Why landing page design can’t be an afterthought

If you’re putting time and effort into your content marketing strategy then you can’t leave your landing page design as an afterthought. A well-designed page ensures the leads you’re gaining from your content are actually being converted. At the end of the day, an effective page designed to convert will help ensure your lead generation campaign is successful.

With the average landing page conversion rate across all industries being 9.7% (with 10% being widely considered a good conversion rate) getting them right is critical. As Hubspot explains, “Marketers who create landing pages that build trust with page visitors, provide valuable information, and use different content types see higher conversion rates.”

How to design a landing page that converts

Creating not only an engaging landing page but one that converts is all about the design. Here are our top tips for creating an engaging landing page:

• Keep it personal – Ensure your landing page is personalised to the user. Utilising generic messaging won’t lead to conversions or maintain engagement, with studies revealing personalised CTAs convert 202% better than a normal CTA.
• Optimise, optimise, optimise – Consistently testing your landing page and optimising it is critical to its success. Utilising A/B testing will ensure your landing page operates smoothly and help convert clients, with 1 out of 8 A/B tests shown to have driven significant change.
• Keep it simple – Too much information can overwhelm your clients. Keep your information clear, simple and concise.
• Have a clear call to action – Ultimately, you want your clients visiting your landing page to take action. This means an effective CTA is critical.
• Ensure it’s mobile-friendly – With more people using their mobiles to find and research businesses it’s critical your landing page is not only designed for mobile but is fast, quick and responsive otherwise people simply click off.

Two great examples

These two finance brands demonstrate what makes a good landing page design. Keeping it simple and immediately trying to gain important first-party data makes these landing pages particularly effective.

Future Green Steps has made its landing page eye-catching and engaging. Keeping the information simple, users gain the necessary information seamlessly. Additionally, it has incorporated short-form videos to make the page feel fresh and provide a variety of content appealing to a wider range of visitors while also increasing users’ time on the page.

Odin’s Crow has also created an innovative and engaging landing page design. Utilising intelligent web design, Odin’s Crow combines interactive graphics with accessible typography that provides critical information. Odin’s Crow highlights that landing page design doesn’t have to be boring, instead, it can be modern and contemporary.

The post How to create landing pages that convert appeared first on Financial Marketer.

Digital marketing trends for APAC finance brands

In the report by Adobe and Econsultancy, there are three key digital marketing trends in the APAC region that finance brands should understand.

• CX design as a priority – One in five (19%) of organisations in the APAC region said that CX is the most exciting opportunity for them. With 73% of consumers saying a good CX design is key in influencing their brand loyalties, creating a great digital customer experience should be a strategic priority for APAC finance brands.
• CX design maturity – APAC organisations are lagging behind their global counterparts when it comes to CX design and the overall customer experience. In fact, only 7% of businesses in the APAC region said that they consider themselves ‘mature’ in customer experience, compared to 12% in North America and 11% globally. With 75% of customer loyalty driven by CX, improving your finance brand’s CX design offers an opportunity to gain a competitive edge.
• CX design investment – Investment in CX technology is set to increase significantly across the next few years in the APAC region in an effort to catch up to global counterpart. In fact, 57% of organisations in the region reveal they are likely to increase their investment in CX-related technology, compared to 47% of companies across the rest of the world. If your finance brand hasn’t yet created a plan to improve CX design, it’s time to start.

How to create a great CX design

CX design is all about catering to what your customers want. Understanding the customer journey is vital to getting your CX right. There are five key areas that are important to get right, if you want to nail your finance brand’s CX:

• Reachability – It should be easy to find and interact with your finance brand, whether that’s your website or social media channels. If leads can’t find you, how do you expect to convert them?
• Convenience – It should be easy and convenient to not only purchase from your site or mobile app but to also get in contact with your customer service team.
• Personalisation – Consumers want personalisation. Ensuring your website, digital app and all communications are personalised with tailored product offerings, insights and key information.
• Ease-of-use – At the heart of great CX design is that every channel you have, whether it’s a website or digital app, is easy to use. This means ensuring your website is not only accessible on a desktop but it’s also mobile-friendly.
• Omnichannel approach – Key customer data should be transferable across all digital channels. This means the customer journey shouldn’t get lost if they transfer from your digital app to the desktop website.

Key takeaways for APAC finance brands

At the end of the day, these digital marketing trends indicate a clear need for APAC finance brands to focus on creating a great CX design. With CX design becoming a key area of competition for finance brands, there’s never been a better time to improve it.

The post Digital marketing trends in the APAC region appeared first on Financial Marketer.

Human connection

Customer service is often seen as one of the top reasons for cultivating consumer loyalty, trust and retention, yet is often scored the lowest in customer satisfaction scores. In fact, 47% of customers would switch brands after a poor customer experience and 91% would leave without warning. While people are doing their banking more and more online, they still desire human connection when contacting customer service.

80% of consumers say speed, convenience, knowledgeable help, and friendly service are the top things they’re looking for when interacting with customer service. Your finance brand should therefore prioritise technologies that support these core areas rather than ones you adopt simply because they’re considered cutting edge. Technology like AI and chatbots are becoming expected from customers as they enable easy queries to be solved quickly while remaining personalised and ‘human’.

CX design as a product

In this regard, the CX design improvements your finance brand has made across the pandemic must be maintained and continually updated to ensure customer retention. Consumers now expect a forward-thinking, personalised, and easy-to-use online experience. Without constantly improving your CX you are losing out to brands that do.

Financial wellness and improved trust

According to Accenture, only 29% of people trust their banks to look after their financial wellbeing compared with 43% two years ago. Consumers are wanting more help from their finance organisations with the pandemic increasing financial uncertainty globally. There’s now a link between financial wellness, CX design and customer satisfaction. This indicates a growing need from consumers for their finance providers to help them understand how to manage their money.

Offering educational resources and tools to manage spending easier are some ways to improve the financial wellness of your clients. Consider what your clients need and are struggling with when creating a customer-focused CX design.

Why CX design is important for financial marketers to consider

CX design is now one area consumers consider the most important when making their decisions. Ensuring you maintain the digital evolution your brand has adopted is critical to ensuring you retain customers and improve conversion rates. Think about the customer’s needs, digital habits, and wants first and foremost in your overall customer experience design.

The post Top 3 CX Design Trends of 2022 appeared first on Financial Marketer.

With Ecommerce expected to make up 22% of global retail sales by 2023, websites are fast becoming one of the most important aspects of a successful marketing strategy. By combining product marketing and design, a harmonious balance can be found that will ensure your website is both functional and beautiful, as well as being informative and profitable.

The difference between UX and UI design

To get started, it’s important to understand the difference between user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design. At its core, UI design is focused on visual design and brand image. Alternatively, UX is centered around user experience and how customers interact with a website. UX design solves structural pain points to make the purchasing process easier.

UX design and UI design collaborate to deliver a holistic customer experience. A website that focuses on both UX design and UI design will be both functional and visually appealing and finance brands must incorporate both. Yet, often, it’s UX that’s forgotten about with 86% of companies failing to consider UX when developing their website.

Users want UX design

With so much choice online, users expect websites to be easy-to-use and functional. In fact, more than two-thirds of businesses compete on customer experience alone, making UX design a key weapon in remaining competitive. UX is an investment that has great returns for finance brands with a study by Forrester finding that every $1 invested in UX design generates $100 in return. Customers want their online experience to be easy and UX design allows for that.

By altering the focus from the aesthetic qualities of a website to the users’ experience it can help finance brands reduce visitors dropping off and choosing an alternative business. 88% of customers were less inclined to purchase from a company after a bad user experience indicating the influence UX design has on customers’ purchasing decisions.

Know your audience

UX design is human-focused. It places the customer at the forefront of your website’s design. By researching and understanding not only who your finance brands’ audience is but also how they use your website, finance brands can drive customers to take certain actions. Whether this is to purchase a product or to engage with a specific campaign, when UX aligns with a strategic content program they work in partnership to deliver on business goals. In fact, companies that focused on customer experience saw their revenue increase by 4-8%.

While 81% of banks believe they understand their users’ needs, only 37% of customers agree. With web design a key aspect of the customer experience, it’s an important component to ensure finance brands are meeting the needs of consumers. Whilst visual design is a way to capture attention and engage customers, to strengthen customer relationships and drive them to take relevant actions finance websites need to be designed with customer behaviours front of mind.

Here are three simple fixes to improve your UX design:
Count how many clicks it takes for your user to get to the page they need. Remove any unnecessary pathways as you want your site to be easy and quick to navigate.
Ensure the front page of your website showcases who your brand is and what they do. Look to showcase content that will drive customers down the funnel as well as providing quick links to products for customers ready to act.
Ensure you have a call to action (CTA) that is noticeable and relevant. Having a personalised CTAs converted 42% more visitors into leads than un-personalised ones.

Design and marketing go hand-in-hand

UX design and marketing are symbiotic. UX design can improve marketing campaigns by ensuring website visitors both enjoy their experience and are directed to relevant information and ultimately to make a purchase. By merging key user experience information with rich marketing data, a finance brand can gain a competitive edge as lead generation can turn into profitable conversions.

Great design stops for nobody

It’s important that finance brands understand UX design isn’t a one-time investment, but a continuous aspect of their overall marketing strategy. UX must continue to evolve with its users and remain driven by data and research into audience habits and goals. With half of all customers who switched finance brands doing so because of a bad user experience, it pays for finance brands to continue to invest in UX design.

92% of businesses that have adopted a customer-centric marketing strategy have seen an increase in customer loyalty and 84% experienced an increase in revenue. Focusing on how your target audience experiences your website and digital platforms is an important aspect of improving a brand’s overall marketing strategy.

The post Convert customers with UX design appeared first on Financial Marketer.

Mobile-friendly web design is the future

Optimising your finance website so it’s mobile-friendly is a competitive decision that can ensure you remain discoverable over your opposition. Currently, only around 13% of websites retain their search engine ranking across all devices, showcasing a prime opportunity for your finance brand to increase organic traffic.

Nowadays, almost everything is performed on mobile phones, so even if you’re ranked high on desktop searches this may not be benefiting your finance business as much as you’d think. With Google implementing mobile-first indexing back in 2017, it’s time finance brands altered their web design to reflect these algorithm changes. Shockingly, 30% of businesses that appear in the first page of Google search results on desktop don’t appear in the top ten search results on mobile.

Quick! Check your website design now

If you’re unsure if your website design is mobile-friendly or not, Google provides a mobile-friendly test that’s a simple and easy way to double-check. It also provides a detailed analysis of key areas of your overall website that could be improved, such as if your:

• Text is too small to read on the screen
• Clickable elements are too close together
• Plug-ins are incompatible

Another way to check the health of your website’s mobile design and how it’s performing on mobile search engine rankings is Google Search Console.

Other than the technical side of things, a simple check on your own mobile should reveal just how easy your website is to use. If it’s difficult for you to use, then it’s most likely being penalised by Google for its poor user experience.

Unlock search engine traffic with responsive web design

With Google’s reindexing of mobile search results to favour websites designed for mobiles, if your finance brand doesn’t keep up it can negatively impact your visibility and organic traffic. For a website to be favoured by Google it must have a responsive web design. With 94% of consumers judging websites on responsive web design, not updating your website would be doing your brand a disservice.

Here are some quick tips regarding the core aspects of best practice mobile-friendly design.

• Your website must respond well to the different devices it appears on. Your web design should adjust to the size of the screen it appears on to ensure it’s easy to use by everyone.
  The transition from a desktop website to a mobile website should be seamless.
• Create visuals that say something. Less is more when it comes to mobile-friendly design.
• Ensure your mobile site is not separate from your desktop site. With Google’s mobile-first indexing they now favour mobile websites over desktop ones. If these are different it could be hurting your discoverability.

Strengthen your SEO with mobile-friendly web design

To ensure your SEO is working well, get comfortable with using structured data. This is simply a method of explaining exactly what your website is to search engines and when used in collaboration with a responsive user experience can greatly improve your mobile rankings.

If you’re not sure you’ve implemented structured data correctly then you can always double-check by using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.

Faster, faster, faster

The final aspect of a mobile-friendly website is its speed. A slow site ranks poorly on Google and will lead 50% of people to click off if page load time is longer than three seconds.

• To ensure your mobile website stays as quick as Usain Bolt take a look at your browser caching and image optimisation.
  Browser caching is information that your customer’s computer saves, like your site’s HTML or images. By saving this data, the next time they click on your website it will load faster. Talk to your developer to ensure that your browser caching is working as efficiently as possible.
• Optimising your images to ensure fast load times could take the form of compressing the file sizes, utilising fewer images, or ensuring the dimensions of the images are correct. It’s all about making sure your visitor’s computer has to do less work.

To check how fast your website really is, then take a look at Google’s Site Speed Tool.

It’s time to optimise

A mobile-friendly website has a direct effect on customers’ perceptions of your finance brand, with websites optimised for mobile improving 60% of users’ opinions and ensuring that 74% of users return to your site. With 52.16% of businesses’ rankings altering on mobile devices by three places, and 29.16% changing by 10 places, your finance brand could be losing out on potential customers every day.

While it may seem like a nice option rather than a non-negotiable, with 67% of users more likely to buy from a mobile-friendly website, it pays for finance businesses to create a responsive user experience.

The post Why Your Finance Website Must Be Mobile-Friendly appeared first on Financial Marketer.

As the senior digital designer at The Dubs, I combine ideas from editorial design into my work when I create images for blog articles, social media and downloadable pdfs. It’s a great way to grab your audience’s attention, give your content a personality and further establish a brand identity. 

Compared to the volume of uninspiring images on the internet, an editorially-led approach to imagery can really help set you apart from the competition. We’ve all come across blogs in the finance space or otherwise with the same standard and unimaginative stock imagery and gone straight for the back button. At The Dubs we were so perplexed by some of the stock imagery we saw used time and time again that we went direct to a stock model to find out what makes a stock image sellable. 

Often as a digital designer in the finance sector, the challenge in my job is to deal with topics and ideas that aren’t tangible and that are also repeated. Themes in no particular order often include strategy, research, financial assets, content, investing and many more. 

7 editorial design tactics that work

To help bring these themes to life there are a number of editorial design tactics that I find successful in my own work. 

1. Focus on the title

Your image will be directly related to the title when viewed together on a blog or via social media, so it’s important they speak to each other and your image doesn’t focus on a different aspect of the article. 

2. Good use of colour

Obviously, if you’re working to brand guidelines, then stick to them. If you have a bit of room to play with, I go for a max of three main colours. I get a lot of my colour combos from colourlovers.com

3. Integrate vintage photography

I’m a fan of using vintage photography when I can. It has a recognisable and timeless quality to it, so it speaks to all. When creating a collage-style image, it creates a nice effect to pick out certain images and turn them to black and white.

4. Match photography with colour

Combining black and white photography with colourful shapes and icons also works well together, allowing you to deal with more complex subjects than you could with just one image.

5. Tell a story through your image

The article is conveying an idea, and so should your image. This could mean focusing on one central image and surrounding it with many other types of imagery. Or the image could focus on one central theme from the article.

6. Keep it modern

As my work focuses on the digital realm it’s important to keep up-to-date and reference contemporary technologies and imagery. I do this often through the use of emojis, memes and celebrities. It’s also important to use up-to-date images of phones, logos, interfaces etc – nothing worse than seeing an old X logo or a Nokia 3310 in a recent article.

7. It’s all about the execution 

I know I bad mouth stock images, but you can still find some gems in there. But don’t just download the image and be done with it. Think about whether it can be framed in a different way. Can it be used in a collage? Or could adding illustration, icons or stats over the top give it an edge? Don’t be afraid to experiment and add a number of layers to an image. 

The striking editorial design you see across the Financial Marketer is a key tenet of our overall content marketing strategy. It’s a style unique to The Dubs that we’ve evolved over time and one we know works to capture attention and stop our audience mid scroll. If your design needs an editorial touch, contact The Dubs. 

The post Editorial design tactics to elevate your brand appeared first on Financial Marketer.

Before content marketing was mainstream

I got into digital and content marketing in the mid-90s, and before that worked in broadcast design (the branding of television networks). When I co-founded The Dubs I used my broadcast connections to build websites and content publishing programs for the largest entertainment brands in the UK – The X Factor for ITV and The Apprentice for BBC.

As creative director I was focused on building enormous online audiences around these brands, slicing and dicing and extending the content from these TV programs as the vehicle for repeated, audience-targeted engagement. It was content marketing, but that concept wasn’t part of the mainstream marketing vernacular like we know it today.

In the background I had a passion for architecture, and later in life I took a break from the digital world to study it. In my first week I was introduced to a design exercise that again shared the foundations of the approach we apply to financial content marketing today. The exercise was to sketch 16 simple building forms out of the letter ‘H’ – which seems easy on the face of it, but after you’ve stretched it up-down, left-right, thick to thin, that still leaves 6 to 10 to go. One becomes absorbed in an internal dialogue of experimentation; testing and criticising increasingly wilder ideas, with each incarnation making it harder and harder to originate an alternative from the one before. 

At the time I didn’t realise the process was a very simple introduction to design thinking – an approach that just like content marketing puts the challenges and needs of the user at its core. And looking back on my entire academic career, it showed me the value of a systematic approach to problem-solving built on research and analysis, collaboration with community, the modelling of complex ideas and the critical assessment of their results. 

Where the X Factor, architecture and content strategy meet

Returning to digital as the GM of The Dubs Agency’s Sydney office, I’ve looked at our early content marketing experiences with fresh eyes. Seeing a clear relationship between our early digital learnings and the rigor of the architectural design thinking system, we’ve adapted and fed these into our always-on financial content marketing process – creating our own iteration of traditional best-practice financial content marketing. 

Architecture is at its core a social orchestration, and through the activation of a physical space an architect’s aim is to create delight when its user experiences the space. 

Virtual space – and I categorise any website or social platform as that – apart from its materiality, or the lack thereof, shares a lot of similarities to physical space from a social and information perspective.

Whether it’s a physical or virtual space the starting question is always why? Why are we doing what we are doing, what challenges are we trying to solve and how does the user ultimately benefit? Universal across content marketing and design thinking, it’s also television 101. If you don’t produce content that appeals to the needs and interests of the viewer, inevitably the show will get axed after two episodes. 

In financial content marketing we draw on audience-based research that we author, and the strategies we develop are user-centered both in terms of the content we create and the way it’s delivered. Step one in any new project is to determine what the target audience wants. The second step is gaining an understanding of the business’ needs via a qualitative workshop process. And from there, only once we have a clear understanding of both the target audience and business’ needs and challenges do we begin formulating a content and distribution strategy.

Drawing on the ‘H’ exercise from architecture we ideate and conceptualise multiple strategies to marry up the two sides and ultimately land on a creative platform that unifies both the audience’s and business’ wants and needs. This union underpins the proposed strategy across content, formats and distribution. Once we implement the strategy and content publishing commences, we constantly measure and refine throughout the project life-cycle.

We are a team of strategists, journalists, technologists, filmmakers, designers and an architect. And after all these years we are still enthusiastic about the digital medium because it’s constantly shifting alongside the world of influences that evolve it. 

The post How design thinking gives financial content marketing its X Factor appeared first on Financial Marketer.

Top 5 design trends for 2021

Neumorphism

A trend we saw coming through in 2020 was Neumorphism – which is best described as minimalist realism. It merges recent trends such as minimal flat design (eg: Google’s Material Design) and combines it with the kind of tactile, realism design we saw in the early 2010s, known as Skeumorphism. Neumorphism allows designers to use a tactile approach to enhance the user experience, while also benefitting from being able to convey ideas quickly through minimalist design. 

Ridoy Rock

Neelesh Chaudhary

Abstract editorial design

A trend I enjoyed using myself in 2020 and I expect to continue to evolve in 2021 is editorial design. Most commonly used in blog article imagery and YouTube explainer videos, it’s a great way to ditch bland stock photography and replace it with editorial style collages that not only look great, they also better convey the idea. It allows you to mix different images from various sources to illustrate an idea that would be hard to do through one photograph. Adding abstract shapes and vibrant colours to this collage approach will make your website, blog or video really come alive.

Klawe Rzeczy

Christina Animashaun/Vox

Soft colours

As we’re spending more and more time on computers, designers are increasingly thinking about eyestrain and how they can use more muted, pastel colours in their design. This was tackled last year in the dark mode trend, where users would be given an option to swap between a white interface or a black one. This year I expect we’ll see designers trying to find a balance by using colours that are easy on the eye and less harsh than pure black and white. Pantone’s colours for 2021 reflect this trend, going for the soft yellow of ‘Illuminating’ and the neutral ‘Ultimate Gray’.

Discovered Foods

Castor & Pollux Group

3D visuals

3D is a medium that’s increasingly coming into its own. With further advances in technology, designers are able to achieve the kind of results they could previously only imagine. As a result, 3D design is becoming more imaginative, bold and colourful – while illustrating its subject better than ever. 3D design is practical for a variety of uses, in particular when illustrating products. Adobe Dimensions is a great app for those who aren’t 3D design experts, allowing you to select from a range of 3D product templates and simply skin them with your own design – rendering a professional final image. 

Google Cloud Next

SENNEP

Design that reflects social issues

2020 was a year where issues such as inclusion and human rights continued to come to the forefront of discussion, most notably through the Black Lives Matter protests. In response, we’ve seen designers using their skills to get behind causes they believe in – creating everything from websites to protest graphics. A trend that has continued in my work, but has taken on more emphasis this year is that of inclusion. Companies are more pragmatic in wanting to reflect the diversity of their audience and this is reflected in the imagery and language we use in campaigns to reflect race, gender, sexuality and ability. 

The Third Strike

100 Every Day

At The Dubs we place a huge emphasis on strong, creative and arresting design that elevates content and ensures it stands out. Get in touch.

The post Design trends: what good content looks like in 2021 appeared first on Financial Marketer.

Website UX vs UI: What’s the difference?

We start off by asking Bradshaw to help us better understand exactly what ‘website design’ means, particularly with regards to users and conversion. He explains, “In this context, design is referred to as UI design (User Interface). Great website design should start with the UX (User Experience) process. This begins with research, analysis and ascertaining what is the best user experience for both your brand and the end-user or customer. From here the UI designer will take over. They will work on a design hierarchy and implement design techniques that users will interact with to achieve the desired conversion.” In order to provide a clear customer journey, both UX and UI should be considered at the start of the website design process.

Great website design should start with the UX (User Experience) process.

When it comes to designing for conversions, finance brands, in particular, must manage the sheer breadth of conversions they will be trying to achieve. As Bradshaw highlights, “A bank, for example, may have half a dozen completely different conversion funnels that it is looking to achieve within its one website, e.g. signing up to a bank account, a credit card or a home loan.” So for Bradshaw, this means the site must work much harder to simplify and streamline the experience for users. The homepage, for instance, will need to present a multitude of different options for the user. “The challenge for the UX designer and the UI designer is to find the simplest way for the user to navigate to where they want,” Bradshaw explains.

What exactly is wireframing and why does it matter when designing a finance website?

Wireframes are a design buzzword that we’ve all heard of, but how important are they? Bradshaw walks us through their purpose: “Wireframing comes before the actual design process. It is a way to illustrate the structure of the site. It is also a way to map out user needs and the user journey. As a finance content agency, wireframing is particularly beneficial as it allows us to work closely with a finance brand to finalise the structure of a website that will successfully convert, before entering design. It means that any small changes can be ironed out before design, as even a small detail can lead to large structural changes to a website’s design. Design can then take place, working over the top of the wireframes to make them look visually appealing,” he says.

Bradshaw’s top 5 tips for designing a finance website that converts

1. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear
   There are many blogs out there that promise a magic formula that will work for any website. These design processes have their benefits, but ultimately it is the product you are selling or the quality of your service that will ensure you convert your customers.
2. Count your clicks
   A great number to always bear in mind is the amount of clicks it takes for a user to get where they want. Always avoid an extra step or page that isn’t completely necessary.
3. Your homepage is your shopfront
   It needs to draw the user in. Ensure you present a simple homepage that outlines exactly what your brand does, and quickly directs the user to where they need to go.
4. Calls-to-action
   It’s important to not only provide clear calls-to-action but also consider a hierarchy of CTAs. For the most important CTA, try a button that stands out against the rest of the site (eg. A solid black button on a majoritively white themed site.) For secondary buttons, use either a keyline button or a button that uses the site’s colour. For less important buttons, use a grey fill with the website colour for the text.
   
5. Imagery makes (and breaks) a website
   It goes without saying but avoid cheesy, badly-lit stock imagery. If you do choose to use stock photos, source high-quality natural-looking imagery. The ideal situation would be to create your own imagery that illustrates your service or product as you can see in the case for content example on The Dubs website.
   

Top design mistakes to avoid

1. A slow site doesn’t convert
   If you choose to have large or a lot of imagery, make sure your site can handle it. Slow loading times will have an impact on overall conversions (as well as your potential SEO ranking).
2. Keep it simple
   Make sure your message is clear, but don’t overload the user with information or jargon. Consider both the language and the imagery you use, and whether it provides your potential customer with a quick, coherent understanding of what your brand does.
3. Trust is everything
   Users need to feel your brand is trustworthy, so it’s vital that your site communicates that your finance brand is real, genuine and already has existing satisfied customers. This can be achieved through the site’s imagery, but could also include quotes from satisfied customers as well as star reviews.
4. Too many fields in your forms
   People are less likely to convert if you’re asking for too much info. Formstack found that by reducing forms to 10 fields or less leads to an increase in conversions by 120%.

Five finance websites using great design with a focus on conversion

We asked Bradshaw if there were any finance brands in the market that he felt were doing a good job designing for conversions, and following some of the key pointers he has highlighted to us:

1. BlackRock
   Bradshaw calls out BlackRock’s clean black and white design and great use of imagery, acknowledging that finding imagery that stands out in this sector can be difficult. BlackRock has put thought into abstract concepts and imagery and coupled this with nice illustration.
2. Nuveen
   In a sea of bland and predictable designs, Nuveen stands out with its modern layout, strong use of colour and nice use of imagery and iconography. However, Bradshaw flags that the customer journey could be clearer and more streamlined.
3. HSBC UK
   Although the layout doesn’t break the mould. The HSBC UK site is clear and to the point, requiring just a couple of clicks to get to where you want to go. HSBC is also a good example of CTA hierarchy, with its consistent use of primary and secondary buttons. The site also employs progressive, multi-cultural imagery which is an important consideration of global design.
4. CommBank
   CommBank ensures a good user journey with a minimal amount of clicks. Bradshaw also highlights their use of imagery and iconography as a strong point.
5. Westpac
   Bradshaw particularly appreciates the design of the four dropdown menus which take the user straight to where they want to go directly from the homepage. The personal and business sections below the dropdowns also work well as they are clean and well laid out.

Designing for conversion is a huge task with many facets to consider. If there’s one crucial takeaway from Bradshaw’s insights, it’s that it must be considered from the beginning and in every aspect of your design process. Try to look at your website with new eyes – look at it from the perspective of a potential customer and someone who has never interacted with your brand before. Ask yourself if the design of your website is making that customer’s path to conversion as easy and encouraging as it can be. At The Dubs we specialise in website UX design for finance brands. If your website isn’t working hard enough for your brand, get in touch.

Related articles

• Vanity websites have had their day: designing for the end-user
• Should finance brands be designing for dark mode?
• The trick to long-form content design

The post How to design a finance website that converts customers appeared first on Financial Marketer.

Available on an increasing number of apps and operating systems, dark mode allows the user to switch colours from a traditional light background to a darker background. Some of the biggest brands in the world are following this trend including Apple, Google and Instagram. With the help of The Dubs senior digital designer, Tom Bradshaw, we investigate why dark mode has become so popular, and what it could mean for finance brands.

The Benefits of Dark Mode

There are two main benefits to using dark mode; the first is user comfort. At the recent Google I/O, Sameer Samat, Google’s VP of product management for Android and Play described standard mode as ‘blinding’, “Everyone can relate to being in a room where the lights are turned down and you’ve got this white screen blinding you”. As Bradshaw explains, Dark mode provides relief for the user. “Dark mode reduces eye strain and means it’s more comfortable to use in dark environments or at night. This is why apps like Netflix etc. are using dark mode.”

The second benefit relates to battery life. Google has confirmed that using dark mode is a huge help for battery life. Bradshaw adds: “Dark mode is particularly good for apps that are used over a long period of time such as analytics programs, or for gaming. It extends the battery life as it uses less power to light the screen.”

It’s not just a case of inverting white to black.

What are the key features involved in designing for dark mode?

Designing for dark mode can be tricky. Bradshaw highlights that ”It’s not just a case of inverting white to black. Some of the design tricks we use on white designs wouldn’t have the same effect on a dark background.” Bradshaw’s key design pointers are:

1. Avoid using pure black
   Pure black (#000000) can be painful to look at. Use a dark grey instead, Google Material recommends #121212, this will enable white text to be readable.
2. Avoid darker colours
   Use lighter tones, such as colours 200-50 in Google Material, because they will read better on darker backgrounds. Avoid using pure white as this will also cause eye strain on a darker background.
3. Hierarchy
   With dark design, we cannot convey hierarchy in the same way we do with light design. Using shadows no longer has the desired effect. So instead think about using lighter greys to create focus in your design.
4. Dark theme colours don’t have to match light theme colours
   A dark theme can communicate different emotions to light mode. So it’s best to think about a slightly different approach to your dark design as some of the subtleties of your light design will be lost.
5. Consider logos carefully
   Bradshaw’s work involves integrating a lot of third-party logos, however, getting access to a logo you can work with can be difficult at times. If the logo doesn’t have an on-black version or you are unable to edit it, it can make working with it in dark mode tricky. An easy solution is to simply use a white container. This keeps the design clean and consistent.

Why should finance brands consider designing for dark mode?

Bradshaw suggests that users engaging with finance brands will appreciate being provided with the design alternative. “It’s a simple toggle for the users, and could encourage greater interaction.” He specifies, however, that for finance brands, dark mode is most appropriate for use with their apps rather than their website. “Dark mode isn’t suitable for text and data-heavy uses, which is the case on finance brands’ websites,” he says. “Where it would prove useful would be for their apps. For example, I use the CommBank app a lot, it’s great, clean modern and simple to use but currently there is no dark mode option.”

Providing a dark mode option could also have an overall benefit on ROI for finance brands with a new design providing a more dynamic, striking experience. The sense of luxury and prestige provides an improved user experience, which correlates to improved customer engagement.

What should finance brands consider before investing in dark mode design?

Bradshaw is quick to emphasise that although dark mode has many benefits, finance brands shouldn’t jump on the bandwagon for the sake of it. Sure it’s on trend and highly popular but as he explains, “Ask yourself if it really will add to the usability of your design.”

If you do decide to invest in dark mode design, testing is vital to ensure your brand meets accessibility guidelines and colour contrast standards. Bradshaw recommends following the Google Material recommendations of a contrast level of at least 15.8.1 between text and background. This can be tested at WebAIM.

Whether your brand decides to invest in dark mode design or not, finance brands should always stay abreast of changing design trends and opportunities to improve their user experience. At The Dubs, we’re passionate about the latest in design. If your website or digital assets need a refresh, get in touch.

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