Enhancing website design was the most common website priority for small businesses in 2019, according to recent research by Visual Objects.
Website design plays an essential role in inbound marketing.
Converting visitors to leads and customers relies on a user experience that supports your inbound marketing process.
In this article, we demonstrate how to optimize your website in ways that support inbound marketing strategy, such as:
- Building intuitive navigation
- Using visuals and white space
- Placing CTAs and landing pages
You can use the information in this article to help design a website that engages and converts your visitors.
Table of Contents
Build an Intuitive Site Navigation
What differentiates inbound marketing from other types of marketing is the process of engaging prospects and developing relationships as opposed to pushing people straight into promotional material.
Providing your website visitors with authentic, high-quality content that helps them grow their business and build a marketing strategy helps your business stand out as a leader in its industry.
Positioning your brand as a thought leader through content marketing helps bring people to your website and build the type of trust needed to convert them to customers.
Content marketing is an essential part of a website’s ability to engage readers and guide them toward conversions and purchases.
Websites designed for inbound marketing typically include several elements:
- Blog content
- Resources such as whitepapers and ebooks
- Brand information
- Product education
- Call-to-action elements
- Landing pages
Most inbound marketing websites contain a complex bank of information, yet designers must strive to keep the user experience simple and intuitive.
Visitors won’t take the time to navigate a complicated website. Instead, they expect you to anticipate what they want to see next.
Inbound marketing brands should design websites with simple navigation that provides visitors with an easy path to content that interests them.
Personalize Content For Each Stage in the Conversion Funnel
You can give visitors what they want by personalizing their content in a way that aligns with their stage in the sales cycle.
- New website visitors are likely to engage with how-to videos, checklists and ebooks.
- People who are evaluating your products and services look for case studies, FAQ’s, and demo videos.
- Prospects who are close to purchasing respond well to free trial offers and coupons.
Aligning your website content with the sales cycle increases the likelihood that visitors will engage with your website and purchase your goods and services.
Other ways to improve your navigation are:
- Include anchor text in blog posts with internal links that guide readers deeper into your website, providing a simple and intuitive way for visitors to consume more advanced content.
- Add a footer menu to all pages to provide essential menu links such as your about page, product information section, and blog.
Create simple, intuitive navigation and personalize the layout on your website to build a user experience that helps boost your site’s engagement and conversion rates.
Use Visuals And White Space To Engage Readers
Use plenty of visuals and include ample whitespace to improve the look of your website while drawing attention to crucial elements of its design.
Unbounce, for example, adds colorful visuals to complement its web pages, then draws attention to CTAs by surrounding them with extra white space.
White space and visuals are also useful in articles and blogs posts.
Use plenty of visuals and whitespace on your website to improve readability and draw attention to essential elements such as CTAs.
Boost Conversions With CTAs And Landing Pages
You can encourage blog readers to subscribe to your email list by placing CTAs within your blog content and at the end of each post.
Overlays and side banners sprinkled throughout your site are another effective way to display CTAs.
Source: Impact
Place promotional CTAs on pages that are relative to your products and services, such as product pages.
Landing pages should follow the same guidelines as all other content: use plenty of whitespace and visual elements to help boost your conversions.
Inbound Optimization Improves Website Engagement, Conversions, and SEO
Optimizing your website for inbound marketing increases the amount of time readers spend browsing and interacting on your site.
The additional time spent on your website helps to improve SEO and build the kind of trust needed to convert your visitors to customers.
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