Design is not that hard for some, but others, it might not be as great. Designing a website should convey its own type of message to your visitors that enhance what content is already available on your website. Design elements that are strategically made to attract your visitors to certain places are certainly things you want to apply in order to successfully convert your visitors. Here are 5 ways to make your site’s design pop in a way to convert your visitor to other places on your website than just the front page.
Colors
Color is important. People are visual creatures. It does not matter whether you are male or female, things that attract people are well put together palettes or tasteful, yet attention grabbing colors.
Typography
Years ago, it was not possible to properly implement different types of fonts on a site to dress up a site. This took encouraging visitors to download fonts they did not have. Since those days, people can use Typekit or what I like to recommend, Cufon Text Replacement to change elements in their site- like headings (h1, h2, h3, etc…) or using it in their graphics.
When considering the right font, choose them not just on how cool it is, but also for legibility.
Sliders/ featured post tools
Featured content sliders really have made a great element for converting websites. While some of the theme developers out there are implementing the content slider just for your posts, you can break out of that and use images and direct to different pages or areas of your site, much like a banner ad, but with some tweaks, you can really make a successful conversion tool. One of the plugins I like for sites that do not have built in featured content sliders is the Easing Slider for WordPress by Matthew Ruddy. You can use custom images or use it for your posts. A similar example of this is here on the front page of Blondish.net
A featured article widget is nice to have in your sidebar. You can show people the way to articles you think they really should read.
Design format
Your design format is important. If you have too much space or things seem smashed together, it becomes a problem for visitors wanting to read your site or go where you want them to go. Good code and clean design is good. If you made your site by yourself, consult a web design friend for advice. They will know or they SHOULD know the best practices in web design.
Interactivity/ forms
Leaving a way for your visitors to communicate with you is an excellent feature. Whether it is the comment form for your blog entries, a lead form, newsletter subscription, social network icons, these will build that dynamic that other sites may not have. Make sure to give the impression to your visitors that your door is open to them and they can contact you. The number of doors, or methods you choose to leave available will exponentially increase that engagement factor on your website.
Of course, the methods above are very basic, but with some clean design and proper placement on a web page, your website can attract those you are trying to reach.
What methods do you like to use on your website to attract visitors?
Hello, Nile. The tips you have here will surely help both newbies and techies alike, especially those who have other ideas for their sites. We just launched our new site, as well and I believe what we came up with will work better in catching the attention of our target market. We went for simplicity, clean coding, the same colours that portray our brand personality and several other features besides that we believe will make our new site more effective as a marketing tool.
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I will have to go over and take a look. 😀
This will definetly help the newbie blogger. thanks for sharing the tips 🙂
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Very good tips. I'll try to follow them.
Thank you for sharing.
What you’ve shared in this post about designs are really what makes the visitors get engaged if not leave the site without exploring any further. Whether the site is new or an old one which I often visit, I give importance to the design of a blog because I don’t want to browse sites which are not user friendly.
Hi Niles,
you are sharing some great tips!
In regards to fonts, I like the TinyMCE Advanced plugin which gives you more options.
Yes, I agree, there needs to be a balance of space and text.
People have a 10 to 20 second concentration span. If the paragraphs are too long, people may not continue reading.
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge!
Cheers,
Yorinda