By: Brent Turner Topics: Build Better Websites 
Is there anything better than a beautifully designed website?
Actually yes, there is.
A beautifully designed website that converts.
Chances are, you might be using a website or landing page that just plain sucks at converting visitors into completed goal actions, or in simpler terms – conversions. As the old saying goes, “you can have all the traffic in the world, but if your website can’t convert that traffic, then you have a crap website.”
I’m not actually sure who coined that saying, and I might have just made that up. But, it’s true nonetheless.
If you’ve been wrestling with your website, trying to improve it’s conversions and you’ve found yourself hitting a brick wall then I want to help you fix it.
Today, I’m going to reveal my all-time top 5 design ‘hacks’ that are guaranteed to boost sales and conversions, and make your business look amazing in the process. And best of all, you’re going to love them.
But first, who am I and why listen to me?
I’m not here to talk about me, so I’ll keep it short. I’ve been designing high converting websites and landing pages and everything in between since 2005. I own and operate
Boost Design, a successful design studio that focuses only on high-converting design.
You can see my AwesomeWeb portfolio by clicking here.
Over the years I’ve learned and experimented with tonnes of design tricks and ‘hacks’ that can seriously bolster up conversions and help improve a business’ bottom line.
Before we dive into the meat of this post, let me ask you a few quick questions.
What would a 20% increase in email list subscribers mean to your business? What about an extra 1% on top of your salespage conversions, or a 150% increase in lead inquiries?
I’m not sure about you, but I know these figures can be business changing.
And, of course, I’m not guaranteeing you’ll see the same results, but if you follow along and implement these design features into your website and business then you’ll be well on your way.
Before we move forward, I just want to say that you don’t need to be a design pro to implement these features into your websites and landing pages. The design customisation level in many WordPress themes and page builders is at an all-time high and you should be able to do a great job with those alone.
However, I am biased and I do totally recommend
hiring a pro designer to do this once your business has reached a certain level.
Now with that said, let’s dive into my five top design hacks and features:
1. High-Converting Typography
Typography and the fonts you choose to use on your website can have a huge impact on readability, which directly ties in to your conversion rates.
We’re at a time now when choosing fonts has never been easier and the volume of good, clean fonts – both free and premium – at our disposal has never been higher.
Free fonts sites like
Google Fonts and
Font Squirrel and premium font marketplaces like
TypeKit and
MyFonts means you’ll never be stuck finding the perfect font for your brand and website.
But when it comes down to it. Selecting typography for your website can be a fine art in itself.
You need to consider font families, sizes, weights and whether or not to use a serif or a sans-serif font.
It can all be a bit daunting, but luckily I have a few pointers for you.
Typography Do’s and Don’ts
- Don’t use anymore than 3 font families on your website. Choose one for your headlines and subheadlines and one for your body text and paragraphs. You might also wish to use another font family sparingly, such as a script font for use in promos and secondary graphics.
- I recommend using a clean sans-serif font as they’re optimal for screens and hand held devices like phones and tablets. Serif fonts, the fonts with ‘hands’ and ‘feet’ extruding from their characters are better suited for long-form reading, that’s why you’ll only ever see serif fonts being used in print books and e-readers.
- For screens, a good font size for body and paragraph text is between 15 – 18px. At this size it’s not too small to be uncomfortable and not too big to have your users scroll or swipe unneccesarily.
- Visit your favourite blogs and websites and take note of the font families they use. A good tool to find out what font a website is using is a plugin called Fount.