The Internet is a vast playing field, and whether businesses thrive or perish here depends on how well they can appeal to—and impress—their target consumers. While many factors underlie the success of your online business, your website is the key that has the power to engage visitors and reel them in as your customers. The simple truth, however, is that a lot of websites fall short in both the areas of creativity and functionality.
The Good Design
The design of your website is a most fundamental factor that influences the chances of business success online.
The truly effective sites are those that look fresh and imaginative, and those that are useful. Thus, the wise online entrepreneur will not undermine his website’s chances of attracting consumers, communicating with them, and servicing them well.
The Internet is a very visual medium, and to capitalize on this, you need to put a high premium on making your website visually appealing to web surfers.
Together with being appealing, your site also has to be comprehensible. Web design is, first and foremost, a logical composition of different sensory elements. Combined, these elements endeavor to communicate your proposition—whether it is a business sale, a political advocacy, a goal to entertain, or whatnot—to the viewer.
Business websites are particularly purpose-driven. The visual and other elements on them have to be arranged in a certain way so as to achieve two things: (1) to communicate the commercial message instantly, clearly and powerfully, and (2) to make it easy for consumers to respond to this message.
What, then, makes for a good business web design? While “good” is a subjective concept, there are however a number of generally accepted notions of what makes a good website design. Here are some of these:
A Welcoming Sight
First, a good design has to be inviting. Being able to catch the visitor’s attention right away, then giving a positive first impression are the first goals of any website.
Always consider that the nature of the Internet allows web surfers the power to leave your site any time that they so desire. Don’t expect surfers to be patient with sites that do not meet their aesthetic requirements right away.
Thus, websites with over-the-top designs and elaborate details—or those that take too much time to load—are apt to be rebuffed by web surfers. Visitors will abandon these sites before they even start to say what they have to say.
A Sustaining Force
Design, too, has to be riveting. When a visitor enters your website, it takes about less than 10 seconds for him or her to decide whether it is worth browsing through. Being able to sustain your web visitor’s interest demands much prudence from the web designer.
First, it is important to keep the web design unified so as not to confuse the viewer. At the same time, a considerable amount of variety on your site will keep your visitors from getting bored.
Navigation also plays a crucial role in keeping your visitors riveted to your site. Smooth navigation allows visitors to accumulate as much information as they want. Being able to navigate your site with ease will also show your customers clearly that your site is created with their ease in mind.
A Rational Idea
Most importantly, a web design has to be relevant. Many web designers fall into the trap of using highly impressive visuals without any regard to the relevance of such visuals to the site’s central message and purpose.
Flashes of aesthetic brilliance on your site may elicit your site visitor’s interest. But if the visuals do not market your products and services or communicate your business intentions, they will defeat the very purpose of your putting up a site in the first place. There must be a rationale behind your choices of color schemes, images, design elements, types, and how and where your web text blocks are placed. Even choosing how these elements will complement each other should be purposeful.
In principle, design is engaging when it tests boundaries and pushes limits. But for business websites, it is advisable for you to stick to the time-tested essentials.
The Design is The Message
Thus, for the design of your business website to be good, it must first and foremost, convey your central business proposition in a manner that is easy to understand and that provides a positive experience to site visitors. Designing your business site should be a delicate balance between aesthetics and practicality. At the bottom line, your site should move visitors to buy your products, use your services, or contact you to ask questions about these.
Your website must communicate. While copy does the main job in this aspect, don’t underestimate the weight that design contributes to this endeavor.
What are the elements of your site design that need attention?
Layout
The layout of your website plays a vital role in communicating your professional position. How body texts and images are laid out in your web pages will guide your visitor’s eye movement—and flow of thought. By convention, a more uniform arrangement of web text body and accompanying visuals makes for a more comfortable browsing experience for your viewer. How all the visual components of your site are arranged will also ensure that your site’s messages are intelligible, clear—and powerful.
Color
Color selection is another key factor in determining how effectively your web design communicates to its viewers. Adding visual appeal, however, is only one purpose of your site’s color scheme. As you probably know, colors have various persuasive effects on a viewer’s psyche. Some colors can intensify emotions. Some can downplay urges. Others stimulate brain activity. Strategically combined with certain hues, some colors will be a perfect fit to the message your site wants to impart.
Typography
How your copy is presented—the size, kind and position of typefaces used in web text—is another crucial element in web design.
Your site’s typography determines whether or not your message is intelligible. Even the most well-written web content can lose much impact when presented in a typeface that is hard to read.
Typeface selection requires from your designer a considerable visual understanding of fonts. From the structure of letterforms, to the allotment of space (leading, letter and word spacing), to type sizes, the wise designer should choose what will appear legible on a computer screen. He must also choose the typeface that complements the copy, and that which has the most desired impact on the visitor.
Navigation
Navigation is the element that distinguishes the Internet from other visual media. Unlike a magazine or a newsletter, a website capitalizes on its immediate interactivity with its audience. Thus, its functionality is dictated by how web surfers can browse through its different sections with relative ease and without getting confused. Keeping the navigation design smooth and straightforward should thus be a paramount consideration of your web designer.
Composition
The overall effect that your website achieves, however, is created by your composition. This refers to how all the visual elements complement and highlight each other.
All visual elements in your web design are there for a purpose—and some elements are really meant to emphasize others. A good website cashes in on the interdependence of its design components.
Plan And Put it All Together
Good design depends in part on your designer’s aesthetic instincts. A great design on your site, however, involves a lot of study, planning and meticulous execution. Over the long haul, your business website will benefit from design ideas that are carefully conceptualized and implemented.
In the final analysis, the true test of your site design’s success is its ability to connect to its audience. If the design elicits the reactions you desired and planned for—which is primary to move your visitors to make a buying decision; if it appeals to the emotions that buttress and solidify this decision—that is when you can say that your site’s design is truly good. Truly, for online enterprises, web design is a key to winning consumers’ hearts and minds.