Remember the world before the Internet? Let’s say you needed to write a research paper for school. If you didn’t own an expensive encyclopedia set, you had to visit a library. Once you arrived, you’d ask a librarian to look up the Dewey decimal number, and then search aisle by aisle for the book you were looking for (if it were available). Then you’d have to find the entry that you were looking for in the encyclopedia. Nowadays, your customers expect much more convenience than that, but if you don’t have a good website design, then visiting your website can feel like a chore. Let’s explore why good website design matters.

Clarity

When someone visits your website, they are almost always looking for one specific piece of information: the services you provide, examples of your work, how to contact you, etc. And yet, because of the culture of convenience that the Information Age has created, that person probably isn’t willing to scour your website for that information. If that information is too hard to find, oftentimes they will visit a competitor’s site.

To ensure that your customers can find what they are looking for, make sure that your website has an easy-to-follow navigation system. Position your most important pages in your site’s main navigation system, and include that navigation in the header of your site. This way, your site’s visitors can get to your most important pages from any page on your site.

Visual Interest

When someone visits a website for the first time, you only have a few seconds to grab their attention. Literally, 55% of your site’s visitors will spend fewer than 15 seconds on your website. You have 15 seconds to make an impression. An effective way to get their attention is to add visual interest to your site. You can add visual interest with high-resolution imagery, video, and a colorful, consistent brand identity. As an added bonus, adding imagery, when done correctly, will help your site’s visibility through the use of alt tags.

Page Speed

Now, visual interest – especially in the form of high-resolution imagery and video – is a double edged sword. The higher quality that the images and videos are, the larger the file sizes typically are. All of these assets have to be sent from a server somewhere in the world to your site’s visitors, and some of those visitors are visiting over a sluggish, cellular data connection. You want your website to be beautiful, but you also want your website to be performant. This is a hallmark of good website design: looking good and working well.

Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like… and feels like. Design is how it works.

– Steve Jobs

Conclusion

Your customers use the Internet on a daily basis. There is an expectation of convenience when they visit your website. And if you don’t have a good website design, then you may be losing leads to your competition. If you view your website and you aren’t confident that your design is good enough, contact us today to find out how we can help you!