Why Is Website Design So Important?

Website design is a vital aspect of your digital marketing plan. Good website design not only benefits your business in terms of SEO, it also sets the tone for your business; a poorly designed website will put off potential customers and lose you revenue. Creative websites designed as part of your marketing plan and linked to your social media can give a positive first impression of your business, and if you are running an ecommerce website, will result in improved conversion rates.

It only takes a few seconds for your potential customer to form an impression of your business from your website and its graphics. If its page load speed is slow, the web page design confusing or old-fashioned, or the logo and graphics unappealing, visitors will form a negative impression of your business and you will lose custom to your competitors on the internet.

Good web design should keep your potential customers on your website, form a good impression and turn your leads into sales.

Of course, bespoke websites aren’t easy to create, and unless you understand the complexities of HTML coding, CMS, CSS and graphic design, creating a good website design may be a challenge. This is where a web development agency can give you useful guidance on responsive web design and other factors. Even if you are using the free web design and development software WordPress (and 34 percent of the internet does), a web design agency will be able to help you out.

 

The Importance Of Having a Good Web Design

Another factor in the importance of good website design is that it helps your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) strategy.

When search engines crawl the internet and index your website, many elements of the website design influence the way your website is indexed. If your SEO results are poor, it doesn’t matter how good your marketing or your website design is, it will not feature in search engine rankings, so your potential customers will not find it.

So your web developer needs to use site code which is search engine friendly, in addition to producing a good website design. A web design agency will be able to advise you on HTML Coding, CMS, CSS, good WordPress practice and other aspects of optimising your website design for improved SEO results.

Your web designer will help you to decide whether you need a static webpage, where the server is only needed to serve static content, or a dynamic website, where server-side technology is used to generate webpages on the fly.

 

Five Reasons Why To Invest in Website Design

It’s certainly worth investing your time in website design, but there are good arguments for employing a web design agency to take on the more complex elements of building bespoke websites. Subjects such as HTML coding, CMS, CSS, server configuration and responsive design are probably things you could learn, but is it worth your investment of time when a web design company will already be familiar with these technicalities?  A web developer will not only make it easier for you to create the creative websites you want, but will also be able to take off your hands the time-consuming task of learning techniques such as HTML coding and maintaining the websites they design. So what are the five top reasons for investing in website design?

1. Customer Service

Think of your website as your most important customer service representative. An attractive, up-to-date and friendly design looks as if you care about your customers and want them to enjoy interacting with you; an old-fashioned, unattractive or hard to navigate site signals lack of interest in your customers. What’s more, a good web design builds trust with your audience, while a poorly designed website suggests that your business is untrustworthy or unreliable. A web designer working with a web development agency will be able to help you with elements of responsive web design, graphic design, page load speed, social media and other ways in which you can encourage visitors to stay on your site longer, creating more opportunities for you to capture business.

 

2. Competition

Your competitors will almost certainly be using web design to capture potential customers. If you want to outrank them on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) you have to stand out with a well-designed website. From your logo to your use of graphics, your web page design is an opportunity for you to make your business stand out. You may have many competitors with the same products and similar pricing – website design is your chance to stand out from the pack and showcase your unique features.

 

3. Consistency

Building a brand is one of the most important aspects of growing your business, and your web design is a big part of that. Website design services will explain the importance of maintaining consistent use of colours, fonts, layouts and styles across your web page design. A poorly designed website with inconsistent pages will make it harder to navigate your site and to establish brand recognition.

4. Calls to action

A web developer will explain the importance of Call-to-Action buttons. Once you have a potential customer on your site, the next task is to convert their visit into a sale (whether yours is an ecommerce website or a bricks-and-mortar business). A CTA button is the best way to do this, but the design elements are important. A well-designed CTA button will stand out on the page without disrupting the design, using colour contrast, sizing, animation, placement and white space.

5. Copy

Another good reason to invest in web design is that a digital marketing specialist will be able to help you produce compelling copy. Though good website design will attract potential customers to your site, good copy makes them stay. If you are supplying your customers with readable, informative, high-quality copy, they will return to your site and you are more likely to make a sale. The content on your site is just as important as the overall design, so you have to give your customers the information they are looking for.

 

Why Does Your Website Need a Good Design?

In most cases a visitor to a website is looking for information on a specific subject, so having a good website design is essential in helping them to find what they are looking for. An essential part of any digital marketing strategy is to convert website visits into sales, and website design is an essential part of this process. Web design and development should aim to improve navigation and access information as quickly as possible, as visitors’ attention spans are short.

An essential aspect particularly for an ecommerce website is responsive design. Your website must be able to adapt itself to use on a mobile device, particularly for local searches, which are predominantly done on mobile devices. Responsive web design means that rather than presenting the same design to every device – smartphone, tablet or desktop – the website adapts its layout according to what sort of device is being used. Responsive web design isn’t just about page size, it can also require changes to layout, fonts sizes and so on – a web development agency will be able to help you with responsive design and with other aspects such as page load speed and social media.

 

Benefits Of Having a Good Website Design

The main benefits of having good website design are that it drives conversions, builds brand awareness, and creates customer trust. So what are the best methods for improving website design?

1. Create a style guide

To promote consistency throughout your website, have your web design agency create a style guide and stick to it on every page of your website. The style guide should specify colours, fonts, layout, formatting and graphics. Every member of your team or any website design services you use should conform to this style guide. A consistent style tied in with your wider marketing campaign will increase engagement, build brand recognition and improve SEO.

 

2. Establish a visual hierarchy

Make sure that the most important features of your website are the most visually engaging. Use bolder fonts, larger text sizes, and brighter colours to create a visual hierarchy, showing your website visitors through the use of these clear visual cues what parts of the site are the most important, and guiding them through the customer journey.

 

3. Use video

Customers are ten times more likely to react to video elements rather than text, so your use of video as part of your web design and development is crucial. From your company logo to graphic design, make sure your visuals are relevant, serve a purpose and are used in balance with text. Though you shouldn’t create a cluttered website by using visuals for the sake of it, there’s no reason why a text section shouldn’t be accompanied by a video explaining the same ideas in a more watchable form.

 

4. Improve page speed

Loading pages quickly makes sure that your visitors don’t get bored waiting for something to happen, and click off somewhere else. Ask a web design company to help you with the technical aspects of design including HTML, CSS, how to optimise WordPress, and techniques such as reducing image file sizes, removing unwanted plug-ins and minimising HTML, JavaScript or CSS code. Google PageSpeed Insights is a useful tool to see how quickly your site loads and where improvements can be made.

 

Can Website Design Affect SEO?

As Google updates its search engine algorithms, design and user experience become ever more important in SEO. Google wants to provide the best possible results in SERPs, but no longer relies entirely on keywords and content to gauge the value of a website. Other factors taken into account include bounce rate (how often a visitor hits the back button after seeing your landing page), time spent on site, and value, rated by number of links to social media, blogs or rating sites.

So here are a few web design topics to think about when creating your bespoke websites in order to improve your SEO:

• What are the first things you see on the landing page?
• How many tasks are there for the visitor to choose from?
• What could be taken out without loss?
• What elements serve no useful purpose?
• Does the page support the website’s goals?

Removing anything that impedes the user’s experience improves your bounce rates, time on site, and backlinks, all of which will enhance your SEO.

 

Can Improving Your Website Design Help You Gain More Traffic?

Creative websites can gain traffic as part of your digital marketing strategy by providing content which is attractive to potential customers and offers something unique to your company.

Crowdspring contributor Katie Lundin suggests the following ways to improve website design to gain traffic and ultimately boost sales:

1. Optimize your website loading speeds.

A Kissmetrics study shows that a website will lose 25 percent of its potential viewers after four seconds of loading time – overcoming this aspect of website design is the first essential. “If your eCommerce website hosts data-intensive graphics and photos, it takes much longer to load than a sleek, cleanly designed website with minimal graphics,” says Lundin. “The takeaway here is not that you should eliminate photos and graphic elements from your eCommerce website design. The lesson is to use design elements smartly for maximum impact and quicker load speeds. Make sure that you minimize your photo file sizes as much as possible while still maintaining good quality.”

 

2. Optimize your eCommerce business for mobile access.

Mobile devices have been the most popular way to access the Internet since 2016, particularly with younger customers, so when you build an ecommerce site, it must be optimised for mobile users. Responsive design is key, and a web design company will help you to visually adjust to the size/shape screen wherever it appears.

 

3. Eliminate distractions on your landing page.

Ecommerce sites can benefit particularly from having a sharply focussed landing page devoted to a single call to action. “Feature each marketing offer and product with a unique landing page on your website” says Katie Lundin. “You may even consider creating landing pages for specific target audiences. This way, people who search for your product online will be taken to a webpage that specifically caters to their needs and perspectives.”

 

4. Streamline your checkout process

A confusing, buggy or multi-stage checkout process will lead to  abandoned shopping carts and lost sales. Review your checkout process and have your web designer redesign it to eliminate any friction points. Reduce the amount your customers have to do and make things as transparent as possible.

 

5. Design for interaction

Leave space in your website for customer interaction in the form of testimonials and comments. Place testimonials in prominent spots, use a different but easy-to-read font, and include pictures of customers if you can get their permission. Another good tip, says Katie Lundin, is to design a ‘Best-Sellers’ page – “Not everyone browsing your site will know exactly what they’re looking for,” she says. “If your company sells a wide range of products, it can be overwhelming, especially for a new customer. When someone stumbles upon your site, they should be drawn to products that are most popular. The best-sellers section must be easy to find and navigate — as well as visually integrated with your overall web design.”

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TRON Media can help with all your web design and development requirements. TRON Media has a highly qualified team of trained specialists in website design services, SEO, website security, email marketing, WordPress, HTML coding, CMS, paid search marketing, PPC, Google Ads, content marketing, digital strategy and social media, and can work with you to develop your ideas and build a website security protocol perfect for your business.

 

TRON Media is a leading web design agency in Brighton, offering the easiest and most cost-effective way to guarantee that SEO works for you. Get in touch today to find out about our latest web design services, email marketing services, pay per click services, and what a web design agency can do for your business.

Contact us using our Contact Form, call Simon on 020 3006 6889 or email us at: [email protected].