It’s a widely known fact that good SEO will only get you halfway if you are trying to boost your online sales results. Getting the visitors to your website is one thing, but converting them to actual paying customers is a hurdle many businesses can’t seem to get over that easily. But as the saying goes, when the going gets tough, the tough get going, so here is our list of four best design practices to help you turn some of those visits into dollars.

Focus on the Visuals

This category should be considered a given (in theory at least), but you’d be surprised how many businesses do not pay attention to the looks of their online offerings.

Whether it’s an out-of-date looking website, meaningless copy crammed all over the landing page or a clumsily assembled color scheme, it should by now be clear that looks simply do matter.

Ignore this at your peril, but be aware that people will consider you unprofessional and won’t bother staying around long enough to make a purchase unless your overall visual presentation is eye appealing.

Create Content that Matters

This one too is relatively self-explanatory, but is not as straightforward to execute in practice as the first point. The truth is, writing consistently relevant and high quality content is tricky.

It is also crucially important - Google knows this, your colleagues know this, and your competitors likely know it too. It’s 2017, and nobody wants to be subjected to spam in any way, shape or form - even if it’s just sitting there on your website, without you having to push it down somebody’s inbox.

Make sure that everything you say or display - including photos, video and other multimedia - is there for a reason, digestible yet meaningful. And don’t forget to explain what it is your product actually does (and other useful tips)!

Devote time to User Experience

Now we are getting deeper into ‘abstract terms’ territory. User experience could be defined in many ways, and it does concern a number of different aspects including some we have already talked about (visuals etc.).

What is commonly referred to as ‘UX’ nowadays primarily involves practices such as user flow mapping, wireframing, website design prototyping and other things that may sound like rocket science to you, but have been shown to improve conversion rates a great deal.

Just as with the previous two points, this is also an activity you can choose to perform in-house or to outsource it. Each choice has its own pros and cons. But if you ever feel like a particular activity is a bit too much outside of your comfort zone, it’s good to know there are other options available - such as outsourcing your tasks to a quality web design agency.

Make Shopping Easy

Congratulations! Now that you’ve kept a visitor on your website long enough for them to put something in that shopping cart, don’t make them regret the experience at the very last stage.

This means no mile-long forms to fill out (especially feedback forms), no store accounts necessary to complete the transaction, no shady payment intermediaries (stick to Paypal) etc. The last thing a customer wants to do after seeking out that perfect perfume online is answer a load of unnecessary questions; make it easy for them to order another one, not leave the store altogether.

There’s more to it than this, of course, but we thought we’d give you a quick rundown of the most basic points - just to get you started on your path of conversion optimization. Feel free to delve deeper once you get the gist of it, and good luck!