Generating Web design leads is easier when your own website’s design, content, and layout are in top condition. Basically, we want website visitors to perform the right actions, at the time that we present them with options. But how we get them to do that requires not just great copy and a sensible, value-based approach, but also giving them the right visual cues that will help them overcome internal resistance to taking action.

A website’s value in generating Web design leads is only as good as its ability to convert customers and get them to perform the right actions during specific campaigns. This applies most especially to landing pages during PPC campaigns or Facebook Ads campaigns.

CONTENT

1. Make it a positive experience

Incredibly, it has been scientifically established that people consider website design a critical component of a positive online experience. An Adobe report stated that 68% of online users consider Web design as the top factor in using any kind of website. That means modifying your website to fit the needs of your core audience is critical to your success. Delaying this will likely cause problems for your campaigns in the long term.

2. People are being more selective with content.

While the entire Web is comprised of billions of Web pages now, studies have shown that people have become very selective of what they actually consume online.

Therefore, it is critical that your website becomes a watering hole for people who need information about Web design in general. On average, the average consumer uses about six devices throughout the day, and they read only 12 sources of different content on a daily basis.

Millennial consumers, on the other hand, use about seven different devices and visit, on average, 14 sources of content for their informational needs. Smartphones are the crowd favorite when it comes to usage among all devices.

It has also been found that 88% of consumers are multi-screen most of the time, meaning they use at least two devices simultaneously while working or enjoying leisure time.

This being the case, people say that they are also mostly distracted (48%) with millennials leading the pack in terms of distraction. As they are being constantly distracted, Web users scrimp on limited time to get what they need while compressing available time.

3. Entertainment value is now more important

A huge part of the challenge now is attracting, engaging, and keeping your core audience is to increase the entertainment value of your content. The entertainment value of content is now being seen as more important than accuracy. A growing section of millennial audiences (35%) now deem entertaining content as more shareable, more than any other generation. 42% of millennial audiences do not check the veracity or truthfulness of content before sharing.

When online audiences open content like articles and anything with textual content, they become more sensitive to the slant of the content and its source. 61% of readers check if the content has a specific and obvious bias, 60% examine images if the said images have been edited or revised by the one who posted it, and 60% of consumers are also interested in knowing if an ‘objective’ post is actually a paid post or not. Obviously, people are concerned about the truthfulness of what they read, but only once they open it.

On the other hand, when millennials are exposed to the content shared on social media, they are wary about such content and are more likely to check the truthfulness of the material, compared to other generations. This means that the older generation is more likely to be more trusting, compared to younger audiences.

4. Increasing standards on content experiences

If you’ve been around on the Internet since the last decade or so, you would know that many websites presented user experiences that were largely hit and miss. Some websites excelled in giving great user experiences with their websites, while others weren’t that great.

With Google moving constantly toward the side of users because users want a specific type of experience when going online, the search engine is also constantly adjusting its metrics and RankBrain itself, to make sure that top-ranked websites are those that provide the best possible online experience to users. The following statistics should give you many clues as to what consumers really like when they visit any website, at any time:

– On average, 73% of consumers state that the content of any website must display well on their devices. By devices of course, we mean mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, and not just laptops or PCs. Laptops and PCs have the least number of problems when displaying content, but we are still seeing a lot of websites struggling with providing an equal experience to users when they access the mobile version of websites.

According to Google itself, mobile versions of websites should never, ever be a toned-down or watered-down version of the desktop site. Everything on the desktop site, including features for menus and easier navigation, as well as access to content and forms, should be equal.

If features are missing from the mobile site but are just sitting pretty on the desktop site, your website is likely to take a hit from Google. On the other hand, your bounce rate is going to increase if you don’t solve these issues, which reduces your website and landing pages’ capacity to convert organic or paid traffic.

– People only have, on average, 15 minutes to consume online content. 66% of people would rather appreciate a website that has a great design compared to a website that is plainly designed or has a poor design.

– Why do people bounce from a Web page? Here are some of the most common reasons: if the images won’t load properly, 46% jump to another device and 39% quit the Web page altogether. If the website itself doesn’t load properly and the screen stays mostly blank, 44% will switch to another device, but 39% will again quit the web page.

The overly long copy used to work – about 15 years ago. Today, people no longer have the patience or energy to read through overly long content. Basically, they want to know what a page is for if it is useful to them and the quality of content within a few seconds. The top portion of the content is extremely important in establishing trust.

In the event that your content is too long, a slightly lower figure (30%) will leave the current device, and 38% will do something else. If the viewer feels that the website is on the whole unattractive, 35% will switch over to another device, while 38% will leave completely.

5. Making your content shareable is a matter of life and death (figuratively)

Trust of Internet content has been dropping for years, and the figures show that the top three sources of content that people trust is: family or family member (72%), colleagues or peers (59%), and from traditional broadcast networks like BBC, CNN and Fox (55%). Tied in fourth place (54%) are traditional publications like the New York Times, and trusted brands or companies that people have purchased from before.

In short, in order to get to the top half, you need to make your content as shareable as possible. There are several ways to do this:

– Use a variety of elements to make your content more engaging

– Directly encourage sharing by having social sharing buttons on your posts, images, infographics, and videos

– Post on a variety of social channels so they can share the content on the platform where they found it

– Make sure that the information that you post are relevant and updated – don’t use old content and continue refining your understanding of what your niche really needs in terms of information.

DESIGN

1. Nothing could be more frustrating than a mobile website that has too small fields and buttons. Everything on the Web page has to be reachable by the thumb, to create an unbroken experience while browsing on a mobile device. CTAs and action buttons should be laid out in a way that people will have no problems accessing the actions no matter how small or big their mobile screens are.

2. People on the Web read in a particular pattern: the F pattern, specifically. It’s imperative that you create a good design that helps people understand what the page is about when they first arrive. Unlike reading a book where people go from left to right in a mechanical manner, they have no such compulsion to do so with the Web page. They read the entire top half (the headline), read a little of the subheading, and then scan the rest of the content by sliding up and down. This has become the norm because people don’t have a lot of time to read content, and they skim content constantly and are happy with that.

This is not to say that people have forgotten how to read something in its entirety. However, due to shorter reading times, on the whole, people will first ascertain if a piece of content is worthy of their time before they scroll up and read everything from top to bottom. Whether they will decide to read your content in its entirety will depend on the layout of the website as well as the quality of the content (which we have discussed earlier).

3. It is considered a best practice to use the rule of thirds in doing layout. Imagine that your Web page has a grid, not unlike a tic tac toe grid. Images and other important elements should occupy only a third of the space at any time, and important elements should occupy the central intersections as these are the most eye-grabbing areas.

The rule of thirds applies whether you are viewing the website vertically (as is the case of most smartphones) or horizontally (applies to both desktop/PC site and while viewing on smartphones).

4. White space is just as important as the various elements on the page. White space is often used as a balancing element to keep the eyes peeled on the most important items on the page. It is also used to highlight objects that you want to make central in any design. The wise use of white space can make your page shine because everything is clean and readable, and generally a pleasure to look at. Sometimes that is all it takes to keep a reader engaged on a page. If the layout is painful to the eyes, people will bounce because they don’t want to spend the next few minutes slogging through the result of bad design.

5. Navigation buttons and the entire schema of a page should be geared toward getting people to perform desirable or target actions. Every page has intent, and the navigation design should, of course, support the overall objective for creating such a page. Having just general navigation for the entire website regardless of intent is sometimes insufficient especially if you have special landing pages for specific campaigns.

6. Review how you write and present CTAs or calls to actions. CTAs are critical for all types of content and pages because you should not waste any opportunity to get things done for your business. Even old blog posts, for example, should be optimized to reflect the most current offers or lead magnets, and currently actively offered subscriptions.

7. Use lots of high-quality images to direct people where to look. We are not just talking about stock photos – if you can use real photographs from your business, use them, add them to your content. Statistics have shown that businesses that use real photos are more engaging and they are more likely to be trusted as well, even by first-time audiences.

8. And finally, we’d like to avoid the possibility of confusing customers so try to limit their choices when introducing an offer. Using countdown timer mechanisms and in-window pop-up displays can also be useful in emphasizing time-bound offers.