Web Design Tips to Lead Visitors Through the Buyer Journey

The buyer’s journey isn’t always a straight path. Site visitors might start later in the process than you’d expect, jump around, skip steps and take a winding trek along the way. However, you can lead visitors through the sales funnel. Your online customer journey can be improved and turned into a positive force for conversions.

Forrester recently reported how drastically buying behavior changed during the height of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. The 2021 B2B Buying Study found a 59% increase in how many interactions buyers prefer now compared to two years ago. People expect you to anticipate their needs and plan for a positive customer experience (CX).

Users want more engagement and guidance in moving from point A to point B in the buying process. Consider these web design tips to lead your site visitors from browsers to leads to buyers without missing a beat.

1. Know the Stages

The first step to improving the buyer’s journey is understanding the stages a customer goes through. The first stage is awareness, where they’re learning about your brand. They then research, consider, decide and hopefully return.

One buyer may have heard about your product from a friend and even seen it in action and might skip right past the awareness section of your site. People come to your website at different stages, and some may need more time in research while others go right to the decision stage.

Offering separate landing pages is the No. 1 way to ensure your site visitors get what they need no matter where they are in the journey.

Source: https://www.creditcanada.com

Credit Canada taps into the online customer journey and gives people the option to jump right to a free debt assessment or learn more and watch a video. Someone landing on the page in the awareness stage will choose to gather more details. On the other hand, if they’ve already decided to try the service, they can hop right to sharing their information.

2. Understand Your Clients

Knowing your buyers’ preferences lets you use the language and triggers they need to move forward regardless of the phase of the journey they’re in. For example, a young single male won’t have the same concerns as a father of three children.

If you’re selling an alarm system, the father will care about his family’s safety. The single man may be concerned about his pets or belongings. The focus is a tiny bit different, depending on the demographics of your target audience.

Take the time to create buyer personas to ensure you’re using the right tone and emotional signals.

3. Choose Power Words

Some words trigger users to take action. Start with strong action verbs that explain the next step you want the site visitor to take. However, you can also focus on words with additional pull, such as “free” or “trial offer.”

People often want to try things before buying them or gather information without feeling obligated to sign up. The language you use to push the buyer through their journey signals the benefits of choosing your brand over a competitor.

Source: https://www.rollguard.eu

Rollguard features some language to help move users through the process. Action verbs such as “Learn,” “Start” and “Configure” all pull the user into the journey. It also uses the verb “Order” combined with “Free Samples.”

4. Tap Into Keywords

Speaking of words, tap into the power of using certain keywords and phrases your buyers are likely to search for. The page they land on should be geared toward those specific keywords. If you sell those alarms mentioned previously, you might use a keyword phrase such as “the best alarm system to protect my family.” You would then share content that explains how to do so.

Make sure any content you add to your page offers value to the user. If someone seeks solutions to keep their family safe from burglary, fire or other events, they want some answers and not just a big sales pitch.

5. Cut Clutter

You want to hold the user’s attention from the minute they land on your site. One of the best ways of doing so is getting rid of anything you don’t need. Each page on your website should have a specific purpose, and every element needs to point the user toward a goal for the page.

The homepage should move the user to the next stage of the buyer’s journey. Someone may already be aware of your brand and simply want to find the CTA button and move on to the next step. You don’t want to waste their time with a lot of bells and whistles. Make it simple and keep the traffic moving along.

People are busy. They don’t have much time to waste and will want to move on without missing a beat.

Source: https://www.depop.com

Depop serves either buyers or sellers. Its goal is to get people to sign up to do either or both. The site offers some clear CTAs pointing the way to download the app or sign up in the moment. Users can browse via their search bar, but Depop prefers to get them on the platform fast and get things moving.

Use Good Design Practices

The best way to get people on your page and keep them there is to use solid design practices in the first place. You can then tweak things to make sense for where your site visitors are in the buyer’s journey and move them along with CTAs and words.

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