What about the perfect website?
How Users Arrive
Let’s start from the beginning. Before anyone can see your website, they must first arrive at it to generate conversions. Therefore, the first thing you need to determine is the initial point of contact for your users. When a business starts, the first point of contact with the user is often through social media. This means that the potential buyer already knows about you when they visit your website; at the very least, they know what you’re selling.
Another way to attract visitors to your website is through organic searches. This occurs when someone performs a search, for example, on Google, and finds your website in the search results. If you want your buyers to arrive this way, you need to pay close attention to your website’s SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and refers to the information that Google needs to display your website in the top search results.
For this example, let’s perform a Google search with the phrase “create a website.” The initial search results displayed by Google are sponsored, which means that companies paid to appear there. However, beyond the sponsored results, the first result contains the words “Create a free website,” which is exactly what we are looking for. This is what you should achieve with your service: making the search match perfectly with what you offer and communicating to Google that you can meet the user’s needs.
Design
Now, let’s discuss a crucial aspect of your website: it should have an appealing and up-to-date design. Although this might seem superficial, it’s essential because it provides the reader with confidence that your company is still operating. When users encounter an outdated-looking website, they tend to leave because they assume that the information is outdated, or worse, the company is no longer in business. This is something you definitely want to avoid on your site, as it means you won’t be able to communicate anything to your potential buyer.
Another important consideration when designing a website is that users already have established usability patterns. This means that they expect certain elements to be in specific places. For example, users expect all web pages to have a call to action (CTA) prominently displayed at the top of the screen. However, on a website with an outdated design, this might not be the case, as we can see in the previous example. In such cases, the purpose of the page isn’t clear because many elements compete for the user’s attention simultaneously, making nothing truly stand out.
A well-designed website has a single call to action, as in the example of Wix, where “Get Started” is the most prominent element on the page, accompanied by a large text that says “Create your professional website.” There’s no doubt about what the user is expected to do, minimizing search time and decision-making. Remember that we live in an era where if something takes more than 3 seconds, we tend to abandon it. Therefore, ensure that decision-making on your site doesn’t consume more time than necessary.
Content
Content is essential, but it’s important to realize that visitors won’t spend much time on your website; the average is about 2 minutes. This means that users won’t read your website thoroughly. Instead, they scan the page quickly and make decisions based on what stands out. In web design, we use a heatmap, which provides a graphical result of how users read the page. In this example, we use a heatmap generated by artificial intelligence, which is an excellent tool to approximate how users view a website.
The heatmap reveals the areas where a user would pay the most attention when entering a website. The redder an area is, the more importance the reader assigns to it.
As we can see, what draws the most attention on a website are the headlines and images, as the brain naturally seeks important information in these elements. Therefore, when creating your site, pay special attention to these aspects. Although paragraph text may not be read as much, it’s equally important because search engines like Google extract information from it to display search results. In addition to metadata and other factors, ensure that the information on your site is relevant.
TESTIMONIALS
Having reviews or testimonials is important because it instills confidence in potential buyers that your product is genuine and effective. However, when you’re just starting out, you may not yet have customers leaving testimonials. In such cases, you can showcase examples of your work and include a section explaining why you’re a good choice for solving the problem they have and why they visited your website in the first place.
Wix does this by explaining why they are the best option for creating your website on their platform. This builds trust and allows users to try out the tool.
MOBILE WEB
Currently, over 75% of website visits are made from mobile devices. This underscores the importance of designing web pages with the mobile version in mind first. Designers focus on mobile design because our goal is to improve conversions on a site. If your site doesn’t function properly on mobile devices, you’ll lose more than half of your traffic and, consequently, your customers.
MercadoLibre reported that 79% of visits to their platform in the last year were made from mobile phones. This is because shopping through the MercadoLibre app is simple and user-friendly. Furthermore, MercadoLibre is known for selling emotions, so their site is designed to make the shopping experience as straightforward as possible.
When we analyze websites that we’ve seen on desktop in their mobile version, we can see that they know how to prioritize information. It’s not just about making elements smaller; it’s about giving them hierarchy. It’s important to show what the user wants to see first and hide the rest of the elements that lack real importance to a buyer. Often, offering too many options can confuse users and make them leave the site.
CONCLUSION
Everything we’ve mentioned is just the tip of the iceberg of what a good website should do. It’s the starting point for creating a site with a conversion goal. As I mentioned at the beginning, not all websites have the same objective; some exist only to communicate, like Wikipedia, and the design should adapt to that purpose. However, if your site aims to sell a service or a product, you should pay attention to these 5 essential points.
Remember that a website doesn’t always start out perfect; you must work on it constantly, add information, and make it grow along with your business. The important thing is to start.What have the perfect website? This question is a constant concern for those of us in web design and development. However, the answer always varies because each business requires a website with different elements and information. It’s also important to understand that a website alone doesn’t sell; it requires several components working together to generate conversions. After many years of designing and analyzing websites, we’ve identified these 5 essential elements that your site must have in order to generate sales.