Nothing is more frustrating than landing on a brand’s website and finding a confusing, unintuitive, poorly designed-mess. More often than not, that brand has just lost your business.
This is exactly why good web design is essential to your success. You must have a website that looks good and offers easy navigation. If your website isn’t organized, doesn’t offer what users are looking for, or just plain doesn’t look good, visitors will immediately leave and never return.
Web design is one of the most crucial aspects of building a website and establishing an online marketing strategy. But it is more than just aesthetics. A website must make a compelling first impression AND accomplish a host of technical elements as well.
To help you better understand the importance of good web design, we’ve put together this list of reasons why it matters and essential elements to include in your design.
Here is everything you need to know about why web design matters and how to pull it off:
Why is Good Web Design Important?
Good design is imperative to the success of your business. It should be functional, visually appealing, and help you stand out from the crowd. A good design will also help increase conversions and audience size while considering the different types of visitors your site may have (e.g., experienced and novice) to ensure a seamless user experience.
Here are ten reasons why you need a good web design:
Creates A Strong First Impression
Websites provide business owners with the opportunity to make an excellent first impression. You have less than ten seconds to make an impression, so you must impress immediately.
Websites that are poorly designed can lead to a negative brand perception from visitors. This means losing out on potential leads and revenue.
A good website design is essential for a business. The design should communicate what the company does, what it stands for, and how visitors can interact with it. If visitors don’t clearly understand your company, they will not stay on the site.
Improves Your Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
A website that does not consider SEO can be detrimental to your online business and your search rankings. Without good on-page SEO, your website will experience more challenges in being found by your potential customer.
Proper web design creates a better user experience (UX) and opportunities for you to employ strategic content and build the authority that is favoured by search engines.
Increasing your company’s website visibility and ranking higher in Google is more attainable with professional web design that keeps SEO in mind. You’ll get higher ROI and customer retention rates when you partner with a team of web design experts who include SEO services in their packages.
Determines an Expectation For Customer Service
Believe it or not, your website will create an impression of how you treat your customers.
If your copy or design doesn’t convey a warm, welcoming personality, the customer may think you don’t care about them and decide to go elsewhere. Designing your site with the consumer in mind is essential.
If you want to draw people in, it’s vital that your website not only looks good but also is inviting. You should tailor a clean, modern design and make sure everything is prominently displayed. This will help potential customers or clients feel at ease.
An outdated website that looks unprofessional makes your business appear less approachable. People don’t want to visit a company that doesn’t put in the effort to make an excellent first impression.
Your website reflects the quality of your work and should be on par with your physical business presence. A modern website design will ensure visitors feel more welcome, making them much less likely to go elsewhere.
Improved User Experience (UX)
A memorable user experience is a crucial element of your website design. Emotional wording is as vital for website design as writing content for your UX design. When you use words that evoke specific reactions, your website design has a more significant emotional effect on its users.
A website’s graphics, layout, text, and interactive elements all work together to give users a unique experience. Listen to your users’ feedback and act on it. The design of your site needs to make life easier for your users by increasing efficiency.
There are a lot of websites on the internet, so your site needs to stand out from all the competition. Having stunning visuals and interactive features will help differentiate your site and create a memorable UX.
Builds Trust With Your Audience
Establishing trust is essential when designing a site. Neglecting the design of a site may lead to frustration on behalf of the visitor and fail to engage them long enough to acquire the information they were searching for in the first place.
If your website screams outdated, consumers will pass on it. They would instead find a business they think is staying on top of their website and the latest industry trends.
A professional website can boost confidence in a business and increase customer trust. If your site looks the part and supplies visitors with what they want/need, they will place trust and value in your business.
And the more trust a visitor has in your site and your business, the more likely they are to stay on your site and the more opportunities you have to convert them into customers.
Keeps Up With The Competition
You want your website to boost conversions and make you stand out from the competition. In this digital era, it’s critical that you have an online presence and a modern website with good SEO.
Finding your company and generating as much business as possible will be hard if you don’t rank on the first page of search engine results. Investing in good web design will impact your online presence, helping you rank higher and get more traffic.
Visually pleasing elements and appropriate keywords are important, but so are the site’s load time and internal linking structure. These aspects should be a part of your website design, and will help you keep pace, and maybe even surpass, your competition.
Creates Brand Consistency
Building your brand reputation when trying to get new leads is essential. Web visitors are more likely to do business with your company if they have a positive impression of your brand.
Website design that places your brand at the forefront will keep your business top of mind when making purchasing decisions.
You must maintain consistency across all pages to give your website a professional and visually appealing appearance and to increase brand recognition. Consistency in design will elevate the impression your site provides to a visitor.
If you want your website to look, feel and operate professionally, you need more than just a few updates around the design, typography, or layout of different pages. You need to have a consistent visual experience across all pages. You want your leads to stay on your site longer to become familiar with you and what you offer.
Improved Responsiveness
Good web design means improved responsiveness that focuses on the user’s behaviour, environment, and screen size. This design trend is focused on customer experience and branded content delivery. It also means that your website has good performance.
Your website should be fast, even when your users are connected through a slow internet connection.
Increase The Dwell Time of Visitors
The time a visitor stays on your site is one of the many contributing factors Google uses to interpret your site as a high-quality resource and determine ranking in Google searches.
Your traffic levels will affect the amount of money you can make from your site. However, even if your traffic is high, a lack of conversions and other factors, such as bounces, may mean that you don’t generate any revenue.
The longer your visitors spend on your site, the more potential you have to convert them, and the more familiar they will be with what you offer. A well-designed, engaging website can keep visitors on the page for longer periods of time.
Positions The Business As An Authority
The structure and user-friendliness of your website also contribute to your authority. For search engines to successfully crawl and index your site, you need a structured hierarchy of headings, headlines, and other textual cues.
Making a sitemap, which lists the permalink URLs of your site’s pages and sub-pages, is essential for effective SEO. It makes it easier for web crawlers to find your site’s content and will help improve your authority. It would help if you also used keywords in the title tags of all the HTML files on your website when optimizing for search engines.
Elements of Good Web Design
Knowing why good web design is essential can be enhanced by knowing what elements go into good web design. If you include the following 7 things when designing your site, your users will surely enjoy the experience:
Responsive Design
Mobile devices have grown in popularity in recent years. This has made the responsive design more crucial than ever so that any visitor to your site has a pleasant experience.
Responsive design is a strategy that serves your website to the browser at any size. Your site will always appear at its full size, regardless of your screen’s dimension, to provide an immersive experience.
A successful website design needs to have a responsive design. This will make your page more engaging and keep the on-site reader longer.
Navigation
Your website should be designed so that it is easy to find content on the site. Keep your navigation simple and straightforward.
To keep visitors on the page, it is vital to have a navigational bar. The bar should direct visitors to the content that they are looking for.
Include copy that is easy to navigate, too. Clear titles will save time for your visitors.
Page Speed
Slow page speed prevents your audience from accessing information. Page speed should be a priority in web design. Keep your page loading time to five seconds or less, as more will lose your audience’s interest.
You can measure the speed of your page by checking Google PageSpeed. A good web design company will optimize your website to load quickly and free up your time to focus on running your business.
High-Quality Content
Your website audience has landed on your site for a reason, so what you put on your site is essential. Quality copywriting should always be at the top of your priority list.
Writing well-designed copy in your posts and website keeps the reader’s attention on the page for a more extended period.
You want website design and content to be both visually pleasing and easy to read. Include valuable information, so people will know what you’re about, and include photos of your products or services.
Visual Elements
Too many videos and pictures on a site can overwhelm the user. They may get in the way of reading content, making it more difficult to find what they’re looking for.
Too many images can distract the user and make it hard for them to read your content.
The imagery on your site should be relevant. Utilize visuals purposefully. This keeps the readers engaged and presented with something visual to look at and gives them an idea of what you offer and what you are about.
User Journey/Flow
A user journey is a path visitors may take to reach a goal on your website. They can differ for every user depending on their browsing style.
User journeys should be considered when designing a website. User journeys involve planning a user’s interaction with your site. An interface that matches user intent and makes it easy for them to reach their goal will lead to conversions for you.
Solid Call To Actions
You can guide your potential client with compelling copy on your site. One of the most critical elements is a call-to-action (CTA) button.
Calls to action are among the most critical factors influencing your audience. Adding a CTA button on your landing page or website will help guide them through the next step.
Integrating solid CTA buttons into your design will yield better results by moving the visitor through the stages of their journey to a favourable outcome.
Summary
A design that stands out and gets people to take the next step is what it’s all about. To ensure you get the best results, your website needs design features that resonate with people. WDK has been designing websites for many years and has a track record of success.
Partnering with a web designer who understands the importance of small business web design is crucial if you want to build a website that looks good and properly supports your business.
We specialize in website design and web marketing campaigns. Our knowledgeable team can help create a site that meets your needs. Building a website you’ll love has never been easier with WDK’s web design services.
We have amazingly skilled web design experts ready to work for you and help you with all your development needs. Whether a new website or a redesign of your old one, our dedicated web designers can provide reliable design services. Reach out today to get started.
Additional Resources:
- What is Responsive Design & why does my site need it?
- How long does it take to build a website?
- Why hire a web designer?
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