“There are three responses to a piece of design – yes, no, and WOW!” said the American graphic designer Milton Glaser. Milton’s famous works include the NYC logo, Brooklyn Brewery logo, psychedelic Bob Dylan poster and such iconic works.
If you think about it, design is what makes the ordinary extraordinary. It is design that made an ordinary laptop the prestigious Apple Mac. It is design that makes a Ferrari different from an ordinary car. It is design that is the true differentiator. Good design can turn heads around and captivate attention.
Incidentally, the same applies to website design as well. Good website design is a pleasure to work with. It entices users and hooks them into using the website for long. That said, there are few traits that a good website design must have:
- It should be elegant
- Easy-to-use
- High on user experience
- Less distracting
- More intuitive
- Serve the user’s purpose
We can call these the cardinal rules of website designing. If you manage to abide by these rules, then your users will surely look over it and may interact with website in-depth. A wellplanned and crafted website design always success in appealing visitors and customers.
Now, let’s get cut to the chase. Why is good website design essential? What difference does it make? What will you possibly lose if the website design is shoddy?
Enhance brand image
A well-designed website is the preface of a good business. It can create the first impression, one that lasts long for the business. In the digital age, users search for almost anything on the Internet. In most cases, it is your website that they will see before transacting any business with you. So it is imperative that your business has a well-designed website. It helps put up a good face to users who might be waiting to become your customers. The website’s good design will translate into an impressive brand image that will fetch returns in the long run.
Increases time spent on website
Engagement. This is the magical word that every web designer is aspiring to master. They want users to engage with the websites in a flawless manner. But, it doesn’t happen so easily. If you want your users to engage with your website more and spend more time spend time on it, it must deliver on certain things.
Like making information easily accessible. Making navigation intuitive so that users are able to go to the information that they are seeking instantly. When that happens naturally, the average time spend on the website by users will increase substantially. Time spent on website being a metric for SEO-friendliness, good website design will help boost your SEO ranking.
Captures mobile traffic
90 percent of the time spent on mobile devices is spent in apps. Mobile traffic is responsible for 52.2 percent of Internet traffic in 2018, reports Hosting Facts. Mobile is the new Internet accessing medium. It has surpassed PC, laptops and even tablets. If you want your website to receive more traffic, it must be mobile-friendly.
It must have a mobile-responsive design so that the website can be rendered with perfect visuals and alignment on all mobile devices. If that works finely, it will again add to the average time spent time on your website.
Delivers information
Good design should reveal content that the user is curious about. It will carefully push the less important content to the shadows and position it in a way that it can still be accessed if required. In web designing context, content is the text copy that appears on the pages. They deliver information that the user might want to learn to consider a buying decision.
Other elements like call-to-actions for performing certain actions, trust seals that display security of the website, affiliations with trade chambers, certified distributor emblems, etc. can also add to the user’s convenience in decision-making. Furthermore, a website’s external appearance like the URL in the address bar may also shed some influence on the user’s decision-making.
For instance, conscious users always prefer dealing with websites that are encrypted with the best SSL certificates. Users know that a website with the HTTPS in the browser is trustworthy and can be used to share sensitive information with.
Aids SEO ranking
A well-designed website will have certain features that makes it easy to crawl for SEO bots. For instance, the speed at which the page loads. If the website is designed with high-res images with heavy file sizes, the page loading speed will be poor which will result in poor user experience.
On the other hand, if the images are optimized for visual appeal as well as quick loading, it will achieve the twin goal of making the website look great as well as load faster. And, it is common knowledge that fast loading websites have an SEO edge.
Last few things
Few years ago, in the late 2000s, a website was merely a loosely held web pages. But, today a website is more like the gateway to digital users. It has become the primary mode of interaction for users with any business. So, it is wise to design a good website that will prove to be useful to your users. Crafting a perfect design, not just for a website, for anything is a daunting task. But, if done right, it can amplify your we