Search engines… are a hard crowd, huh? When your website is in a battle royale to be the number one, you know it’s hard to find that perfect balance between aesthetics and SEO.

Rankings can still be affected by mistakes, even if you have a great website, well-written content and a savvy keyword strategy. Let’s look at the other side of SEO – the User Experience (UX) and the design. UX and design will result in faster navigation, better responsiveness and an improved home page. Our top web design tips will help you to tighten up your message and reduce bounce rates.

Key Learnings

• Image sliders are a killer for your conversions.
• Tips to achieve a navigation bar that is straight-shooting
• Negative space is not as negative as you think
• How to win the war between SEO design and SEO

Goodbye to sliders

Image sliders have been banned in 2018. In 2018, the best UX design calls for an end to auto-sliding pictures. This is a killer for conversion and user experience. Humans are drawn to moving things, but when a lot is going on at once, we can easily lose track of what’s important. You’re likely to find that your typical shopper loves control. If you remove this power by using a self-regulating pop-up or a self-regulating advertisement, they will not be able to digest the information on their terms.

Just 1% of users clicked on sliders in a shocking UI study earlier this year. [Insert an open-mouthed emoji] So, replace the rotating window with a striking image and some witty copy. This will help you to be more direct and reduce the blind spots of your viewers. You can thank us later for a boost in click-throughs and for fitting within that 5-second load time!

Square is the winner if first impressions are what make or break a company. Square’s hero shot and one-liner opening work together to provide viewers with context on their payment technology, even if they weren’t born yesterday. The minimal call-to-action approach has also helped them break down barriers, as they save additional details like phone numbers and emails for later.

Menu items to consider

Let’s discuss your navigation. The top-level menus should be intuitive and offer logical steps to reach the goal. This is not to say that your “Meet the Team’ section does not deserve premium advertising space. Think about how you can strategically place this type of content on your website. Why not use Testimonials as a way to break up long blocks of text in your landing page? You won’t make any major changes without focusing on your ‘why,’ but you can still narrow down the distractions which keep your visitors from making a purchase.

Your content curates your navigation style. Start thinking about dropdowns if you have more than six pages of content. Please make certain that only selected categories or links are visible once they are triggered. If you can, simplify the structure by merging similar content. Google prefers pages with fewer navigational levels.

Slack’s model menu clearly defines what it does, for whom, and how customers can get started.

The footer is a great place to include extras, such as company information.

Use space smartly

Reducing your word count is one thing. If you want a website that’s free of BS and beautifully refined,

Be mindful of your visuals and how they are laid out. Keep your visuals relevant to your branding and conversion goals. That stock photo of the blank notepad can be thrown out!

Overloading elements that don’t add value creates information overload. It’s true what they say about people not needing to know everything all at once. Mastering the art and science of negative space is not only a way to show off pure design genius, but it also increases reading comprehension and customer trust by 20%.

Quip has a great consistency in its margins and spacing. They have been clever with their icons and avoided using excessive text lines. Readability: 10 out of 10.

How to Win the War Between SEO and Design

Google’s as picky as your single-but-good-looking friend. Although having a blog and bull’s-eye backlinks has its benefits, it does not guarantee that you will be on page one. A UX-only approach without considering design will also not do you justice. It’s important to combine user experience with design and your headline message. This way, you can have it all and convert, too! You should always back up your updates with the analytics that you trust.

Chatting with our experts will help you learn how to optimize your website UX and begin climbing the search rankings. Request a 15-minute Q&A here.