Companies that disregard the importance of intuitive design are often left wondering why they are unable to convert their prospects into customers. If you’re reading this, you have already avoided the mistake that makes companies lose customers drastically.
Funnel design ideas for small business success include using visual hierarchy to create a smooth user experience, expressing brand identity through colors, creating a contrast to increase readability, highlighting elements by leaving negative space, and choosing a utility-based font.
A good funnel design uses different elements such as color, spacing, layout, and fonts to create a smooth experience for its customers without taking away from its aesthetic appeal. Making deliberate design choices can positively change the way customers connect with your brand.
In this article, I list five funnel design ideas that can lead your small business toward great success.
5 Funnel Design Concepts for Small Business Growth
1. Prioritize Visual Hierarchy for a Smooth Experience
Design consists of various elements such as colors, fonts, images, size, and space. The arrangement of these elements in order of importance is what we call visual hierarchy.
Simply put, it is a design that considers human behavior and guides the gaze of the viewer in a particular fashion. Ask yourself: where do you want your viewers’ attention to fall, what action are you motivating them towards taking, and where does their natural gaze land?
Using too many elements can confuse your viewers and overwhelm them. The most significant thing to remember is that if all elements in your design are highlighted and given equal importance, then none of them will appear important.
Netflix’s homepage makes great use of visual hierarchy to simplify the process of subscribing and becoming a customer. The first thing that catches your eye is the text written in big, bold letters, “Unlimited movies, TV shows, and more.”
That text is followed by a short phrase in smaller font size, “Watch anywhere. Cancel anytime.” Their text is straightforward and follows the no-fluff policy, informing the viewer about their services in exactly 10 words.
They use two CTAs that are easy to locate due to the bright red color. This shows the intuitive use of visual hierarchy that prevents your customer from having to “figure out” your website.
Fun elements like interactive animations are also a superb way of capturing your customers’ attention. Do check out my article on the role of interactive content in modern marketing to see how powerful it can be.
2. Understand Color to Express Brand Identity
The role of color in marketing is to project and reinforce your brand goals and values consistently. Avoid using too many colors on your homepage. Instead, stick to a color palette that fits your brand identity. For instance, the pairing of red and yellow is almost always associated with the fast food chain McDonald’s.
Try not to exceed the limit of 3 to 5 colors in your design scheme, and make sure that they work together in both light and dark contrasts. You can use the color wheel to determine which colors are complimentary, as they are guaranteed to work together. Remember to experiment with tones and values to avoid washing out or saturating colors that are contrasting in nature.
Colors are also a powerful language that can evoke specific emotions and effectively communicate feelings within your audience.
Coca-Cola and Netflix use red to enforce a sense of urgency and excitement. Blue is used by companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, and IBM to generate credibility and gain the trust of consumers. Orange is a vibrant color that attracts people without appearing threatening. It is used by brands like Nickelodeon, Harley Davidson, and Amazon. Companies like Whole Foods and Tropicana use green to align their image with all things natural, fresh, and healthy.
Shailen Vandeyar from FunnelTeacher.com says, “Choosing your brand’s colors is like picking a superhero outfit! Spiderman uses red and is visible from a distance, instilling fear in bad guys from far away. Batman uses black and gray for stealth. Thugs don’t know what hit them.”
3. Integrate Color Contrast to Increase Text Readability
If your content requires the viewer to squint their eyes and look closely, then you’ve lost the battle even before it has started.
Often, you will have text that is overlaid on an image or a background of a different color. In such situations, choosing the right color is a key decision that will define how much text your viewers read. If the color of your text resembles the color of the background, it will be hard for your viewers to make out the letters.
Having a low contrast ratio makes your content difficult to navigate through. This may lead to them missing important prompts, such as a CTA button or a link to your website. It is recommended that you maintain a contrast ratio of 4.5 to 1 by using a dark-colored background for light-colored text and vice versa.
4. Negative Space is Your Friend, Use it!
Negative space refers to the black or white space in your content that lacks any images or text. Negative space works best when you become aware of how to use it in a balanced manner. Try to find the sweet spot between your content looking empty and incomplete or crammed with content and confusing.
This white space will make your content more readable and effective in two major ways. Firstly, it guides your viewer’s gaze to important components of your design by spotlighting them. For instance, having a bright-colored CTA button surrounded by negative space ensures your viewer’s eyes land on it without any distractions.
Secondly, it serves as a resting space for the audience’s eyes and keeps them from getting overwhelmed by other design elements. Providing a sense of relaxation and break is of great significance when trying to create a smooth customer experience.
5. Choose a Font That Works With Both Design and Utility
Fonts play a multifaceted role in creating the correct aesthetic for your brand while enhancing its readability and overall user experience. Similar to colors, they are a powerful tool that can communicate your brand’s motives and, therefore, must be chosen strategically and deliberately.
You can choose to stick with one font or experiment with a variety of them. If you prefer the latter, remember to choose a typeface from a large font family so that you can easily experiment with more styles and make your design more coherent.
Fonts have character. A serif font that has a stroke at the end of each alphabet will provide a formal and traditional appearance. This letterform is better for printing and reading horizontal rows of text as switching from one row to another becomes easier. Sans-serif letterform that lacks the stroke gives off a more modern, clean, and sophisticated appearance. It is also a style that is preferred for digital use.
Keep in mind that your text can be viewed on multiple devices, and therefore, the font of your liking must be scalable without losing details.
How your font performs once published is critical in determining how smooth your reader’s experience will be. It is advised that your content delivers system feedback within 400 milliseconds to retain your viewers’ attention and encourage them to interact. Opt for a font with a quick loading time to avoid losing the viewer’s interest.
You can even carry out an A/B tests to see which font works best for your business. My article on tricks for effective sales optimization talks about implementing A/B tests as sales tactics.