Website Optimization: How to Visually Highlight The Most Important Messaging on Your Website
If you want your web visitors to become paying customers, you’ve got to give them a pleasant, easy-to-use, and impressive experience when they land on your website.
Many businesses, even ones with a great deal of experience, tend to go more maximalist than they should with their web pages.
But, websites that require endless scrolling, have wall-to-wall text, offer no easy way to skim, and no quick navigation make the user experience way harder than it needs to be. The messaging gets lost in the sauce, and the would-be customer is likely to bounce.
“Above The Fold” Is Important Visual Real Estate
Here’s the thing, once someone lands on your website, it takes them a split second to decide whether it’s relevant enough to keep looking.
That means that whatever they see when they first land on your website is really important. Extra attention needs to be given to the design and messaging that shows up before a web visitor scrolls. The term for this part of your web page is “above the fold.”
Think of it like newspapers and magazines on the rack at the bodega, checkout aisle, or airport kiosk. Your eye is going to be drawn to the headlines and images that are attention-grabbing and make you want to see more. You’re unlikely to drop your cash on anything that didn’t get interesting until the bottom of the page- which you couldn’t see at first glance because it was, ahem, “below the fold.”
The “above the fold” space of a web page is not a good place for a long wind-up before you get to the point. People don’t tend to visit business websites for leisurely, pleasure reading. They’re looking for answers and solutions, and they want you to get to the point fast.
Make answers to obvious questions easy to find. (Who you are, what you offer to whom, how much is it, and when/where can they get it, and why should they choose your offer over their other options.) “Who” and “what” in particular are great questions to answer in the “above the fold space.”
First-time web visitors don’t have much incentive to go hunting for info, so make it easy for customers to see you meet their basic criteria- then, once you’ve got their attention, you can start filling in the details.
Skim-Friendly Is User-Friendly
Should your website pass the split-second judgment test, web visitors typically browse for a couple of minutes or less.
Think of your own website browsing experience. If you’re looking for some help with something, you’re unlikely to read all the fine print on any old website with a potential solution.
No, you’re going to skim the most eye-catching parts of the page to determine whether their solution is relevant enough to your situation for you to even bother reading further.
So, it’s important for the most eye-catching parts of the page to give web visitors a good sense of your brand, offers, and the benefits of buying from you.
Layout, design, visual elements, and text headings can be strategically used to make sure your web visitors’ eyes are being drawn to the right place.
Here are the deets.
The Bigger The Font, the Easier To Notice
Headings are important for your web copy for several reasons:
Potential readers will glance over your headings to see if they are interested enough to read more.
Headings let you visually emphasize your most important messaging by making it bigger than the surrounding copy.
Headings give you an opportunity to demonstrate your brand voice: from quirky & creative to serious and plain-spoken.
When you include helpful, relevant key phrases in your headings, search engine algorithms can better determine which search queries to surface your website for.
Large walls of text can feel overwhelming or burdensome to web visitors. Breaking up copy with headings makes reading what’s on the page seem more manageable and less time-consuming.
Remember what’s biggest gets the most attention. So, things like your page title, tagline, section headers, etc. should get headings that are sized accordingly.
Use Contrasting Fonts for Emphasis
Kim Myers, CEO of Visual Alchemy, explains that fonts can also be used to emphasize certain wording. For example, using italics or bolding in contrast to plain type can make certain words really stand out.
Keep in mind, the only way this works is if you use italics or bolding sparingly. Emphasizing everything makes it hard to instinctually know where to look first.
“Keep it clean and simple. Highlight the least amount of information to avoid diluting emphasis,” Myers recommends. “Approximately 10% or less of total content should be highlighted.”
Blockquotes Bring Gravitas
Blockquotes are another excellent way to break up big chunks of text and visually highlight important messaging. (That’s why Myers’ wisdom appears in blockquote in this article.)
If you’ve interviewed an expert, secured a great testimonial, or your CEO said something dope- you can put visual emphasis around their words by pulling it out from the rest of the copy in the form of a blockquote.
Whitespace = Breathing Room
For the same reason, whitespace- or space that doesn’t include text or images- is a really important part of your web page design.
“When design elements take up too much space or when there is too much information that the viewer must consume, the eyes can get strained trying to “look” at all the elements. By using whitespace or negative space, we can give the eyes some periods of rest or breathing room, which causes less visual stress and keeps the viewer engaged.”
-Kim Myers, CEO of Visual Alchemy
Whitespace also leaves the subconscious impression that the amount of information presented on the page is manageable. The web visitor isn’t going to have to read a lot or put in much effort to understand the page.
(Word to the wise: “whitespace” doesn’t have to be white. On our website, it’s black.)
Picture It
“A picture is worth a thousand words” is a cliché for a reason. Consider this: MIT researchers found that the brain can identify images seen for as little as 13 milliseconds. Images are a powerful way to quickly convey information to your website visitors. More quickly than you can convey information with text actually, because our brains are hardwired for visual processing.
Consider whether you could explain with an infographic rather than a paragraph. Perhaps an illustration could set the emotional stage for web visitors. Maybe including a photograph with that glowing testimonial will make visitors consider the review to be more credible.
Use Calculated, Consistent Colors
Colors trigger emotional responses in viewers, so take care in selecting and using colors for your website that create the impression you want to give customers.
Marketing lore has a “rule of 7” that refers to the theory that new customers need to have a pleasant time encountering your brand 7 times before they’re ready to buy. That means, they need to form positive associations with your brand and remember it after each encounter.
A great way to leave a lasting impression is to choose brand colors that reflect your brand’s identity and use those colors consistently throughout your marketing. For your website, use the same color scheme as your social media and marketing collateral so that visitors can easily recognize and remember your brand.
Make Everything Easy To Find
Make sure your menu and footer offer easy ways for your web visitors to get right to the information that is most relevant to them. For instance, if they’re convinced halfway down the sales page, you want them to be able to quickly and easily get to “Buy Now” or “Contact Us.”
Also, consider adding anchor links into your longer-form pages so that the reader doesn’t have to scroll to get to their most pressing question. An anchor link, sometimes called a jump link, allows the visitor to jump to the section of a page they’re most interested in. You’ve probably seen them in the form of the “Back To Top” option on some of your favorite websites. For another example, on our Website Copywriting Landing Page, we offer anchor links to the What We Write, Who We Write For, and Pricing sections so that visitors can skip to the section they’re most curious about if they wish.
We especially recommend that businesses that primarily market on social media consider anchor links on their long-form sales pages. If someone has been following you on Instagram and was convinced by your last Live to buy your course, you don’t want them to have to do a lot of scrolling before they can “Add to Cart.” Remember, every obstacle between clicking “Buy Now” is an opportunity for them to get distracted and forget or change their minds.
Also, there’s no law that says all of your messaging needs to show up on each page. We’re big fans of offering teases- seductive introductions- and linking out to other pages if they want to know more about our story, a related service, etc.
Less Is More
Key takeaway: if you emphasize everything, your web visitors won’t have any visual clues for what’s most important to remember.
With your design, layout, and copy, it’s important to be clear about what needs to be visually prioritized so that you can arrange your web page accordingly.
Also, remember that the shorter your web page is, the more accessible it is. If it looks like web visitors are going to have to do a lot of work/reading to understand what your brand is about, you’ll lose ‘em.
Further, the longer, and more complex a page is, the slower it is to load. If the page isn’t fully loaded in the split second it takes for someone to make up their mind about whether or not they want to check out your page- you’ll lose ‘em.
I’ll concede that many popular marketers and copywriters tout long-form sales pages- especially for higher ticket offers. I respectfully disagree. In my former role providing marketing services to midmarket and enterprise tech companies, B2B buyers told us over and over again that they spent no more than 2 minutes on a vendor site while evaluating whether or not to buy services that cost thousands and thousands of dollars.
I advocate shorter landing pages with easy ways to navigate to whatever info they may need: like separate About Us, Pricing, FAQs, Contact pages that are listed in the menu, sidebar, and/or footer.
Limit Your Asks
Do keep in mind that choice overload is real.
Yes, some broad, overview pages on your site, like your home and services pages, for example, will need to provide several options for what the web visitor can do next, depending on their preferences.
But your landing and sales pages will do a better job of converting visitors into customers if you only ask them to do one thing (buy, subscribe, sign up, etc.) and remove any other distracting requests.
Saying a Lot With a Little Takes Strategy
Oddly, editing your copy and design down to its most concise and impactful version takes quite a bit of time, effort, and strategy.
This is why there are so many epically long sales pages out there. When you don’t know your strongest selling points, you don’t know how to prioritize. When you’re not clear on what’s most important to your customers, you don’t know how to present information in a way that will move them. When you’re more comfortable with long-form conversational or poetic prose, it’s a challenge to delete a lovely turn of phrase for the sake of clarity and a smooth customer experience.
Many a great thinker has said something along the lines of “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”
Regardless, when you’re working on your website- particularly the website copy- be prepared to edit. A lot. It also never hurts to get some outside perspective on your web pages to make sure you’re visually drawing attention where you want it.
Want some help with that? Check out our website checkup service, where we assess the effectiveness of your website’s messaging. We also offer powerfully minimalist website copywriting as well as bold branding and sleek website design.
