What does it take to achieve high conversion rates on your website? There are numerous ways to encourage visitors to buy (or turn into qualified leads). Nonetheless, the best method to lay the foundations of a high-performing site is to focus on web design.

After all, web design quality and aesthetic appeal directly influence on-site user behavior. Research suggests they also hugely impact how potential customers perceive your business.

Do you want to maximize your brand’s ability to attract and acquire new customers? In that case, investing in web design — particularly visuals — can be a great way to elevate conversion rates.

In this article, we’ll guide you through the importance of visuals in web design with the ultimate goal of boosting conversions through strategic choices.

Why Visuals Matter for Acquiring Customers

It’s no secret that humans are visual creatures.

Research shows that we process images way faster than words. Visual aids — including images, illustrations, and videos — can help people comprehend and retain information more effectively while contributing to perceived relevance and appeal.

And let’s not forget that consumers prefer to interact with attractively designed pages. 

A study from Adobe found that 59% of people prefer beautifully designed resources over plain ones. Furthermore, scientific studies suggest that web visual aesthetics impact purchase intention via the mediating effects of positive emotions, satisfaction, and aesthetic experience value.

Of course, boosting conversions with web visuals isn’t as straightforward as peppering your landing or product pages with random images, videos, or illustrations. 

On the contrary, to fully harness the power of visuals in web design, you need a strategic approach. This shouldn’t just align with your target audience’s wants and needs or complement their position in the buyer’s journey. More than that, it should also actively encourage them to move toward the lower stages of the sales funnel.

How to Boost Conversions Through Strategic Design Choices

There are several web design tactics you can try out to boost sales.

Remember, you don’t have to limit yourself to just one or two of the strategies mentioned in this article. Instead, feel free to combine different visual elements to develop a design direction with the highest chance of appealing to your target audience.

Here are a few visual web design ideas for your website.

Use Visual Elements to Communicate Your In-Depth Understanding of Audience Pain Points

What’s one of the most important things consumers want from brands?

According to research, people find it crucial that businesses show an in-depth familiarity with their prospects. In fact, one survey discovered that 79% of consumers demand that brands show they understand and care about them to even consider purchasing in the first place.

And, sure, the best way to show you care about your prospects is to deliver a consistently satisfactory customer experience throughout the buyer’s journey. Well-optimized copy backed by audience research is an excellent tool for achieving this goal.

However, knowing that visuals often enhance the power of words, it’s a good idea to explore ways to utilize visuals to communicate your familiarity with your audience’s pain points (or aspirations and values).

For example, check out how Bay Alarm Medical does it. By using the website hero section (which yields the highest level of web visitor engagement) to show familiar scenes, this brand expertly shows that it comprehends the exact situations in which its users could benefit from its medial alert system solution. The short video format adds a much-needed dose of storytelling. Moreover, the copy inviting web visitors to “ensure [their] loved one’s safety” does a splendid job of supporting the visuals and calling prospects to action.

Build Emotional Connections with Website Visitors

Another excellent strategy to boost website conversion rates is to encourage your prospects to form emotional connections with your brand.

Research suggests that emotional interaction — particularly that which evokes feelings of familiarity and intimacy — enhances purchase intention. If you want to maximize your site’s ability to engage and acquire new customers, it’s a good idea to explore methods of getting closer to your target audience.

The great news is that visuals — particularly images and videos — have the power to evoke highly specific feelings among your potential clients. And note that it’s not necessarily just positive emotions you want to arouse. Instead, negative emotions can be just as powerful at driving consumers to convert as those that encourage people to act based on the desired expected outcomes of an action.

For example, the Wild + Free Young Naturalist product page features a compelling video that effectively appeals to parents’ emotions. By describing the rare experiences children need to fully understand the world around them, this brand effectively implores its target audience’s wish to provide their children with a wholesome life where they won’t miss out.

Source: bewildandfree.org

To see a different approach, check out Armra. By using an illustration to depict a disrupted mucosa barrier (and how it can harm the proper functioning of an immune system), this brand uses visuals that evoke feelings of fear to encourage web visitors to convert.

Source: tryarmra.com

Whichever of these two directions you go in will depend on your target audience’s preferences. 

However, if you decide to try out this web design strategy, do your best to test its effectiveness. That way, you won’t risk alienating your prospects with the wrong visuals. Instead, you’ll ensure that your website design upgrades actually benefit your business.

Boost Product Understanding for Complex Solutions

One of the biggest conversion killers on your website is copy that doesn’t sufficiently explain the purpose and benefits of your solutions. Why? Because today’s consumers don’t want to waste their time (or hard-earned money) on products that are difficult to find, buy, or use.

However, while communicating user value can be straightforward in some industries, there are several niches where explaining what you offer to your target audience — especially in an appealing way — can be a bit more difficult.

If you sell complex products and services or if your prospects need to have some level of industry experience to comprehend the value of your offer, employing visuals to enhance product understanding could be the way to go for your brand.

High-quality product images — or screenshots for digital products, like the ones used by DialMyCalls on their two-way SMS software page — can be a great way to show your solution in action (and communicate user value).

Source: dialmycalls.com

Nonetheless, if you want to guarantee exceptional product understanding, consider investing in video formats.

According to data from Wyzowl, 91% of people have watched explainer videos to learn more about products or services. Up to 82% have been convinced to convert by the same format. And 89% of people want brands to use more videos, as they’re convenient to consume and easy to comprehend, effectively elevating the entire shopping experience.

For instance, something as simple as a short video demonstrating what your product does — like the one on the Redsbaby ONIX Pram product page — can be an excellent way to use video to maximize product understanding and boost purchase intention among web visitors.

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Source: redsbaby.com

Demonstrate Authenticity, Transparency, Competence, and Trustworthiness

Just like product features and benefits, brand characteristics matter when attempting to elevate website conversion rates.

Take a look at Edelman’s latest research on what consumers prioritize when making buying decisions. According to the data, 91% of people want good value for money. 89% prioritize quality. And 88% of consumers think it’s essential for the brand behind the solution to be trustworthy. This perfectly aligns with other findings suggesting that 82% of shoppers choose to support and buy from businesses whose values align with their own.

The great news is that you can use web design — and visuals in particular — to communicate key brand characteristics that will encourage your target audience to do business with your brand.

For example, on their Brisbane Mortgage Broker page, Eden Emerald Mortgages features partner logos in a highly visible spot, which is an exceptional way for the brand to support its claims with visual social proof.

Source: eemortgagebroker.com.au

Or, you can take things to the next level by following in the footsteps of Somewhere. Understanding that its ideal customers demand authentic and data-driven social proof, this brand sat down with some of its clients to summarize their customer experience in a way that’s genuine, relevant, and reassuring for potential prospects.

Talent is everywhere. Hire with Somewhere.

Source: somewhere.com

You can use the same principle to enhance brand transparency — which is particularly important if you consider that 94% of people are more likely to remain loyal to a business that’s completely transparent.

Heveya is another exceptional example of a business that utilizes website visuals to build trust, in this case, basing the outcome on full disclosure and educational buying resources. On its Compare Bed Frames page, the brand provides web visitors with multiple visuals depicting the main features of its solutions, creating a more insightful evaluation experience for web visitors and maximizing their chances of purchasing a product that perfectly aligns with their needs and expectations.

Source: heveya.sg

Use Illustrations to Remove Conversion Obstacles and Shorten the Buyer’s Journey

Sometimes, the best way to harness the power of visuals in web design isn’t to increase conversion rates but to shorten and enhance the buyer’s journey instead.

After all, the buyer’s journey can be quite lengthy — especially for big-ticket items or for B2B sales. In fact, the average buying cycle for European B2B buyers was 10 months in 2024, according to the latest data from 6sense.

This doesn’t just mean that converting new customers takes a long time. This prolonged timeline may also incur additional marketing costs for your brand, which you have to take on to keep your prospects engaged.

What’s great is that, in some cases, shortening the sales cycle can be as simple as utilizing a few well-placed visual elements throughout your website.

For example, knowing that end consumers want free (or at least affordable) fast shipping, fair returns policies, and trustworthy satisfaction guarantees, place visual elements depicting these user benefits on your key web pages. 

This is what The Sill does on product pages with subtle illustrations, as well as the rest of its pages with an eye-catching banner element that advertises key conversion boosters.

Source: thesill.com

Use Visuals to Boost Average Order Value and Customer Loyalty

Lastly, as you explore strategies to elevate your web design in a way that will enhance conversions, don’t forget that acquiring new customers is just the beginning of your road to success.

To genuinely increase your brand’s resilience (and secure a healthy cash flow), you must focus on retaining your customers and encouraging them to spend more. 

With this in mind, it’s important that you explore the role of web visuals in the process of elevating AOV and promoting customer loyalty — especially considering how easily you could achieve these effects with a bit of strategic web design.

Something as simple as using color and contrast to highlight key UX elements — like how Bark uses blue to elevate the subscribe option on the Beef Dog Food Topper product page — can be an excellent way to draw attention to these shopping options, encourage conversions with a discount incentive, and secure higher levels of customer loyalty at the same time.

Source: bark.co

Over to You

Incorporating visuals in your web design — and doing so strategically — can be a great way to boost conversion rates.

Nonetheless, elevating sales is not the only benefit of using images, illustrations, or videos on your web pages. 

When done right, these elements can be a great way to maximize web visitor engagement, remove common conversion obstacles, and position your brand in a light that’s more likely to appeal to your audience.

So, do your research. Identify your audience’s wants, aspirations, and priorities and explore ways to address these with a variety of visual formats. Lastly, always remember to track site performance when making web design changes.