Common mistakes that can sabotage website or app conversion rate

For a website or an app to convert and retain users, it is important to get the User Interface (UI) right first. Three cardinal principles dictate the principles of UI: aesthetics, engagement and design from an emotional angle. Here are ten common UI mistakes that can either kill or leave your website in a coma state:

1. With mobile-based sites doing the rounds in 2018, it becomes all the more important that either you go for a stand-alone mobile site or mobile responsive design based on your time, budget and resources at hand. If not, you are already on the losing ground.

2. Next is a cluttered web layout which is the most annoying to users, members and customers. If they are unable to find out what they’re looking for, they may waste no time switching to the next listed website on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) of Google or other search engines. While this may seem basic, a few tweaks in line with the usability principles, particularly done on the key pages of your website may fix lingering usability issues.

3. An unintuitive navigation can be a spoiler when it comes to users staying on your website —your users wouldn’t like to walk through a confounded maze. Two things come into play here: navigation and hierarchy. Headings and sub-headings, menus and sub-menus and vertical sidebars and horizontal sidebars, if anything, must be organized intuitively.

4. CTAs or Click-To-Action buttons should stand out in terms of colour, design, size, shape, location, language and length. Note that CTAs impact the conversion rate and click-through rates of a website in a huge way

5. Website imagery must spell authenticity and be convincing enough to pull in your targeted audience. A good point to start is to study your customer persona and buyer behaviour. Trust is everything when it comes to buying a product or subscribing to your offerings.

6. Social proofs or signals including customer feedback, testimonials and user-generated content hold the key to unlocking sales opportunities, either online or offline. The key is to get these from your users, customers or members as much as you can for increased brand awareness and visibility.

7. Less is the new ‘more’! Content churned out in jillions of words may not be just convincing enough as an infography image, vlog, live video, explainer video or personal or influencer blogs. Educate yourself to create ‘meaningful snippy’ content cut to the point and leave the rest to your audience.

8. Failing to optimize your website speed can prove costly. Optimizing your images, reducing redirects, using too many plug-ins and reducing HTTP requests are few ways to optimizing website speed.

9. Making the user think can be the biggest impediment to any site looking to up the sales figures, or simply conversion numbers. Minimize the friction coming in the way of customer or user journey and accelerate the time taken for their decision-making.

10. Finally, design for your user persona and not according to your whims and fancies. Use whatever analytics or data you have at your disposal towards that effort.

If you think your site isn’t just converting enough, simply talk to our UI team, even if that’s for a brief consultation. We will help you with a sure-fire method to enhance the UI of your site or application fast and easy.