It takes less than a second for users to pop out of a website. If a portal fails to strike the right chords within a few seconds, users’ chances of logging out of it increase exponentially.
We are no longer living in an era where having a skeleton website with shallow articles stuffed with keywords worked. Right now, a carefully designed website is the primary factor of online success. It is the place where users come to check out how you are doing. They navigate your strategies and vision to decide if your product or service is worth paying for.
According to Blue Corona, 73% of companies invest in design to differentiate their brand from the competition. When you are on the website design mission, you must remember it should be consistent in look, feel, and purpose with other marketing strategies, such as PPC (pay-per-click) advertisement.
Critical Components of Effective Website Design
A solid, well-executed web design is the heart of all marketing efforts as it has the power to achieve all your organization goals. The ingredients of an effective web design are as follows:
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Incredible User Experience – It provides a user-friendly experience with optimized navigation and adequate information.
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Consistent Branding – It conveys the same message through colors, fonts, logo, images, and overall content.
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Search Engine Optimization – It contains quality content and focuses on highly productive tactics to improve conversion rates and increase sales.
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Advertising – It creates a seamless connection from the ad to the landing page, leading visitors to the desired action.
If you take one wrong step during website design, it could crumble your entire digital marketing strategy. Putting efforts without proper knowledge can create a negative impact.
The Value and Significance of a Website Design
A well-rounded website design can make or break your business, reputation, and brand perception. It works as a vehicle to deliver all your digital marketing essentials in the virtual world.
Tyton Media’s survey found 48% of people said that website design was the number one factor determining business credibility.
Here are six more reasons why brands should generously invest in website design:
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It makes a solid first impression
We live in a world where people make snap judgments. It takes around 50 milliseconds for users to create an opinion about your website. (Google)
When studying components of a good website design, know that it is about using shapes, colors, texture, forms, space, and content in a balanced fashion. A stellar combo of these factors will signal the customers if they want to buy from you.
Research for Consumer WebWatch by Stanford University found a difference between what people say about how they evaluate trust on a website and how they really do are incredibly different. The data showed that an average customer paid far more attention to the visual cues than its content.
Slack, for instance, hooks the users at the first visit. Its unique illustrations shed light on the developers’ creativity, plus the purpose it serves catches their attention.
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It helps a business to stand out
Design can have a tremendous impact on how potential customers perceive your business and set their expectations. Competition for user attention is constantly on the hike. While robust search optimization helps draw more customers, if visitors find content generic or uninteresting, they will not stay.
According to SAG ipl, 38% of people will stop visiting a website if its design is sloppy and unattractive. This brings us to another component of getting unique solutions on the table. You don’t want people playing, “Where is Waldo?” with your website.
Following are ten ways to create a different website:
Give people something extra
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Update regularly
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Make it searchable
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Add a blog
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Make it fun
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Use videos
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Make it mobile-friendly
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Provide insight and inspiration
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Use graphics and headlines
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Display examples and metrics
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Adjust your website navigation
As Steve Bradley, the author of Design Fundamentals, points out that users believe beautiful things function better.
Blue Corona discovered 73% of the companies invest in design to differentiate their brand from customers. Using a fantastic logo, for instance, is the first step to make your mark in the market. Therefore, it is advisable to have a web design expert like Logo Design Valley on board.
Make sure your site stands out in beauty so it attracts a reasonable audience figure.
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It nurtures customer relationships
Making an active connection with customers is crucial to business growth. We see companies pouring their time, money, and energy into obtaining new customers. But they often miss out on the biggest market of all – their customers. A good website design makes customers feel emotionally connected with the company.
Incorporating a memorable, emotional, and impactful connection in your brand’s visual display is the best way to show the world who you are. There is no better way to achieve customer loyalty than by connecting through shared values, and a great design is the most helpful way to illustrate them.
StudioPress homepage design shines because of its minimal elements, muted colors, and flat illustrated designs. Its customers love the whole vibe set by the site and stick around.
Following are the four simple ways you can use to foster meaningful relationships with customers and turn them into revenue generators:
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Use analytics to develop perfect personas – The metrics will provide you with a granular understanding of your potential customers’ lifestyles and buying habits.
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Send personalized emails – By sending customized emails, you can demonstrate your brand’s interest in your customer’s unique interests and needs.
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Be social – Implement a system that prioritizes customer communications above all virtual requirements. Promoting a positive social customer experience will compel your customers to recommend it to others.
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Aim to retain – Content marketing and customer support, coupled with excellent solutions to customer issues, is the combination needed to make loyal customers.
Developing strong relations with customers is not complex. You have to seek opportunities to engage with customers.
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It is easy to use
A design has to perform specific functions to bring good results. When people have attention spans lower than that of a goldfish, you have to spend some time planning to impress them instantly. As per Microsoft Corp, the average human attention span has declined by four seconds since 2000.
A good website design has an effective inbound marketing strategy, which in turn lowers the bounce rate. On the other hand, a poorly designed website with a painfully long download time could put off the users. According to Design Resources, Slow-loading websites cost their owners $2.6 billion in losses each year.
Remember, a good website design is not merely about infusing tons of graphics. It is about providing customers with the bare minimum that they need when expressing your brand. There should be a simple information display coupled with helpful images to guide the users.
CarMax shows us how to do it the right way. The company buys and sells cars, so it caters to two types of audiences. Multiple CTAs on its homepage direct visitors to either find a car or go to a page where they can sell it.
A good web design doesn’t entail typography or graphics. It also covers workflow and an enhanced user experience.
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It promotes brand consistency
Consistency is the foundation when it comes to creating a cohesive brand. This is because a website ties the brand with the customers. They become used-to wandering around the site, and fluctuations could annoy them.
An inconsistent brand seems to be chaotic and disorganized. Imagine if McDonald’s would change its logo to purple, all of a sudden. It would be weird, right?
People are unwilling to get involved with a chaotic company, and their trust level reaches rock bottom. Ideally, your website should embody the best attributes of your company. You have to make informed choices on what elements of your company and service philosophy should go out there.
Try to limit the number of menus. A sub-navigation or a drop-down menu may work better on a large site with several pages. Advancements in JavaScript or DHTML libraries has also opened doors to new possibilities of creating innovative navigation systems.
The core is to ensure every page, and every visual element delivers the brand message. This includes offering consistent content and visible structure across the website.
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It makes you money
And last but not least – it brings money.
A good website design increases your company’s value, improves sales, and puts your business in an ideal financial situation. By catching the customers’ attention and constant efforts to say upgraded, a good website design can make your business highly profitable.
Take MySpace and Facebook as an example. Both platforms set out to connect people, but Facebook gained massive popularity as compared to MySpace. The intuitive and sleek Facebook design, with its constant updates, has turned into a dominant social network across the globe. Facebook holds the value of $445 million, while MySpace has a value of $45 million!
Parting Thoughts
A good website aims to provide a seamless experience to the users and increase brands’ chances to succeed. By now, we hope you might know quite well why a brand should invest in website design. Let us know how you plan to move ahead!