11 Reasons Why Design Matters for Your Business

For many business owners, especially those that don’t work in creative fields, web design is a task. It’s something that they deal with because they know they have to, but they resist every step of the way because they don’t think it’s really essential to their success.

Sound like you?

Problem is, there’s a direct correlation between business growth and good design that you’re overlooking, and in the hands of the right designer, the good design could completely turn your business around.

Here are a few essential reasons why design matters for your company, and why you can’t afford to ignore it any longer.

Let’s get real: consumer trust is more essential to your survival than ever.

Today’s consumers are bombarded with options. In fact, the average consumer sees about 5,000 ads per day.

But we also live in the age of Big Data, Facebook, and the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

In short, consumers are inundated with marketing, but they’re less inclined to trust those marketing messages than ever. So if your brand wants to survive, you need to find a way to show your customers that they can trust you.

One of the most basic ways to get customers to trust you is good web design.

Consumers usually take about 10 seconds to decide if they want to stay on a website, but if your site is poorly designed, they’ll bounce even faster. Why? Because poor interface and bad design imply that you don’t care about how your visitors see you and that you don’t care much about their business.

This dovetails into the next point: good design makes a strong first impression.

Remember, you only have 10 seconds at most to make a first impression. This means that you need to make the most of the visual information you give your visitor because the human brain processes visual information much faster than text.

According to the old saying, a picture is worth a thousand words. Scientifically, a picture is worth 60,000 words, as we process visual information 60,000 times faster than text.

People have short attention spans (shorter than a goldfish, in fact), but you can take advantage of that if you use good design.

Basically, you’re utilizing human communication (which is primarily visual) in order to communicate without words. It’s sort of like magic, except that it makes sales.

To that end, good design does more than present a pretty picture. It tells a story.

To get a sense of what we mean, look up the website for a law firm and compare it to that of a local coffee shop.

Setting aside the differences in the actual content, the design for these two sites is dramatically different. That’s important because it gives you a totally different sense of what these two businesses offer–without needing a single word.

Good design can show your business as young and fun, quirky and clever, dependable and serious, or any combination thereof. It’s all about showing your business’s personality so that consumers can decide whether they want to do business with you.

This can come through in everything from your colour choices to your logo to your fonts–something a good designer knows how to use to send the right message.

More than that, a great designer knows how to use good web design to make your business memorable.

Web design is about way more than just the outward appearance of your site and brand. In fact, it’s sort of like meeting a new person–you see them a certain way initially, but as you get to know them, you learn all their small quirks and funny details.

It’s unique, just like your brand is unique and unlike anything else. Maximizing on that distinct personality through design helps set you apart in consumers’ minds and encourage them to think of you the next time they’re looking to buy.

Of course, good design does more than just tell consumers about you. It also makes you more user-friendly.

To understand this, remember that good design is about more than just appearances. Good design is also about how your site works.

With technology and the web constantly changing, good designers and software developers have to stay on top of new developments to offer ever more intuitive options to site visitors.

Take a responsive website, for example, which ensures that the site renders properly regardless of what device a visitor views it on. That seems like a small change, but it makes a huge difference in how consumers engage with your site–and what they think of your brand based on those interactions.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably noticed a trend by now–good design is as much about building customer relationships as it is about giving customers something pleasant to look at and use.

Relationships are based on emotion, which means that your customers often have an emotional connection to your brand.

You can build that connection in the details of your site design. Even something as seemingly basic as colour can change your customer’s mood when they see your site.

Add all of this together, and it’s easy to see the final outcome: good design is good business. Good design creates user conversion.

You see, an effectively-designed website does more than look pretty–it entices your users, persuades them why your brand is the best choice out of all the other brands out there.

A smartly-designed website can literally direct a user to do something, like clicking a buy or subscribe button, while a poorly designed website can drive users away from the desired action.

All of that is in the hands of your web designer if you let them help you.

A good brand design does a lot for your business, but one of the big things it can do is help promote brand consistency, which helps consumers recognize you.

Think of it this way. Everyone knows what the Google homepage looks like, and everyone knows what the results pages look like. When they click on Google, they know what they’re signing up for.

It would confuse people if suddenly Google started displaying results in cursive.

You see, a good brand design is about encouraging your customers to associate your brand with a certain look and feel. That tells them what to expect from you, and reaffirms what they’re going to get out of working with you.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: good brand design is about so much more than appearance.

The best web designer isn’t just going to give you a pretty logo. They’re going to consider what they know about your company’s personality, values, and audience and channel that information into a logo (or whatever else they design for you).

Even when they use the latest web design trends, good web designers know what will work for your company and what won’t. They won’t look at trends on their own, but rather as tools to communicate what your company is all about.

And if they’re communicating properly, you’ll have a much easier time showing your customers what you’re all about.

Explaining what your business is all about can be difficult, especially if you’re focused on abstract concepts, numbers, and ideas. But, “it’s hard to explain,” isn’t going to get you very far, whether you’re in the boardroom or trying to pitch your customers.

Good web design can remove the guesswork from your explanations. People are heavily visual, which makes it easier for them to understand what’s going on if they have a visual aid. You can use web design to better communicate what you’re really talking about, and with more interest than graphs and charts.

Now that you know why design matters, it’s time to make the most of it.

Of course, if you’re still foggy on how to actually create great web design, we can help you figure it out.

We partner with you to take your project from concept to completion, making sure that you get exactly the results you want at every step of the process.

Ready to find out how our team can help you thrive? Get in touch to learn more.