Design is an important aspect of conversions online. In this post below are discussing the importance and the success you can have with radical redesign vs evolutionary design.

Radical redesign vs. evolutionary design

Creating a new site is always exciting but there are times when you can evolve an existing website to generate more conversions. The rule of thumb here is to change the direction of your business. That helps you get a completely redesigned website. You need to start by determining which option will produce the best results for you.

Evolve your current site:
The first option is to evolve your site and it’s far cheaper to do something like this than to scrap it completely and build one from scratch. If your site works well, has no big technical issues and you have a stream of returning visitors, a tweak of your site is all you need. If your sales funnel has leaks, there’s nothing a good design won’t fix for you.

Rebuild from scratch:
However, completely redesigning your site can break the bank. Yet it sometimes is the only option ahead. When you get the highest possible conversions and your site design is old and feels amateur. It doesn’t get much traffic, start anew with a fresh direction. For instance, a site that sells remote workplace security should design itself to look secure. That’s the first step.

Principles of persuasive design

When creating an effective website, the biggest challenge is for designers to start persuading visitors using simply words or images. Modern tech makes meeting this challenge somewhat easy by giving site creators easy access to useful data that helps with high conversions.

These are the five principles of persuasive web design.

Here’s a brief look at these principles:

1. Clarity
The first principle is clarity, which in essence says that the site should be clear about what its about, who it’s for, and what it wants from you. This can be anything related to a product or service, a newsletter, or a quote. The best way to do this is by the help of balancing visuals and copy.

2. Visual appeal
The internet is full of visuals that appeal the senses. The idea here is to keep visuals beautiful but also simple when designing site hierarchy. It’s the best place to advertise a business

3. Visual hierarchy
We often see visuals in a hierarchy which means the most important is at the top. One that’s deemed less important by their order of importance is located far down.

4. Hold their attention
The most important thing for a salesperson to do to close sales is to get customer attention. Then hold this attention. Attention spans online are often short and holding it can prove to be quite the challenge. However, there is more than one technique to achieve this with images, calls to action, and compelling copy.

5. Only one action per screen, but don’t force it
Every page on the site should have an action you want the visitor to take beginning from signing up to the newsletter, buying something to making donations. It’s important however to provide the site visitor with enough information so they take that action. Otherwise, they will leave the site without doing anything on it.

Importance of Visual Design in CRO

People are generally visual and it doesn’t matter what you know about design. The eye is drawn to something that’s designed well. We are also extremely judgemental based on what we see. Attractive babies get held more often and attractive people attract business success. So attractive design is what you need to transform a simple SEO service to a professional SEO service.

For conversions, the design of your site trumps everything else. A beautifully designed website leads to better user experience. It leads to better trust and the opposite is often true for badly designed websites. Making sure all visible elements are working is paramount to attracting customers. Taking the time to nail down your UI testing tools will save money in the long run.

This makes the case for hiring skilled designers if you focus on CRO best practices.

1. Extremely quick to judge
Research shows that in a mere .05 seconds of people seeing something they form an opinion of your site, which is either good or bad.

2. First impressions
Research also states that the majority of people form an impression based on the looks of the site.

3. Inspiration impacts first impressions
Visually inspiring images increase the first impression of the site followed by site usability and ease of use.

4. Simplicity and prototypicality
Familiar prototypical design that doesn’t have too many distractions is best. The clear it is to the visitor what’s going on, the better it is.

5. Data-driven design is the best design
Using data helps you make sense of what works and what doesn’t. This allows designers to improve both site performance and its design.

Visual Hierarchy
One seminal element of persuasive design is visual hierarchy. This is the order in which the eye takes in what it sees. Creating a proper visual hierarchy on your site is important as it guides people toward important areas, tells them of the actions you want them to take doing the checkout or clicking on the CTA.

Ranking elements:
In continuation of the first point, rank elements as per priorities, business objectives, and desirable actions.

What influences visual hierarchy?
With the help of a data scraper, designers can gather and analyze user engagement data to identify what factors influence visual hierarchy and create more effective designs.

Visual hierarchy is influenced by topography, placement, alignment, and similar factors. The most important of these is size and color.

The bigger an object button or photo the more attention it garners. However, you cannot cover the entire site with a single image. The size should be proportionate to the design and appeal to the visual aesthetic on the site.

The color used must be different but not that different it creates a jarring feel. If your site has pastel colors, using a neon color can feel out of place.

Any good designer will use visual hierarchy to design a site.

There’s no shortcut to marketing success. To improve conversions invest in web design and get a proportionate increase in conversions as a result of that.