Web designing is considered mostly to be the aesthetic part of building a website, but those that consider it to be only that do not fully appreciate the full extent of the impact it has on a business. In order to explain this point further, let’s take a look at the following aspects of web design that often go neglected and hamper the business in the process.
Trust
Trust on the web is built by three things primarily: reputation, branding, and looks. During surveys, it was found that websites which did not have any significant reputation were judged by visitors almost solely on how they looked and felt. Nearly every website that was mistrusted, owed it to its design choice, rather than content. Thanks to that data, it was possible to identify the five design mistakes which cause viewers to generally mistrust a site.
- Pop-up ads
- Complex layouts
- Tiny text
- Lack of vibrancy or colour
- Long loading times
Surprisingly enough, the actual content had a secondary role to play in terms of first impressions.
SEO
Design choices impact search engine optimisation directly. If one takes the example of the single continuous page design or what is sometimes known as the parallax design, it would be easy to understand how. It’s a popular trend, a lot of people like it, and site owners also like it because it engages viewers better than the traditional page-by-page styles. However, that single page design which enables the whole website to be browsed from just one page also means that all keywords used in the entire website is being spread over a single URL and that’s not good news for SEO. In order to reach the middle ground, it might be a good idea to just make sure that every individual piece of content is laid out on a single page, but not the entire website. This would increase immersion without sacrificing on better SEO optimisation.
Branding
How a company website is designed has a lot to do with the branding of the business as well. Branding is basically what builds trust, reputation, and familiarity over time, and as an important part of that, your website’s design needs to keep the following boxes checked.
- It should reflect the overall philosophy and theme of the business, as marketed to your audience
- It should in no way be contradictory to how your audience has come to view the business because that may raise trust issues
- Sudden and unannounced changes that mess with the familiarity factor should be avoided at all costs
- The design should be updated and changed incrementally, to improve and highlight the things that your customers like most about the site and the business in general
Most reputable web design companies, like this web design Coventry firm, understand the impact of web design on business and they have complete solutions for their clients that not only cater to the aesthetic part of building a site but also SEO and marketing.
If you are thinking about launching a new site or redesigning the old one anytime soon, it might be a good idea to not forget the points we discussed here because in business, one succeeds by making the most out of every investment and web designing is not an exception to that rule.
