Introduction
In the current era, the importance of web design is pertinent to most businesses as well as individuals. So, by now, most businesses know that having a good website design (UI+UX) is important. For small businesses or startups, investing in a well-designed, professional website may seem daunting. However, studies point to the fact that good web design is important. Moreover, your business’s website design impacts your customer experience, lead generation, and ultimately your bottom line.
You may be wondering, why? So, let's answer that why now;)
1. An Impactful First Impression
The time in which it takes a visitor to assess aesthetics and make a conclusion about any site is extremely fast – maybe microseconds. When a user opens a website, a good design can make them feel good. If the website looks in fashion, has bright and beautiful colors, and is well organized, it looks welcoming to visitors and encourages them to stay. But if the website is dark along with outdated graphics and extremely confusing navigation, I myself would never open it ever again so why should I expect anyone to be inclined to continue on through the site?
First impressions are extremely important! Potential customers are visiting your website, wanting to get to know your business. But if you get off to a bad start due to an unprofessional-looking page with zero design consideration, trying to convince users to stay on the page to learn about what you can offer them is gonna be difficult if not impossible. You put so much money in long-term SEO campaigns just to get visitors to your page. Don’t waste your money or even time by bringing visitors to your website only to have them leave later on. According to stats presented by Adobe, "38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content/layout is unattractive". For once, just think about how many potential customers and money you could be losing due to poor visuals.
2. Usability
The website design has a huge impact on how easy it is for visitors to find what they’re looking for. Research shows that "86% of your website visitors want to see product or service information, 65% look for contact information, and 52% seek an About page for your business".
Therefore your website design should make these things as easy to find as possible. Otherwise, you'll frustrate your users or even potential users and may drive them away. Consider using standard conventions e.g put your primary services in your main navigation, feature your phone number in the upper-right-hand corner of your site, etc. It doesn't matter even if your website functions perfectly as a bad website design may make users feel that it’s harder to use or find what they need.
3. Promotes Trust in Your Brand
Let's admit it, website design determines how most people judge the integrity of your business. I mean, we all do it, don't we? Beautiful yet professional website designs promote trust. Out of fashion and unprofessional web designs make users doubt your credibility. Consistency in the brand is another way that a decent web design encourages trust. Customers recognize prominent and successful brands by just looking at things like their colors, logos, or styles, etc.
Therefore, it is very important to ensure things that your customers identify your business with are clearly reflected in your website design. Make sure that the outline, styles, and fonts are the same throughout every page on your site. If every single page had a completely different design with no consistency, your site will appear unattractive and unprofessional.
4. Your competitors are already utilizing it
The most crucial reason why web design is important is that your competitors are already utilizing a good web design. If you want to retain your competitive relationship with them, you must use a good web design for your site. Everybody wants their website to stand out from the competition. If you have an old fashioned low-quality website, your competitors are gonna outrank you. Their well-designed fashionable website will ultimately perform better than yours. This means that you’ll lose to your competitors. They’ll attract more and more customers to their website because their website is visually more appealing.
Actually, your website’s design is a golden opportunity for you to set your business apart from the competition. When competing with other businesses, you and your competitors generally have the same services and similar pricing. But you need one thing that will make your business stand out from them. A well-designed fashionable website is an opportunity for your business to showcase its unique features. You can visually show your audience why they should choose your business over others.
5. Ease in Navigation
A good design makes your website easy to navigate. Most professional designers apply Hick’s Law while designing websites. This law states that the duration a person takes to make a decision is proportional to the number of choices available. If there are many choices, it's gonna take you much longer to make a decision, and vice versa.
When professional designers build website navigation while having this Hick’s Law in mind, they want to simplify and reduce the number of options. They do this so that visitors can easily decide what action to take or where to go. This makes your site easy to navigate so an optimum number of options should be five or less. Analyze your product menu and if you find similar options, merge them into one. In this way, visitors or potential customers will find your website easy to navigate and easy to use.
6. SEO
Various components and techniques related to web design have a huge impact on your site’s content publishing capability. This ultimately influences how top search engines crawl and rank your page. Also, some web design components can hurt your SEO strategy. According to some studies, more than 60% of users have mobiles as their primary devices so having a fast, responsive website is imperative to SEO.
In order to enhance the visibility of your page, you should make use of SEO-friendly web-design elements and techniques. If you think that this is not part of your expertise, hire a competent SEO company that will optimize your website for search engines and drive organic traffic to your site as this will end up enhancing your online presence.
7. Improvement in Website Loading Speed
A well-designed site loads quickly on all types of devices. A page loads in seconds because of high-quality responsive visual media. Any visitor is more likely to stay way longer on websites that load faster than on ones that take ages to load. One study found that 53% of mobile users will leave a website if pages are unresponsive or even take a significant amount of time to load. Think about it, what do you do when a website takes long to load? You leave right? That's the same for other visitors too!
8. Reduces Bounce Rates
Bounce rate is the percentage of users who visit a website but abandon it after checking out just one page. As we have already discussed it, a well-designed website with a fast loading speed means that users will interact with your website longer. This will in turn lower your bounce rate. If users spend more time on your site, they will be more likely to open other pages on your website. They will also learn more about you and your business while also checking out your products. Perhaps they would make a purchase too ;)
Conclusion
Website design is not a simple matter and should never be taken lightly. After all, it has the potential to make or break your online business! A well-designed website can help you gain many benefits. It can also help you nurture your leads and get more conversions. Moreover, it provides a good user experience, helping visitors to access and navigate your website with ease. Make sure that your website is designed user-friendly. Even if you already have a website, conduct site audits and optimize it to provide better accessibility and user experience.
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