For Every Page on Your Website, Provide a Clear and Concise Headline
Let users know where they are and what they can expect to find. Cover one topic per page. Bonus points for including relevant keywords in your copy and page titles and using the proper HTML heading tags.
FreshBooks a great example of how to create an engaging headline. FreshBooks combines a bold headline with elements of social proof to get buy-in from prospects, as well as an informative sub-headline that explains the product offering in more detail.
Reinforce Your Headline With a Meaningful Sub-Headline
Use your headline to grab the user’s attention and sub-headlines to keep them engaged or drive home your point. E.g. Selling a major benefit of your product or service in the headline, use your sub-headline to elaborate.
Citing FreshBooks as an example again. Because they have decided to use the headline for demonstrating social proof of their product's effectiveness, FreshBooks also includes a descriptive sub-headline that is also benefits-focused and directly related to the headline.
Focus on Benefits First
Many small business websites make the mistake of leading with a list of features and technical data. While this is good content to include, users ultimately want to know what’s in it for them and if the product or service is right for them. Once further along in their decision-making process, they will make use of feature lists to compare, evaluate and research further.
Looking at the second part of the FreshBooks Homepage, it’s easy to see the benefits of using their product. The interesting thing to note is that FreshBooks continue to utilize elements of social proof amplifying its benefits statements. This social proof serves to substantiate the product's claimed benefits.
Create Effective Calls-To-Action
By knowing your users, their interests and understanding their common pain points you’re in a great position to create more effective calls to action that are more relevant to your users. This relevance combined with a good, often time-sensitive offer, can be great for conversions.
The Montage photo books website is a great example of using two core Call-to-Action elements. One allows users to dive right in and begin creating a Montage, the other offers a risk-free trial. Notice how your attention is drawn to the “Start Your Montage” button, this is done on purpose.
Further down the page, Montage makes use of the same two buttons, but position the offer slightly differently.
Provide a Summary of Features
It’s a good thing to provide users with information about your products and services, but don’t alienate them by making it tough to read or overly detailed and difficult to digest. Provide a features summary and then provide a way for users to drill down further into the page or site for additional details or request more information if they require it.
When it comes to providing a summary of features, I feel like the FreshBooks site has done it again. Here they provide a section entitled “Features at a Glance” which is a brilliant way to let users see a summary of the top features the product offers. This section also allows users to drill down into each of the top features for more information.
Demonstrate Social Proof
For many users, the experience of others will have an important impact on their decision-making process. So, don’t rely solely on your content to demonstrate the value of your service or product offers.
Make use of elements of social proof such as testimonials, accreditations or your track record to highlight to prospects that your company is not the only one who believes in what you have to offer. Testimonials have always been important and will continue to be.
Looking at the FreshBooks site again, it’s easy to see how they make use of the elements of social proof to demonstrate to users that they’re not the only ones who believe that their products are great. Additional props for also using social proof to substantiate their benefits statements.
Provide a Standard, Intuitive Navigation
Unless you’re designing a specific type of website, stay away from overly complicated navigation systems. Provide your users with a simple, easy-to-use navigation system that facilitates website exploration and helps your users to find what they are looking for easily.
Many great websites fall short in achieving their full potential because of poor navigation. If users find using your website frustrating or confusing, you can be sure that they won’t hang around for long, they will simply exit your website and seek the information they need somewhere else.
Use Supporting Imagery and Graphics
It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words and nowhere is this truer than on your website.
Use imagery to convey tone, emotion, and details relevant to the page users are on and thereby improve the user experience. Where possible make use of quality, original images rather than stock images as overly professional stock images can make a website feel less authentic to users. Similarly, avoid the use of blurry, low-quality images as these can also ruin your chances of making a favorable impression on users.
The one site that absolutely should be used as an example when discussing the use of imagery and supporting graphics is Apple. Apple makes use of beautiful product images in an otherwise very boring design to create a website that is clean, rich and very usable. The pictures help users see the product details and as such facilitate decision making and the conversion process.
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