to buy your product or service!
It should be abundantly clear what the user is supposed to do once they arrive on your site. If it is not, there is a high probability of you losing the customer.
Whitespace and the size of your fonts are important. Don’t use single line spacing, it is better to use 1,5, or even 2. If you have an older audience, possibly bigger.
I prefer 1,5 line spacing and 14 or 16 sized fonts. But it really depends on the site and who it is for. But I will not go below font size 14.
When it comes to conversion, in particular, your CTA’s needs to be on point. One mistake I see many sites make is using different fonts, colors, and buttons on their CTA’s.
Your CTA’s needs to be in a contrasting color to your main color. Use a color wheel to find out which color is the contrasting one. If your primary color is green, your contrasting color would be red.
You can deviate slightly from using the exact opposite color in the color wheel, but the central point here is that the CTA is in clear contrast with the primary color. And be mindful of color blindness!
Our website is designed to be as informative as possible without being overwhelming. The process of receiving our product is a little bit different so our website is designed to educate potential customers to make them feel comfortable in the process.
Websites need to be optimized both for mobile and desktop versions. People tend to browse more in mobile, but purchase in desktop so it’s important to have a website that is intuitive on both.
One of the biggest improvements we’ve had over the last year was increasing the speed of the website through design. We cut back on oversized images and implemented plugins designed to reduce the loading times of our content.
It brings the content immediately reducing the risk of a customer becoming impatient and exiting the website. We saw our conversations immediately increase after improving the speed through design.
My biggest design tip for increasing website conversions is to include product and brand testimonials on the top half of your home page.
Indeed, when a top of funnel customer is initially landing on your website, they need to know that your product and services can be trusted.
By showcasing (1) customer testimonials, (2) press and publication mentions, or (3) social proof/visuals via influencers, you can do exactly that.
Research shows that almost half of internet users rely on a website’s design to assess its credibility. Nail these three essential website design elements, and you’ll see conversions rise.
1. Strong and clear call-to-action (CTA) buttons
Call-to-action buttons need to grab your audience’s immediate attention. Use a contrasting color to distinguish it from the text and graphics above it.
Use language that conveys a sense of urgency, tells them exactly what to do, and explains what they will get when they take action. Phrases like “Start a Free Trial” or “Book an Appointment” communicate clearly and drive action.
2. Effective use of white space
Using plenty of space between the visual elements and text on a webpage makes it easy for people to focus on your main message.
Trying to cram too much information or visuals onto a single page confuses readers. And, in the worst-case scenario, it can even cause eyestrain.
3. Clear and simple navigation
Neil Patel explains the need for clear, easy-to-follow navigation best. “Websites that make me jump through hoops drive me nuts…I prefer to get from point A to point B via the shortest path possible.”
So do your website visitors. Don’t make them guess where to find the information they need.
Clear signposts that guide them to where they want to go in mere seconds will mark your brand as one that they’ll want to do business with.
After all, if your website is efficient, your products will likely be, too.
Create a Buyer Persona
To improve the conversion rate, your content should provide value to your target audience. To make sure your website visitors receive what they are looking for, that content needs to address each visitor’s pain points.
For example, if you are targeting large companies, the content on your service pages should address decision-makers.
It could list such benefits of working with your company as cost efficiency, time savings, higher productivity, and an appealing ROI (Return on Investment).
If you want to capture the attention of an industry professional, you may want to go deeper into the technical aspects of your offer while still addressing the reader’s point points.
To do all the above, you may need to create a buyer persona for each segment of your target audience. This persona creates a clear picture of what each part of your audience needs and wants so you can adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.
Educational and Organized Content
The content on your service page could be the first thing a potential customer learns about your company. The first impression you make on the visitor relies heavily on the quality of that content.
The service page should explain “why” visitors need to follow your CTA (Call to Action). It should take the user a few seconds to scan the service page and understand how working with your company can solve their problems.
Besides elaborating on your offer in a clear and concise manner, you should provide transparent instructions on what needs to be done next.
Make it easy for the visitor to get in touch with you. Contact details should be readily available in more than one place on the service page.
Be Smart with CTAs
Make sure your CTAs aren’t just descriptive. They should be creative. A simple “contact us” is overused and bleak. Come up with something more exciting, such as “Start saving money now.”
While CTAs are highly important for CRO, overdoing them can lead to a negative effect. Don’t put more than one CTA on the page. This could confuse the visitor and keep them from taking any further actions on your website.
Leverage Visual Proof
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, allow it to do its job. Website visitors have a much easier time processing visuals than reading plain text. In fact, they are more likely to stay on your page if they see something visually appealing.
If you can add examples of your work, before/after photos, product videos, and other visuals, you are likely to capture the audience’s attention. This, in turn, could lead to higher conversion rates.
The best design tips for increasing web conversion rates include making sure that your contact information is always visible (top, side, or bottom of a page).
Make sure to consider including a chat bot, live chat, or a way to leave a message in a contact form easily.
The easier it is for a person to contact you once they are on your website the better chance you have of gaining a new client.
Use quality photos. According to research, 56% of users look at photos and illustrations first when they visit a page. Low-quality pictures can alienate some visitors, and they will close the site.
Compress photos. Users don’t like to wait. Compress pictures to make the site load faster.
Show a real team. Instead of stock images with smiling people, download a section with your heroes – real employees.
Make user-friendly navigation. Have a convenient menu with links to other sections.
It is much more pleasant to wander around the site when everything is intuitively clear and the desired section is easy to find. Easy navigation can even affect the position of the site in the search results.
Test your headers. They should be short and at the same time clearly convey the essence to the user. Do not be foggy – it is better to speak clearly. Especially, this concerns articles: from their title it should be clear what is the benefit for the reader.
We’ve increased website conversions time and time again by implementing these two things in all our designs.
1) Providing some kind of immediate call-to-action at the top of a page and above the fold accompanied with a bold headline and a few subheadings. These will be the first thing your customers see on a page and it’s often all you need to capture leads.
2) If you’re an eCommerce website your checkout process needs to be multi-step. Long gone are the days where customers fill out 12+ text fields all on the same page in order to checkout. Abandoned checkouts are way too popular now.
Make the process seamless and instead break it up into bite-sized pieces. An example would be:
step 1) contact info
step 2) shipping info
step 3) billing info
step 4) place order
If you serve a market with one currency, remove the currency from the price. People will understand what currency they pay, but the omission of the currency sign will make it feel less like they’re spending money, resulting in more sales.
Obviously, this won’t work for websites serving multiple countries, although it can work when you have country-specific TLD’s or can somehow switch currencies based on location or the visitor’s own choice.
Another tip is:
Choose a distinct color for your calls to action (buttons). People should easily note them to click and do what they’re supposed to do. It should be a total contrast with the other colors, so it cannot be missed.
One of my EASIEST tips to implement design-wise is the URQ rule.
URQ stands for upper right-hand quadrant, which is ironically and surprisingly the spot on a website our eyes naturally go first.
Why? Well, it’s because that spot is usually home to the “Login” button on Gmail – or the “Cart” when we’re shopping. We go to that spot intuitively to take action.
Dental offices should make the best use of this spot by including a Scheduling Button there, a link to their portal, or, at the very least, their phone number. Whatever their # 1 priority is, this spot is a great place to put it.
Use a responsive design and A/B test your designs
A responsive design will automatically scale the size and placement of content and elements to match the screen size of the user.
It keeps images from being larger than the screen width so that users don’t have to take extra steps, such as swiping sideways or zooming out, to read your content.
Most traffic now comes from mobile devices, so it is important to ensure your site loads quickly and looks good on all screen sizes.
Using a responsive design that avoids clunky images, large tables, or links that won’t work as intended on smaller screens will ensure a high-quality user experience for everyone who visits your page.
A/B testing is probably the most valuable tool available for a web designer. Instead of following your gut feeling or blindly implementing what “experts” recommend, make data-based decisions.
Always test your design changes to see whether they help or hurt conversions. We test every change we make to our landing pages and we’re often surprised with the design option that provides the best conversion rate.
Websites should be easy to read and not overwhelming. Many people mistakenly pack information into their websites, when clean minimalist designs win.
On the internet there is so much noise and it’s hard for website visitors to pick where they should focus their attention.
But if designers can make browsing simple by adding a short paragraph at the top of the website that highlights the key points they will keep viewers engaged longer and there have more conversions.
Another tip is to have a simple call-out form in addition to a phone number. A short contact form can give customers who aren’t ready to call a simple way to request more information.
After filling out the form customers can be redirected to a calendar where they have the option to schedule a call. This two-step funnel with a lead form followed by a calendar page has been a moneymaker for SoFlo SAT Tutoring.
1. Less is more. When you have a lot of things on the website, people are distracted and they may not do business with you. They want something simple so they can navigate through it much easier.
2. The site needs to look great everywhere else before marketing online (on your social media and business cards, etc). If you can’t make a good impression online, why would people do business with you?
3. Meticulously think about your font choices and what they say to customers. Stay away from complicated fonts because it makes the page look unprofessional.
4. Make sure that your logo stands out on the page. This way, customers know who it is they are dealing with and what to expect.
5. Be sure your business name shows up on every page so people don’t have to search for you when they want to do business with you again in the future. It also helps in link building and brand building as people of your industry will be aware of your brand.
6. If there’s a lot of text on the webpage, make sure it is broken up with bullet points and sub-headers. This makes the content easier to read and digest, and people can quickly skim through everything they need to take action.
7. What’s the call to action? At the end of your content, you need a final paragraph that clearly states what you want people to do next. Make it obvious so the path is clear. Don’t make people guess!
8. If you want to sell a product, your image needs to be crystal clear and high-quality (no blurry or dark images). People need to be able to see everything they are about to buy. It’s important that they can zoom in close on any details they need to see.
9. Make sure your website loads quickly! When people go on a website, if it takes too long it’s very frustrating for them and they may leave (and you don’t want that). It needs to load in 3 seconds or less.
10. Your site should be optimized for both mobile and desktop viewing so people have the same pleasant experience with your site no matter what device they are using.
11. Take note of where people spend most of their time on your website and optimize that area for maximum impact. Where do most visitors look at first? Where do they go next? Where do they spend most time looking around?
An important first step to designing your website is to have a thorough understanding of your dream client.
This is important because you want to tailor the website so that your dream clients have a good first impression and feel a strong presence with whatever you are selling.
If you can point out your features and how they solve your dream clients’ problems, it will be a lot easier to sell them on your product or service that you’re promoting.
The next biggest step after this is to have a clear and concise call to action that solves their problems. You want to set your website up like a funnel so that you can convert interested visitors into clients or sales.
Try to keep things minimal on your website, but be detailed enough that customers understand what you do and why you do it.
Far too many times, I come across websites that I can’t even figure out what they are selling because they get to into the weeds but don’t identify any customer problems they are solving nor do they have a call to action.
Here are some of my web design tips:
When it comes to website conversions, the guiding question we have to ask is ‘how do we get the user from point A to point B (conversion) quickly and easily?’
With this in mind, my top design tip for increasing website conversions is to have one clear CTA (call-to-action) per page.
In saying that, you can have more than one CTA button on the page, but how you incorporate that into the design should be balanced and the goal should be the same every time.
The most common mistake I see when it comes to CTAs is landing pages with multiple buttons (worse yet, if they are all the same colour) with different call-to-actions.
Having multiple call-to-actions means you are asking the user to do different things – go to point B, consider point C, read more about point D, etc.
Having too many directions to choose from can create barriers to the user reaching the conversion point.
For me, one of the best tips for increasing website conversions is to make navigation easy. I’ve lost count of the number of websites I’ve seen that make a user’s life difficult.
If you’re lucky, you have a maximum of 30 seconds of someone’s attention. It could be and usually is, much less than this. There are many ways to do this.
Your navigation bar is probably the most important. Hamburger menus work well here, as they clearly tell a user how they can get to different pages on your website.
Have a footer that makes sense and has links to the important pages on your website, as well as your social media accounts.
And finally, your navigation should go hand-in-hand with the main priorities of your business. Do you want users to purchase? Do you want them to book a call with you? Do you want them to download something?
Navigation is a make or break for your business, and should not be ignored.
Website builders are a perfect solution for individuals and small businesses to start a website without hiring a developer.
Squarespace, Wix and Weebly make it simple for even a newbie to put together a polished site in a relatively short amount of time, even when they need more advanced features like email marketing or an e-commerce platform.
Here’s a simple list of do’s and don’ts in making your website.
Do’s:
Don’ts:
Web design is all about knowing exactly who your target audience is and what they struggle with. Your visitors are searching for valuable, helpful information or a solution to a specific problem.
Hence, you can only generate conversions if your website addresses that need or desire. Each conversion is a sign that you delivered exactly what they were looking for.
Therefore, your website design, structure, and layout should all serve the same goal: to offer real value to your visitors. When it comes to increasing your conversion rate, you should start with the end in mind:
Keep your design as clean and clear as possible – less is more in web design. Don’t distract or overwhelm your visitors with too much information.
Moreover, make sure each sub-page or landing page only targets one specific issue or topic. That way, you will generate highly targeted leads and conversions interested in one particular product, service, or offer.
These visitors are highly likely to make a purchase and become loyal customers and regular visitors in the future.
Let’s face it, the only reason why a person or a company has a website is to get conversions. Could be someone signing up for an art class, or a corporate SaaS company looking to book more demos for their software. Conversions make the difference for sales.
Have you ever had the intention of filling out an online form, just to be scared away by too many required fields?
It’s one of the best ways to kill your conversion rate. Remove all unnecessary form fields, leaving only those that are essential to accomplishing your goal.
No one wants to be the first person to use a product or service. So, you can put their mind at ease by providing testimonials and/or reviews from past customers. Social proof, including video testimonials, can put consumers at ease.
Many visitors want to buy your service but are on the fence.
They have lingering questions that keeps them from taking that next step
Live chat tools are perfect for helping these people feel at ease and take the leap of faith. Especially after you have helped them with a pain point-type question.
Most live chat tools are easy to add to any site and can add an immediate boost to your conversion rates.
When I write content for a dental website or any other website, I don’t think just words. I also think design. That’s because one of the quickest ways to lose a visitor is with a page that looks intimidating to read. It’s actually not very hard to score big on this aspect of design.
On a dental page, I often begin with a general introduction, then a factual section about the specific procedure or ailment, possibly a section on the cool tech, definitely a section on the caring dentists, and finally a section on taking action (location, hours, call to action).
Most importantly, I write in plain English, which means shorter words, shorter sentences and shorter paragraphs. Not only are they easier to read, but they look less intimidating. And less intimidating is what marketing dentistry is all about.
My top design tip to increase website conversions is to make a site that is usable and inspires curiosity. To make a site usable and enjoyable, web designers and marketers should stop reverting to pop-up forms and huge click-to-call buttons.
That might have worked with older generations, but the younger Internet users are quicker to discern between well-intentioned design and click-bait.
Designers must simplify the experience and give users the basics while empowering them to continue on their journey.
Simple design choices such as teasing continuity, using contrasting colors that attract your eye, and making the conversion process quick and painless, are – in my opinion – the best “hacks.”
For local businesses creating additional landing pages for each service offered and optimizing those pages so that they are easily accessible ensures your potential customer will find what they are looking for and that all of their questions get answered right away.
This is a big deal for conversions and it changes from desktop to mobile so it should be optimized for both.
For example, a desktop website can have a mega menu that displays all pages and services along with an additional menu in the footer highlighting your services and contact information, however, when accessed via mobile there is a single hamburger menu with a clickable submenu along with click to call and basic business information.
This may seem like basic common sense advice, but there are countless small business websites out there with a single service page and dodgy experience when comparing desktop and mobile.
Designing a modern and professional website has been known to increase the chances of converting traffic into subscribers/ leads/ sales.
One forgotten issue is that lots of website owners did not focus on, is the loading speed of the website. An additional second of loading speed could mean traffic going to another website when they are already 1 foot into your webpage.
Here’s how you could improve the loading speed significantly;
1. Do not use a website builder. As they have lots of codes to load. (Important)
2. Get fast reliable SSD web hosting.
3. Reduce the file size of all images on your website.
4. Get CDN, like Cloudflare.
5. Manage your codes in Google Tag Manager. Clear those not using.
6. Clean website database at least quarterly.
7. Use caching if possible.
When you need to use a website builder, then all other steps MUST be implemented.
Blog content typically generates a high percentage of a site’s traffic but has a particularly high bounce rate. This is to be expected but at the same time presents a great opportunity to improve website conversions.
A Call-To-Action at the end of the post is often used but it won’t be seen by every reader. I recommend one or two CTAs within the body of the post.
Avoid using them in the first third of the post, you want the reader investing in reading the whole post and any small distractions in this early part may lead them to bounce.
You should also keep the CTA in context with the preceding content and this will improve the likelihood of a reader clicking.
From a pure design perspective, you want it to be compelling enough to take action, while not interrupting the natural flow of reading.
Aside from the CTA within the body of the content, I love seeing sticky sidebars or headers that maintain a CTA as readers scroll down the page.
What do professionally-built websites do differently than DIY’ed websites? Here’s the thing! You have less than 10 seconds to create a representation of your brand on the top of your website. 99.9% of the visitors to your website are not going to buy that visit. So how can you create a vibe that keeps people coming back time and time again? Let’s go through it!?
1. Use WordPress. WordPress is the gold standard for creating custom, beautiful websites while allowing your team to manage your content, orders, etc. There is no argument for any better CMS platform.
2. Say what makes you unique immediately! Your most creative copy should be in the header of your website. Get straight to the point, but punch people with uniqueness and what makes your brand valuable!
Stop using cookie-cutter templates or themes! Custom and unique sets you apart immediately from your competitors.
4. Have the right Call to Action(s) (ex. Don’t have a “See Plans and Pricing” button. Instead, have it say something creative or something like “Let’s Get Started!”.
5. For every second it takes your site to load consider that a 7% loss in conversions so make sure your website is loading fast. Terrible WordPress or Shopify themes slow this down so make sure you hire a good developer who understands site speed testing.
6. Create an Exciting Loading Page to get your visitors engaged while the site loads.
A common problem that I see with website design is that the designers lean towards an informative website, that only educates the visitors. I frequently see websites that have no call to action anywhere on the page!
The simple solution to improving conversions is to have several CTAs throughout the website. I like to have slight variations on what we are asking the visitor to do, as different visitors will respond to different offers.
I recommend always having on call to action visible no matter where the visitor is on the site.
Additionally, adding a contact form in the footer of the website ensures that not a single page goes without a good way to get in touch with the business.
Using these strategies, I’ve worked with countless businesses to take a website with zero conversions, and turn it into a lead generation machine.
If you want to design your website to increase conversions, then you must design for User Experience (UX).
Your visitors want a seamless, straightforward, and positive experience while on your website and, if you can give them that, you increase the chances of having them convert.
A positive experience for the user also improves your credibility in the visitor’s mind and can make them feel more at ease when they decide to purchase something or provide personal information.
Do not overlook the User Experience when designing your website!
Limit your options. Choice overload is real. If your webpage has too many options for consumers, they’re likely to become overwhelmed and not choose anything.
Use the hierarchy of customer thought to influence what you put on the page. What questions or objections do customers pose during your sales process?
You should be answering objections to get micro “yes” moments as the person works their way down your web pages which lead up to the final “yes” which is the lead/sale.
Meet your audience where they’re at. In automotive, we know that the majority of consumers visit websites on their phones.
That means that the website user experience should be designed for mobile-first, then fitted to desktop instead of having a desktop-user experience that is responsive to mobile-sized screens.
1. Using heavy images and animations will kill your conversion rate
The longer it takes for your pages to load, the more likely visitors are to bounce.
More precisely: 25% of people bounce after 4 seconds, and half of the web users say they don’t come back to a website if it offered poor performance the first time.
Improving your page speed is the most efficient way to improve your website conversion.
2. Being too subtle with CTAs.
Soft-colored buttons that blend perfectly might be the most aesthetic option, but it’s never the right business option.
When it comes to CTAs, high contrast and bright colours systematically lead to higher conversion. And buttons perform better than hyperlinks.
So if you want people to click and convert, make your primary CTA as prominent as possible.
Users of eCommerce websites are 7-10 times more likely to convert than regular users. If you have an online store and you want to increase your sales apply the following strategies.
Make the search box easy to spot
The search box is an important part of any website. It’s where users can find information about your site, and it also serves as a way for them to navigate around your site. If you don’t make the search box easy to spot, then people will either ignore it or miss it altogether.
The best place to put the search box is at the top left corner of the screen. This makes it easier for users to see the search box when they first land
Make the search box big enough for typical queries
Most sites only allow one word per query. But, sometimes people like to type multiple words together. To accommodate this, you should increase the size of the search box to let people enter multiple words.
Also, you should consider adding a dropdown list to let users select the category of the product they are looking for. This would make it easier for them to narrow down their search.
Place a search box on each page
This is another great strategy to improve conversions. When people visit your site, they expect to see a search box somewhere on each page. So, if you don’t have a search box on every page, then they may not bother using it.
This is especially true if there are no clear navigation options. You could also try placing the search box near the top of the page. This gives users a better chance of finding it before they get lost.
Avoid zero search results
People often think that zero results mean that there are no products available. In reality, it just means that there aren’t many products available.
If you want to improve your conversion rates, you should always display at least five results.
Use different search filtering options
Include different search filters so people don’t get confused by too many choices. For example, you could add tags and categories to help people find what they are looking for. You could even add prices to help shoppers find exactly what they want.
If you want to improve your conversions, you should encourage users to leave reviews about your products. These reviews can be used as filters to sort out the best products.
It’s so important to have a strategy behind your design and map out your customer journeys from the start. We usually work by planning the content and structure of the website first and developing a design that brings that structure to life.
One creative way to make your design stand out, improve the user experience and conversions is with micro-interactions.
These essentially provide feedback to the user for taking action – this could be in the form of a transition, animation or a simple change in the text.
An example we did for one of our clients incorporates animation as part of their members’ rewards experience.
Once they have enough points, the user is encouraged to ‘open a box’ for a free treat, and the confetti animation reinforces the feeling of being rewarded, making the interaction enjoyable and memorable.
These little ‘rewards’ help encourages engagement, and they can be used at almost any stage in the journey – from adding an item to your basket to completing a form or checking out a purchase.
They make the experience memorable and motivational, and that in turn will help boost those conversions.
Create design and content that is ADA-compliant. If the design of your page lacks contrast, it may be difficult for visitors to read the text.
If you are missing ALT tags for images, videos and audio files, then those who rely on screen readers will not be able to experience all of the content on the page, resulting in a poor user experience.
Tip: you can check the contrast between color combinations with free tools, such as Contrast Checker.
Create mobile-friendly experiences. Make sure your website design and content are easy to access, navigate and read on all screen sizes.
This will ensure that as many users as possible are able to access your content seamlessly and easily, and will boost the results you see from your website.
Tip: you can check if your site is mobile-friendly just by entering the URL here.
Insert CTA buttons that stand out. Use bright, contrasting accent colors for your most important CTAs on-site, to draw the eye to them. This makes it as easy as possible for visitors to convert when they’re ready.
Don’t make them hunt for this feature. Don’t hide the Contact Us button in a drop-down menu, or leave a product landing page without a clear path to purchase.
Check your page load speed. This is now especially important because, with their most recent algorithm update (Core Web Vitals), Google has started prioritizing the ranking of websites that load quickly.
Additionally, web pages that take too long to load waste the user’s time, and they will likely bounce as a result.
Tip: you can check how fast your site loads using GTmetrix or Page Speed Insights from Google.
In today’s online world, it’s not enough to just have a good product or service anymore. You need to be able to promote it in a way that stands out, beats your competitors, and resonates with your target audience.
One of the most important aspects of promoting your business or product is design and aesthetics.
So, what does that look like? Here are a couple of easy tips to keep in mind when designing a website that will help you increase those conversions:
Navigation is critical: The last thing you want is for your users to be confused about how they can find the information that they are looking for.
High-quality graphics: Remember, you are competing for people’s attention with other websites and quality images are a must.
Responsive design: If your site isn’t responsive, then you are losing out on a ton of potential conversions. Everyone is on mobile now.
Simplicity is more: Remember, you want your website to be as simple and easy to navigate as possible.
In order to effectively increase your conversion rate, you need to be able to design your website in a way that is easy to navigate, aesthetically pleasing and gets across your message without being too distracting.
One of the top tips I have found to increase conversions is to create scarcity that feels immediate. Essentially, the way we do this is to create a CTA which embeds in it the current date and month. If this includes a discount so much the better.
For the sake of example, Buy Product with 10% OFF Only in. This creates a sense of urgency and FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) in the user and has helped us increase conversions. If you make such a CTA dynamic, then you have manufactured scarcity every month.
An easy way to do this with WordPress is to sure the Current Date plugin and add a shortcode [current_date format=’F Y]. The plugin can be found here.
If you add this to the pricing section, so much the better, because it is at the point that a user is considering whether to make a purchase or not.
Introduce Micro-interactions:
Although they’re little, micro-interactions play a big role in web design.
They make navigation more simple and humanize the entire browsing experience by offering feedback, allowing users to see the results of their actions, and delivering feedback.
Visitors can learn how to use your website by using animations, as well as visual and sound effects.
For example, a pleasant sound notice can indicate that an action was done accurately, while a flashing, red visual cue can indicate that they made a mistake.
Micro-interactions readily promote engagement and result in a nice user experience, which in turn encourages conversions, because they’re catchy and interesting.
Paying attention to such minor details shows that you care about your users’ opinions.
At the same time, flawless execution is technically hard, which is why, if you want great results, you need to hire a reputable web designer.
Be clear in your webpage’s headline what you are offering. This ensures visitors know whether the content is relevant to them or not.
People will not necessarily stick around to explore your site just to figure what it is you actually do.
Also, being clear and descriptive in the heading and subsequent text, will likely mean including some keywords which will be good for your SEO and relevance of the content.
To increase website conversions for my clients (coaches and entrepreneurs), it surprisingly starts BEFORE the design itself.
The words you use matter so much and strategically using short and benefit-driven headlines that cut straight to the pains and secret desires of your target audience is critical.
Make your copy incredibly specific! It converts better as people think you’re reading their minds, which gives them more trust you can solve their problem and hire you.
Then in the page design, forget walls of text. Break up sections and stick to one column for increased focus. And make sure your page width isn’t too wide as it causes too much eye effort to keep scanning so far across.
Keep sentences on the shorter side and have 1-2 sentences per paragraph. I love interspersing testimonials throughout a website because there’s no such thing as too much social proof after all.
And lastly, increase conversions with a clear next step at the end of each page. Invite for a consult call, contact you, buy now. But don’t leave ‘em hanging!
Focus is the key. To increase conversions on a website, home in on what you want your visitor to do on each page.
Limit your calls to action to one clear, primary call to action per page. Too often, it’s tempting to add multiple calls to action on a website or fill pages with unnecessary clutter.
This is especially true with websites that offer a variety of products and services. Website owners want to draw attention to all of it, all at once. But what ends up happening is the opposite.
When you don’t have a clear focus on each page, nothing stands out. Even if your visitors can’t verbalize it, this lack of clarity makes it difficult for them to make a decision. When the visitor can’t decide what to do next, they leave.
When you make it absolutely clear what you want your website visitor to do on a page, you will increase your conversions and lower the frustrations of your customers.
These days, it’s essential to think beyond the desktop. Web design needs to meet consumers where they’re at and, increasingly, that means mobile-responsive and mobile-optimized design. Today’s consumers are easily distracted.
They’re generally on their phones or tablets, and you’ve got about two seconds to catch and hold their attention before they move on to the next shiny hyperlink on the SERP.
For this reason, mobile-responsive and mobile-optimized designs are no longer a “nice-to-have.” They’re a necessity.
So, how do you improve the mobile user experience? Start with the data. Where are your website users coming from? When are they accessing the site? Which pages do they linger on, and which contribute to your bounce rate?
Once you’ve separated the late-night doom scrollers from the catching-up-between-meetings crowd, it’s easier to design your website around your audience’s particular needs.
Above all, simplicity is key to effective web design. This is especially true when considering the mobile experience. Cut the fat in your copy, make sure your load time is lightning fast, and make the buying portal easy to navigate.
One of my favourite techniques for increasing website conversion rate is removing every unnecessary button. Whenever we build a landing page we always A/B test it.
What I like to do is completely remove every button that is not a buy button. This includes header and footer too! I simply remove them so that the visitor cannot be distracted by anything else on the site.
It’s part of a theory in neuromarketing, which suggests that a part of our brain called amygdala (our “lizard brain”) makes us notice a lot of different things in our environment.
It is the part that is responsible for human instinct and survival, so it’s said to be the part of the brain responsible for our decision making on a fundamental level.
Studies have shown that fewer choices actually make the customer more likely to buy, so by removing all unnecessary distractions from the page you’re much more likely to convert them.
We have found an increase of 30-80% in conversion rate of our landing pages when we remove the unnecessary choices and funnel the visitor through the exact steps we have designed.
1. Offer a clear price offer on your website landing page. Most buyers understand tiered price packages. So, it’s best to put that on your site. This way, you can attract leads who have the capability to pay for your services.
2. Avoid sliding images in the HERO banner. You should clearly mention your brand messaging. For example, you are a wellness expert for new age first time entrepreneurs.
3. Promote your lead magnet or a video section of your brand. If visitors find information about your services, they are more likely to enquire.
4. Add an exit intent pop up when someone is about to exit. This puts an urgency and lets you capture leads information for a quick follow up call.
5. Well optimized mobile website is a MUST for high conversions. You can integrate a chatbot or a phone call icon. Most visitors are scanning, not reading. You have very limited opportunity to grab the attention.
Web design, SEO, and branding are closely intertwined, so to increase conversions, you need to keep all three in mind when working on your website.
SEO comes into play based on the keywords you use to get organic traffic to your website. If you focus on keywords that are less related to your products or services, you’ll see less conversion.
For example, if you own an e-commerce store that sells a specific cut of women’s sweaters, using niche keywords that describe your product (ex. “women’s cowl neck cashmere sweater”) will likely have a higher conversion rate than a more general keyword like “women’s apparel.”
The next step is branding. Once you have the keywords you’d like to use, you need to incorporate them into your website copy.
Using your brand colors and voice throughout your site helps people get to know your brand and feel more comfortable reaching out or making a purchase.
Finally, the star of the show – web design. Adding calls-to-action (CTAs) is the first step to increasing conversion. If people don’t know what you want them to do next, how will they do it?
CTAs on e-commerce websites are straightforward (ex. buttons that say “Shop Now” and link to a product page). Service businesses can be more nuanced, depending on the next step in their marketing funnel.
One conversion could be signing up for a newsletter, another could be submitting a contact form, or you could prompt people to schedule a consultation.
No matter what action you want people to take next, you need to make it clear with calls-to-action throughout your website.
You also want to make sure that your website is easy to navigate and search, so that people can find exactly what they’re looking for and convert accordingly.
If you are looking to increase the conversions on your website there are a number of different things that you can do. I’m going to go over a few of the most important aspects Dentists should consider for their site.
1. Make sure to look your site over on mobile to ensure everything looks good as many users will only access your site through their phones.
Furthermore, you should ensure that you have mobile-specific elements such as “click to call” buttons that will auto-dial your number for patients when they click them.
2. When your website first loads you should have a “call to action” in view without the user having to scroll down or look for it. This can be a button to book an appointment, a click to call button, or a contact form. Determining the best call to action depends on your business and how you prefer patients to contact you.
3. When you first start building your website you want to have a clear goal in mind for how users will navigate through it and find the most important information. Make sure you are leading users to not just read about you online but to contact you.
4. Make sure to include testimonials and reviews of previous patients in an easy-to-find spot for additional social proof and to ensure new patients feel comfortable reaching out to you.
5. Try and avoid using stock images when possible, having authentic high-quality photos of your practice and team will give patients more confidence in your business. Especially in a field like dental where patients want to ensure they are in a clean and comfortable environment.
6. Have you donated to the community, won an award, or been featured in any local papers? Make sure to mention it on your website!
7. Add a social media feed to your website to encourage patients to engage with you online! This will make it easier for you to retain patients and keep them coming back.
These are just some tactics that we recommend you employ when deciding on a dental marketing strategy for your practice and looking for the best tactics to increase conversions.
The number one factor that makes or breaks conversions is trust. Building trust is paramount to increase website conversions. Implementing trust-building factors into the design is done in several ways.
Be transparent by having contact info easy to find.
Make sure that your grammar is solid. Typos and poorly written content lower trust.
Place “as seen in”, “has worked with”, and badges for professional associations. This will help website visitors know that you are proficient and reliable.
Other trust badges are “Free Shipping” and “Money Back Guarantee” depending on your industry.
Another major trust factor is the use of real reviews and video testimonials. The best practice is to use a review aggregator so users can see the actual reviews from your GMB, Facebook page, or Amazon page so they can click and see the actual review.
And on a broader scope design itself can make or break trust. Having a clean, user-friendly mobile responsive website relays that. Whereas a poorly constructed website does not inspire trust.
It’s best throughout the design process to keep in mind that people are skeptical, and for good reason. Each element of a website will either create more trust or lessen it. So think of the user and how they may interpret the design.
Something often overlooked is the commitment that people have to make to follow through with a conversion.
A service or product that costs $100 is far more likely to have people convert compared to something like a vehicle or new home build. Buyer journey and the length of journey are extremely important to take into consideration.
Once you understand this, it becomes easier to know what you need to be offering. For home builders, free brochures will always download (convert) higher than phone calls or form submissions.
A call to action banner is always a great go-to option, particularly for pages with a lot of content. If users are having to scroll a long way to get to the bottom call to action, you’ll be losing customers.
It also works to break up your page and give a bit of breathing room.
You have to be strategic though. I’d recommend putting it at about the halfway mark of your page. Far enough down that users have read a decent amount, but not too far that you may have lost them.
Always follow these call to action banners with more content. It needs to act like a quick half-time pep talk before getting back into the good stuff, and then rounding out with another final call to action in the form of copy.
A/B test your website design and messaging.
2. Create a compelling reason to buy from your store.
3. Use bright colors to attract visitors, but keep the colors consistent throughout your website.
4. When designing a menu, make sure it is easy to use and doesn’t distract visitors from the main call to action.
5. Make your site easy to read by using sub-headers and bullet points to break up text into smaller chunks.
If you want your website to have success with conversions, the two most important page elements to include are a well-crafted message paired up with a strong call to action.
Without a powerful headline, you’re unlikely to attract the attention of website visitors. The message has to resonate well with website visitors, so it’s important to think about who is going to be landing on this page when writing this.
Your message should quickly summarize the solution or product you’re offering to the visitor and why it’s going to help them overcome a problem they are having.
After attracting enough attention to keep a visitor on your website, you’ll need a way to push them into converting.
Your call to action should work as a direct follow-up to your primary headline. Any text, including the words on the button itself, should reinforce that your offer is the best way for the visitor to get what they are looking for.
It takes about the first 3 seconds for the visitor to decide whether they want to continue on the website or exit.
Hence, it is important to avoid cluttering your website with multiple widgets, pop-ups, flashy graphics, etc., that can distract the visitors, resulting in a higher bounce rate.
Single column layouts and minimal widgets, and sticky pop-ups should be the ideal choice for designing a website.
Over 80% of the website traffic typically comes from mobile devices. Most of your prospects will ideally be visiting your website from their smartphone.
Furthermore, Google tends to prioritize websites that have a mobile responsive or mobile-friendly website for their SERP rankings. Hence, it is essential to create websites that are mobile optimized and suit different devices.
The key to maximizing conversions from a website is to use strong and compelling CTAs. The stronger your CTAs, the better are your chances of scoring a conversion.
In addition to that, ensure to place the CTAs prominently and use different color contrasts to make them pop which will help in encouraging visitors to take the desired action.
When it comes to design websites, it is no longer solely about how aesthetically pleasing and unique your site is because websites today, play a tremendous role in converting potential buyers into actual sales (hello digital world!).
To help you with the process of designing a website that increases conversion, consider these tips: Stay true to your brand. Reference your brand style guide to ensure you stay ‘on-brand.’
Remember that the best brands are those that are able to humanize and make themselves relatable- consistency here is the key which is why you absolutely need to reference your brand style guide during the design phase.
Design with the user experience in mind. Ensure your potential customers enjoy visiting your site and can navigate easily – this also means that you must consider the mobile experience as well (this is critical!).
Something as simple as whether a pop-up will help or hurt your chances of keeping a customer engaged should be discussed (test and learn). Minimize options whenever possible.
Choice overload can cause paralysis by analysis causing your potential customers to not make a choice.
Where possible, simplify your website messaging and solutions- if need be, elaborate once you get the customer further down the sales funnel with a phone or in-person conversation.
Creating a homepage that reads like a story seems to be an effective way to lead the viewer through your desired funnel right up to the point where they purchase what you’re selling.
To do this, you’ll need to meticulously plan and design a homepage that does the following:
Quickly explains who you are, what you do, and why they should care. Explain the problem you solve. Provide examples to make you appear reputable and legit.
Impress them with your advanced tech, expert team (or whatever your major selling point is).
Offer a deal that is ‘too good to be true’ and wrap it up with a call to action.
An expertly designed homepage can quickly increase your conversions and make a big difference in how a website visitor becomes a paying customer.
Negative Space is Your Friend
It’s tempting to offer as much information as possible on your website, but this might harm you. Negative space allows your pieces to breathe and guides the visitor’s attention around the screen.
Allow your viewers to scroll down the page to see each aspect independently.
Negative space does not just refer to the gap between your page’s major parts, such as the space between your header and your content or the space between your sidebar and your content.
It also refers to the space between all of the smaller components on your websites, such as the space between paragraphs, lines of text, and even letters.
Keeping all sorts of negative space on your site in mind helps to maintain everything readable, scannable, and easy on the eyes. All of this, of course, leads to greater conversions.
Make your call to action stand out.
It’s easy for signup buttons, buy now prompts, and other calls to action to get buried by other information, so you need to make sure everyone sees them.
The easiest way to do this is to make your calls to action a color that contrasts with your main theme.
The easiest way to do this is to make your calls to action a color that contrasts with your main theme. (I’ve included an example below. I like the way that the “See if you qualify button” contrasts against the greens.)
Another tactic, especially if you’re incorporating your call to action into a blog, is to style your call to action in a different font or font size than the rest of the text.
For instance, you might make your call to action bigger, or stylize it with an H3 header tag to ensure that everyone sees it.
For instance, you might make your call to action bigger, or stylize it with an H3 header tag to ensure that everyone sees it.
Keep in mind that if you make your call to action button the biggest thing on the page, your content is going to come across as too salesy, and readers are likely going to bounce from the site.
The trick is to incorporate your buttons and prompts into the content in a way that feels natural while also highlighting them.
1. Simplify by default
If it takes too long to find something, visitors will leave. Some websites are so packed with widgets, pop-ups, and flashing graphics that users lose interest and leave.
Sidebars, supplementary menus, and pop-ups may keep visitors on the page, but they deter action. If visitors are overwhelmed with options, they may do nothing.
2. Stunning graphics and visuals are in.
With people spending a whole day online each week, it’s vital that websites give a holistic experience. Hire an expert photographer for unique images.
Remember that visitors will notice if your photos are irrelevant. Also, remember to use appropriate ALT tags and captions for optimal website visibility
3. Design responsively
Mobile devices account for over 52% of all website traffic. Asia and Africa have significantly higher figures at 65.1% and 59.50%. Visitors will leave a website if the links are too small or the site doesn’t render appropriately.
Rather than establishing separate mobile and desktop websites, we propose embracing responsive web design. With responsive design, your website will appear great on any device.
4. Use heatmaps
Most web users skim a page from left to right and down, rather than reading every word. Heatmaps help you see where users interact with your site.
Thank you so much to all the experts that have contributed to this expert roundup! Please share this post with your friends and followers on social media.
That is right. You will have fewer page views in those one-to-two seconds, decrease customer satisfaction, and see fewer conversions.
Today’s consumers have high demands that they expect, especially regarding the speed at which they browse the web.
They want an unhindered user experience to quickly and effortlessly find what they are looking for on the web.
Fast loading websites have become a requirement to remain competitive and not lose visitors to your website.
Before making changes to your website, you will need to measure its performance first. Several tools on the market will enable you to test and measure your homepage speed, including:
This article will use the GTmetrix tool and The Dental Marketing Guy website to measure, analyze, and recommend improvements.
You can either use the public version of GTmetrix or register for a free account. The public version always uses the same configurations.
With a free account, you can change the conditions, such as the testing location and connection speed, for a more accurate result based on your target audience.
Start by heading over to the GTmetrix home page, entering the URL of the site you want to test, and clicking Analyze.
GTmetrix generates a performance report with Web Vitals and a Grade when you run your speed test. The GTmetrix grade is derived from two sources:
Web Vitals, introduced by Google in 2020, is a standardized set of user experience and web performance metrics.
GTmetrix focuses primarily on the following Web Vitals metrics:
In our example, using Dental Marketing Guy, the GTmetrix speed test results are:
Now let us see where we can make improvements on specific metrics. Boost Your site speed with these five ways to cut the time it takes your home page to load.
When visitors land on your home page, their browser requests to access your site’s content. However, if your website has excessive JS, CSS, HTML, and other assets, the page load is reduced because they take longer to process.
Minification refers to stripping out unnecessary characters in your site’s code and does not change its functionality.
Examples include removing unnecessary line breaks, white spaces, comments, redundant code, and characters.
WordPress (WP) users can use a plugin such as W3 Total Cache to minify JS files, CSS, HTML, and other assets.
Non-WP users can use online tools to minify codes.
Assets refer to elements such as images and favicons. Naturally, you want to make them as small as possible and compress them without sacrificing quality.
Minification increases page speed by making the transfers smaller and more efficient. In addition, GTmetrix triggers structure audits after scanning your site.
The audits are based on Google’s best practices for optimal front-end website performance. They are assessed and ranked according to their impact on your performance and how well you adhere to the best practice standards.
Even though the structure audits do not directly affect your Performance score, they can improve overall page loading time.
Click on the down-arrow to open the specific suggestions for each element. GTmetrix suggests focusing on this top issue section first as they have the most considerable impact on page speed and performance.
Each time a page on your website redirects somewhere else, it prolongs the HTTP request and response process while reducing loading times.
There will be some situations where a redirect is necessary. However, remove any unnecessary redirects on your site to increase the speed at which pages are loaded.
Dental Marketing Guy has no issues with too many page redirects.
WP users can use a plugin to reduce redirects. However, GTmetrix recommends redirecting necessary URLs on the server-side because they are cacheable, fast, and universally implemented.
Image source GTmetrix
Browser caching can significantly improve page load times by asking website visitors to save and reuse your site’s files.
It works by enabling browsers to store various information and files, such as JS files, stylesheets, and images, so that the entire page does not need to reload every time the same visitor lands on it.
In our example, the impact is low under the structure tab for cache policy. However, GTmetrix still offers recommendations for improvement.
GTmetrix identifies a resource as cacheable if it meets all of the following criteria:
GTmetrix will flag all the static resources that need attention and improvement when you are not leveraging browser caching.
Click Audit to see the list of resources with transfer size and the cache time-to-live (TTL).
When your site does not have the correct HTTP cache headers on the server, site speed is affected and slows down.
Many site owners struggle with leveraging browser caching, especially when it occurs on resources you do not control.
For example, if your Audit shows a third-party ad network as a cache issue, you can do nothing as it is not a resource you control.
WP users can use one of the many powerful caching plugins, such as WP Rocket, WP Super Cache, and W3 Total Cache, to optimize and create lightning speed page loading times.
TTFB is the total amount of time browsers need to wait before receiving the first byte of a response request.
It refers to how long it takes for a page to start loading. The metric is made up of the Redirection Duration + Connection Duration + Backend Duration and is a key indicator of web performance.
A slow TTFB might result in website visitors only seeing a blank page while the browser waits for your server to respond.
Requests for your web page from users are sent to the server. The server, in turn, generates an appropriate response and sends back your page resources to the user.
Below are a few ways to improve TTFB:
Using the Waterfall tab in GTmetrix, TTFB is measured from the test’s start until right before receiving the page requested.
One of the best ways to reduce TTFB is to enable browser caching.
A CDN is a network of servers with nodes located in different regions. The servers are spread around the world.
The benefit of using a CDN is to reduce load times by caching your page’s static content, such as JS files, images, and CSS.
When a visitor lands on your site, resources are served from the cache of the closest CDN node. This is instead of loading resources from your original server.
Leveraging a CDN will improve page loading speed by hosting and delivering copies of your website’s static content from servers located in various locations across the globe.
It works by reducing the distance user-requested data has to travel between your servers and the visitors’ browsers.
Image source GTmetrix
GTmetrix will look at page request response headers, identify those not served from a known CDN, and trigger an audit.
While CDNs can significantly improve website performance across different locations, they are not essential to your website’s functionality.
Whether or not to use a CDN will depend upon your performance goals and the location of your target audience.
We cannot overstate how critical site speed is to success. You must regularly monitor page loading speed and make improvements where necessary.
As we have shown above, several factors affect home page loading speeds. Therefore, using a tool to help identify issues and provide valuable suggestions on areas to optimize performance is invaluable.
Be sure to look beyond just the scores. Instead, do a deep dive into the specific aspects of your website’s performance that have the most impact on your page load times.
Do not forget that every second it takes your web page to load significantly increases visitors’ chances to leave.
For help with your dental website design let’s talk!
In addition to the obvious SEO factor, your dental website design – or any web design for business – must be optimal for attracting search engines and humans.
Getting a visitor to your site is only the first step. The next and most crucial step is to keep them there long enough to read the content and take action.
Better search rankings are associated with original and relevant content and the website’s overall design and aesthetics.
Think about the process of how users search for content. They start by typing keywords or phrases into a search engine to find the information they are looking to find.
For example, if a dentist is looking to build a website, he would type “how to build a dental website”.
The best-optimized websites for accessibility, design, and content will appear higher in the search engine results pages.
The user will choose one of the sites, almost always on the first page, and then land on the corresponding website.
If they find it too confusing, irrelevant, or cannot quickly locate what they came to see, they will leave the site very quickly and move onto the next result.
Alternatively, if a website owner’s SEO optimization efforts align with the UI and UX, its rankings will increase.
Below are the top ten design tips for ranking in Google.
Most people do not have the patience to wait for a website or page to load, and neither do search engines.
This is why how fast web pages load is still an essential factor in how Google ranks sites. Pages that take too long to load result in high bounce rates, affects user experience, and hurts rankings.
Optimizing your website for speed enhances user experience and helps boost search engine rankings.
The time it takes for a specific page on your website to load when a user lands on it is referred to as page speed.
Numerous factors affect page load speed, including the:
Not only do the above examples affect how fast a web a page loads they also impact UX. If a page takes too long to load, users will leave the site.
It might surprise you to know that even a second or two can significantly impact how long a user stays on a web page.
Research conducted by Google shows a 32% increase in the probability of a visitor bouncing off a site when page load time increases from one to three seconds.
Engagement, conversions, and increased rankings are all affected by slow loading web pages.
How should you design your website for optimal page loading speed? To focus on optimizing page speed, you first need to measure their current performance.
There are several free and simple-to-use tools to test your web page speed, including PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom, and GTmetrix.
Web design elements are often the culprit of slow loading web pages. The good news is that there are several actionable steps you can take to make improvements. We have listed a few below.
It becomes a balancing act between enhancing web pages’ appeal with engaging visuals and increasing loading times.
Professional services sites, such as dental sites, benefit from showing smiling patients and friendly staff faces.
Luckily, you can have the best of both worlds by optimizing and compressing image files. The objective is to use the smallest file size possible without compromising quality.
If you use WordPress, there are a variety of plugins to optimize images, such as WP-Optimize and Smush.
Several sites on the Web will reduce image file sizes to varying degrees for those using a different CMS, such as TinyPng, Squoosh, and Online Image Compressor.
Be sure that you are using the right image format for your needs. For example, if you need to use transparent images, the PNG form will offer that option but is a larger file than the JPG format.
Resize and optimize your images before uploading them to your site. You want to use the smallest and final image size on your web pages.
When someone lands on your website, what have you gained if they leave without taking any action? If you want conversions, you must use strong calls-to-action (CTAs).
A CTA is usually displayed as a text link or button that asks the website visitor to click the link and act. It should be action-driven, specific, and offer value. Examples include:
The bottom line is if you do not tell your website visitor precisely what you want them to do, they will not do anything. Look at CTAs as a bridge between sales and marketing.
You spend time and resources to get more exposure and engagement for your brand to convert visitors into paying customers.
The last thing you want is to turn away potential customers because your CTAs are not effective, persuasive, or convincing.
Ensure that your CTAs clearly outline what is in it for the website visitor. If they are self-serving or do not meet your target audience’s needs, they will not resonate with them and will be ineffective.
Other suggestions for creating and using effective CTAs include making sure they:
Below are several examples of clear and compelling calls-to-action.
Dropbox uses a clean and straightforward design. The “Sign up for free” CTA not only stands out but is also available in two locations on the page.
Image source Dropbox
Netflix anticipates a fear many users have when trying out a service. That fear is the difficulty in cancelling if they do not like it.
Image source Netflix
Notice how simple it is to get started using Netflix and how the CTA lets visitors know that they can cancel their membership at any time if they choose to do so.
What dentist does not want more patients? This clear CTA addresses precisely what dental professionals want.
The CTA above tells site visitors exactly what they will achieve. It is minimalist and visually compelling.
By using a caching system, your website will only need to call up and create the content once rather than every time an individual user lands on one of your web pages.
Some content management systems offer static caching features to convert dynamic pages to static HTML files, thereby reducing server processing that is not necessary.
For example, WordPress offers numerous caching plugins. And Drupal has a Dynamic Page Cache module in its core.
When one page on your site redirects to a different page, it prolongs the HTTPS request, response processes, and reduces loading times.
There will be times when it may be necessary to use redirects, such as when you are moving to a new domain.
Try your best to minimize your use of or limit redirects.
CSS and JavaScript delivery are essential because they also optimize the critical render path. The critical render paths are the events that occur in the background before a web page is displayed.
It is also instrumental in determining what events need to occur to show your web page’s section above-the-fold.
Remove characters, spaces, comments, and any other elements that are not necessary to run your site to reduce these files’ size.
You should also minimize the number of tags you use when writing code. For example, instead of using alt tags, such as headers and bold commands, use CSS to define the header type and style property.
This will not only reduce CSS and HTML documents, it will also make your site easier to maintain.
Google pays attention to other sites that link to and from yours, as well as to websites linked to from yours.
Your internal links are treated by Google as outbound links and counted as votes for your page. Therefore, you should carefully plan your internal links to ensure they lead to other relevant pages on your website.
Internal links are hyperlinks that point to a different page on the same website. They are usually used in the main navigation of a site because they:
When creating internal links, use description keywords and phrases for the anchor text and be sure you link to a page about the same or relevant content.
In addition to internal linking, be sure to include external links to relevant authority sites to increase brand exposure and improve your brand authority.
Clean and straightforward navigation leads to seamless and straightforward user experiences. Search engine crawlers will also have fewer barriers and URLs to dig through to find relevant and valuable information.
When users have positive UX and search engines have less work to do, your website ranking will increase.
Try to keep your URLs short and easy to remember and limit the number of categories you use.
We already know that useful, relevant, and unique content is critical to increase traffic and boost search rankings in Google.
However, that is only half the battle. In a perfect world, your content’s quality would be a magnet to attract a targeted audience interested in what you write and share it with others.
However, what sounds great in theory does not work in real life. This is where content hubs can have a significant positive impact.
A content hub is a branded microsite resource where users can find curated, branded, user-generated, social media, or any other type of content related to a particular subject to increase brand awareness and reach a wider audience.
They let Google and your target audience know which pieces of content are the most relevant and valuable on your site.
An effective content hub strategy lets your audience and search engines know that you understand your target market’s interests and needs.
Like a magazine, hubs enable readers to delve deeper into a narrow topic to explore, discover the latest trends, conduct research, and gain new insights.
When your content is included in a hub, it gives your brand authority as a thought leader in your niche.
Consistently publishing quality content will drive traffic, increase search engine rankings, and improve cross-channel brand visibility.
Hubs increase the chances of visitors viewing multiple pages of content because many are linked together.
Not only does this help SEO, but it also improves the user experience and increases engagement by showing multiple pieces of content to an interested visitor.
Content hubs help get attention in a crowded field. They work because they are structured and help you arrange internal links to let Google know which of your pages are the most important.
By offering a curated collection of content, hubs enable readers to quickly find what they are looking for without searching for it.
Below are several examples of successful content hubs.
American Express provides a forum or hub to educate businesses with tips, advice, and insights into adapting to changing times.
Image source American Express
Unilever’s All Things Hair is a content hub that delivers beauty tips and insights for all types of hair.
Image source All Things Hair
It includes different categories with information about everything related to hair, including hair color, hair care solutions, and hairstyles.
The categories are then broken down further into subcategories, making it easy for users to find exactly what they are looking for to make informed decisions about purchases they can make on the site.
The Etsy Journal features content in categories such as home décor, event decorating and fashion.
Image source Etsy Journal
All the tips, advice, and ideas tie back to where users can purchase items through the Etsy marketplace.
It also highlights many shops that sell their merchandise on Etsy while engaging readers with relevant and useful information.
According to Google’s John Mueller, headings and title tags no longer play the same role they used to in ranking websites.
H1 headings are no more important than H2 headings as a ranking factor. He explains that Google reads headlines to get an understanding of what the topic following the headings is about.
Rather than factor into a website’s rankings, header tags indicate hierarchical information levels and proper web content organization.
For example, H3 headers are sub-topics of previous H2 headers which are sub-topics of previous H1 headers.
One headline type is no more important than another when it comes to ranking. Mueller also explains that using keywords in headings will not necessarily increase rankings.
Their main purpose is to explain what the text and page content under them is about. So, headline tags still play an important role in communicating to Google what your content is about.
From a UX experience, headers break up large chunks of text to make it less overwhelming and easier to read.
So, header tags do indirectly influence rankings by providing keyword-rich context about the page content and making it easier for your site visitors to read.
When SEO is done correctly and built into the web design process, it will add value to the user by providing a better experience, making the site search-engine friendly, and improving your business’s online marketing goals.
Learn marketing from my dental marketing blog.
It’s almost a full-time job to keep up with the ever-changing digital landscape. When it comes to designing your dental website, your primary goals are to make sure your site is found in search for your location and enticing enough to convert your visitors into patients.
Your website should tell your brand story as well as your patients’ experiences. Because choosing a dentist is a very personal decision, your dental website design and site messaging should be unique and clear to help prospective patients trust you enough to make an appointment.
The following tips will provide some insights into how you can create an effective web design that will help you grow your business.
Getting visitors to your website is only the first step. You also want them to stay long enough to read it and take action. Some of the ways to create the best user experience are:
Check your site carefully for broken links or missing images because these errors will make your site look less professional.
We have all heard that a picture speaks a thousand words because it’s true. If you are a pediatric dentist, showing photographs of smiling children will grab the attention of a parent looking for a dentist for their children.
It is best to avoid stock images that are used on other websites because they are not unique and they are not an accurate representation of your practice.
You can either hire a professional photographer or take pictures yourself with the permission of your patients and showcase real images on your site.
Photos of the dentists in your practice interacting with patients is a great way to help build trust with your website visitors and make it more likely that they will call your office to make an appointment.
Be sure not to overcrowd your site. Leave plenty of white space. It makes focus and comprehension easier for your site visitors.
The content you include on your website needs to be concise, clear, and to the point creatively and engagingly.
Don’t forget that most people are visiting your site from their mobile device where too much text can be overwhelming.
Also, many people tend to scan through text rather than read it thoroughly while they are searching for the most relevant and helpful information. Make sure they can find what they are looking for quickly and easily.
Dental website quality content should include professionalism and industry-expertise to convert more website visitors into patients.
It is advantageous to include a blog on your site as well. Blogs not only keep your website dynamic, they also give you the opportunity to show your expertise by providing relevant and helpful dental information.
Not only should you have good quality content, it needs to be laid out in the most accessible manner possible. When it comes to reading online, small font sizes, thin and low contrast fonts are the number one complaint by users.
So, think carefully about the most readable fonts and formats when designing your published blogs.
As stated above, choosing a dentist is an extremely personal decision, so you want to make sure your website helps prospective patients see that you are credible and trustworthy. How can you do this?
Including a video of the dentists in your practice goes a long way in helping your website visitors get to know your staff and to connect with them on a personal level. They will feel like they already know you and will be more likely to call your office.
The value of testimonials cannot be overstated. Prospective patients will put more weight in how others describe your services than what you say about yourself.
Although you want your content to be reader-friendly and sound natural, you also have to write for the search engines. If your site can’t be found in search, it won’t matter how great the design is if no one sees it.
You need to carefully choose keywords and phrases to make sure your website is prominently placed in organic search engine results.
This is accomplished by search engine optimization (SEO). Patients are searching in Google for your dental services. You want to make sure they find you.
The more helpful and valuable information you provide to your website visitors, the more likely they will be to return to your site and the higher the likelihood they will call your office. Why is that?
By publishing articles, blog posts, or videos that describe specific dental procedures offered by your practice, you are helping possible future clients understand exactly what they might need to have done and what to expect.
What makes your dental practice different than others in your geographic location? Do you specialize in one specific area that your competitors don’t?
Whatever it is that makes you unique should be consistently advertised and promoted on all channels including social media, newsletters, and brochures.
When designing your dental practice website, keep in mind that there is a psychology behind why patients choose a dentist.
Keep this top-of-mind when creating your site and crafting your messaging. Also, focus on earning the trust of your prospective patients and getting found in Google search. Learn more about my dental SEO services.
