Web Design Principles That Convert Visitors into Customers

Traditionally after conducting a Custom website design review we are able to identify a long list web design principles that are missing from the site. Designing a website is completely different to designing a business card, there are key areas and factors that each website must contain in order to convert visitors into customers.

Ultimately the only reason business owners build a website is to attract more customers and hopefully automate some lead generation but unfortunately in most cases this does not happen. While this is a "normal" problem it is one that can be instantly fixed using some basic website design principles.
To discover whether your website is "conversion friendly" you can simply review your website design for the following:

The 8 Second Rule
Generally you have 8 seconds to convince a new visitor to stay on a page before they bounce off to the next site. This means that the content and web design needs to be most convincing in the top half of your site. One technique that has been proven to work well in web design is to include 3 Major Reasons why someone should stay on your site at the very top of your site. This can be represented by words or graphics and is generally incorporated into the header website design.

Proof, Proof and More Proof 

Potential customers want to know that you are good at what you do and you have a growing list of satisfied clients. If you are able to provide proof of satisfied clients in the form of testimonials, feedback ratings or examples of your work you are more likely to get results. A good web design will incorporate these proof elements into the design in a graphical way.
Strong Message 

Make sure that each page on your site is pushing across a strong message about your business or product. Many designs and websites try to convey too many messages and end up not getting any message across clearly. Choose a single message per page and convey that in the strongest way possible.
It is important to understand that while a web design may appear to you to be visually appealing this can be different for your potential customers. Remember that you are building a website to attract customers not to make you happy!