3 website design mistakes killing your conversion rate

When you launch a new business website, getting traffic is the first hurdle. But even if you are successful and you drive a lot of traffic, that doesn’t mean you are going to make sales. That’s why it’s so important to pay attention to your conversion rate.

Your conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to the website that actually buy a product. If you have a low conversion rate, you must be going wrong somewhere because people are entering the site but you are not doing enough to convince them that they should buy a product. In some cases, that may be an indication that the product itself is not right or the price is too high. However, it can also be down to issues with the design of the website. A lot of new businesses make simple mistakes on their site which lead to a very low conversion rate. If you cannot do something to turn it around, your business is likely to fail.

If your conversion rate is low, you could be making one of these common website design mistakes. 

The website is slow

There’s nothing more frustrating than a slow website. If users click through to your site and then have to wait 2 minutes for the page to load before they can explore, they won’t be happy. People are very impatient when they’re browsing online and if every page loads incredibly slowly, they will give up and leave the site before they have a chance to look at any of your products. 

This is a common issue for businesses as they expand. When they first start out, the website is equipped to deal with the level of traffic that it is getting. But as the business grows and traffic levels increase, the website grinds to a halt. You need to do a speed test on your website which will give you a score out of 100. Anything above an 85 is fine, but anything lower and you need to make some changes.  

Streamlining the design and cutting back on pictures and videos that may slow loading times is a good place to start. If your site is too busy, it will take longer to load. You should also consider changing your hosting provider and finding one that can handle the level of traffic that your site is currently getting. Installing a caching plugin helps as well. There are a lot of features on the website that stay static on each page. A caching plugin will store that information so they do not need to be loaded separately each time, and that will improve speeds. 

If you can speed your website up, you should notice a big increase in your conversion rate. 

The navigation is confusing

People like online shopping because it is quick and easy. But if your website is poorly designed, you take away from that experience, which is why the navigation is so important. You should pay for website testing and see what the feedback is. If people report that the site is difficult to navigate, you need to get a web design company to come in and revamp the site. It needs to have a simple menu system so users can quickly jump to the right section, and you need a good search function as well. 

Often, too many pages makes a website difficult to navigate because users are presented with a long list of options. It’s important that you only include pages that are absolutely necessary and try to group things together as much as possible so the menu system is simple. 

The way that you use color on your website makes a big difference as well. Color is important because it makes your site look good and it can catch people’s attention and draw the eye to certain areas of the page. However, if you go overboard and fill the page with too many colors, it gets messy and it is difficult for people to quickly scan over the page to find what they need. So, you should use color sparingly and only where it makes an impact. 

Lack of security

Online shopping can be dangerous and there is a risk of fraud, so people are understandably cautious, especially on sites that they have never used before. That’s why it’s so important that you boost your cyber-security and ensure that all of the personal information of your customers is protected. But the user also needs to see evidence of this security on their end. If they don’t, they will not be willing to risk sharing their credit card information with your site and you will lose the sale. 

You’ve probably noticed the small padlock icon to the left hand side of the web address in the address bar. This indicates that the data being sent is encrypted and can only be read by the company that runs the site. This does not necessarily mean that the site is fully protected, but users will always look out for it and they will not be likely to make a purchase if the padlock icon is not there. Your hosting company will be able to offer you an SSL certificate which shows that data is encrypted and puts user’s minds at ease. You will probably have to pay an extra fee for this but it is worth it because without that padlock, your conversion rate will suffer.

The checkout service that you use has a big impact as well. If you are using a platform that people know and trust, like Paypal or Shopify, they will feel a lot more comfortable putting their credit card details in. But if they do not recognize the payment platform, they may not want to take the risk. A badly designed checkout system that asks people to fill out pages and pages of information will put them off as well. Make sure that it is quick and easy, and you always use a trustworthy platform. 

As long as you can fix these design mistakes on your website, you should be able to fix your conversion rate as well.