By Hripsime Manukyan . Posted on March 6, 2023Close the website window or browse the site? You spend a different amount of time on every website. You’ve probably never thought why right? The reason is hidden in the website design. Your brain feels uncomfortable interacting with complicated or intricate web navigation. That’s why you closed that window.
Let’s get to website design, specifically. Website design refers to the process of building a www. presence of a brand, business, service provider, product, or even a person. Its primary focus is the aesthetic and visual factors like the layout, user interface and experience, and user-friendly navigation. A website is made of multiple pages, each of which is developed individually.
The bases that make a website design stand out are its functionality and usability. What acts psychologically are factors like color choices, typography, visuals, consistency, and simplicity. So, appeal and function come together in creating great website design.
It’s nice; it’s functional; what’s next? The aesthetics and functionality of your website should align with its primary purpose. Tailoring back to the start, its objective must be identified before developing a website.
The website’s purpose can primarily be
- to sell a product or service
- to generate new leads
- to provide information
- to entertain the visitors
- to connect with the audiences
The overall website design will fail if it does not serve the intended purpose, along with improving lead generation and business engagement. After all, a website is a tool that communicates the business message with its audience.
The Key Importance of a Great Website Design
Whether you are developing a website from scratch, redesigning your existing website, or adding a new webpage to your site, you should know precisely how it will affect your audience and your business. This article will highlight the importance of a great website design.
Creates the First Impressions and Brand Image
Consciously or subconsciously, our human instinct judges a book by its cover. We interact with millions of digital products daily. The first thing is the visual appeal to our eyes. The same psychology applies when entering a website. We see it; we make our first impression, we go on browsing or shut it down.
First impressions led to first actions.
A business website can be described as its profile picture and face; its navigation can be compared to the gestures and expressions, generally the elements that form our daily impressions. A great website design can hook the audience or increase the bounce rates by making them leave for a competitor’s website.
“The dull website interface creates the same dull image of the brand. Imagine you enter someone’s house for the first time, and it’s in a mess; your first thoughts of the owner are ready– they’re messy, unorganized, and probably irresponsible”, says Jeoffrey Murray, Digital Marketing Expert at Solar Panel Installation.
An impression is made, and the decision follows: you wouldn’t like to do business with them. Now imagine if that house was scrubbed, neatly clean, and orderly. You would feel confident and trust the owner, consequently more likely to do business with them.
Projecting the example on a website, it’s clear how leads are generated with the amount they are.
The elements that create your brand image on the website scale are colors, layouts, fonts, and typography. Exploring the principles of choosing colors, you can line them with the message your web pages convey.
Use green if you deal with finances or ecology, blue if you aim to increase trust, red if you need to create a strong emotional impression, etc. Your website’s purpose and brand proposition will determine the color choices.
Not to puzzle the website visitors, its layout should be simple, organized, and neat. It should emphasize the most important elements, buttons, and visuals.
The website’s and brand logo’s font collection should go well with the overall design, the selected colors and be visible. All the design elements’ choices hugely depend on the audience, their age, and preferences.
Developing each website element, remember that the design “articulates” the brand message and displays the brand image. “A great website design not only elevates your brand image but also creates a seamless and memorable user experience that keeps visitors coming back for more”, explains Brad Anderson, Founder of FRUITION.
Assists SEO and Contributes to Ranking
Is it optimization or the web design that aids the other? When one is present, the other results. SEO and website design are tightly interconnected. You have a proper website design optimized with SEO guidelines that will add a point to ranking. Appearing on the SERP will get clicks, and real user-friendliness will determine how long a visitor will spend on your site. One gives rise to the other, and it’s a whole website–optimization–lead relations cycle.
Besides the website’s visual look, how you publish and distribute your content across web pages affects the search engine spiders crawling and indexing the website. Your website hosting, speed, and loading time are fundamental factors for good SEO ranking. That’s why you should aim to select one of the best enterprise WordPress hosting providers to guarantee its positive impact on your page position.
“Don’t underestimate the power of a visually appealing and user-friendly website, as it can be the key to unlocking your SEO potential and driving more traffic to your business”, Jonathan Faccone, Managing Member & Founder of Halo Homebuyers, puts an emphasis on the importance of a great design with respect to SEO.
Web design doesn’t start and finish with the visual design but includes how it is developed technically. The website codebase should be SEO-friendly, fit optimization standards, and avoid common SEO mistakes.
Aids Customer Trust and Service Reliance
The aesthetic-usability effect–boom!
If the term is new to you, it is explained as the tendency among users to consider aesthetically attractive products more usable and functional. Encountering something visually attractive, the human brain perceives it as more practical.
“Your website is your digital storefront, and just like a physical store, it should be inviting, organized, and easy to navigate. A great website design not only helps to build trust and credibility with your customers but also makes it easier for them to rely on your services and stay loyal to your brand”, says Jesse Shaw, Owner of JShaw Furniture Design.
As stated earlier, the website sets the first impression of how you will be as a service or provider. Customers build their trust around these first impressions, which you should not ignore. Remember the example of a messy house owner you wouldn’t want to do business with. The factors that affect your decision are trust-related. For a robust website design that builds customer trust, here are tips to start with:
- Refine the page content: proofread for spelling, grammar, and coherence issues.
- Increase readability: make the font sizes visible and the content scannable.
- Improve navigation: keep the consistent flow of Home/About/Services/Contact.
- Perform routine website maintenance: ensure that page speed and responsiveness are optimized.
- Use whitespace: space around all images, texts, graphics, forms, etc.
- Align colors: keep the branding colors for the website.
Interacting with a nicely laid-out website, visitors develop a deep reliance on the website content, develop purchasing behaviors, and promote the business, consequently.
As Tom Miller, Director of Marketing at FitnessVolt, explains, “Great website design is more than just aesthetics — it’s the science of building customer trust. From the layout to the color scheme, every element plays a crucial role in establishing credibility, building rapport, and turning visitors into loyal customers.”
Boosts Conversion and Sales
The end line of launching a product is raising sales. A customer passes a long journey before arriving at the purchase point. They see the business online, interact with the website, get attracted by its design, explore some more, move onto the next stage, read through to the CTA, wow, here click, and convert. The sales prospect is ready.
“From the moment they land on your site, every touchpoint is an opportunity to leave a lasting impression”, says Faizan Ahmed Khan, Sr. Content Marketing Specialist at UBUY Australia.
Passing through the same route, the customer might experience “bouncing” from the website because of poor design. Thus, sales will never be on the horizon. It is the leads that are translated into conversion and sales. And the website is the best place for acquiring convertible quality leads.
As Jamie Irwin, Marketing Executive at eLocker, says, “A well-designed website can be the difference between a window shopper and a loyal customer, ultimately boosting your sales and helping your business thrive.”
The important particle of an excellent website design is the presence of CTAs (call-to-action). Any landing page must have a CTA button. They are for a desired conversion action. Depending on the conversion goals, CTAs can vary among cart buttons, sign-up buttons, download buttons, etc.
The next important element is to have landing pages. A landing page is at the bottom, the “conversion page” and the “selling page”. The more landing pages, the higher the chances of generating leads.
Testimonials are another must-to-have to increase conversion. Most consumers report that others’ reviews affect their buying decisions. Having a third-party appraise your business is a perfect indirect way of sales persuasion.
To optimize the conversion rate, you can:
- Conduct A/B testing to identify users’ preferences
- Run multivariate testing to test different designs and layouts at the same time
- Use heatmaps analysis to see how visitors interact with your website and its content
You will better understand your website visitors’ preferences and behaviors with tests and experiments. Mixing it with expert website designers, you will get a convertible website design and boost overall sales.
Excel Your Website Design
Like a face of a person, a website is the online face of any business online. Investing in a top website design is a cornerstone of business success. Especially when selling something or introducing a new product, online presence is a priority. We do remember “product hunting begins online”; in most cases also ends online.
Adam Fard, Founder & Head of Design at Adam Fard UX Agency, summarizes all about a great design this way: “A great website design helps customers develop their first impression of a business, plants creativity seeds in the visitors, assists optimization, and brings conversion closer.”
On top of all, an easily navigable and usable website improves user experience, which indicates your business consumers will stay with you long and happy. Website design must always be a priority. It is never too late to conduct an audit, pass the site inspection, talk to a web designer, and improve existing issues since what else, if not a first impression, will lead to purchase decisions.
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