Grabbing people’s attention and converting them to prospective customers is the goal of any professional website. To do that, you need to create a terrific-looking and user-friendly site that encourages visitors to sign up for eBooks, consultations, and other services. Be sure your website follows these five rules that make it easier to convert visitors.

1. Optimize your website for mobile devices

More people are now surfing the web on the go via smartphones, tablets, and laptops. If you want a piece of this traffic, you need to make your website’s design responsive to all mobile devices.

To give your visitors an enjoyable mobile experience, make sure your website design fits the screen of any device. Additionally, all elements of your website, including inner pages, resources, and call-to-action buttons should be easily accessible. If not, visitors will get frustrated and click away to a competitor.

2. Make it easy for customers to contact you

This means displaying your phone number in the upper-right corner of every page and providing a simple, easy-to-find contact form. While some people prefer not to give up their email address for fear it will be picked off by spambots, it can serve as another contact option for those who hate web forms. Ideally, your customers will have more than one way to contact you.

3. Keep it simple

People are always busy. They don’t have time to navigate a complicated website, dig through dozens of pages to find a contact number, or try and figure out what it is that you’re selling because your mobile site doesn’t display content properly.

So when it comes to design, simplicity makes sense. When producing a simple website, every page, word, and image you create must have a singular purpose: to get visitors to contact you. Don’t distract them with excessive information, silly games, or flashy animations. Instead, have a nice clean layout so they can quickly understand what you’re offering and can contact you with a click.

4. Include custom photos whenever possible

Say you have to choose between two different websites that sell the same thing and look virtually the same. The key difference is that one uses real photos of the owner and his or her staff, while the other uses generic stock images of business people. Assuming images from both sites are of the same quality, which one will you more likely choose? Undoubtedly, the one that looks more authentic.

So the next time you need images for your website, invest some time and money in quality pictures taken by a professional photographer.

5. Move social media icons to the bottom of the page

Everyone loves throwing social media icons on their websites. And while it’s not a bad idea to show your credibility, putting social media icons at the top of the page makes your visitors more likely to click on them immediately. When this happens, you just created an exit for them to leave your site and never return, and we all know how easy it is to get distracted on social media.

Instead, place your social media icons at the bottom of the page or in the footer area. Remember, the goal of your website is to convert. If your visitors leave before they get a chance to explore your services, content, and offerings, you’ve lost them before you even had them.

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Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.