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How Conversion Design Can Increase Customers

(Photo courtesy of Mudassar Iqbal from Pixabay)

Written by Phillip Atwood

Your website is more than an online brochure to sell your sheds. It should be a digital storefront, inviting people in not to just browse but to convert.

Your website’s layout plays a bigger role in this than you might think.

In fact, design is responsible for a whopping 94 percent of a website’s first impressions, so it’s worth taking the time to get it right.

The good news is designing a conversion-centered landing page or website for your shed building company isn’t as difficult as it sounds. In this article, we’ll cover what conversion-centered design is and how you can apply its seven principles to improve users’ experience on your landing page or website.

WHAT IS CONVERSION-CENTERED DESIGN?

Conversion-centered design is a framework that uses persuasive design techniques to optimize every part of the user’s journey. The goal is to move your website visitors through this experience as smoothly as possible, guiding them to take the desired action.

THE 7 PRINCIPLES OF CONVERSION-CENTERED DESIGN

There are seven principles of conversion-centered design—originally created by Oli Gardner, the co-founder of Unbounce. Each principle plays a part in directing the user’s eye exactly where you want it to go.

By applying some or all of these techniques to your web design, you can cut a clear conversion path for your visitors to follow.

  1. Keep It Simple

These days, attention is one of the most important forms of currency.

If you can get and hold your user’s attention, your chance of conversion has already increased.

Some of your potential buyer’s distractions are out of your control— like social media notifications or chatty co-workers. But you have full control over the distractions on your website.

You want to make it as easy as possible for your website visitors to convert, and the key is keeping it simple. Giving your visitors too many options or elements to look at could lead to analysis paralysis. Instead, create focus by eliminating clutter on your website, like unnecessary menus and extra navigation links, and focus on one call to action (CTA) at a time whenever possible.

A good rule of thumb: if an element on your landing page doesn’t serve a purpose and distracts potential customers from converting, get rid of it.

This is where a strong visual hierarchy comes in. The exact structure you build will depend on you—your brand identity, your business goals, and the action you want your visitors to take. But typically, the aim is to balance images and written content and create a layout that serves as a natural path for your visitors’ eyes to follow.

2. Build Structure

Your shed business is unique to you, so don’t just use the first web design template you see. Instead, structure each page for optimal clarity and flow. Prioritize the information that’s most relevant to your visitors and find ways to highlight it both in your copy and the layout of the page.

For example, your page could use the following structure:

  1. Begin with a compelling headline with a call to action (CTA) button.
  2. Include high-quality images of your sheds.
  3. Highlight their main benefits.
  4. Feature customer testimonials.
  5. Conclude with another CTA.

Once you’ve decided which components you need to encourage conversions, lay them out in a way that directs your visitor’s eyenaturally through your content from start to finish.

3. Catch Your User’s Eye

Keeping your page layout simple is important, but simple doesn’t have to mean boring. Conversion-centered design does more than make your website look great. Strategic use of color, fonts, and shapes throughout your website can reinforce a consistent brand identity and draw your user’s attention to important elements of each page.

Colors: From your primary background to your CTA buttons, use your brand colors throughout your website for a consistent design— creating enough contrastto grab the attention of your site’s visitors and encourage clicks.

Fonts: Create contrast with fonts across your pages to draw the user’s eye to key information. Using bold, italics, headers, and different typefaces can improve readability— but, again, it’s all about balance. You want just enough contrast to help users easily scan the content, but not so much that it hurts their eyes and makes them leave.

Remember, white space gives your content room to breathe, creates a cleaner look, and provides directional cues to your users, making it easier for them to focus on your message.

4. Put Trust First

Trust and credibility are crucial for converting curious browsers into paying customers. Someone visiting your website for the first time will look for any proof they can find that your shed business is the right choice for them.

So, how can you establish trust in your website’s design? One of the best ways is to include customer testimonials.

Sharing social proof like positive reviews and testimonials from real customers on your website can reassure visitors that you’re a good fit. Make sure your social proof gets the attention it deserves—carefully choose which testimonials you share, how they’re formatted, and where they’re placed on your web pages.

5. Show, Don’t Tell

Your website visitors want to know exactly what they’ll get if they choose to invest in one of your sheds. That’s why it’s so important to include high- quality images and videos of your products.

Not only do these images look great, but they also showcase the benefits your sheds have to offer, helping your audience imagine how your products will improve their life.

Your hero image is the first thing people will see when they visit your site, so it should grab the visitor’s eye and paint a clear picture of the benefits they can expect from your sheds.

Plus, authentic visual content— images of real customers who have bought one of your sheds—can be another form of social proof, reinforcing trust amongst your audience.

Not sure if your visual design is working? Try doing a squint test. If you squint your eyes so you can’t read the copy, can you still tell what your page is about based on design elements and images alone?

6. Don’t Prioritize Looks Over Function

You wouldn’t pick a shed just for its color, right? You need it to serve a certain purpose and meet specific storage needs. It’s the same with your shed company’s website. We all want to wow potential customer—but don’t get so caught up in aesthetics that you forget about functionality.

Here are a few ways you can streamline your site’s functionality for desktop and mobile devices:

  • Minimize the number of fields in any forms your users must fill out. Three to five is enough.
  • Keep page design and site navigation as simple as possible.
  • Test your site loading speed with a tool like Pingdom. Under two seconds is considered ideal.

User experience (UX) is vital. If users are dealing with slow page loading speeds, glitches, or unnecessary steps, they’ll get frustrated and exit your site.

7. Consistency Is Key

Nothing creates more trust than brand consistency. From your colors and fonts to your images and layouts, find a design that works, and stick to it across your website, landing pages, paid ads, and social media.

You don’t have to make every page of your website look exactly the same—in fact, subtle variation adds visual interest and keeps visitors engaged! But using a completely different color scheme, font style, or layout on each page will confuse potential customers and keep them from converting.

PUT AS MUCH CARE INTO YOUR WEBSITE DESIGN AS YOU DO IN DESIGNING YOUR SHEDS

You don’t need an advanced degree in graphic design to create a great user experience.

By applying the seven principles of conversion-centered design to your website, landing pages, and marketing campaigns, you can guide your target audience smoothly through each step to becoming a customer.

Phillip Atwood is principal at Vessel with over 20 years of experience in marketing, sales, and technology.

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February/March 2025