1. Make your website easy to read

Well-written content that is insightful and entertaining is worth nothing if the user can’t navigate through the website or read whatever is written on it. It might even turn away visitors, which is a waste of time, good writing, and money.

There are plenty of things you need to keep in mind when trying to make your website easy to read like:

• Font

• The font in relation to page color

• Font size

• Syntax

It’s important to use a few different fonts and sizes and test them with employees, family, or friends.

This is important because there aren’t any real rules in place when designing a website. There are no rules for what font, size, and color a website should use. Most websites use two or three different fonts spread around the website to emphasize different content.

Here’s an example of a website that is not easy to read or comprehend.

Yale school of art’s website is not well designed. It’s difficult to read with all the different fonts, let alone the small font that needs to be zoomed in quite a bit to be readable.

The large paragraphs don’t help as well. Avoid writing lengthy paragraphs and sentences when designing your website.

If you’re struggling with writing content for your website that converts well, then you can always make your way online and download a content writing tool to help you.

2. Have a visual hierarchy

A visual hierarchy is all about the way you layout the website to make it easier for users to quickly take in all the information and move to the next page. 

It can be especially confusing for someone who is using your website for the first time, which is why it’s important to get the layout of your website correctly.

There are some obvious things a website needs like the brand or company name, a logo, and call to actions.

Your unique value proposition needs to be well placed and stand out so users can quickly identify what your brand is about and what you’re selling.

Make sure the call-to-action buttons are visible, preferably somewhere in the center of the page, as well as place them on product detail pages.

Gibson’s website has a call-to-action button (shop now) right in the middle of the page. There is a cart symbol, and logo that takes you to the landing page as well as a find a dealer button at the top.

If you’re struggling with designing the layout of the website, or aren’t sure where to start, you can find plenty of great design template ideas from recognized websites to get you started.

3. FAQ pages

Frequently asked questions or FAQ is an important part of any website. A lot of easily fixed issues can be addressed on this page, as well as questions that frequently come up from customers.

75% of internet users expect to receive help with an issue within five minutes, which isn’t a lot of time when your support team is already busy or possibly small.

An FAQ page will help ease the load off customer service since plenty of issues they might have dealt with are now settled within the FAQ page.

When creating your FAQ page, it’s important to remember an FAQ page needs to:

• Take your audience’s needs into account

• Doesn’t focus on a single intent.

• Get updated regularly with new questions and answers.

• Drive customers back to more important pages on your website.

• Show professionalism and knowledge about the product or service for sale on the website.

Youtube’s FAQ is an excellent example of a simple, well-designed FAQ page. The most frequently asked questions are on display, as well as a search bar for searching any other queries the users might have.

4. Only use professional photos

Nothing is as off-putting as ending up on a landing page with photos that look like they’ve been taken on a 10-year-old Samsung phone.

Clear, well-lit, and detailed photos quickly instill a sense of trust in your brand when users visit your website. It doesn’t hurt that it’s excellent eye candy.

Getting professionally photographed pictures of your products is important. Not only is it the only way a customer on your website can see what your product looks like, but it’s also part of your brand’s first impression. Ugly photos do not make a great first impression on customers. 

You don’t need to create Hollywood-level ads or pictures, but it’s worth the investment in hiring a professional to help you take these photos and edit them.

Fast-food chains like McDonald’s and KFC are great at this, although their pictures look even more appetizing than the food you get.

If you do not wish to invest in professionally photographed pictures you can always browse for stock images.

You will be able to find high quality images, some even a great fit for your website, but be aware, these kind of images can look unconvincing and unnatural.

For example, Cherrydeck Branded Stock™ is the new performance-based way to create visual content for your products.

Yes, you can source a library with hundreds of photos and videos of your own products easily, and only pay for the content you like!

Ditch traditional product shootings, costly productions, and generic stock photos - with Cherrydeck, you can get custom content according to your needs and at your own budget. Suitable for your website, social media, ads, and more. 

From still life, lifestyle or product photography to GIFs, unboxings or reels – Branded Stock™ works for a variety of industries within consumer brands: beverages, skincare, fitness, homeware, pets, food, and more.

5. Make check-out simple

A simplified checkout is an excellent design choice that should be used by all companies. This is especially true when you are working on making your website optimized for mobile use.

When customers have already committed to buying your product, there is no need to feed them more information or make it difficult for them to purchase the product. No need to give them time to change their mind.

To avoid this happening, you need to create a simple one-page checkout.

A one-page checkout doesn’t allow for any distractions whilst checking out, which could cause a user to exit before purchasing the product. Also make sure that users can buy your products without having to register.

You also need to make sure that on the way to the checkout page that the website runs smoothly, the pages load fairly fast and everything is easy to read. That applies to your checkout page as well.

Studies have shown that a single-page checkout is able to convert over 21% more leads than a checkout with multiple pages.

Popular online shopping site Lazada uses this strategy to encourage users who are quickly looking to buy a single product by offering them a buy now button.

The issue with theirs is that only registered users can use the buy now feature. It’s still well implemented and easy to use. Regular customers can quickly buy products with a single-landing page that only asks for the delivery address and form of payment.

If you struggle with website design or might not be sure where to even start when designing a simple one-page checkout, then there are plenty of online website design courses you can check out to help you progress your web designing skills.

6. Have products on your landing page

Landing pages are your website’s first impression and should be welcoming to your new guests. Not only should they look great with professional photos, be easily readable, and load quickly, but placing products on your landing page, with a call to action should attract users who are looking to purchase something quickly.

It also gives users an idea of what to expect from your website as well as the products you might have in your catalog.

A great way to do this is to have your best-selling products on the front page, either as a rotating banner or a few categories with pictures.

You can also use videos of your products to show the user what your products do.

A study by Nelson found that on average a user takes 10-20 seconds to decide whether they want to browse through your website or not. Those 20 seconds are mostly spent on the landing page, which makes it crucial to get them hooked as fast as possible.

Having a video on your landing page does just that since studies show that a landing page video could increase your conversions by over 130%.

7. Have a search bar

Having a search bar on your website is important because many users don’t want to scroll through your website when they’re only looking for one specific product or article.

A search bar lets users quickly get to where they want to be, without going through any of the extra pages.

Adding a search bar to your website increases conversions as well. eConsultancy did some research and found that users who used the search bar on websites had double the conversion rate of users who didn’t.

This is Swiftype’s landing page. On the top right corner is the search bar, as is with most websites that use them. It’s important to keep your design in tandem with most websites, since users usually expect these simple convenienves from a website.

Once you click the search bar you are greeted with a large blank screen with the search bar on top. Once you start typing, suggestions are given using what you typed as the keyword in an article or page. 

This makes finding what you’re looking for fast and quite in-depth.

8. Brand consistency

Creating a brand image takes time and money. It’s important to keep your branding as consistent as possible, and that includes all your content or competitive advantages like images, and videos on your website.

Keep the pages looking similar, yet not monotonous. 

Your brand should be recognizable. When a user clicks on your landing page, they should be greeted with a landing page that is indicative of your branding with your logo as well.

Make sure the color scheme of the website is consistent on every page and matches well with your logo and branding. 

The only time it is acceptable to really change the color or font is your call-to-action buttons. To make them stand out, you could choose a contrasting color to the rest of the webpage. 

9. Make your website mobile-friendly

It’s safe to say that everything has gone mobile. These days most people spend more time in front of their mobile phones than a TV or computer.

This rings especially true for the younger generations. These days people use their phones for consuming media, paying expenses, using it to pay at stores with digital wallets, and scheduling and communicating whether it be voice or video.

There isn’t much mobile phones and tablets cannot do. 

This is why it’s important that your website is mobile-friendly. According to Google, more than 50% of website traffic is from mobile. If more than half of your users are from mobile, it is something that should take top priority.

If you’re website isn’t doing well or you might be considering migrating your website to another platform that fits your goals better, or just generally performs better. This could be especially true if the ecommerce platform you are currently using doesn’t support mobile or isn’t as well optimized.

10. Never empty customer carts

To be able to store cart information from users, they will need to agree to allow you to use cookies. With that though, your shop will be able to remember what items they placed in their cart and keep them there, even when they leave the website.

68% of users never finish shopping and leave the website with products in their cart. It’s a concerning number of unconverted customers who got the finish line but didn’t cross it.

With that in mind, even if a small percentage of that 68% comes back, having the products in their shopping cart already might sway them to quickly buy it.

You could also remind users of their abandoned carts using emails, which have an excellent 41% open rate, as well as a 21% click-through rate. However, you need to make sure the email address used is properly authenticated, to do so you can perform a DKIM setup which will higher the chances of not ending up in your recipient's spam folder.

Offering discounts on the items in the cart has a 54% conversion rate.

If your website empties the carts of users, you’re losing out on all of these extra conversions that come later.

Get converting now!

Following these guidelines, you’ll quickly create a website design that is a site to behold. 

Remember that a website that reads easy, is comprehendible, and has eye candy will always keep users hooked and possibly convert them into paying customers.

If you need a prototyping tool that will help you stay consistent with your brand, use UXPin. It's an end-to-end design solution that will help you build consistent user interfaces. Try it for free.