How Does Quality Web Design Improve Lead Generation?
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In addition to guest posting on the UpCity blog, Triton Commerce is featured as one of the Top Web Design Agencies in the United States. Check out their profile!
The strategies behind online lead generation have evolved exponentially over the last decade. Long gone are the days when simply having a website gained any meaningful traction or conversions. Now, digital marketing strategies need to be cutting edge to generate leads and stay ahead of the competition.
Whether you host an eCommerce or B2B site, having a quality web design will significantly impact not only your search engine optimization (SEO) but online lead generation.
Think about the last time you searched for something online. How many sites did you peruse? How long did you give the website that took longer than three seconds to load? Did you give a company a chance if the information you’re looking for isn’t easy to find? Rankings matter.
Providing a great first impression is often the deciding factor between whether or not someone stays on your website. In fact, it only takes 50 milliseconds (that’s .05 seconds) for a person to decide whether or not they like your website enough to stay.
Investing in quality web designs means putting forth the effort to create a positive experience for high-quality leads from the moment they click on your URL.
How Web Design Affects First Impressions
While the finer details of website design can be subjective, there are a few considerations that all quality sites possess.
Web design that reflects your company’s brand and maintains a cohesive look throughout the site will appear more professional to potential customers. Keeping track of little details like consistency in colors and design layout will help with this.
Next, ensuring that your website is fully functional on all devices—desktop, mobile, and tablets—is essential for keeping people on your page. If your web design includes pictures or videos that aren’t embedded or sized correctly, it will ultimately impact how fast your site loads.
Web page load time has a considerable effect on the success rate of your conversion rate. The quicker and more responsive your site is, the more likely it is to convert.
Consider using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to see how well your site runs on different devices.
Design With Mobile in Mind
When it comes to mobile layout, 57% of internet users will not recommend a website that looks poorly designed and isn’t user-friendly on their phones.
A less desirable mobile experience could mean any number of things: maybe the website content doesn’t load quickly on mobile, or the graphics are too big, making the site difficult to navigate, or perhaps the layout is so cluttered you don’t know where to go.
Quality web design on mobile looks like a one-column structure with an easy-to-understand hierarchy of information and a clean layout.
If you want to know how mobile-friendly your site is, consider running it through Google’s Mobile-Friendly Tool.
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Quality Web Design Means Accessibility and Responsiveness
To cultivate lead generation via your website, it is imperative to have a design that is responsive and accessible. Ensuring your site is ADA compliant means providing a better user experience.
In addition to making sure all images have corresponding alt text and that any videos include subtitles, consider incorporating a layout that responds to keyboard shortcuts. This way, you’re sure to reach a more inclusive target audience by creating a better user experience for everyone.
Using Web Design to Drive Conversions
Providing a positive, inclusive user experience is the first step to creating a quality web design that cultivates potential leads into conversions.
It might be tempting to put as much information as possible on the homepage when it comes to web design. However, having a clean layout with simple navigation and smart use of white space goes a long way in keeping people engaged.
Create a hierarchy of important information that’s digestible while integrating clear messaging as to how you’d like prospective consumers to engage with your site. That way, users understand how to better navigate your site.
Integrate Clear Calls to Action
A call to action, or a CTA, is any design used to prompt website visitors to complete an action. A few popular CTAs include:
“Buy Now”
“Call Today”
“Learn More”
“Subscribe”
“Request an Estimate”
How websites integrate CTAs in their design is a big part of what ultimately drives online lead generation. Each website’s CTAs will differ according to the goals a company wants to accomplish.
Having a quality web design means that your CTAs are aesthetically pleasing, easy to access, and clearly defined. A red button is hidden somewhere on a web page that says “Click Here” is not going to stand out or have nearly as much impact as a button that fits your branding paired with a definitive action like “Contact Us.”
Where you place CTAs on a page can also impact user engagement and lead generation. Generally, you’ll want CTAs placed beneath the header, in the footer, and integrated into the text.
As every website and industry is different, website designers can further perfect CTAs by A/B testing with the help of tools like Google Optimize and Crazy Egg.
Ensure Forms Are Responsive and Accessible
If you’re utilizing CTAs that lead to a form that gathers people’s information, such as a contact us form, it’s imperative that the form also matches your branding, looks modern, and functions well on mobile and desktop.
You want to make the process as easy and seamless as possible. Therefore, things like having a horizontal scroll on mobile can deter user experience and your qualified lead’s willingness to engage with your website.
Drive Online Lead Generation With Smart Web Designs
When companies invest in a thoughtful, strategic web design, they show prospective customers that user experience is at the forefront of their minds.
Web users are far more likely to become new leads when sites: look professional via cohesive branding and layouts, are easy to use and navigate, function on both desktop and mobile, are accessible and responsive, have clearly defined CTAs, and easy-to-use forms.
If your site looks a little worse for wear and your online lead generation has been suffering, it may be time to consider a design overhaul. Often, putting forth the time and effort to design a site with the user experience in mind can significantly impact online lead generation.
About the author
Corey Kelly
Corey Kelly, CEO and Founder of Triton Commerce and Atomic 8 Creative, is passionate about equipping businesses with innovative, digital marketing solutions for optimal growth and brand awareness.
