Wooing online shoppers can be tricky. While your website may look professional and include social proof and trust badges, you could be overlooking less obvious design elements that can affect conversions. But don’t worry; you don’t have to be a web designer yourself to understand and implement these four simple fixes.
- Pick the right colors.
When choosing colors for your website, you shouldn’t simply pick your favorite. Instead, you need to consider the emotions each color will convey and if that emotion matches your brand. It’s commonly believed that certain colors affect the way we feel about a business, including whether we decide to make a purchase.
The color blue, for example, is thought to evoke feelings of trust, strength and dependability, which is why companies like Dell, Ford and American Express use it. On the other hand, companies like Lego, Nintendo and YouTube chose red because it tends to evoke excitement and youthfulness.
So consider what your website’s colors are conveying to your audience. Do you sell healthy lifestyle products? Then think about choosing green to evoke peacefulness and growth. And also bear in mind that using high-contrasting colors helps the most important elements, like call-to-action buttons, stand out.
2. Consider typography.
Just like colors stir specific emotions in people, so do fonts, so you need to choose typography for your website that represents your brand accurately. For instance, if your business makes hand-crafted furniture, you might consider choosing a font that tells your audience that reliability and comfort are important to you.
Additionally, creating enough spacing between lines of text will make your content easier for users to read. The magic line-height (the space above and below lines of text) is 150 percent of the font size you’re using.
3. Use negative space.
Negative space (or whitespace) refers to the space between all of the different elements of your website, such as that between header and content. Lots of negative space on your website is actually a good thing, allowing you to focus on the most important elements — like an eye-catching main image and call-to-action — and overall readability.