A fatal flaw of many site owners is that they think they know why their page is underperforming. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. There are lots of variables that affect how users respond to your site, from the domain you’ve chosen to the layout of the page to the tiniest minutiae that influence visitor emotions.
You can’t approach website improvement in a granular way—the entire thing needs to be assessed as a unit. This is due in part to the psychological blunders we humans make when searching for things to improve. If we scrutinize our ad copy long enough, we’ll probably start second-guessing it. If we hold a magnifying glass up to the number of white space pixels on the margins of our home page, we’ll start wondering if there’s room for improvement. It’s just our nature.
To counter this, work with a professional who has experience looking at the big picture and identifying weak spots. It’s easy to lose the forest for the trees when you’re close to a project—get some outside help to guide you along.
A great looking website is awesome, but the point of your web page isn’t to be sexy—it’s to deliver results. With that in mind, consider how well your page reflects your brand identity and supports your marketing goals.
Do your stylistic choices reflect the tone and culture of your brand? Does your page copy speak in terms your target market will appreciate? Your brand must be consistent in its messaging, from the website you build to the content you promote.
Consistency might seem like a nebulous concept, but it’s not just lip service. Your website is a tool that should guide users through your philosophy as a company and prime them for conversion—which only happens when viewers understand what you’re all about. Lucidpress surveyed over 200 marketing executives and brand leaders to find that 90 percent of respondents believed there was noticeable inconsistency in the brand materials they created, but over half (55 percent) felt that brand consistency was a significant driver of growth.
Nothing on your site should be there by accident. Everything has a purpose, whether it’s a bit of ad copy designed to get users thinking about a concept or the use of cool color tones to put users in a relaxed mood. With that in mind, improving website design often means digging into details to determine what elements are failing to live up to their intended purpose.
The good news is that you can test just about everything on your page. Obviously you’ll be A/B testing your calls-to-action and the ad text of your paid search marketing campaigns, but don’t stop there—test different fonts, different sizes of headlines, and different content layouts to see how they affect on-site behavior. For marketing success, a site needs to be optimized—but this can only happen one step at a time.
There are countless ways you can improve your website design, but the above framework will set you on the right path:
And above all, don’t assume—it’s hard to know what to improve when you’re close to a project. Keep an open mind and trust in the professionals you’ve chosen to guide you.