Designing a website can be quite a difficult task. There are so many design principles that need to be taken into account, and you need to find unique ways to catch and keep users’ attention. If done correctly, a website can become a sales funnel of sorts, getting people interested in your product or service to the point that they purchase or call for more information. Let’s dive into some design tips that can bring a website to the next level, as well as how to create a sales funnel.

Before we get into ways of creating a sales funnel on your website, it’s important to understand the goal of a funnel. Ultimately, you design a sales funnel to draw people in, get them interested, and get them to complete a goal. While sales are typically a goal for sales funnels, other goals can include filling out a lead form, downloading a piece of content or an app, etc. Basically, creating a funnel will streamline the process of getting new clients/customers to complete a desired goal. It’s important to make this process as painless and efficient as possible using the following tips.

Our first tip in creating an effective website is to use strong branding throughout. As a brand, you should have specific colors, fonts, and even shapes that you use regularly. When you delve into website development, make sure to stick to these elements. For example, take a look at the screenshots from BusySeed’s website below. As you can see, our website development team has been very consistent with the structure, colors, font, and shapes used throughout the site. Using your brand’s elements liberally on all pages makes it easy for viewers to get an understanding of your brand’s tone and mood. It also makes you more easily recognizable. Coca Cola can be identified with just a silhouette of their bottle. That right there is good branding. At the end of the day, you want to design a website that is unquestionably yours no matter what page someone navigates to.

Create Eye-Catching Landing Pages

Landing pages are those pages of a website that people are directed to. The meaning of “landing page” has changed recently from a standalone page to any page that is used in an ad or a Google search. With this new change, a website can have several landing pages. If BusySeed runs an ad for Social Media Management, we will send users directly to our social media page, making it a landing page. Likewise, if we are trying to bring in clients looking for website development, we would link directly to that page. You get the picture. So, any page on the site that will be used as a landing page needs some extra care. All of the information someone needs for a product or service should be readily available on the landing page. This is the first step in creating a sales funnel and is critical for gaining and keeping attention. Many studies suggest you have around ten seconds to draw someone into a website before they click off to go elsewhere. Your landing pages must clearly say what the service or product is and it should contain at least one call to action. Any awards or certifications that your business has should be very proudly displayed, preferably somewhere on the first view of the page. The key is to put hooks, visuals, certifications, awards, and any important information on the page so that it is seen without the customer needing to scroll at all. Again, with only ten seconds to make an impact, you need to show off the best things about your products and services right away. Use friendly faces, easy-to-read descriptions, and your brand colors!

What’s the best way to get attention? Visuals! When you are designing a website, try to use visuals as much as possible (without it being overwhelming). Venngage released an article back in 2019 describing the importance of visuals in online content. Infographics are always hugely popular amongst audiences because they are the perfect blend of text and images. People are drawn in by the visuals and then stay for the text. The other great thing about infographics is that the text is often minimal and simple to read. Other visuals that are super effective are videos. People love videos. They always get a ton of engagement whether on a website or as a post on social media. Use videos whenever you can! Of course, we also have pictures. Make sure you choose images that match your brand and always show diversity. Remember that smiling faces always make your brand more relatable! Other great visuals to use when you design a website include icons, slideshow images, logos, and call to action buttons. All of these things will help you attract customers and keep them on your site long enough for the sales funnel to start working.

Once you have your potential customers in the sales funnel, it’s time to make them stick. How can you do this? This is an incredibly important step in the website development process. It’s up to you and your team to make the sales funnel something that prospects want to travel through. Clear and convenient navigation is one way to do this. Always have a header (or a menu on mobile) that navigates to the other pages of your site. Try to keep the header clear of clutter by organizing things into subpages. Take a look at our screenshot for an example. Subpages prevent the header from being overwhelming to look at, making it more user-friendly.

Another way you can make navigation easier is to provide buttons on a page. If you talk about services on the home page, include a button that will take site visitors to the “Services” page. By structuring your pages this way, you can highlight what you consider to be the most important pages of your site. If your ultimate goal is to create a sales funnel, you can use buttons to get customers to the pages you want. If you’re an eCommerce company, design your website to feature a product you want to sell and add a button that navigates directly to the purchase page for it. If you’re a service company, add buttons that take people from the home page, to the services page, to the results page, to the contact page or lead form. If they make it through the whole sales funnel, you’ll have yourself a new client! Be careful to not include pointless buttons on a page. Every button you include should be put there with a purpose. Taking prospects to new pages should enhance the strength of the funnel, not kill the flow. For example, don’t link to a page with the history of your company because it will break the streamline and could cause visitors to exit the funnel rather than continue down the process. Long story short, use buttons strategically to give consumers an easy way to get to only the most important pages on your site.

The last step of the sales funnel is to get the consumer to complete a goal. As we said, this could be filling out a lead form, contacting you directly, purchasing a product, or downloading an app/content. Whatever your goal is, it has to be easy for customers to complete it. Make any and all forms user-friendly and not too long. Have multiple points of contact. Make checkout hassle-free. Make the app/content downloadable directly from that page. Do anything in your power to keep things simple and inviting so that your desired goal is achieved. The less time-consuming and complex a task is, the more likely people will be to do it. Be sure to use buttons to link to the goal pages so customers don’t have to go searching. Easy= effective.

In addition to a dedicated contact page, we recommend adding contact forms or click-to-call buttons on other pages. We typically leave a click-to-call in the header so it’s always there when the customer decides to use it. Contact forms can be placed at the end of a page, or a “Contact Us” button can be incorporated that will take them to the contact page. Important communication information like phone number, fax number, address, and email should all be in the footer for easy communication from any page. It may seem like too much, but we promise it works!

Let’s recap how website development can create a sales funnel for your business, shall we?

1. Landing pages are the first thing potential customers see, so well-designed landing pages are a MUST.
2. Once your landing page attracts the customer, they will likely start scrolling through the page.
3. Offer lots of call to actions and buttons to other pages for easy navigation
4. The prospects will become more interested and click to other pages to learn more. You can create a flow of navigation that logically leads them from the landing page, through other pages, to the point of contact. The rest is up to the sales team!

We hope this has been an educational article for you. It is long, but there’s a lot to cover about website development and creating online sales funnels! Keep these tips in mind the next time you design a website, or use them to improve your existing site. If you need help designing a website, call our team! BusySeed has created dozens of websites for clients, and we’d love to add your business to the list! Call (888) 353-1484 to get started.