Five Key Principles of Conversion-Focused Website Design

Unfortunately, many storage websites aren't built to make that purchase decision as seamless as possible. Instead, lead-to-lease conversion rates are lowered with roadblock pop-ups, fragmented user flows and calls-to-action that do not meet the user's expectations.

Instead of using your website as an online brochure for your storage units, let's look at five easy steps you can take to build a website that is optimized to deliver results.

1. Pay Attention To Attention

Ask any elementary school teacher: our attention spans are terrible. Unfortunately, users don't gain attention spans as they get older. They want the information they are looking for at their fingertips. You have one goal for people visiting your website: Lease a storage unit. Instead of distracting your visitors with multiple calls-to-action (CTAs), make the path to becoming a lead simple -- keeping your Attention Ratio at 1:1. In other words, to reduce the friction between your users and the desired conversion, your goal is to present them with only the desired conversion option. Limit the distraction on each page to ensure you are driving the highest conversion.

2. Get to Know Your Users

Website Analytics are the new norm. By using any of the various analytics tools available, you have access to rich data that will allow you to learn more about your users. The problem becomes, what to do with the data?

Determine your most consistent traffic source and deliver an engaging experience for that audience. Look for not only consistency, but also size of audience. Most people get a few hits from Russia, but unless that is your target audience, don't cater content to them. You've got to build a path for the users you want to convert. That path is called a user flow. A user flow is the path a user follows through your site to complete a task. Fortunately, many analytics platforms have user flow reporting built-in. It's now up to you to build your site to deliver that ideal experience.

3. Simple Isn't Easy, But It Should Feel Like It

Now that you understand the user flow of your targeted audience, you need to remove the friction that stands between them and a conversion. Make the forms easy. The less work that they have to do, the more likely they are to give you their information. One example is to ensure your website vendor uses geo-codes that allow you to pre-populate the fields on your forms and reduce the work for your prospect.

One of the simplest fixes that you can implement today is showing your visitors what format the information needs to be in. How many times have you filled out a form online and tried to submit only to be given an error? Perhaps the phone number shouldn't have dashes, or the state should be written out rather than having a two-letter code. By pre-populating the form with the correct format examples, you're removing the guesswork for your visitors.

4. Make It Fast

Today's users are not only coming from multiple devices such as tablets and mobile phones, they are also tapped into multiple networks. Research shows that if it takes longer than 2.4 seconds to load a page, visitors will bounce. Though images are the primary tool to create a beautiful and engaging experience for your visitors, they are also the slowest thing to load. Deliver the right image to the right device. You will drastically shorten your load time by ensuring that each device is getting the correct image.

5. Test

Testing is a crucial piece to the puzzle. A website is a continuously appreciating digital asset. You cannot "set it and forget it." By testing, you can ensure that you're constantly delivering an engaging experience that will lead to highly qualified conversions and, ultimately, occupancy.

Article Contributions by: Garret Gladden - Senior Product Manager at G5

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