Conversion-centered design means arranging your site to guide visitors toward a specific desired action, like making a purchase. Even small changes—such as simplifying your checkout flow, clarifying calls to action (CTAs), or rearranging design elements—can significantly improve conversions.
For instance, you might swap your checkout button from gray “Proceed” text to a bright orange Complete Your Order button. Such a change took just a few minutes on your end, but now your customers know exactly how to place an order.
Here’s what you need to know about how and why conversion-centered design works, plus how you can start adopting it for your own business.
What is conversion-centered design?
A conversion occurs when a user takes a desired action on your website, social media channel, emails, or other content. Conversion-centered design (CCD) is a set of design principles aimed at encouraging site visitors to perform those specific actions.
The term was coined by Oli Gardner, cofounder of landing page design company Unbounce, as a framework for creating successful landing pages.
You can apply conversion-centered design principles to any type of ecommerce web page or marketing content, whether the goal is to get customers to make a purchase, download a brochure, request a demo, or share a piece of content.
According to Gardner, the seven principles of conversion-centered design are:
1. Create focus. Use design to create one item of focus at a time.
2. Build structure. Create your website flow and each page in a way that guides users to a particular action.
3. Stay consistent. Use consistent branding across all touchpoints to boost recognition and trust.
4. Show benefits. Include photos and website copy to show how your products and services improve customers’ lives.
5. Draw attention. Create bold, unmissable CTAs.
6. Design for trust. Add social proof, such as relevant customer testimonials and a list of clients, to solidify your reputation.
7. Reduce friction. Make conversion flows, such as checkout pages, form sign-ups, or subscriptions, as smooth as possible.
How to apply conversion-centered design to your website and content
- Gather data
- Use visual hierarchy to guide visitors
- Show your products in action
- Prioritize functionality
- Signal trust
- Reduce conversion steps
- Create brand cohesion
- Keep CTAs simple
Here are the practical ways in which you can implement conversion-centered design principles on your website and marketing content:
Gather data
Conversion-centered design is evidence-based. User research and data analysis help reveal what visitors actually need to convert. That may mean more product details, clearer pricing, or simpler checkout steps. Data can also tell you where they lose interest, due to confusing navigation, slow-loading pages, or distracting pop-ups.
You can gather these insights through methods like heat maps, session recordings, A/B testing, surveys, and user interviews. This information can help focus the design process to create sites that feel clearer and more intentional, with pages that reduce friction, improve the user experience, and increase return on investment (ROI) by converting more of your existing traffic.
Use visual hierarchy to guide visitors
Your page’s visual hierarchy—the arrangement of your page elements—should naturally guide visitors. The goal is to combine visual appeal with a clear path for what to do next.
Eye-tracking studies show readers move left to right, then down, forming an F- or Z-shaped pattern. You can lay out your information in an F pattern (for a large amount of copy) or a Z pattern (for lighter copy pages) to match how people scan their screens. Position key design elements—headlines, images, and buttons—along these paths to guide attention. Regardless, develop a page layout that emphasizes your target CTA for conversion first.
Use fonts to create an attention hierarchy. Larger headlines, smaller subheadings, and lighter body copy guide skimming readers’ eyes and lead them toward conversion.
Furniture brand Horne’s website, for example, uses a Z pattern to help guide users’ eyes across and down the page from the large hero image at the top down to a left-to-right grid of lighting options.
Show your products in action
Use more than words to highlight the benefits behind your conversion goal. Visual elements like images, video, and short GIFs should clearly illustrate the value you’re offering and answer the visitor’s unspoken question: “What’s in it for me?” When paired with concise, benefit-focused copy, these visuals can turn passive viewing into a persuasive argument.
Show visitors your value proposition with purposeful imagery. Research suggests that photos or videos of real people boost conversions, especially when they’re shown using your product or service. Lifestyle shots that show your product in use, or before-and-after photos that reveal impact, don’t just reinforce your message—they are the message. Each image becomes a concrete proof point of the value you want to communicate.
In the example below, phone accessories brand PhoneLoops’ homepage includes a video of a skydiver using their phone grip case. The video highlights the product’s durability while showing customers how they, too, can take their phone safely on adventures.
Prioritize functionality
Your page’s functionality is as important as how it looks. Any small issues your users encounter—from slow load times to broken links or forms and confusing navigation—decrease the likelihood they’ll stick around and get to the goal. You can improve functionality by including these best practices:
-
Ensure fast loading times. Compress your images and videos, use browser caching, and have a reliable web host to keep loading times fast. Slow-loading pages lead to higher bounce rates, meaning potential customers never even see your CTA, let alone click through.
-
Use responsive design. Responsive design means your page layout, text, and images automatically adjust for an optimal viewing experience across different devices like phones, tablets, and computers. More people access the web via their mobile devices than laptop or desktop computers, so make sure your conversion-centered landing page works on smaller screens.
-
Make your pages accessible. Inaccessible design prevents people with disabilities from accessing your site and converting. Make sure your images have alt-text and your color contrast meets accessibility standards for people with low vision or color blindness.
Signal trust
If you want site visitors to click through to your targeted goal, they need to trust you. Focus on proven trust signals that scale. Key elements include:
-
Social proof. Think verified reviews, star ratings, and recognizable client logos. These types of social proof show your target audience that real people already trust your business.
-
Trust badges. Include logos and signage throughout your site that indicate you have your users’ cybersecurity in mind. Secure checkout, payment verification, or industry certifications are all types of trust badges, and each reinforces confidence at key decision points.
-
Testimonials. These are direct statements from satisfied customers sharing their positive experiences with your brand. They offer personal narratives that potential customers can relate to.
Lifestyle brand Ugmonk, for example, features video testimonials on its homepage, with customers sharing exactly how they use the company’s signature Analog collection to organize their projects and to-do lists.
Reduce conversion steps
Once your customers have made the decision to convert, make it as simple as possible for them to take action.
Make your forms and checkout flows as easy as possible. Allowing guest checkouts means customers don’t need to create an account, filling in only the essential information needed for purchase. Similarly, create forms that include only the information you really need. If you have a lot of information you want to capture, break out questions into a multistep form with short sections and add a progress bar at the top so customers know how much more there is to go.
Create brand cohesion
Designing consistently across all pages can build familiarity and trust. When visitors feel they’re exploring a unified, interconnected site with a cohesive brand experience, with similar colors, fonts, and button styles, they’re more likely to take the next step.
Limit your font choices to two or three fonts, maximum, ideally using one font for headings and another for body text. Too many typefaces create visual noise, and the extra cognitive load makes it harder for visitors to scan a page and notice the action you want them to take.
If you’re designing an ad, ensure that it matches the conversion-centered landing page it links to. When the handoff feels seamless, visitors don’t hesitate or wonder whether they’ve clicked into the wrong place, which preserves the momentum you need for a conversion. Fewer competing colors make it easier to guide the eye, and strong contrast helps your CTAs stand out.
Keep CTAs simple
Since CTA buttons play a major role in conversions, design them with large text, clear hover states, and plenty of negative or white space around them to draw attention. Strategic placement is also key: Add one CTA above the fold and one at the bottom of the page, if readers need to scroll down a long way to get to the end. You can also add CTAs in the middle of a long page, but keep them well spaced out—you don’t want to appear pushy.
To create a high-converting landing page with a singular focus, stick to a 1:1 attention ratio: one page, one primary action, one way to take it. If your goal is to get visitors to start a free trial, you can include several Start Free Trial buttons, but they should all drive to the same signup process.
Homepages, by contrast, often need a higher attention ratio because visitors come with different goals: to explore products, learn about the brand, or find support. You’ll likely have different CTAs in different sections. To clearly explain what each one is leading to, use direct phrases like “shop now,” “contact us for a demo,” or “sign up for our mailing list” to prevent confusion.
Outdoor lifestyle brand Mollyjogger, for instance, has a clear CTA at the very top of it homepage, urging customers interested in its scrimshaw knife kit to “Shop now.”
Conversion-centered design FAQ
What is a conversion web design?
Conversion web design primarily focuses on getting users on your landing page or marketing content to complete a targeted action, like signing up, making a purchase, or downloading an ebook.
What are the 7 principles of conversion-centered design?
The seven principles of conversion-centered design are to create focus, build structure, stay consistent, show benefits, draw attention, design for trust, and reduce friction.
What is the difference between UX and UCD?
User experience (UX) refers to how a person feels about and interacts with a site, while user-centered design (UCD) is the process by which you build a site that’s user-friendly and directs user behavior toward desired actions.
