In today’s era of online entrepreneurship, simply having a website isn’t enough for your business to survive. You can post pictures of your products with detailed descriptions, but in order for your online business to not just survive but thrive, it needs to perform.
For today’s digital entrepreneur, driving traffic and converting leads are two of the primary focuses for entrepreneurial success. But it’s a lot harder than you might think and presents itself as the most challenging aspect of running a business.
Sure, there’s market research you can conduct and engaging with your audience on social media to expand your reach, but did you know that the design of your website could be the very thing that’s keeping your online business from reaching its full potential?
And the thing about it is that it starts from the very beginning of your site’s creation. First and foremost, you have to pick the best website builder when building a website… That’s going to be a major contributor to how well your website performs. Once your website is built, you can then start implementing various aspects of web design and functionality to ensure you have a high-performing website.
Here are the qualities your website should have for high performance.
Qualities of a High-Performing Website that Boost Your Conversions
Impeccable Visual Design
As humans, we are visual creatures, and the way your website looks is going to play a significant role in how your brand is perceived. According to CXL, it takes one-tenth of a second for a person to form an opinion about another person, and that theory is no different from websites.
Research from Google revealed that it takes 50 ms for a visitor to your website to form an opinion about your business, and some people can form their opinion in as little as 17 ms. In creating a great visual design, you have to keep in mind that the visual design of your website is actually an extension of your brand’s visual identity.
So just make sure you’re implementing certain design principles like color theory and visual hierarchies to boost your website’s performance and overall functionality.
Easy Navigation
When a visitor enters your website, they shouldn’t have a hard time navigating it. In other words, visitors to your site should be able to clearly and easily find what they’re looking for and transition from page to page with ease. If your website is lacking in any way in this area, visitors will leave and find a site that’s easier to navigate.
In fact, poor navigation is one of the top reasons why lots of online businesses have such high bounce rates. One of the best ways to make navigating your site easy is to have a clear and structured menu. Also, to further assist visitors in finding what they’re looking for, you’ll want to incorporate a search bar as well.
Mobile-Friendly Design
When you think of how most people shop online, you’ll quickly realize that most people shop from mobile devices because people are always on the go. Nearly 60% of searches are conducted on mobile devices now; smartphones are the top device people use but tablets are utilized as well.
Lots of online business owners make the mistake of neglecting to make their site mobile-friendly and instead make it only compatible with desktops. This ends up costing businesses thousands of dollars in potential sales. So if you want your website to be a high-performing site, make sure you optimize your site to be mobile-friendly so that it can be accessed across any device.
Fast Loading Speed
When was the last time you waited a long time for a website to load? It’s been a while. People don’t typically sit around waiting too long for a website to load. In fact, if a website doesn’t load in 1.3 seconds, most people will leave that site. The latest a person will wait on a site is for two seconds but anything longer than that, they’re leaving.
The average load time for lots of sites is 8.5 seconds but if you can optimize your site for it to load in two seconds or less, visitors will continue returning to your site. Fast load times also prompt your visitors to visit other landing pages as well simply because they can quickly browse what they’re looking for.
Clear Purpose
All of the above qualities make for a high-performing website but there is one thing that tends to slow a lot of high-performing websites down… It’s a lack of purpose. Have you ever been on a website and not been sure what you were looking at or how that site will meet your needs? Well, it happens all the time.
When building your website, you need to make sure that your site’s purpose is clear from the jump. There should be no confusion to visitors as to what your business is about. Everything from your URL to your landing pages, your business’s purpose needs to be apparent in every facet.
You need to make special efforts to choose the right domain name… Being too trendy, using your name, the current year, and hard to remember names can all negatively impact the amount of traffic to your site and really confuse visitors as to what your site is about. For example, if you’re selling handmade pajamas for children and call your website kellysjamjams.com, people might think you’re selling edible jams like what goes on toast or biscuits.
Not only will a clear purpose be helpful to your visitors but it will also gain your business brownie points with Google’s crawling algorithm. How? Because when users conduct searches, Google can better recommend your site on the results pages when it sees that your site is relevant to a particular query.
Everything from your tags and images to your site’s URL, the better your site’s purpose is apparent, the better chance you’ll have of ranking high in search engines for certain queries. This will in turn, drive more traffic to your site with the potential of boosting conversions.