On the surface, web design may appear to be about no more than making a website look nice. However, it is actually one of the most powerful conversion-boosting tools you have access to.

The way you design a website can subtly guide your visitors down your sales funnel and prompt them to take the actions you want them to take. A well-designed website will help customers trust your brand and feel comfortable buying from you.

Let’s take a look at seven often-overlooked design hacks that can help you increase sales on your ecommerce website.

White space can be black

Guides similar to this one will often tell you to utilize white space cleverly. Yes, in, negative space is almost always white. But keep in mind that you are allowed to paint it black (if you pardon the expression).

By inverting the two main colors on your website, you’ll achieve a very interesting and unique effect. The combination certainly won’t work for every brand, but some might find the darkness to speak better than the overly light and airy feeling of a black-on-white design.

Let’s take a look at an example. Fantasy Jocks features a black background, white text, white highlights, and pops of neon yellow.

This makes their items (which are often black themselves) stand out better, with the white bordering on the black background.

Highlight the main selling point

The hero section of any page is always the most important one, and you naturally want to make it visually appealing. And while choosing the best possible image is paramount, you also shouldn’t forget about the heading.

A lot of ecommerce websites choose to let the image speak the loudest and don’t include a heading above the fold altogether. In fact, by using the brand’s main keyphrases and highlighting their USP up front, you can add another layer of meaning to the imagery and guide your visitor’s thought processes in the right direction.

Let’s look at Techno Gym. They clearly convey what they’re all about: personalized home workouts.

You may have come across their page by searching for treadmills or ellipticals. This one phrase tells you everything you need to know about the brand – and that they are so much more than just a fitness equipment store.

Choose a Product-Based Color Story

Sometimes you see an ad for a product, see a product on Instagram or in real life, and suffer major disappointment when you visit the brand’s website and it’s nothing like the product itself.

True, major ecommerce stores that sell hundreds or thousands of different items need to select a more neutral design. But if you are selling a branded and unique product, the website should match the design of the product. At least choose the same color story.

An excellent example of how to do this with great effect is JOI.

The colors on their website match their product perfectly, and the pastels and white reflect their packaging seamlessly. You can effortlessly connect the product to the website, and both give you the same kind of vibe: modern, fresh, clean.

Refrain from Sliders and Carousels

Using a slider or image carousel is great on Instagram, but you should really skip it in your website design. First, chances are no one will get to see the last image. Even if visitors stick to the top of the page and click through the entire thing, your messages would be communicated better if you laid them out vertically.

And second, they slow the page down significantly, no matter what you do really, so you’ll only be wasting valuable loading seconds on a design element that’s not actually useful.

Here’s an example. I Love Parcels has an image slider in their hero section that is practically useless. It shows their products in different settings, but showcasing these images ultimately achieves nothing. No conversion will be inspired this way.

The other semi-decent solution they have is the product carousel just below. You might find it’s also distracting, a tad confusing, and probably won’t attract too many clicks.

Animation Is Your Friend

In order to make a website truly dynamic, you want to reach for the simple solution that is animation or motion graphics. Of course, you’re not going to make every single element on a page dance and sing. But if you’re going for the effect of vibrancy and activity, simple transitions can go a very long way.

You always want to ensure that the animations you use are not distracting. And that they are fast enough not to slow someone’s trip down the page (and down the sales funnel) down significantly.

Since the only way to illustrate this point is with an example, take a look at what Real Thread has done.

The animations are crisp, the transitions smooth, scrolling is not impaired by them, and they definitely make the page feel more lively.

Make the CTA Truly Pop

The call-to-action button is the element that is most obviously used for boosting conversions. Unfortunately, so many of them are poorly designed and executed.

The basic rule of CTA implementation is to differentiate it from the rest of the page. Most CTAs are buttons, and they more or less blend into the design used on the rest of the page.

Yet if you truly want to influence a conversion, you need to make the CTA incredibly obvious and allow it to stand out. Again, this won’t work for every brand and every page, but it can be incredibly effective nonetheless.

See how Transparent Labs have designed theirs. The orange stands out against the blue, and it really is the first thing you see on their homepage.

While they use the same color and shape across the rest of their pages, there are fewer CTAs there. So, the effect is not as dynamic, but it keeps working well.

Adjust Your Mobile Version

Finally, you want to ensure that your desktop version and your mobile version are not identical. They need to be just about the same, but the way people shop from mobile pages is quite different from how they do it when there is a mouse involved.

For starters, you need the CTAs to be within thumb’s reach. The images need to be smaller and adjust to the screen size and orientation. The menu needs to be intuitive and subtle.

The list, of course, doesn’t end there. However, as discussing mobile vs. desktop design would call for an entirely new article, lets’ just underline the importance of adapting your design to the screen you’re designing for.

Final Thoughts

Take some of these seven design hacks into consideration when looking to boost ecommerce conversion rates. They may be elementary, but they work like a charm.