At White Label Dating, we’re committed to offering our partners the best tools to grow their online dating businesses. That’s why we held the first in a series of workshops hosted by our internal optimisation team, WALDO, this week.
WALDO help our top tier partners optimise their sites, create new designs and manage their affiliate spending, as well as managing our own sites which they use as a platform to test new features, designs and marketing techniques. The team is comprised of creative and experienced web designers, developers and acquisition experts.
The first workshop looked at design optimisation and took a practical and informative approach. Here’s a summary of what we covered.
Know that you aren’t your audience – Always remember you are designing for your audience, not yourself. It is very easy to design creative that you think looks attractive, without thinking about what will motivate your audience. As an example, men prefer websites designed by men and women prefer websites designed by women. You need to create appropriate and attractive user experiences for the demographic you’re trying to target.
Trust, credibility and motivation should be the foundation of your design – It’s essential that you bear in mind that a large chunk of visitors to your site will have very limited knowledge of your brand. You have a very short window in which to convince them that your site is credible and trustworthy, motivating them to join. It’s vital that you create pages that look and behave credibly. People are 63% more likely to sign up a site that contains testimonials.
The Aesthetic Usability Affect – If your site is pleasing to the eye, visitors will assume it’s credible and easier to use. Using a classy, modern design is more likely to attract someone prepared to pay a high subscription value than one that looks dated. Designing for ‘arousal’ plays a huge part in drawing people into your site. Rounded objects, smooth shapes and strong colours are considered visceral positives – which arouses positive feelings about a site – whereas looming objects and asymmetry are seen as visceral negatives – which arouse negative feelings about a site. Create appropriate, great-looking user experiences. They do convert.
Responsive design and fast loading is key – Users expect sites to be mobile-friendly. They believe that everything they would do on a desktop should be accessible on a smartphone in the same amount of time. Faster sites covert better. Users don’t want to do a lot of typing on a mobile device, so it’s essential that the joining process is quick and easy. However, you still need to include enough information to motivate users to join – even if it’s just a sentence. 54% of mobile users want mobile sites to give them more information.
What works on your site now might not work as well in a few months – As design patterns and user preferences are constantly changing, it is really important to keep testing what works best for your site. By changing one variable at a time, you will be able to see the results clearly. It doesn’t require a large financial commitment, just time and effort put into it.
In summary, how you design your site could dramatically influence your click-to-registration rate and the quality of site visitors who join your site.
If you’d like any more information about how to improve your site design and increase your conversion, get in touch with your Partner Manager.