Design Mistakes That Hurt Your Web Site’s Conversion Rates

Writing Too Much Text

When your Web site’s content is too long and its purpose is unclear, it is very hard for the user to find the most important information to decide whether they want to buy your product. Because the site’s content must convince the user to buy your product, you need to highlight the most important information and clearly communicate the product’s benefits.

This is where UX writing—a branch of UX design—comes in. The UX writer’s job is to make the text understandable and helpful to the user. Sometimes it is possible to say something more concisely by keeping only the essential parts of your message. As a result, your users may absorb more information, which could convince them to make a purchase. The UX writer is also responsible for taking care of microcopy—for example, the labels of navigation links, buttons, or fields in forms, as well as error messages. The goal of all of this text should be to make the user experience smooth, avoiding the frustrations that could otherwise result in potential customers abandoning the purchasing process.

Consider using a heatmap and conducting usability testing to discover what information is most important for the user to make a decision. On the heatmap, you can see the areas on your site where users are clicking or interacting with elements. To determine whether the content on your site is too long, you’ll need to look at the users’ scroll depth, which can tell you whether it would be wise to add a new section at the bottom of a page. If, for example, only 5% of visitors would see the new section, creating it would not be worth the effort.

Failing a Scan Test

Another design mistake becomes apparent when a Web page doesn’t pass a scan test. When a Web page has a clear structure—with headings, subheadings, and bulleted lists that highlight important information—and uses simple words, this makes it easy for the user to read and absorb the information by doing a quick scan. If something grabs their attention, they’ll stop scrolling and read in greater depth.

For example, the same picture could have different effects depending on how you place it on a page. It could catch the user’s eye and convince the user to click your banner. On the other hand, placing the picture next to text could make it too overwhelming or distracting and cause people to ignore the text. This is another very good case for usability testing. For example, you could do a so-called five second test, showing the picture for five seconds, then asking the participant some questions about the content you previously displayed. In this short time, you can confirm which element grabs the user’s attention. There are some online tools that let you conduct such tests remotely and very easily.

Lacking Visual Hierarchy

Even if a Web page is long, giving it a clear visual hierarchy can help users easily scan the content and find the information they need. Pay attention to the visibility of key elements. As you design every section, consider which element should be the most visible—a photo, a heading, or a call to action? Try to refrain from the overuse of gradients, blinking elements, and other decorative elements on your site. If you don’t know which element should be the most important one, always refer back to the business goals for the Web page.

Difficulty Navigating

If a landing page doesn’t answer users’ questions, they’ll want to search for more information. Enable them to do that. Provide a section with related products to give them some other options. This could increase the value of their shopping cart.

To ensure better navigation for the whole Web site, provide a clear menu with categories for the products or brands in your portfolio. Make users’ paths to the products they want as short as possible. While a search bar is always helpful for people who have become lost, people must know exactly what they want and what to call it to use search effectively.

Breadcrumbs may look a little bit outdated, but they can still be useful for people who have become lost when browsing. With breadcrumbs, users can easily see which category they’re in and navigate to a similar category page to see comparable products. Breadcrumbs are especially useful on Web sites with a complicated information architecture—for example, an ecommerce site with many product categories.

Conclusion

A Web site that has a great user interface, is attractive, and is easy to navigate could still be targeting the wrong users and provide a terrible user experience. Perhaps the user journey that you’ve implemented is incomplete, leaving people unable to find what they’re looking for. In contrast, a wireframe could represent the most elegant navigation of a user journey and, thus, potentially provide a great user experience, but have a terrible user interface with difficult-to-read fonts and colors that makes no concessions to mobile access.

To engage your target users and meet their needs, make sure that you’re balancing the concerns of both the user experience and the user interface. If you can avoid the design mistakes that I’ve described in this article, you’ll be able to keep your customers coming back for more.

Of course, you must never forget about the business goals behind a Web site. Whenever you’re making a difficult design decision, always refer back to the business goals for the site. In the end, the Web site must serve the needs of the business. But never underestimate the power of user feedback. Conduct as much usability testing as possible. In this way, you can verify all your hypotheses and determine which solution would be best for your users or customers.