The Importance of Good Website Design
Does your website say what it needs to about your brand at a glance? Can it convert?
The days of running a monopoly are over. Business climates in today's world experience stiff competition irrespective of niche.
Anything from no-deposit casinos to something as everyday and mundane as your local supermarket needs to promote and sell itself.
So it's a no-brainer that your brand identity needs to be on point.
And this can only be executed adequately through solid web design practices; otherwise, you may as well kiss your company's audience engagement and, consequently, success goodbye.
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First impressions count
First impressions count. Even though we don't always admit it, we make judgments made on first glance all the time.
If we're in the airport browsing for a book with 15 minutes to spare, we will judge a book by its cover before snapping it up.
If we have five minutes at the liquor store to pick a wine for dinner when we don't even drink vino, that'll also be based on label and price.
Putting your best foot forward from the start is why you need a good website design to encapsulate your brand identity.
What is the effect of bad web design?
Bad web design can leave a bad taste in the viewer's mouth. Rather than being compelled to learn more about your brand, a viewer quickly clicks off to the next competitor or recoils in horror, astonished at how bad it looks.
A bad website is the brand identity equivalent of wearing a bikini to a funeral—the horror of it all. Brand identity is, underneath all, about customer psychology: it's designed to evoke feelings in the viewer and reader.
If you get the design component wrong, you will produce the wrong feelings, blowing off potential sales, connections, and growth.
Is a template enough?
While plenty of businesses launch with a simple templated site from Wix or Squarespace, it is a cookie-cutter representation of a website.
With many of the most popular templated website builder services, your website will look the same as a million others with some tweaks.
Will you be able to stand out from the competition? It's only possible if you have an expert eye for design and can make the exact right changes stylistically and with your copy. A template is okay for a quick prototype of your business.
Still, once you're ready to holistically hone in on brand identity, you might need something more customised and unique.
A new website or a new brand identity?
A website isn't your brand identity; it's a reflection of it. And at what stage is your brand identity overall?
For a mature picture, complete with all the correct elements, or a brand refresh, you must develop a comprehensive, documented brand identity kit to work with.
This kit will inform your website's design, and skimping on this stage of development to launch a website sooner will only lead to a never-ending list of do-overs for design tweaks.
Nail down your customer identity first – and be sure about what you're signing off on.
Think strategically about information design
There's more to good website design than just how your website looks. It's also about how it's organised from an information architecture point of view.
Good design means having the right sections, headings, subheadings, drop-down menus, links, etc.
Everything your business represents and offers should be available in just a click or two so the website visitor can reach what they need when needed. Many people over-complicate their information architecture as they have much to say about their business.
Hiding incidental information deeper in levels of pages makes for a cleaner, easier-to-navigate website.
Looking to get a good website design?
Choosing to engage the services of a professional designer for your website can be the difference between an amateur hour on your site or a uniquely ‘you' experience tailored to pique your visitors' interests.
A professional can tailor the site to your defined brand identity, coming across as the image you want to portray rather than just a reflection of everything else on the web.
While not all designers are developers, and not all developers are designers, you can often find a person or company that can do both for you, all packaged up to your specifications.
Make sure to have your brand identity nailed down first, and you'll be well on your way to wowing visitors and getting those conversions.
