Web Design Posted On: Dec 21, 2018
Let’s face it, how many times have you left a website because you ended up not getting what you came for? Website design has a lot to do with this. Take this fact for example from Tyton Media: A visitor takes 0.05 seconds to get a first impression of your website. Surprised? This means, if your website design isn’t forming a good impression in front of your customers, it’s likely they’ll leave than spend time on your website.
While content may still be the most important thing on your website, it’s practically of no use if your customers aren’t able to navigate through your website and find it. This, in website design standards, is what is bad UX design.
Your customers start looking for information as soon as they land on your website. According to KoMarketing, 86% of visitors start looking for information about a company’s services when they land on a website.
It is hence crucial for your business to have a website that’s both informative and well-designed.
UI / UX design are the core components of every website design. User Interface Design (UI) is the practice of developing the user interface of a website. It deals with the visual elements of your website and how your visitors will interact with it.
User Experience Design (UX) is the practice of designing the overall layout of the website to make it more user-friendly and easier to navigate. Think of it as the blueprint of your website. It helps your visitors by giving them directions to find what they’re looking for through a good website structure.
According to a metric by Kinesis Inc, just by looking at a company’s website design 75% of visitors agree they form opinions on the trustworthiness of a company.
So, focusing on only one of these components or not paying attention to both can severely affect your website’s performance and traffic. Not to mention it can also affect the credibility of your company.
While a good user interface would make your website look nice and pleasing, a poor website structure would make it difficult to navigate for your customers. On the other hand, a well-structured website with poor visuals and aesthetics would make it look dull for your customers.
This is the reason why a majority of the websites fail to win over customers.
The takeaway? You cannot afford to ignore both UI and UX design of your website.
If you want to boost up your sales tenfold, you must have a website design that has a good balance of UI/UX and which goes hand-in-hand with your brand identity.
While this isn’t a project guide to UI and UX design, we still have better ways to help you understand their importance.
To know the importance of website design in a real world scenario, let’s understand a few design principles along with some examples.
Let’s understand this with an example.
Being user-centric is designing your website for the benefits of your users and not for your own sake. With the visibility approach, you can increase the user-centricity of your website.
What is visibility with respect to user-centric design?
It’s making the most important parts of your website’s UI elements ‘visible’ and easy enough for your users to find.
In Gmail, you may be familiar with the big ‘Compose’ button used for creating an email. You may also notice that it’s more visible than other elements on the page.
Why?
Gmail has a lot of features but its most important feature is letting its users compose emails.
By implementing the visibility design principle, Google helps make composing emails easier for its users by making it strikingly visible on its website. This directly makes the design user-centric for the users of Gmail allowing them to easily compose an email without any unnecessary searches.
Thus, the visibility principle is important when it comes to web design. It will make it easier for your customers to take quick decisions by selecting what they want without any unneeded clicks.
Accessibility, as the name suggests, is the ability to reach something without the need of any extra efforts. However, when it comes to web design, accessibility means making the information on the website ‘accessible’ for users in an efficient and quick way.
Let’s understand how a popular brand uses the power of accessibility to their advantage.
Apple’s clever UX design and content formatting of its Mac webpage help their customers get all the required information without any extra hassle. The presentation of different features of the Mac is aligned in a meaningful way which adds to a delighting shopping experience for their customers.
UX design can enhance your website when it comes to accessibility. By making your website more approachable for your customers, they have a greater chance of finding the products they’re looking for, thus giving you more conversions.
Consistency in website design plays an important role in building your brand image in the minds of your customers.
It is through consistency that users are able to recognize big brands and companies just by looking at the colors, typography, and visuals they have used in their website’s design.
Take a look at The Verge, for example.
The popular tech blog maintains its company’s identity through a solid use of consistency. Right from the consistency of colors to typography, and layout, every aspect of their website is persistent.
This gives their website a distinctive look while still letting their audience know that it’s The Verge and not some other website.
By keeping your fonts, visuals, and logos consistent and aligned to your brand’s identity can help your customers retain a better image of your company.
A well-designed website built with the right approach can effectively make a positive impact on not just your customers, but also on your sales. Which is why it’s necessary to create websites which infuse the right balance of user experience and interface.
Now that you know why it’s crucial for your company’s website to have a good design, you might already be thinking of designing it. Or, to save time hire someone who’ll do it for you.
Being a UI/UX design company, ATop Digital has built professional websites that have transformed businesses. We offer website design services from custom landing pages to responsive websites. We’d suggest going through our services page to give your website the makeover it deserves.
