Design is what pleases the eyes. We designers understand that the importance of visual can affect people's behavior to benefit a better result. However, web design goes much deeper than that.
A good looking website does a lot more than plain looks. A great design is just like branding, and for that it can be a great marketing tool to deliver your wanted results.
Web design is the first thing your visitors see beside looking at your website's contents. As a brand that wants to deliver a message, web design is what makes communication in a more beautiful manner. You can have ideas put into words and graphics, but web design is the base that put everything together in a similarity pronounced everywhere on your site.
Brands that can communicate those messages and ideas beautifully are more often embrace human psychology as design principles.
Below is some of main reasons why a good web design matters in terms of marketing and branding.
First Impression
The first things that people see when they see your website's design is its colors, the typography you use, and the images that perfect it. What messages do these web design elements give? Is the communication becomes clearer and organized with them, or do it gets more irrational and irritating?
Whatever your message is, your web visitors just need a fraction of a second before deciding to stay or leave. A great web design is what makes people comfortable in spending more time with you, and that in turn will make them return to you somewhere in the future.
To have a great and compelling web design, you need to match the design with your contents so people can easily digest all the necessary information.
Last Impression
It may take just a second for people to judge you. But once they do, the impression will last a long time.
After glancing at your web pages, users need to have a reason to stay and think about your website, your company, and/or your brand. To make a long lasting impression, you need to give them more. Show your visitors that you're unique with your web design visuals.
A great looking web page is what most people need, but it needs to be similar all over your site. This is to give your website the identity that can distinguish you from many others that are similar to you. Your homepage is your presentation, your landing page needs the call-to-action, your web design needs to have a character.
Enhance Recognition
To recognize someone, the person needs to be the same person. For your website to be recognized, your website's design should be consistent all over the place. Consistency is what helps people find you and drive them to know you better.
As a brand, your web design should be able to signify you. You need a design scheme that does this thing repeatedly.
To make your website consistent, you need to have your own distinct style, your own color combination, your own voice, your own message, your own character. Your logo and branding should always be clear and integrated flawlessly into your web design.
A great visual presence is nothing unless people know what it represents.
Increase Loyalty
There is nothing better than a loyal visitor that trusts you with their hearts. After a visitor is hooked for a single visit, you should encourage them to come back and become a loyal user. Web design can do this for you.
A great logo, color combination that stands out above your competitors, and easy to read fonts are some of the ways to keep them coming.
If a person likes your design, you have successfully establish a connection to them, if design is what comes first in their mind. You can further establish loyalty by using words and/or images that users want to be associated with.
Distinguishable
Your web design is what unifies your look and presence across the web. By using the same visuals on your website, your mobile app, your social media profile accounts, your printed materials, and other marketing products you create, you have created a character for your brand.
A character is what represents you on the web. Who are you? What do you want to be? Why do people want to connect with you. All the questions can be answered if people know who are they talking to.
You can answer all those questions with web design. A unified visuals is your character that will distinguish you from others.
Great Accessibility
A great looking website should not just look great. It should also perform well.
Internet connection speed has gone up and people are getting used to it. Web pages should load as fast as they can so people can have a high expectation on you. A handful of technologies are available to create web design that is both fast and reliable, but yet good looking and attactive.
Technologies for modern web include: HTML, CSS, JavaScript and many others. With these, you will have control and function in a common way.
A site that is fast and easy to use will make users relate to you more. Pleasurable experiences help bring people back and encourage them to become more loyal.
A Human-Level Experience
On the internet, both bots and people made its population. No matter how much of those bots overpopulating your site's traffic, you need to target humans as your priority.
As a part of your design and marketing plan, you need to include a story to make human visitors happy. Your web design's visuals should be able to communicate your message to human visitors so they can remember and retell.
Engaging humans is done by going deeper into their minds. You can connect on a human-level by giving experience individually with each users.
Encourage Sharing
The modern internet is where people share. For a website to be great, it needs to be sharable.
There should be opportunities for users where they can share your content and experience with others. Beside that, you should also encourage that behavior by establishing a community feel for new visitors.
Design social share buttons that are easy to use and find. Preload your messaging, text and images into the prompts to manage the message that goes out.
Creating Trusts
No matter how long you spend your time to create an attractive design, if it couldn't establish trust it can be useless. Your design should help establish trust to people that visit your site, and then the design should be able to encourage visitors to be a benefit to you.
Elements such as colors and typography can impact trust. You can also add other design elements that encourage trust as well such as links to media coverage, testimonials from clients, showing numbers of social media connections, using your own images and photos, and creating a website that is unique (not available elsewhere - free or purchasable).
Encourage Action
For a brand that represents a business, your website should have that call-to-action feature where visitors can engage with you to the next level. For the best marketing results, you need a web design that encourages this. All buttons should be designed in such a way that they are easy to find, distinguishable and easy to click.
Navigational elements and instructions should be clear and concise. Your design will fail if your users don't know who to complete the action the site is designed for them to do. Calls-to-action feature should be easy and be the most prominent elements across your website.
Conclusion
A great web design may differ from one person from another. The answer is actually subjective. But what a great web design have in common is their great ability to impact people by clearly giving the message they want to give in an appealing manner.
There are countless of designs out there. The process to create an overall brand message by web design is nothing less complicated. But when you do succeed in creating a web design that is both compelling and attractive, you may be considered successful in creating your own brand identity, aided only with visuals.