Any eCommerce company lives and dies by its website. Just a few lines of code make up the web pages that can carry the fate of a business. With something so crucially important, a business can’t afford to mess it up.

Businesses frequently delve into this thinking that their service alone will secure a lead or the functionality of their website is enough to speak for itself. This can result in pages upon pages of good, relevant information for a customer to peruse, made with search engine optimization in mind. These sound like good qualities (and they are), but they can easily fall by the wayside if all of it isn’t presented in an attractive and effective manner. As important as service and functionality are to a business, what every business needs to remember is to have some mindfulness towards salesmanship.

Sales are as much about what you convey as what you provide. With a website, you don’t get the convenience of seeing your customers face to face and using the full extent of charisma and personality to sell your wares. When words are presented as flat text, it is easy for eyes to gloss over, followed shortly by the whirring sound of a mouse wheel as customers scroll past all of the well-thought-out information that you meticulously prepared.

Don’t let your page go to waste. Format your page so that it appeals the eye naturally. This means consistent design themes. Utilize spacing, fonts, and color schemes so that customer attention is directed in an effective manner.

Here are some general tips that will help if kept in mind:

• With spacing, be careful to not clutter the page, but at the same time avoid too much blank space. The eye naturally enjoys breaks in text, but don’t leave a page too sparse. A page needs to have enough to hold attention to deserve attention in the first place.
• What font you use can make a world of difference in the tone you convey to the customer. This can easily be seen in any major publication. Coincidentally, they also serve as good examples if you need some ideas.
• A proper color scheme will generally set the tone for your website in both subtle and obvious ways. If the colors you design your website around are clashing or too bold, your site can appear garish to the eye of your customer and hurt your rates of conversion.
• If you are unsure about handling these matters yourself, it may be worth consulting a graphic designer for input concerning the visual appeal, balance, and format of your website. If you just need a little inspiration, you can easily search for color palettes online.
• Fresh eyes are likely to find what you are missing. Bring someone in who is unrelated to the project to critique your site. Take the input that you think could apply in improving your site design for your target market.

Different web pages have different needs, so not all of these tricks are necessary all of the time. Have you ever seen a User License Agreement that was formatted like a page in GQ? I certainly haven’t. That being said, these tips are good to consider as you design or reevaluate your website. Even the smallest change in visual appeal for the better can result in major returns.

So remember, if you catch their eye, you catch their attention; if you hold that attention, you might just catch a sale.