If you’ve got a high quantity of visitors coming to your site, but they’re jumping ship within a matter of seconds without engaging, there’s something wrong quality-wise. In this post I want to discuss how your website’s content and design may be the source of the problem and offer a number of ways you can go about lifting your visitors’ on-page time and dropping your site’s bounce rate.

The proliferation of smartphones and tablets means that Mobile and the Web are increasingly consolidating, hence Responsive Web Design is now the benchmark.

Like other trends, web designs and styles go through seasons. The web design that was popular last year or ten years ago is out of date today. As you browse through websites, you will find that some look crisp and modern, some look cool and hipster, and others looks high-end and trendy.

As you consider your website and what you want it to accomplish, don’t lose sight of the fact that the primary purpose and ultimate goal is to attract visitors to take action. In other words, your website can be the start of your sales funnel or a part of the overall process, but it should always be a lead generation machine that compels guests to become paying customers.

In this post, I’ll break down 5 of the best design tweaks to seriously maximize your website’s conversions, once and for all.

1 – Incorporate Colour Psychology

Psychology proves that certain colours stimulate different emotions. They can inspire aggressiveness, confidence, excitement – even confusion and sadness. But with over 16 million colours to choose from, how do you know which ones to use?

Recent studies have identified how certain colour palettes appeal to different audience types, and traditional marketers and veteran web designers use colour psychology all the time. For example, a cosmetics e-commerce site may use shades of pink that’s associated with playfulness along with purple and blue – some of the favourite colours of women.

For individual site elements that you’d like to stand out, such as a CTA button, it’s advisable to use a complementary colour, which is on the opposite side of the colour wheel. For example, if the background colour is blue, then you should use an orange or yellow CTA button for emphasis.

1. Using a splash page

Splash pages have no value in today’s online world. They just run up your website’s bounce rate because users can’t immediately find what they’re looking for, so they leave.

Instead of using a splash page, your website should have a standard home page. If you want to communicate a message or trigger an interaction, then use a modal or popup window. Using a standard home page also helps with SEO.