There has never been a more critical time for good web design, especially as we find ourselves in this global-socially-distanced-everything-virtual pandemic. Strong branding and polished web design have always been important factors of a successful digital marketing campaign, this has not changed. The difference now is that we are seeing businesses being forced to explore new and unique ways to reach their audiences. As a result, we are finding out just how much of an impact good web design can have.
According to Google, it only takes users 50 milliseconds to form a first impression of your website – and that first impression can have a ripple effect on a multitude of marketing efforts. A strong website design can set the first impression for visitors, benefit SEO campaigns, help build trust, encourage users to convert, allow brands to stand out among competitors, bolster PPC campaigns, and so much more.
Ways a Well Designed Site Affects a Business
Join us as we break down the complex array of ways a thoughtful well-crafted website can impact your business and why it’s worth the investment in having a beautifully responsive website designed for your business. Then we’ll take a look at some elements that are a must in a good web design. If you think it’s time to upgrade your website, check out our portfolio of past work from the creatives at Results Repeat and be sure to reach out to our team today for a custom website consultation – we’d be happy to take your site to the next level.
Good Design Sets the First Impression
As we said before, the time in which it takes a visitor to assess aesthetic and make a conclusion about your site is extremely fast – so you want to make it count. When a user lands on a site, good design can make them feel something. If the site looks modern, offers bright colors, and is well organized – it’s welcoming in visitors and encouraging them to stick around for a while. If the site is dark and cold with outdated graphics and an extremely confusing navigation – why would anyone be inclined to continue on through the site?
Think about a website like a storefront building, if you walk into a well lit store that’s clean and organized with smiling employees ready to help you, you feel taken care of, calm, and ready to view the product offerings and possibly make a purchase. If you walked into a store that was dimly lit, had a weird smell, and some very unhappy employees lurking, you’d feel anxious and want to get out as quickly as possible and certainly would not want to make a purchase of any kind. A website’s design can make customers feel all the same feelings and produce very similar results.
Which hallway would you rather walk down? Websites can send the same messages.
First impressions are important, potential customers are visiting your site and are looking to get to know your business, 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 your offerings is going to be quite difficult. Think about how much money can be put into PPC campaigns, or the effort put into building out content over long-term SEO campaigns, just to get visitors to your page. Don’t waste your money or time by bringing visitors to your site only to have them leave. In fact, according to Adobe, “38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content/layout is unattractive”. Just think about how many potential customers and dollars you could be missing out on just by having poor visuals.
38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content/layout is unattractive
Builds Trust in the Brand
Along with making a strong first impression, a well thought out and designed website build trust in your brand and in your company amongst visitors. Having strong, clean, and engaging visuals with consideration for user experience and your audience are all ways your website’s design can build trust within your audience and potential customers.
If a site looks dated, is not easy to follow, or looks to confuse or deceive the audience, trust will be lost and the chance of getting a user to convert drops drastically. Clean and simple web design can go a long way to reflect an open and transparent brand with nothing to hide. Guiding a user through the site with clear headings and call to action statements and buttons leaves the user feeling taken care of and can help build and enhance that trust.
Bolster SEO Campaigns
Google recently announced an update to search ranking signals that will have a dramatic impact on which websites will show up in the top ten search result positions. The announcement declared that they will consider the “Core Web Vitals” of a webpage as a ranking factor beginning in 2021. If you are doing any sort of search engine optimization efforts to your website you know there are important SEO factors to consider and now Google is acknowledging 3 very important metrics to pay attention to – and they all can relate back to your website design.
Core Web Vitals that Google now considers for search rankings are:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)– the time it takes for a page’s content to load
- First Input Delay (FID)– the time it takes for a page to become interactive
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – the amount of unexpected layout shift of visual content on a page
It sounds quite complicated but essentially all of these could be improved with a well-planned and thought-out web design. These Core Web Vitals are user-centered, which allows us to conclude that Google wants us to put the user experience first when it comes to the content we are sharing on the internet.
A great way to start thinking about user experience and improving it is having an updated modern website design that puts the needs of a user first. Consider how fast a page takes to load content. Are images quickly appearing? Are the user’s needs being met in an efficient time? These are all things Google is looking for in their top ranking pages – so you should also look to capitalize on improving these loading times.
SEO metrics can drastically change with a website’s design and layout.
- Time On Page – how long a user spends on a page
- Bounce Rate – the rate at which a user lands on a page and does not interact with it and leaves
- Conversion Rate – the percentage of users who visit the site and convert
Each of these metrics are important to track and measure and can be greatly affected with an improved website. Within many SEO campaigns we are trying to target specific keywords or phrases to bring users to a webpage. We then use the metrics above as a way to measure the effectiveness of a webpage and user experience on that page. For example, if we see a lot of users coming to a webpage but they are not spending any time there and the conversion rate is very low it may mean that the content is not serving the needs of the user. But sometimes the content does meet the needs, it’s just the way the information is presented that’s affecting the chances of a user sticking around to actually read it and convert.
If the page is pleasing to the eye, easy to navigate with engaging graphics or animations, a user will be more likely to stay on a page rather than leaving because their question was not answered. If the user is engaged and spending more time on the page, there is more likelihood that they will convert.
Stand Out From Competitors
Having a responsive website – meaning a site that will dynamically change and alter its appearance depending on the size or orientation of the device or screen it’s being viewed on – is simply a non-negotiable part of web design in 2020. If you want to not only compete with your competitors, but stand out amongst the crowd, your site needs to be dynamic and thoughtfully designed. Strong branding and consistent use of fonts, colors, and creative layouts can easily make you stand out and surpass your competitors and demonstrate the professionalism in your company.
Standout from your competition with a well crafted website.
Take a look at the websites of your closest competitors – how does yours stack up? If you feel on par with your direct competition, look farther at the big names in your industry. While you may not be able to compete directly with them, you can have a website that is on par with theirs. When you emulate creative sleek designs of industry leaders, you set yourself apart from direct competitors and can draw up new business for yourself.
Elements Of Good Web Design
Now that we’ve established a few of the many reasons good web design is important and can have a major impact on any marketing strategy – it’s time to look at some specific elements that make a web design superior.
One way to be sure your site is well designed is to hire professional web designers and developers to build a custom website uniquely catered to your business. Professional web design templates are a sufficient budget friendly option, but a custom web design can be a real game changer and take your online presence to the next level.
There are a variety of elements that can elevate a website from bad to good.
- Navigation – An easy to use and understand navigation that leaves a user with no questions and is intuitive to their needs is essential.
- Responsive Design – When a site automatically makes the necessary adjustments to seamlessly look good across multiple screens and devices.
- CTA Buttons – Also known as “call-to-action” buttons, they need to stand out and be placed in appropriate places throughout the site and at moments when a user is most likely ready to take action or convert.
- Colors – Establishing brand colors and following a 60-30-10 rule can create an ideal sense of balance. Follow this rule by consistently using the following formula – primary color 60%, secondary color 30%, and accent color 10% (and only in the most important places, allowing for specific site elements to stand out).
- Font Style Guide – Typically just one or two font choices should suffice and having an established style guide for each header option capitalizing on different font sizes and weights can ensure consistency across the pages while improving readability and scannability of the site.
- Animation – Used strategically and in moderation, animation can elevate a boring, flat, or still design, but if over done with too much moving on the site it can become distracting very quickly.
- High Quality Images – Having beautiful photography can elevate any site. When images are grainy or stretched it’s distracting and can lose credibility with the users.
Get Started On a Brand New Website
There’s no question a new website can be a reset for a floundering digital marketing strategy. You can spend a lot of time and money getting users to your site from PPC and SEO campaigns, but if they finally get there and it’s too confusing to navigate, they can’t find the answers they are looking for, the site doesn’t load fast enough, or they can’t understand the product you’re selling, you’ll lose that customer and the marketing dollars used to get them to the site will be wasted.
What are you waiting for? Reach out to the team of experts at Results Repeat for a consultation today and we’ll thoroughly evaluate your site for you, examining any pain points, if a full site redesign is necessary, or maybe you just need a bit of a face lift to compete with your competitors. We have years of experience in web design and development and would be happy to help you get your site on the right track!
