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Before buying, people compare. Before comparing, people judge.[/tweet_box]

Every webmaster wants to know “how to make a website sell more”, with 60+ hours of research and 14+ years of experience in the online marketing area, Diggiecorp has compiled this 101 actionable points to help you in engaging visitors, improving sales, and making the right impact. You should definitely diagnose your website against these 101 points. Enjoy the post…

On coming across a website for the first time, online users skim through it quickly, and if it doesn’t meet their expectations, it is abandoned within seconds. If losing your treasured customers due to this haste of seconds is your biggest nightmare then learn about the tips to make your website sell and play safer with Diggiecorp expert’s recommendations.

Your unique product or service will get a chance to impress only if the website leaves a positive impression. It seems unfair but unless you are a big name or the only supplier of the product/service, you will be judged by your website. And visitors judge whether your website is worth their time or not in just a few seconds.

So this post will teach you how to impress your visitors and generate more leads. The points that roll in this list will equip you with the jargon of optimizing a website to improve sales and increase online visibility. All you need to do is making an action in the given direction for witnessing a notable change in your conversions.

The First Impression should always be right

1. Organized website structure which includes a well-planned homepage as well as unique and custom design. Minimalist design without distracting backgrounds ensures the information reaches visitors seamlessly.

2. Other than going for readily available templates, go for a custom design that offers you a unique and distinctive look.

3. Adopt color psychology which aids in increasing the conversion rate of an online business.

4. Modular layouts that let content shine have the biggest impact on visitors.

5. Have a consistent style across your website. This makes it easy for the visitor to get accustomed to your website design.

6. Header sliders are a thing of the past. Nowadays it is prefered to use illustration in the header, 360 degree videos, animations and gifs which tell a story.

7. Use favicon and logo on every page of your website.

8. These days screen sizes vary across platforms, therefore it is advised to adopt a responsive design for your website.

Also Read: 10 super tips to build a user-friendly mobile website

9. A hero image is an ideal solution to immediately arrest a visitor’s attention and entice them to explore your site further.

10. Do not overstuff your website with content and graphics. Use a minimalist design and lighten up your website.

11. Avoid using unnecessary popups as they hinder user experience. Use them effectively.

12. Ensure there are no spelling mistakes, typographical errors, spacing or alignment issues.

13. Website loading speed should always be kept in check. If your website is slow to load then it will not only decrease user’s interest in your website but also affect your search engine rankings.

14. Picking up appropriate keywords will help reduce the bounce rate as only relevant traffic will visit your landing page.

15. Restrict the amount of information you display on the homepage and just highlight details like logo, tagline, services offered and USP.

16. Use scalable vector graphics (SVGs) for a responsive website.

17. Use skeleton screens to improve the speed of the UX.

18. Never use a splash screen for a website. It is only useful for mobile apps.

19. Do not use a registration or subscription popup at the doorstep of your website.

20. Auto-play audio and video are not recommended for a website.

21. Separate advertisement from the main content.

22. Do not display information on your website that is not yet available. Seeing a “Coming Soon” or “Under Construction” is not advisable.

23. Ensure there are no 404 errors, broken image links and resolve any form of technical issue.

24. Conduct cross-browser testing and screen resolution testing before making any webpage live.

25. Replace your stock images as it prominently screams that “we are fake”. Put more authentic images instead or use a combination of stock and custom photography.

User-Friendly Architecture

26. If you publish large amount of content on a regular basis, then it is advised to use page hierarchy to organize your content. This helps users to find the content more easily.

27. In the menu bar, you should a mega menu with a responsive sub-navigation menu.

28. Make sure that your website is easy to navigate and users can find the relevant information without any hassle.

29. You can use a vertical dot navigation style and one-page scrolls.

30. Do not waste your header image just to look pretty. Offer a CTA or link the image to an inner page.

31. Make sure that you always use breadcrumbs for navigation.

32. Offer the main value proposition within the first fold of your web page as 80% of users spend their time looking at the information above the page fold.

33. Provide a glimpse to the user that there is something below the first fold too, so that the visitor scrolls down and views the remaining content.

34. If you cater to a global user base speaking different languages, ensure that your website has options to be translated as per the target audience.

35. Instead of using old CAPTCHAs, get creative by using latest CAPTCHA trends which can be fun for your website visitors. This includes word and math solution, drag and drop, JQuery slider, etc.

36. Add a sitemap in the footer and site search option at the top.

37. Always ensure that the external links do not open in the same window.

38. Provide acknowledgment to the user after any type of successful conversion.

39. Keep the branding consistent throughout the website, like same font, color scheme and layout pattern.

40. Prefer pagination over infinite scrolling.

41. Design your website in accordance with user expectations, like clicking on the website logo takes user to homepage.

42. Make sure that the functionality of the back button is consistent across your website and does not break the navigation.

43. Avoid the automatic refresh of the content when the user is viewing a dynamic page. You can place a notification stating new content is available.

Conversion Path Optimization

44. Value-based exits – Offer more value when a visitor is trying to exit midway.

45. Focus more on enticing CTAs. Ensure that it creates anxiety and urgency, solves some problems and compels someone to stay on the website.

Must Read: How to create best CTAs that create more leads and sales

46. Use contrasting colors for the call to action buttons and test different shades to determine what works best for your website.

47. Include content and media that is persuasive.

48. Always keep your main heading and text towards the top left corner and your call to action towards bottom right

49. The checkout process ought to include minimum steps and minimal forms

50. If a user has left some conversion critical action midway to browse some other page, offer them a reminder to complete the process, but do not pester them.

51. Use arrows on your page as a directional cue to boost conversion

52. Always do a follow up on a user who left a process midway.

53. To control cart abandonment you can also offer deals on products added to the cart.

54. At the time of the checkout show the images of the product in cart.

55. Feature most selling and popular products on home page.

56. Your landing page should be dedicated to a single cause and should not have any outbound links.

57. Make your registration process quick, streamlined and hassle-free.

58. Pricing Structure should be carefully planned and should not seem overly expensive.

59. The price should be clearly indicated where necessary. You can also create a sense of urgency like limited time offer or n items are left in stock.

60. Ensure that your landing page offers the visitors all that has been promised.

61. Use high-quality product images on the product page.

62. Remove any form of distraction close to conversion funnel.

63. Offer recommendations in the form of suggested items or related products.

64. Physical addresses, contact number and tech support details should be clearly visible on the contact us page.

User Engagement

65. As more and more web pages are designed with border-to-border artwork in a single-column style, the content below the fold is more likely to be missed. Add arrows or other visual cues to encourage scrolling.

66. Principle of Reciprocity– Give away valuable resources related to your industry for free (example: a free eBook, a trial pack, etc.) so that the other person feels indebted and uses your services or refers you to someone else.

67. Have a limited number of tabs in the menu bar and incorporate nesting of menus.

68. Organize Webinars and other online events to discuss latest trends of your industry.

69. Make the content available on your website shareable across social media platforms.

70. Publish a blog on a regular basis to engage users through your content.

71. Stay active on Social Media websites to build a network.

72. Start a newsletter to update your subscribers about any new event, product launch or any useful update.

Give a human feel to your website

73. In the era of Chatbots and artificial intelligence, customers do look forward to get the answer to their questions with a personal touch.

74. Use “About Us” page to introduce mission, values and vision so that the visitors get to know more about your company.

75. Include a list of your employees and their credentials so that the visitors can see who is working behind the scene.

76. Ask your users to leave feedback or some suggestions.

77. Do not merely list all your offerings in a bunch of bullet points. Properly highlight how your product or service can solve a problem.

78. Users prefer to choose you if they like you over the competition. Ensure that you solve their queries in a timely manner, do not charge them unreasonably, and make them feel important.

79. Keep your comments section moderated to avoid spam or irrelevant comments.

Trust building elements

80. Show your availability on various social media platforms. Highlight your accounts on your website.

81. Showcase your company culture to your potential clients.

82. Use guarantees, risk reversal mechanisms for garnering trust.

83. Talk about awards, accolades and recognitions entrusted upon you on your homepage

84. Include case studies/stories of your work with your past clients. Highlight list of your clients, past works in the form of a portfolio, or live demo of a product.

85. Showcase what neutral third parties (authoritative sources like news publishers, influential blogs) have to say about your work.

86. Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, contract details, shipping policy, return policy, etc. should be transparent and clearly mentioned on your website.

87. Always highlight why you need particular information, when requesting it from the visitor.

88. Use testimonials from past customers and place them right before your CTAs. This is highly helpful in increasing conversion rate.

89. Secure your checkout pages and display security icons/signs on them.

Content Relevance and Presentation

90. Have a dedicated page to address user queries and FAQs.

91. Clean the cobwebs on your website. Refresh your look and content from time to time.

92. The content on your website should be original, plagiarism-free and should focus on your target audience.

93. Use hand-drawn annotations, which always commands attention.

94. Use visual aids and statistics to support your content.

Also Read: What makes visual content so critical for a website

95. To improve readability, use the same alignment consistently across the page.

96. Use interesting headings, sub-headings, and fonts to draw attention to your content and make it easier for the reader to scan through the page quickly.

97. For an eCommerce website, there ought to be a proper visitor and product segmentation.

98. Give your visitors a reason to buy from you via competitive positioning or USP.

99. Clearly tell your customers how you are better than the competition by highlighting the solutions you provide for a given problem.

100. Your webpage should highlight all the information that is crucial to the visitor.

101. Highlight a clear breakup of the difference between various packages offered, highlighting which package offers what.

Bonus point

Add fun elements: People remember how you make them feel, if we make them smile by including some fun elements on website. They will always remember the website and bounce rate can also be reduced.

With this checklist of 101 actionable points by Diggiecorp, now you definitely know the answer to this mystic question ” how to make your website sell “.

We know it has been a long post but there is still one important lesson left. There are various not-so-good-looking websites that are doing great in the web zone. Craiglist surely is a good example.

To stay updated on professional insights and industry best practices, it would be helpful if you subscribe to the following: Conversion-Rate-Experts, ConversionXL, Marketo, Moz & Diggiecorp Their blogs are a great resource to learn more about conversion optimization and internet marketing.

Also Read: Actionable Strategies To Increase Blog Traffic

For making a lasting impact, it is important to keep in mind visual as well as functional aspects. While undertaking design and development work for our clients, we always keep the above points in mind to ensure real business benefits. These tips to make your website sell will certainly save a lot of your time on research and will directly give you a well thought out action plan to implement.

If you have anything to share with us don’t forget to make use of our comments section. Your comments and feedback are valuable to us.

The post 101 Actionable Best Tips: How To Make Your Website Sell appeared first on Diggiecorp Blog.

Through the length of this article we have tried to answer

 the following queries:

– How to make people spend more time on my landing page?

– Why most people are leaving my website in first 5 seconds?

– Best practices to ensure your website visitors stay & convert

1. Optimize the loading speed of your web pages

If your webpage takes more than 4 seconds to load be sure that you have lost a considerable amount of potential clients.

Research proves that people abandon pages that take time to load and on an average online buyer expects a web page to load in 2 seconds or less.

Also Read: Quick tips to help you reduce the loading time of your website

To make people stay on your website it’s important to first quickly load your web page to ensure your visitors don’t quit before seeing your website even once.

2. Make a Great First Impression

As it is always said that ‘First impression is the last impression ‘. This phrase holds true in case of online businesses. Very rare there is a chance that a website that looks awful does a good business, that’s pure luck and nothing else.

To pass the 5 second test, it’s important to have that first impression right.

We suggest that make your website visually attractive using color combinations, images and design that syncs with your overall website. The deal is to capture people’s attention without confusing them! Don’t be scared to experiment with your design till the time it is impressive, memorable, and unique.

Make use of eye-catching visual aids which make people want to stay and check your website.

3. Plan an Expressive, Meaningful and Concise above the Fold Area

According to research done by Nielsen Norman Group, Website users spend 80% of their time looking at the information above the page fold. This clearly indicates that website visitors are more likely to spend major part of their time reading the information provided in the first fold itself.

Make sure you include your USP, what you offer and how it will benefit your potential clients in a language which is easy to decipher and digest.

Visitors have a short attention span and considering reading and scrolling extra activities there are chances they stick to only what is visible in the first instance so make sure you include everything that is important to make visitors stay on your website in the first fold only.

Want to know why you are losing sales?
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4. Highlight What You Offer through Crisp Headlines

Website visitors will not put in so much effort to read through all the paragraphs to find out what you have to offer, they expect to see that right when they arrive.

Having a short crisp and informative headline is a must to make your audience realize that they are on the right page. Your headline must effectively communicate what’s in it for the visitors and what is the benefit that they are going to derive. Don’t rely on your gut feeling while choosing headlines for your website; test the headlines using A/B testing and use whichever gives you the best result.

Research proves that 79% of the people just skim through the page while only 16% read in detail.

Make sure your headlines are simple, concise and informational.

5. Offer Clean and Intuitive Navigation

One thing that your visitors expect the moment they land on your web page is to have easy and clear navigation options.

Your top navigation bar must have all the important links that might be of interest to your visitors like other related services, contact us option, home etc.

Your website’s navigation must be intuitive and easy to use.

The language used for each tab must be easily comprehensible because if the navigation is baffling and your audience is not able to locate what they were looking for then certainly it will lead to rejection.

6. Avoid Using Too Much Text: Use Videos, Graphics Instead

If your web page has a lot of content in the form of paragraphs, and long texts without any breaks than be ready to face a high bounce rate.

Simple reason is that visitors aren’t willing to read so much of content to understand what you offer. To make them stay on your website it’s important to highlight all the information explicitly that they want to see.

Also Read: 101 Tips to make your website more engaging

With so many websites offering the same products/services and with people always being in a hurry it’s vital to keep what you write precise and focused.

Make use of images/graphics to communicate your message visually. Optimize your content to reduce length and make scanning of your page easier.

Uploading an ‘Explainer Video’ is another great example of making your web page visually attractive and informative without adding to the length of your content. Videos can be used to showcase your core functionalities, company overview etc. but again be careful and do a thorough research before hiring a company to make an explainer video for you. Remember it requires a lot of expertise to convey maximum information in as few words as possible!

We create websites which rank high on creativity & usability.
View our Portfolio

7. Include Elements That Add to Your Website’s Credibility

Website credibility plays a crucial role when it comes to creating an everlasting first impression. If your visitors find it hard to trust your intentions then they won’t even spend a second before quitting your website. Research proves that visitors are constantly concerned about the safety features of a website, whether its virus attack, payment security or risking fraud. To make certain that your visitors find your website trustworthy you must add reviews, testimonials, security badges, privacy trust seals and a detailed privacy policy as well.

8. Use Graphics that Support Copy: Avoid Using Cheap Stock Images

Eight out of ten people quickly take a glimpse of the images/headings to understand what the company offers, and only two of ten read the content in detail.

To pass the 5 second test the graphics or images that you use on your web page must communicate and support your content.

Instead of using common stock images make sure you use relevant, high quality, unique photos that actually represent who you are and what you offer.

9. Optimize Your Website To Cater To Users Coming Via Mobile & Tablets

Research has proven that Mobile Searches have gone up by as high as 500% in the last 2 years and it is expected to grow even further. So mobile devices and tablets are one such area which you can’t afford to ignore. Just getting a responsive design won’t solve the problem here, it is critical to optimize your web page to deliver the ideal user experience on all devices.

Test your mobile and tablet version to check how the headlines, images appear and what is the appropriate font to be used etc.

A desktop version is completely different from a mobile/tablet version so its important to test in order to ensure it ranks high on usability and passes the 5 second test with ease.

10. Give your visitors a clear path to follow: Plan your CTA’s well

Another very important point to make your website visitors stay for more than 5 seconds on your web page is to ensure that you constantly give them a clear line of action.

If they know what they have to do next without any hassle there are chances that they will take that action.

Your call to actions must be easy to understand, should prompt for an action and most importantly they must look clickable.

Also Read: How to create the best call to actions to generate more leads?

Give a clear path to follow because you don’t want your visitors to think too much when they arrive at your site and nor do you want them to keep looking for what they have to do next. So well planned CTA’s at regular intervals which motivate users to take action is the key to pass the 5 second test!

11. Keep All the Sources of Traffic Consistent with Your Web Page

Your website might get traffic from a variety of sources, so it’s important that you maintain consistency. This means you have to ensure that a visitor who lands on your web page by clicking a ‘Pay per Click’ Ad, search results, banner Ad or from any social mediums gets what he is expecting.

Your promotion must be in line with what you are offering. If there is a disconnect between what your Ad and landing page convey then that will immediately lead to visitors exiting your web page without any further action.

Always confirm that your website is ranking for the right keywords, Ads match your landing page copy & social media shares and mentions are relevant to guarantee that your users find what the description specified.

12. Avoid Any Kind Of Distraction on Your Web Page

The biggest turn off for any visitor when he lands on a web page would be an auto sound – automatic music that plays in the background. Make sure you aren’t still following this age old trend because if you believe us that’s the major cause of your visitors immediately leaving your website. On the other hand some might consider pop ups as a distraction too. But in reality if used effectively they can be the biggest source of conversions.

Make sure you do not bombard your visitors with pop ups as soon as they arrive or with pop ups that stick and do not go away till the time the desired action is taken.

Avoid using a lot of animation or flashy graphics to showcase your creativity; they will only act as a continuous source of interruption.

We tried to cover all the best practices that brought great results for our clients with you. Let us know if you have more tips to increase your website’s user engagement. In case you have any doubt or want to have a friendly conversation with our web experts then feel free to fill in this form to contact us. We will be happy to help you!

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The post How to make people stay on your website for more than 5 seconds? appeared first on Diggiecorp Blog.