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When you first stumble onto a website, you may not notice it, but you’ve already developed a first impression within less than one second. As you navigate the website over the next few seconds, you continue to develop an opinion on this site and the company it represents. What impression is your brand’s website leaving with your potential customers? As a business owner, you already know that your website is essential to building your online presence and growing your customers. What you may not understand is that your website’s design has a lot more to do with your business and its success than you might think.
Many businesses put together a quick website to have a web presence thinking that it’s good enough for their customers to find them. But what are they finding when they show up? Are they clicking out of your website as quickly as they arrived? 75% of users make judgments about a company’s credibility based on visual design alone. If your website design isn’t clean, functional, and aesthetically pleasing, you’re likely driving away potential customers.
A good website design that is organized, and presents well to your customers from a visual and user experience standpoint, may help your business more than you can imagine. The design of your website is defined by its appearance and layout structure. Your website’s look and functionality is an integral part of your business and your brand. The fonts, images, content, and color of the layout are what goes into making a well put together website design. You also have to consider things like user experience which isn’t one size fits all and can vary based on your brand’s goals, mission, values, and processes.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to why good web design is vital for business. Below we will outline some of the benefits of creating a compelling website design for your business.
Showcases Your Brand
Most businesses spend time on their branding and put a lot of focus on making sure that they stay on brand. In some ways, your brand is the most crucial part of your business. Whether you own a small or established company, branding:
- Creates customer recognition
- Raises brand loyalty
- Makes your business consistent
- Communicates your mission and values
Showcasing your brand’s identity is essential if you want to get customers to trust and understand what your business represents. To get your messaging across, a well-designed website that represents your brand is going to be one of the best tools your company has. There are a variety of ways for you to demonstrate your business’s brand just by how you design your website. From fonts and colors to layouts, consistency throughout your website will highlight your brand and intentions to attract your audience.
Get Ahead of Competition
By now, we know that most business ideas exist elsewhere. All businesses, whether product or service-based, have competitors that have similar offerings. One way to get ahead of your competition is through your website’s design. Not all businesses put a lot of thought or value into their website design, leaving room for your business to do better. This is especially true for new and upcoming businesses that may not have a reputation or word of mouth to bring in potential customers. For these businesses, it’s challenging as you try and get potential customers’ attention over your competitors. It’s even harder when those businesses either have more experience or more resources to get in front of the larger crowds.
This is why focusing on your website’s design can help you outshine your competitors. A well-designed website can sway potential consumers your way even if your competition has been around for decades longer. Your website is to sell others on your service and show what sets you apart from the rest. Customers will be more interested in your business if you can show them, through your website’s design, that you are professional and committed to giving them the best product or service with your brand or business’s own unique spin. Tailor website design that is specific to your audience, pleasing to the eye, easy to navigate, and organized. You already will have a leg up on other businesses that have a messy and bloated layout or lack much of a web presence.
Increases User Experience
People like looking at visually attractive websites, but they also will engage with it more if the layout is crisp and clean. The contact form, pricing page, and any other offers or products of interest should be easily located. A well-designed website ensures that the users who wind up on your website can find what they’re looking for.
Remember, when you get visitors onto your website, they are there to check out your products or services. We’ve all interacted with websites that were frustrating, hard to navigate, and didn’t work the way we expected them to. Oftentimes if this happens we simply leave. Successful businesses usually have layouts that are clean and organized; customers are able to find anything they need just on the front page. Your homepage or landing page design should be easy to navigate and not bloated with unnecessary paragraphs and images while still looking good and representing your brand well.
Stabilizes Bounce Rate
One benefit you may not have considered is that a good website design for brands can also fix a high bounce rate by keeping customers on the site for longer. Did you know it only takes visitors 50 milliseconds to form a first impression of your website design? A study from Google shows that readers take way less than one second to form an impression, way before they have time to read or click on anything.
Bounce rate is determined when customers open your website but leave without clicking through to the rest of the pages. This is something that you can check in your analytics. If your website is unappealing or just generally confusing to navigate, then your visitors may not want to stick around for too long and will click out as fast as they clicked in. This problem could prevent potential customers from buying services or products, directly affecting your revenue. But a good design for your website will make a great user experience. If a visitor arriving on your website likes the way it looks and can easily find what they’re looking for this will lead to them staying and interacting with your site more. This will reduce your bounce rate and potentially turn the visitor into a customer.
Higher Conversion Rate
Building on the last section, while a good design can decrease your website’s bounce rate, you also want to see that your potential customers are also active. That means that they are taking actions that will lead you to more revenue. If you know that you have visitors, but your conversion rate is lower than expected, look into how your website design might be impacting your conversion rate.
An unappealing, unresponsive, or confusing design will discourage potential leads and prevent customers from buying your product or service. While you may get high traffic to your website, it’s also vital that you’re getting relevant visitors who are actually taking action and provide your business with more revenue.
Good design can be a major player in this flow from visitor to customer. Bringing your customer’s attention to where you want them to take action is part of a good design. For example, a responsive call to action (CTA) banner or button implemented into your website design will help you see a higher conversion rate. Just make sure that you don’t go overboard and keep your CTAs simple but powerful.
Increases Social Shares
Social media marketing is one aspect of advertising where you’ll likely see a growth in the website’s visits and interactions. If you have a business website to get more leads, getting customers to share your content on social media will help. If your website’s design is unattractive to its visitors, fewer people will want to share the website no matter how many sharing options you put onto the pages. That can change when you spend some time considering a website’s design and what might influence people to share it with others.
Website design that is well thought out can encourage customers to share your website throughout social media platforms. With social sharing, it’s not just about an organized and professional layout with appropriate images and powerful copy. Putting a little extra creativity and finding ways to showcase the value your brand provides will encourage people to share it with others on their social media feeds.
Helps Google Ranking
The goal of any business is to rank better on google. If your customers can easily find you when searching, you’re in an excellent position. Good website design also helps your business rank higher on Google, raising the number of potential customers who find your business. While most businesses do focus on having several traffic generators, helping your website be found in search is hugely beneficial and something you don’t want to ignore just because you have other ways to drive traffic. However, it’s not enough to just put together a website and assume it’ll start to be found in search.
If your business is not coming up on search engines when customers try to find you, it may be because Google has not indexed your website. One reason for this is due to your website’s design. While SEO is vital to ranking on Google, many people don’t realize that website design can also impact the way your website ranks or doesn’t rank in searches. When you focus on creating an excellent SEO-friendly design for your website and include quality SEO content, you will be in a better position to rank in search engines.
Saves Money and Time
A professionally designed website costs money upfront, but it will save money down the line. It may be very tempting to just throw a website together that looks decent and move forward. After all, other essential tasks need to be taken care of as well. If you neglect good website design, you may experience regrets by having to go back to it again and again. Without a good design, there may be problems that you’ll have to fix continuously. Other than the challenges of a lower visitor and conversion rate, issues such as slow speed, loss of online presence and credibility, and broken or unresponsive pages may arise.
Website design done right the first time will allow you to put your brand’s best foot forward. You can focus on your zone of genius without the need to come back and constantly work on your website. Take time in the beginning to create a great website design. One that is responsive, attractive, mobile-friendly, and designed with your potential customers in mind; this will ensure that you won’t need to come back to fix problems.
Initial investments in time and money may be needed. The result is a good, professional, website design that makes money and saves time in the long run.
Conclusion
Although most businesses know that website design is important, not everyone understands the why behind it. Hopefully, we’ve provided some of the most important reasons a good website design is crucial for your business. There are major benefits to creating an attractive and responsive site that can ultimately lead to your businesses’ success.
If you’re having trouble gaining new leads and seeing your business grow, consider updating or creating a good website design. Eventually, you will see your online presence and revenue take off to new heights.