How to draw positive attention to your website - LaunchUX

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How to draw positive attention to your website

Your website’s design is the first thing that visitors will see. That’s why it needs to draw them in – and do so for the right reasons. Without that, you lose their attention as well as sales.

Drawing positive attention to your website is simple and straightforward. Learn how to do it down below.

Keep it simple

Number one design rule: simplify it. It’s functionality over aesthetics and aesthetics over anything else – but never break that hierarchy. If it looks good but is hard to use, it’s not good.

Remove clutter, unnecessary content, and anything else that turns a simple layout into something else. Visitors don’t care about fancy stuff on the web. More importantly, they don’t have the attention span to follow along.

You need to hold your customer’s hand from visit to purchase. You get to do that using a simple design and an intuitive layout.

Make sure your layout flows intuitively

When it comes to design, if you must explain something, it doesn’t work. Visitors will not stop to try to figure out how to use your website or see if they can understand how to buy something from you. Either people understand it intuitively – or they leave.

How can you make an intuitive design? Remove anything that is not important. Make sure people see the main content first – and every button that’ll lead to the next step second.

For example, an e-commerce website should focus on the products and purchasing options. That’s it.

Pay attention to visual hierarchy

Color schemes matter a lot. They need to complement each other and, at the same time, create enough visual hierarchy so visitors can distinguish between the main content and everything else.

You can guide your visitors to what’s important by using scale and contrast as well as complementing color schemes.

How can you test that out? Look at your website. What do you see first? Is it the main part? Great! Otherwise, you need to make a few changes.

More white space is better

Formatting is key. We could go into detail about why or how you should structure your website – but simple things are always better. Follow this single rule: give your content breathing room.

What does that mean? Words on your page need enough space around and in-between so people find them easy to read. People will leave your website if they must try to read an article, let alone navigate your site.

Letter spacing, word spacing, and margins are key elements to accomplish that. In contrast, having too much white space feels like you have an empty website. We’ll talk about balance down below.

Fewer actions mean more profit

How many clicks does a customer have to make to purchase something? Or how long does it take for a visitor to subscribe to your newsletter? That number is, perhaps, one of the most important ones. The lower it is, the better.

As you now know, good design is intuitive. You can make something both intuitive and long, though. That’s what you need to avoid. Make it short and sweet.

People have a 10-second attention span at best. You’re going to lose a lot of traffic if you don’t keep that number in mind.

Question every choice you’re about to make

Good design feels effortless – but is hard to accomplish. Even more so when it comes to complex websites. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible. It takes time, though.

Questioning every choice, it’s one way to make it to the end. It may feel like you’re driving with your foot on the brake. Instead, you’re in a slow is smooth and smooth is fast situation.

Why is that? Because, when it comes to design, everything is linked. When you change something, you may have to change ten other things. Take your time and figure out if your next move is your best move.

Balance things out

One of the biggest mistakes you can make in design is to go overboard. You make everything so simple that customers don’t care about what you’re offering. Or try to make things so intuitive and straightforward that people feel you’re pushing them instead of helping.

Balancing things out is easier said than done. Stop what you’re doing occasionally. Check if you’re making the right call – or, perhaps, you’re going overboard.

Doing that on your own is almost impossible. That’s why customer feedback is so important.

Don’t put yourself in your customers’ shoes

Good design is a tricky thing to pull off alone. That’s why big companies hire testers to see whether their design is simple and intuitive enough or not.

Don’t try to figure out what your customer wants or thinks about your website. Ask them! Be open to feedback. Pay attention to your site’s data and statistics to see where people are spending most of their time – and what things they don’t like.

Know your audience

There’s something else to have in mind when it comes to customer feedback: segmentation. College-aged customers don’t want the same thing as older clients. These differences affect both products and design decisions.

For example, young adults prefer flat layouts. Their parents, in contrast, find flat layouts unreliable and untrustworthy. There are differences between people from different countries regarding color schemes, visual design, and more as well.

Research is crucial to know how to navigate different waters – and improve your design according to future visitors.

Be unique – but don’t try to stand out

The biggest issue you may face is trying to stand out. Don’t. Most websites look similar because they follow tried-and-tested designs and guidelines. Do the same.

That’s not to say you should copy and paste whatever the competition is doing. You need to add a twist to make your brand unique – but do so via good content, even better customer interactions, and so on.

Overcomplicated layouts, weird color schemes, and a few other things will make your website stand out – for the wrong reasons. When that happens, you lose people’s attention and future customers.

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