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5 UX Practices That Are Converting Leads Into Buyers

5 UX Practices That Are Converting Leads Into Buyers

Traffic to your site is steadily rising, which means that your marketing efforts are working. This seems like great news until a closer look at your analytics data reveals one big problem:

Conversions are abysmal.

People are landing on your site from search and social media. But they’re barely converting or buying anything.

You tell yourself that you’ll simply ramp up your efforts and pour more money into your marketing campaigns. Problem solved, right?

Not exactly.

If visitors on your site aren’t converting, the problem could be with your site’s user experience (UX) — how users feel when they interact with it.


So what is UX and why does it matter? And what can you do to improve your site’s UX and drive more conversions?

Keep reading to find out. In this article, we’ll look at 5 UX practices to convert more of your traffic and leads into buyers.

What is UX and Why Should You Care?

A study in the Oxford Journal Interacting With Computers defines UX as the following:

“The goal of user experience design in industry is to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty through the utility, ease of use, and pleasure provided in the interaction with a product”

In other words, UX design is all about making a product (or website in this case) easier to use. The goal is to enhance the experience that users have as they interact with your site.

Get the UX right on your website and users will have a more positive impression of your business. But get it wrong and users will likely bounce and click through to a competing result instead.

Here are some simple questions you can ask yourself to analyze your site’s UX:

  • Is my website easy to use?
  • How do users feel as they navigate my website?
  • Does my website make it easy for visitors to get in touch?
  • Do users know how my business can help them?

Answering these questions objectively isn’t easy. 

Get a user interface store review for a comprehensive analysis of your UX design. You’ll get 3 to 10 actionable points that you can implement to improve your website.

Now let’s take an in-depth look at UX strategies that you can incorporate on your site to boost conversions.

1. Add Videos to Your Product Pages

Shopping online isn’t the same as shopping in person — you can’t physically hold a product in your hands and try some of its features. Instead, you have to rely on the product description and reviews to help with your purchasing decision.

Videos are a game changer in these situations. 

They allow you to communicate the value of your products and demonstrate how they work. Visitors on your product pages can watch a short video instead of sifting through written text.

Whether you use product videos to showcase what you’re selling or corporate videos to define your company’s mission and values, video is a powerful way to increase conversions.

The key takeaway? Adding video to your product pages improves your UX by making it easier for visitors to learn more about what you offer.

But there’s a caveat here — you need to consider the quality of your videos. You’re not doing your business any favors by shooting with a cheap handheld camera. Visitors are likely to have a negative impression of your brand if your videos are low quality.

Invest in professional video production to improve customer engagement and showcase your products. You can always start with a small budget and gradually ramp up as you start seeing results. 

2. Pay Attention to Your Calls to Action

A call to action or CTA is a prompt that tells visitors exactly what action you want them to take. Examples can include subscribing to your newsletter, downloading a free ebook, and purchasing a product.

One of the most important aspects of an effective CTA is placement. In other words, where you place a CTA can greatly impact your UX and conversions.

For example, placing a CTA at the bottom of a page may reduce conversions because visitors won’t see it unless they scroll down. Users are more likely to pay attention to your CTA when it’s clearly visible.

This page for DCIM software adds their CTA to schedule a demo above the fold, or in other words, the part of the page that’s visible on most screens before you begin scrolling. It also includes a short informative video on how to choose a DCIM vendor:

Something else to consider is the color of your CTAs.

Use a contrasting color to make your CTA stand out. For example, if the main colors on your site are blue and white, use a more prominent color like yellow or red for your CTAs.

Experiment with different colors to determine what works best. But be sure to keep placement and colors consistent across your product pages.

3. Improve Your Website’s Readability

Landing on a website with small text is incredibly frustrating — you have to zoom in just to read the content. Most users won’t bother and will click the back button instead.

Usability tests show that online users tend to skim content they come across. They rarely read web pages word for word.

The fact that users skim content makes it all the more important to improve your site’s readability. That means using larger font sizes for your main headlines and product descriptions.

Look at this Toronto home care services company as an example:

The larger font size makes it easy for visitors to know exactly how the company can help. The background image is also a nice touch as it improves the website’s overall aesthetics.

The key takeaway here is that readability has a major impact on conversions. Visitors won’t buy if they can’t even make out what your offer says.

To improve readability, increase your font sizes and make ample use of white space — the empty space between elements on a page. 

4. Add Engaging and Relevant Visuals

Text-heavy pages are incredibly overwhelming. Another UX best practice to increase conversions is to add engaging visuals to your product pages.

Visuals are effective because they can convey meaningful information in a way that regular text can’t. Images also facilitate retention and improve overall readability. If you look at this post from ESQ Marketing for example, it’s heavy, there’s a lot of content, but images and visuals are helping readers understand everything.

No matter what kind of product you’re selling, always include images to help your visitors visualize what you offer. These include your home page, product pages, and even blog posts.

Here’s an example of Carson’s homepage, which includes an image of how their services work:

Similarly, you’ll want to use images that reflect your products or services.

There are free tools available like Canva and Gimp that you can use to create quality graphics. Working with a skilled graphic designer who can create images that reflect your brand is another option you can consider.

While stock images are relatively affordable, you’ll want to avoid using them. These types of images not only lack authenticity, but they also tend to be generic photos of random people smiling in different settings.

5. Implement Live Chat 

Even with videos and detailed product descriptions, some visitors will still have questions. Make it easy for them to get in touch by implementing live chat on your website. These are chat boxes that allow your visitors to instantly connect with a person.

This page from Florin & Roebig, a personal injury law firm, offers a good example of live chat in action:

Visitors on this page can chat with a live person without having to pick up the phone or send an email. The person on the other end can answer their questions and convert leads into buyers. 

Live chat offers a ton of benefits for your business too. For example, chat data with your visitors can uncover potential usability issues with your site. If visitors are complaining that your mobile site doesn’t work properly, you’ll know what to prioritize next.

If you decide to implement live chat on your website, be mindful of waiting times. Don’t keep your visitors waiting too long before replying or you risk hurting your brand’s reputation.

The average live chat wait time for the e-commerce industry is 1 minute and 53 seconds. Aim to keep response times below that duration. Otherwise, visitors may leave your website in frustration and click through to a competing search result instead.

Conclusion

The importance of good UX can’t be stressed enough. It makes it easier for your visitors to navigate your site and leaves them with a positive impression of your business.

If your visitors aren’t converting, implement some of the UX strategies described here — add product videos, pay attention to your calls to actions, improve readability, add engaging visuals, and implement live chat.

Improving your website’s UX isn’t something that happens overnight. But it can have a positive impact on your conversion rates.

This is a guest post contribution by Jeremy Moser. Jeremy is the Chief Marketing Officer of Wordable. His work has been featured on HubSpot, Foundr, G2 Crowd, Drift, SEJ, Codeless, Shopify Enterprise, BigCommerce, Nimble, Keap, and many more.

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