In This Episode You’ll Learn:
- Optimizing design to maximize success
- How to know when to redesign your website
- Mistakes you’re making in redesigning your website
What Is Conversion Design?
Rafal Tomal specializes in conversion design—design that goes beyond just what looks good, and actually aids you in reaching your business goals. He helps businesses redesign their websites to optimize their business goals. Redesign isn’t just a hobby, Rafal explains, it is an investment in your business.
[02:00] “Conversion design means that you design thinking of how your design will help to sell products or services. So it’s not only designing to make it look nice, to make it look beautiful, and provide a good experience, but also thinking about the business and how your design can serve the business goals.”
“Just nice design” doesn’t make a big difference in terms of conversion, Rafal says. But when design is optimized to both look good and intuitively to the products at hand, the result would be a boost in conversion rates.
When Should You Redesign Your Website?
As your business grows, so too should your design. Feel like now is the time to redesign?
Rafal provides some good indicators that it’s time for a redesign:
- The company, business, products have outgrown the current design
- Your client-base has changed or expanded
- You’ve adjusted your business focus
- Conversion rates are low compared to the standard
But wait! Before you go into full redesign, start with some testing. Rafal explains that whenever he goes to redesign a client’s website, he first starts with some simple AB testing to get a better understanding of what is working and what isn’t.
[07:50] “Instead of going through a full redesign, I’ll go through first, change the headline, change some copy, maybe change the color of some buttons, reposition some of these elements, maybe add another section of testimonials. Try to do some tests first before going into full redesign—I think that’s very often the mistake people make. They tend to redesign everything before they start testing.”
Remember: Nice and new doesn’t always mean optimized and efficient.
Implementing a Successful Redesign
Design’s main job is to support your content, your services, or what you’re selling.
Dos:
- Flow. Flow is so important to your design, Rafal says. Each page should flow individually, but the site itself should also flow well together as a whole
- Strong copy (this is first and foremost)
- Being upfront with what you’re selling or what you have to offer
- Visual elements, bullet points, headings to break up text
- Toned down colors
- Site design that supports both new and returning visitors
- Contrasting call-to-action section
Do Nots:
- Long paragraphs without any sort of visual breaks (images, bullets, headings, etc.)
- Burying your product/service/what you’re selling
- Hard stops that discourage further scrolling
- Harsh colors that may cause the reader to stop or think it is the end of the page
Selling Your Service as a Freelancer
Rafal doesn’t even have a portfolio on his website. All of his focus goes into making his clients’ websites good, so much so that he barely has time for his own. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however. In fact, Rafal says, the word of mouth that he gets from satisfied clients is more effective than any website he could build for himself.
[19:00] “I think for all designers or all freelancers out there—if you want to have work, focus on providing good work for your clients and providing great service.”
Pretty pictures don’t sell your services—assurance does. Rafal recalls working with freelancers who had a beautiful portfolio but ended up being very hard to work with. He wishes he’d been warned about them in advance, he says.
Reputation, authority, and trust are everything in freelancing.
Educating Your Target Audience
Jeff and Rafal discuss the best, most optimized way to educate your audience, subscribers, or clients. Rafal notes that a blog is a great way to keep people engaged in your content and demonstrate that you are up-to-date with the latest in your industry.
It does depend on who your target audience is. If you are targeting potential clients, your content shouldn’t be too technical. It should be simple and easily understandable for the layman.
[38:00] “The more you help your audience, the more you help people who follow you, the more business will come back to you eventually.”
Organizing Your Information 101
It’s a good idea, Rafal says, to experiment with your content. If you have a blog, start out by making different kinds of small articles and content to see what people are most interested in. If something is a hit, maybe take that article and make a bigger more focused evergreen article on that. You may even want to make an ebook—but again, it comes down to starting small with testing before going big.
Learn More:
- Visit Rafal’s website www.rafaltomal.com.
- Find Rafal on Twitter, Instagram, and Dribbble.
