Website Body language

The top 6 ways to influence your website audience and drive results

While someone is reading the text on your website, what is your website actually saying?

As with face to face communication where more than half of the impact depends upon the body language, the same applies to your website.

Ignoring this non-verbal communication can lose you visitors, sales and subscribers so it is very important to pay close attention to it when setting up your website.

Here are the 6 vital elements to your website’s ‘body language’ that you need to get right in order for it to be successful.

1.    Quality images

Images are a great way to create an atmosphere within your website. They help to communicate feelings and immerse people in your stories, fuelling excitement about your brand.
You should always ensure that the images you use are of good quality, never use an image that is pixelated or out of focus as it presents a negative representation of your brand. Although this is key, it has been proven that people are 4 times more likely to read your post if the image contains a caption or call to action.

An important thing to think about when using images is placement. It determines the conversion rate and whether or not potential consumers will choose to read on further.

For example it is common advice to not break the left margin as it can distract the reader, unless it is a call of action that you want to draw to their attention.

2.    Effortless Navigation

When people have been directed to your website they want to find exactly what they want, quickly and with ease. For them to do this, keep your links direct and sidebars uncluttered. For each page there should be a single goal as not to con¬¬fuse and complicate the reader.
If your content is considered valuable by the reader, it would be worthwhile including a subscription form at either the beginning or end of your article.

3.    Fonts

It always comes down to being convenient for the reader, using the right font is vital. If you want to stay safe with your choice of font, studies have shown that the best fonts are Verdana when the text is smaller than 12px and Arial when larger than 12px.
Generally speaking it is advised never to use any more than 2 fonts per page otherwise it all looks very amateurish and unprofessional. With this being said try to avoid a pair of fonts with almost no difference, choose two that are fairly different but with something in common, part of the same family etc.
It is ok to use fonts with personality but only in moderation, as there are some cases where it does help to sell the product. For example a simple font is great when doing a call to action, its good to make the task at hand as easy as possible whereas using a ‘fancy’ font will be great to show quality or a high priced product.

4.    Evidence of engagement

Evidence of engagement can be very valuable as everyone likes to be reassured that they are looking at valuable content or products, although if you are new and don’t have the benefit of numbers you are probably best just to keep the numbers out of public view until there’s an increase preferably into 4 figures. Once you have obtained a significant amount, use it like a badge and flaunt just how great your web site/page is.

5.    Loading time

Convenience. Convenience. Convenience. When it comes down to it, you just want them to buy your product and read your content. How can you expect them to do this if they have are forever having to wait for aspects of your website to load?  Not only will you be putting off potential customers but you will also be penalised by Google.

When using WordPress try to eliminate all unnecessary plug-ins and reduce image size to help cut loading time.

6.    SEO

If you are still unsure about what SEO ( search engine optimisation) is here is a brief explanation. Have you ever searched something in Google and wondered how they got in a particular order? Well that is the point of SEO, to rank as high as possible for relevant keywords.

Google has recently altered how they rank sites and instead of being able to use related keywords to rank it has now become more important to highlight anchor text instead. It has now become all about quality rather than quantity, Google are ranking those with valuable content higher above those who just spam.

The most efficient way to rank is to create links, the more the better. This being said try to link with relevant sites and blogs that share a topic, even better if it’s a high quality blog network as Google will value your content higher if associated with quality web pages.

By: Nelly Berova