Your website is one of the most important aspects of your brand’s online presence, and it’s vital that you design it appropriately. A website functions as your central space for you to cultivate prospects into leads and eventually into customers.
Any errors on your website, or poor web design, and you might find yourself losing potential customers. An ugly or unsightly website with broken links and bugs everywhere might cause visitors to leave your site and lose you a potential sale.
A website should be designed with the customer in mind so you can provide a great user experience. Anything less and you might find yourself turning people away.
So, let’s take a look at some of the reasons why web design is so important and some little changes you can make to help keep your online branding a success.
It’s your chance to make a good first impression
When your audience visits your website, it gives them the first impression of your company. Prospects make judgements within seconds and so, in that crucial moment, you would want your site to have a positive impact on them.
If your website looks unattractive or outdated, your audience will immediately get a negative impression of your company. 75% of users make judgments about a company’s credibility based on visual design alone!
If a visitor to your website isn’t satisfied by its design, they made be deterred from visiting your site in the future. You could then miss a potential sale opportunity as you’ve lost the chance to engage with those visitors – they could even be leaving you for a competitor’s website!
So, make sure your website makes a good first impression. It needs to catch the visitor’s eye whilst being simplistic – if your home page is too clunky and full of too much information, visitor’s may get overwhelmed and leave. Focus on doing the simple things right and you’ll be much more likely to retain that visitor!
It helps boost trust and brand consistency
As mentioned above, your website design determines the way people will judge the integrity of your business. Modern, professional website design tends to build trust, as it communicates to the user that you care about your brand. On the other hand, outdated and unprofessional web design makes users doubt your credibility.
Your website should also communicate a sense of brand consistency. The design elements of your website, such as colours, fonts, and images, constitute your brand identity. Consumers can recognize outstanding and successful brands simply by looking at these aspects. So, you should choose your brand identity carefully and ensure it is consistently reflected throughout your website in its design.
You should also make sure that the layout, style, and fonts on every page of your website are consistent. If the design of each page is different, your website will appear unappealing and unprofessional.
A consistent brand identity shown throughout your website is likely to encourage prospects to trust your credibility. Spending time curating good website design shows potential customers you care about your brand.
By showing that you care, potential customers can better understand who you are as a brand.
Improves usability
Good website design allows visitors to effortlessly access the content they are looking for. If a visitor is on your website and wants to get in contact to raise a query, for example, their path to this page should be as efficient as possible.
Removing any obstacles to your user’s journey can help transform their experience on your website and leave them with a positive impression of your brand. If areas of your website are hard to find, or there are many obstacles to reaching certain pages, visitors may be left with a bad impression.
Your website could be getting a lot of clicks, but its poor design could make it difficult for visitors to use or find the content they are looking for. Users may prefer to use a simplistic website rather than a complicated one, even if the two websites are the same in terms of operation. Pay attention to your usability and you could improve your website’s perception.
Creating a usable website often requires the help of a specialist or expert. If you feel you could benefit from a professional design service, get in touch with Floodmaker to see if we can help you!
It aids your SEO strategy
Various web design components and techniques have a significant impact on your website’s ability to publish content, which in turn affects the way your web pages are crawled through and ranked by major search engines.
In addition, some web design components may harm your SEO strategy.
Certain elements of web design can directly affect SEO itself. If you are not familiar with how web design works, this may be difficult to understand, but simply put, your code needs to be SEO friendly.
To increase the visibility of your page, use web design elements and techniques that are compatible with SEO.
If you are not sure how to do this, you can always work with us at Floodmaker and we’ll optimize your website for search engines, bring organic traffic to your website, and improve your online presence.
To sum up
Your website design plays a vital role in the success of your online marketing campaign. It can mean the difference between your business’ success and failure.
If you want to produce the best results for your business, you should invest time (or even money) in designing a website that encourages people to learn more about your business.
If you feel ready to outsource your website design to a professional, take a look at our website design services to see how we might be able to help you!