When a visitor comes to you website you have roughly 0.05 seconds to make an impression.

50 milliseconds to convert a visitor and make them stay.

This all happens before they have read a word of text so you have to capture their attention with non verbal signs.

You need to understand online human behaviour and just by having super content won’t be enough to convert the user.  By using Visual Clues you can create a killer first impression.

Here are some tricks and techniques to help you along the way.

1)      Understand the Users Eye Patterns
People read your website in an “F” pattern.   Eye tracking research has shown that typically people start reading in the top left corner and read across, and then down the left hand side, and then across the middle.   You need to make sure you have your important messages in the right positions.

2)      Trust Indicators
When converting users, its all about Trust & Credibility.  You have to prove to the user that you are trustworthy of their business.  Here are a couple of pointers to show you can be trusted online.

— Show Your Hands
Body language research tells us that people will trust you more if they can see your hands.  When choosing images and video for your website make sure you can see your hands as much as possible.

— Facial Expressions
Understanding facial expressions is important so that you make sure you are portraying the right message.  Make sure that your photo doesn’t have you smirking as this portrays contempt, or unhappiness as some people believe.

3)      Nonverbal Call to Action
This is the art of guiding people to a call to action without using words.  Photos with hand or eye gestures pointing to what you want people to do is one example.   Once a person reaches your website you want to be able to guide them to where you want them.

4)     Focus Points
Scientists have used infrared eye tracking software to monitor where people look when they are viewing websites.  They found that curtain features drew more attention than others:

a)      Logo

b)      Main Navigation

c)       Search Box

d)      Social Media Icons

e)      Primary Image (Banner image or Feature Image)

f)       Text Content

g)      Footer

5)      Website Colour Psychology
Colour will have a huge effect on how much people trusted a site.  Leo Wildrich at the Buffer Blog has an interesting post on the psychology of colour and what each colour represents for branding.

Here are some top colours and what subconscious messages they send to users:

Blue: loyalty, stability, tranquillity
Yellow: happiness, optimism, youth
Green: healing, success, hope
Black: power, mystery, professionalism
White: purity, cleanliness, innocence
Red: passion, sexuality, intensity
Purple: royalty, spirituality, luxury
Orange: energy, fun, warmth

6)      Keep it Simple
Use plenty of white space
Don’t overcook it by having too many widgets
Keep it Simple

A study by Harvard University found that the more complicated a website became the less appealing it was to the users.
Google researchers also tell us that users like prototypical websites.  This means that e-commerce websites should look similar to other e-commerce websites, blogs should resemble other blogs etc.
Design Matters!

7)      Content isn’t Always King
If you don’t make a good visual (nonverbal) impression then users won’t even get to your content.  Your content has very little to do with making a great first impression in those 50 milliseconds a user is making a decision.  If you don’t portray a feeling of trust & credibility and make it easy for the users to know where to go and what to do then they are very unlikely to make a purchase or come back.

Yes have great content, but if the design is not working then its probably all in vein.

Contact me to discuss ways to improve your websites credibility and how you can attract more conversions.