Designs that Generate Income

If the essential purpose of a website is to generate money, then the prime step should be to turn site visitors into customers! When internet users land on your website, what do they do with it? The answer is simple - Whatever you want them to! To make this a reality, you need to lead them by hand. Define a clear Action Path for your visitors, which includes precise visual clues to lead them through your information to the prize shopping cart, or subscription plan.

Here is how to define an appropriate action plan for your website.
Space is a powerful element in website design and can be an influential factor in how visitors use your website. The appropriate placement of elements can play a vital role in defining user behavior on your site.

The prime rule in defining Action Paths is not to make visitors scroll to find actions. Keep all the call-to-action tabs like ‘Click Here’ or ‘Subscribe Here’ above the fold. The majority of the world population reads from left-to-right and top-to-bottom. So, keep all the vital elements within these areas. Also remember that elements of design supersede text elements, that is to say that images are more important and prominent than words. In a split second that users take to scan through your text, they take in scattered bits of data such as the headings, pictures, search boxes, links etc.

Balance is not the same as regularity. While regularity ensures a clean layout and consistency in the web page, balance is essential for users to concentrate on certain elements. It’s better to create an asymmetrical space when you are trying to draw attention to specific actions on the web page. And the best way to do this is by creating a balance between images and white space. And an obvious consequence of making visitors at ease with their pathways, is retaining them on the site and generating further business.

White space is the space between columns, the space around images, and the space between text blocks. Leaving certain sections of your website empty makes visitors concentrate on other areas of the page. Lending space to the design gives a flow and allows for a comfortable user experience. A comfortable user-experience promotes your credibility and prompts them to invest their faith and money in your company. Thus, your visitors will convert to be your customers.

The colors that you use on your website play a vital role in its online success. It not only sets the tone of the web page but also calls attention to specific sections. And colors influence the psychology of people too. Different colors trigger different emotional responses in people. So a wise choice of colors can help you make the users do what you intend them to do. For example, setting your call to action in red, or a color that contrasts the general scheme of the page, stands apart and focuses visitors.

Create a noticeable pattern through your website. This way you create a sense of expectation in the users and they become more comfortable. Patterns can be of several types like ‘title-content-title-content’ format, lists or tabular data, etc. Blue underlined links are perhaps the most powerful pattern type in recent times. A major advantage of adhering to web standards is that visitors know what they are meant to do immediately.  This is not to say that you cannot break the rules.  But only after understanding the rules… can you then know when it is advantageous to break them.