Having a website is useless if people don’t actually visit it. Driving traffic to your website is crucial for any online business or personal blog to survive in the long run. The visual design, content, and user experience of your website play a huge role in attracting and retaining visitors, keeping them engaged, and eventually prompting them to take desired actions. Implementing certain web design strategies can significantly boost your website traffic over time.
In this comprehensive blog post, we’ll explore 16 proven web design tactics to increase website visits and substantially enhance your online presence.
Search engine optimization should be a key priority for any website looking to organically grow its traffic. With over 3.5 billion Google searches per day, claiming those coveted top search results spots through SEO can direct a steady stream of visitors to your site.
When conceptualizing, designing, and developing your website, always keep search engine bots and algorithms in perspective. Follow SEO guidelines and best practices regarding site architecture, metadata, technical optimizations, and content creation to boost findability. An SEO-optimized website makes it easy for search crawlers to properly index and categorize your pages, rank you for relevant keyword searches, and drive qualified traffic your way.
Here are 8 key elements to include for a search engine and mobile-friendly website:
● Avoid deep nested hierarchies going more than 3 levels deep
● Have a simple information architecture and sitemap
● Limit the use of complex dynamic functionality like endless scrolls or filtering
● Ensure the majority of the site is easily accessible through links and menus
● Have a responsive mobile-friendly layout
● Use proper heading tags like <H1>, <H2> to denote topics
● Paragraph text should go under <p> and <div> tags
● Ensure images, videos, and other media use appropriate tags like <img>, <picture>, <iframe> etc.
● Apply semantic tags like <strong>, <em>, <blockquote> to highlight important text
● Have well-structured data markup using schema.org standards
● Craft compelling <title> tags with target keywords for every page
● Meta description concise and enticing, 160-180 characters
● Relevant alt text provided for all images, videos, and visuals
● Social media metadata like og:title, og: description, twitter:title customized
● XML sitemap listing all site pages submitted in Search Console
● Compress images with tools like Compressor.io or TinyPNG
● Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files automatically
● Browser caching enabled for static resources
● Lazy load non-critical resources through plugin integration
● Upgrade to a faster web hosting plan if needed
● Link relevant site content pages where contextually relevant
● Menu and sitemaps used to facilitate site navigation
● Include contextual links within on-page content driving readers
● Anchor text variety used, no aggressive keyword stuffing
● Limit the use of nofollow links across user-generated content
● Thorough keyword research conducted around industry topics
● Blog posts and articles focused around specific keyword groupings ● Related terms mentioned naturally throughout content
● Meta titles, descriptions, and headers incorporate target phrases
● Alt text includes keywords where applicable
● Share all new content additions through branded social media channels
● Build partnerships with niche industry influencers and players
● Seek backlinks opportunities from forums and online press
● Curate and promote branded social content consistently
● Test site performance using PageSpeed Insights and WebPagetest
● Fix all crawling errors like broken links in Google Search Console
● Monitor keyword ranks and traffic sources in Google Analytics
● Update schema markup, robots.txt, and sitemaps as needed
● Feature snippets earned in SERPs
With the right technical SEO foundations laid, you can optimize every site page targeting relevant viewer intent keywords and answering their questions better. This is guaranteed to attract more organic searchers long-term and sustainably boost qualified website traffic.
Your website's information architecture, visual design, and overall layout directly impact user experience. An intuitive, user-friendly interface allows visitors to easily navigate through your site, find relevant information quickly, and convert on intended calls-to-action.
Here are some UX best practices to follow:
● Clean and consistent site-wide layout reflecting brand identity
● Simple menus and navigation schemes allowing ease of movement
● Eye-catching but relevant visuals throughout all key pages
● Good page hierarchy maintaining optimal content-to-white space ratio
● Consistent CTA placements across site templates prompting conversions
Additionally, your website should be completely responsive, with the design and layouts automatically adapting to fit different screen sizes and devices. With over 60% of web traffic now happening on mobile devices, a mobile-optimized responsive design is absolutely vital for consistent user experience regardless of whether visitors access your site on smartphones, tablets, or desktops.
Testing responsive design across all popular device sizes and quickly fixing layout or text sizing issues is crucial. Visitors expect and demand a unified experience on websites these days, optimized for smaller displays and touch interactions.
An intuitive and responsive user interface makes for satisfied visitors who will keep returning to your site and promote your brand organically through word-of-mouth. Thereby attracting more referral traffic over time.
In 2023, unique, valuable website content has become enormously important for driving qualified organic growth. Publishing amazing blogs, how-to guides, research reports, tools, and other content not only boosts dwell time while answering visitor questions, but also helps display your pages more prominently across search and social media.
Ensure all content on your site targets relevant user intent keywords and topics specifically tailored to your business vertical and buyer personas. Well-optimized content that engages visitors and prompts social media shares or external links is guaranteed to directly boost traffic.
Here is a step-by-step guide to creating high-quality website content that ranks and attracts visitors:
● Identify the highest volume of search queries around your products/services
● Assess keyword difficulty for rankings potential & traffic
● Group keywords by theme for content pillars
● Craft 10x long-form in-depth blogs and guides around key themes
● Intersperse related keywords naturally throughout each piece
● Include statistics, expert perspectives, and multimedia to build authority
● Attention-grabbing headlines using emotional triggers
● Bulleted lists or numbered steps for skimmability
● Bold and italic text to highlight key takeaways
● Info-rich graphics - infographics, charts, diagrams etc.
● Contextual links directing readers to other on-site content
● Related posts sections below articles drives engagement
● Feature relevant content within site menus and sidebars
● Share link previews across owned social media channels
● Hashtags and handles targeting niche communities utilized
● Paid promotion through social media ads on LinkedIn, Facebook, etc
● Outreach to influencers and industry websites for shares
By regularly creating and updating owned media content on your website around themes visitors care about, you can position your brand as an authority within your space. This prompts new visitors to find your relevant pages organically when searching for those topics online. Make sure content is findable both externally through SEO along with easy internal navigation.
Getting website visitors is only step one. Guiding them towards micro and macro conversions relevant to your business is equally crucial for capitalizing that traffic towards profitability. Carefully designed calls-to-action (CTAs), landing pages, forms, checkouts, and onboarding processes substantially impact conversion rates.
Here are some conversion-focused web design elements to incorporate:
● Contrast colors to draw attention
● Clear, benefit-focused copywriting
● Strategic placement - headers, content sidebars, etc.
● Exit intent popups catch abandoning visitors
● Scroll-triggered popups once past 75% of page length
● Multi-step lightboxes guide users through QUalifying questions before final sign-up
● Progress trackers on longer insurance applications, loan requests, etc.
● Guest checkout minimizing fields to reduce abandonment
● Remember customer details reducing checkout time for returning buyers
● Multiple payment options - cards, digital wallets, EMI, COD etc.
● Visual order review summarizing purchases before payments
● Segment users by demographics, geography, tech usage, etc.
● Display customized product suggestions matching interests
● Send behavior-based emails like abandoned cart reminders
● On-site messaging reflecting loyalty status or other attributes
Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest are hugely influential referral traffic sources, together accounting for over 20% of site visits across industries. Enabling seamless social sharing, maintaining an active presence on relevant platforms, and integrating branded social profiles throughout your web design helps spur viral chatter.
Visitors who share your pages and interact with your social content essentially expose your brand organically to entire new networks. Maintaining an active social media presence through branded profiles is thus vital to stay top of mind, continuously sharing links, and directing followers back to interesting owned website content. You can even cross-post blog articles across multiple channels to extend your reach further.
From a web design perspective specifically, incorporate large and visible social media share buttons on key pages prompting visitors. And place branded social media follow icons persistently through the header or footer driving conversations. Even embedding dynamic social feeds onto pages keeps visitors hanging around longer.
Here are some additional social media tactics to unlock referral traffic:
● Share customer testimonials or reviews on social proof
● Ask industry experts or influencers to review products
● Promote in niche communities through retargeting ads
● Create value-rich educational social video content
● Run social media contests and sweepstakes driving UGC
● Live stream exclusive virtual events around launches
The ultimate goal is to create share-worthy website content and experiences worth raving about on social channels. With fans and followers actively advocating your brand, continuous traffic growth becomes inevitable.
With voice-based searches growing exponentially year over year, voice search optimization is the need of the hour. As per Comscore, a staggering 50% of searches will be voice-initiated by 2020. And with Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, Microsoft's Cortana, and Google Assistant widespread usage, bloggers must ensure website pages resonate with voice queries too.
When designing pages, focus on enhancing comprehension for conversational queries. Answer questions clearly using natural language tailored to voice results in longer content formats. Remove unnecessary complexities in site navigation or layouts hampering accessibility through voice interfaces.
Here are some additional voice search optimization tips:
● Use longer keywords with 5+ words matching natural language
● Target featured snippet opportunities highlighting key answers
● Improve overall mobile site responsiveness and speeds
● Include extensive FAQ and “About Us” sections
● Build backlinks from industry podcasts and internet radio
Getting discoverable on smart assistants ensures you catch website visitors even for voice-initiated searches.
Integrating a website analytics platform should be a priority for accurately tracking all sources of traffic and audience segmentation. Solutions like Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics offer a wealth of data around website visitors like channels of acquisition, geo-locations, pages visited, on-site behavioral heatmaps, popular site flows, form drop-offs, etc crucial for optimization.
Detailed traffic analytics allows guiding better engagement and conversions across channels - be it organic search, paid advertising, email marketing, referrals, or straight direct visitors. You can identify your site’s highest traffic landing pages, texts clicked the most in articles, observe lead nurturing/sales funnel metrics or gauge banner ad ROI. Metrics revealing peak site usage times or top visitor geographic regions further facilitate targeted localization.
Continuously monitoring analytics dashboards provides the most tangible insights on quantifying and understanding your website audience. This enables crafting an optimal web design and digital marketing strategy for sustaining traffic growth month after month.
Incorporating interactive elements across your website pages also boosts user engagement significantly. Boring static websites with walls of text have much shorter dwell times than those letting visitors “play” along.
Here are some engaging interactive modules to consider:
● Smart chatbots providing 24/7 instant site assistance
● Specialized calculators - pricing estimators, profit models, etc
● Assessment quizzes, choose your adventure stories, surveys
● Interactive configurators allowing custom product visualization
● AR/VR elements bring immersive product experiences
● Retargeting interfaces reflecting familiarity like personalized dashes
Such interactivities tailored to your offerings prompt visitors to interact more with your website content. And the longer they hang around, the higher the chances of revisits and conversions.
Set clear traffic goals and conversion benchmarks. Continuously optimize layouts and content based on visitor feedback and emerging trends. Build an authoritative industry presence through thought leadership that visitors organically find and fall in love with.
With a laser focus on engaging visitors rather than hard selling to them, exponential website traffic growth is imminent through voice, search, social referrals, and retention.
A strategically designed website drives qualified traffic, boosts conversions, and ultimately accelerates business growth. Core elements like an SEO-friendly and mobile responsive layout, engaging content, smooth user experience, social sharing capacities, and integrated analytics all shape positive visitor interactions.
Consistently optimize your website by monitoring analytics and implementing engaging features tailored to your audience’s needs. Gradually build an authoritative online presence that attracts and retains website visitors through organic discovery and word-of-mouth referrals. Soon, a steady stream of relevant traffic will be flooding your website daily.
FAQs
How can I make my website design more user-friendly?
Implement intuitive navigation menus, eye-catching page elements, consistent branding, seamless CTAs and a mobile responsive layout. Avoid clutter and keep things clean and readable.
What's the best way to optimize website content?
Conduct keyword research to identify relevant topics and questions to address through blogs, articles and guides. Insert related terms throughout naturally to help search engines categorize content.
How do you speed up page load times?
Compress images, minify code, enable caching, limit HTTP requests through effective bundling and defer resource loading to improve site speed. Faster load times enhance SEO and UX impacting traffic.
Should I use a website builder or hire a developer?
Website builders offer drag-and-drop simplicity for DIY sites on a budget. Custom development allows greater design flexibility and functionality scalability as you grow.
How can I make my website more shareable on social media?
Add large, visible social share buttons across site pages and content. Maintain active social media profiles sharing links directing followers back to your website.
What's the best way to create CTAs that convert visitors?
Use contrasting colors for CTA buttons, keep copy short and action-focused and place them in prime locations like page headers, footers and beside relevant content.
How often should I be posting new website content?
Ideally 1-2 times per week. Consistency is key. Promote each piece extensively upon launch via social media, email newsletters etc. to maximize visibility.
Which web analytics platform should I use?
Google Analytics offers a robust free solution. Alternatives like Matomo or Adobe Analytics also provide enterprise-grade capabilities at a price.
Should my website layout be the same across all pages?
Ensure key navigational and branding elements like headers and footers
How can I optimize my website for voice search?
Voice search optimization is crucial as voice queries grow. Ensure pages target relevant long-tail keywords and answer searcher questions clearly. Use natural language and a conversational tone. Improve site speed and mobile responsiveness.
