Website Design Matters and Here's Why

Oscar WaterworthSenior Editor
Oscar is a writer and a senior editor over at Bizzmarkblog.com. He enjoys reading and writing about marketing, technology, and business.
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Read about why website design really matters in today's demanding market.
While basically every business on the market has a working website, many of them are poorly designed or come from a WordPress template. However, seeing as how around 40% of people will abandon a website if it fails to load or if the layout is unattractive (according to the last year’s State of Content Report by Adobe) – this is simply unacceptable. Moreover, according to KoMarketing research, more than 50% of people will use the navigation menu to orient themselves and if by any chance the design is counterintuitive, they will be out of there in a second and most likely will not come back.


RWD (Responsive Web Design)

Ever since mobile surpassed desktop usage two years ago, mobile optimization can no longer be considered secondary and in order to succeed, your website has to have a mobile strategy set in place. Experts are predicting a continuous increase in mobile usage. With the increasing variety of devices (tablet usage has grown by more than 30% from December 2013 to December 2015, according to comScore) you are required to make your design more flexible than ever before. Now, by definition, Responsive Web Design responds to everything from the user’s device to the device’s platform. This basically means that RWD can easily adapt to any screen resolution. So if you want to deliver an acceptable user experience, your website design has to respond to the user’s viewport. This design will definitely increase your visits, sales, and especially conversion rate – according to Aberdeen Group, a responsively designed website achieves 11% more conversions than non-responsive websites.


Branding and Grabbing People’s Attention

Before a person formulates an opinion on your brand, s/he will definitely turn to the internet and do some research. In fact, according to a recent Visible Logic survey, nearly 90% of respondents said that they visit a company’s website before they make a purchase. And as numerous studies have shown, you have about half a second to make an impression and convey your brand messaging. Keep in mind that an impression is formed way before a visitor reads or watches any of your content or clicks on your FAQ page. You have to grab the attention of any potential customer with your site’s “nonverbal cues”, such as your logo, photos and even colors and fonts. And a lack of budget is not a viable excuse in 2016 – if you do not have the money to pay a designer, you can easily find a great, free website builder in just a couple of seconds  and create a professional looking site in a matter of minutes.


Ease-of-Use Matters More Than Ever

When visitors click on your website, they want to find information about your product or service, read everything they want to know and quickly bounce. If there is too much clicking, scrolling, or if your site is disorganized, an average user will give up and leave your website in less than 60 seconds. Usability is one of the most important features of your website and while it may be tempting to put as much information as possible on your homepage, you should definitely steer away from it. Ease-of-use and good loading speeds are mostly achieved through simplification. And keep in mind that on the Internet, each second counts, because according to KissMetrics, an average user now expects a web page to load in less than 2 seconds.


Building Customer Trust

In most cases, your website is the first interaction a customer has with your brand, so it is vital that it sends the right message from the get go and builds your organization’s credibility. What is more, Stanford's famous Persuasive Technology Lab conducted a survey of more than 2,600 people, which revealed that nearly half (46.1% to be exact) think that website design is the number one criteria for evaluating whether a business is credible or not. To put it simply, design elements like content, navigation, and speed can make or break a business. And whether you realize it or not, the overall visual design has to do a lot with establishing trust and disproportionate, busy designs only fill your visitors with distrust. 
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Oscar WaterworthSenior Editor
Oscar is a writer and a senior editor over at Bizzmarkblog.com. He enjoys reading and writing about marketing, technology, and business.

Comments (2)

Good read Oscar! Thanks for sharing that here :)
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