Earlier this year I decided to give TheBikeSeat.com a refresh after four years without a meaningful update. I knew it would help sell my signature bike companion seat, but never anticipated the almost immediate perk of changing to a modern new design. The newer look and feel reduced my site’s bounce-rate from 60% to 24% overnight! More people engaged with the site and better yet, with more people spending more time on the site, sales improved by 135%!
Why a Simple Design Update Works
The saying ‘less is more’ has never been truer than on your website. Don’t overwhelm visitors with information overload. Your homepage is an introduction to your product or service, and doesn’t need all the gritty details. Provide the high-level benefits, summarized in bite-sized chunks, and encourage people to click through to learn more. It’s all about relevancy at each step in the flow.
The saying ‘less is more’ has never been truer than on your website. Don’t overwhelm visitors with information overload. Your homepage is an introduction to your product or service, and doesn’t need all the gritty details. Provide the high-level benefits, summarized in bite-sized chunks, and encourage people to click through to learn more. It’s all about relevancy at each step in the flow.
Another tip? Stick with large, engaging pictures. Behavioral studies have shown pictures that tap into our primordial instincts (like showing food or danger) are by far the most effective at grabbing our attention. Pictures of human faces are also incredibly effective, as humans are social animals.
Lastly, remember the five second rule. Not for dropped food, but for visitors. If they can’t tell what it is your offer or how they can learn more in the first five seconds, they’ll probably leave which, you guessed it, means a lower bounce rate!
Don’t Forget Mobile
Almost half of all site visitors visit from phone or tablet. It’s important to make this growing number of mobile visitors feel welcome with responsive web design. Once you publish your website, check it out on your own mobile device to make sure it still makes sense and looks good; layouts can change, pictures can resize or even disappear completely. Using a mobile responsive design can help take the headache out of catering to customers on the go by sizing content to the device accessing your website.
Paul O'Leary Paul is a software product manager and entrepreneur with more than 10 years of internet marketing experience. He started TheBikeSeat.com with Weebly