First impressions are everything these days, especially when it comes to web design.
The audience experience has become customers’ number one priority and expectation when window shopping on the web. In fact, 38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content or layout is unappealing!
With more and more audiences wanting a memorable web design experience, your business must learn why web design matters in regards to converting viewings into loyal customers.
Audience Experience Can Make or Break Your Business
COVID-19 has changed the way people expect to be treated by the brands and businesses they buy from. No one wants to be treated like another customer anymore; they want to feel a real connection to those they support.
Web design is no exception to this new rule.
With more and more people expecting experiences with brands, a custom web design and development plan is essential to keep your audience engaged and converting and keep them happy.
When it comes to understanding why web design matters, there is one simple answer…
Because your audience experience matters.
As you can see from the statistics above, customers will not only pay more for a good experience, but it’s also one of the most important factors when deciding to purchase from a brand.
If you’re struggling to keep clients entertained or engaged on your website, keep reading to learn more about why web design matters and how to give your audience the experience they crave.
5 Important Reasons Why Web Design Matters
First Impressions Are Key
Research has shown that first impressions of a website are 94% design-related. Content and copy is important as well, but even the best wording is rendered worthless when it’s surrounded by poor design.
Studies of consumer behavior have found that custom web design and development have the biggest influence on audience experience and their overall first impressions of your brand.
Positive first impressions lead to higher conversion and click-through rates. The initial impression that someone gets from your site can have an effect on how they perceive future interactions with your business. Research shows that negative first impressions significantly drag user satisfaction.
Studies find that no matter how contradictory, subsequent impressions can never make up for the first impression – bringing a more than literal meaning to the saying that “you never get a second chance to make a first impression.”
Bad Design Can Mean Bad Conversions
If you’re asking yourself, “why web design matters when it comes to conversions,” you’re not alone. Many small business owners assume that a great product or service can essentially sell itself, regardless of design. And while they aren’t entirely wrong, you need to remember your audience experiences your brand differently than you.
As we mentioned above, a wrong first impression can significantly impact your conversion rate. Even if you do sell the world’s greatest yoga products or offer the best photography service, your consumers aren’t going to know that if your web design clouds their judgment.
Even the colors you choose can affect how your audience experiences your website!
The colors you use can help strengthen your brand, encourage sales, and even lead visitors toward specific pages or actions on your landing page.
For example, call to action buttons that are red or orange often have higher conversion rates than those that are green. And that while blue has been noted to suppress appetites, it is great for boosting sales indirectly.
To read more about other color psychology facts, click here.
It Affects Customer Usability and Navigation
Another big reason why web design matters is because it can affect your customer’s useability and navigation. When users access your site, they want to access information or check out quickly and easily. If you want visitors to remain on your page, you must implement navigation that is easy for your audience to use.
One way to figure out how usable and easy your website is to navigate is to research your heatmaps.
A website heatmap is a graphical representation of where your audience clicks and hovers using a system of color-coding to represent different values. Heatmaps are used in various forms of analytics but are most commonly used to show user behavior on specific web pages.
Heatmaps can show you how people interact with your website, so you can use those insights to improve the audience experience.
Hotjar, a website analytics platform, gives us fives ways heatmaps can help your overall audience experience:
Showcases your best-performing designs
Finds which CTAs have the most (and least) clicks
Measures how far your audience is scrolling
Spots areas your audience is expecting something to happen
Helps optimize your site for mobile
Heatmaps are the perfect way to show you why placement and web design matter.
It Increases Your Professionalism and Trust
According to the Stanford Web Credibility Project, judgments on a company’s credibility are 75% based on the company’s website design alone!
Your business could be selling the world’s best product or service, but if your web design looks unprofessional or outdated, audiences may not even stay on your site long enough to find out.
One of the best ways to give your audience a trustworthy experience is by creating a custom web design and development strategy that incorporates visual hierarchy.
Visual Hierarchy refers to the organization of the design elements on your pages so that the eye is guided to consume each design element in the intended order.
However, it’s important to note that visual hierarchy needs to work with functionality in web design. In other words, form and function need to work in perfect harmony. If a website has beautiful aesthetics but lacks functionality, the visitor has no way to answer CTAs or purchase a product and move on to a site that better fits their needs.
Web Design Directly Affects SEO
Web Design and SEO go hand-in-hand these days.
Without both SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and high-quality website design, your target audience might not be able to find you, engage with you, or use your product/services.
Search engine bots mimic the human user experience, so what's bad for human users is also bad for search engines.
If you have a poorly designed website that's hard to use or takes too long to load, your consumers are going to leave. When search engines pick up on your high bounce rate, they drop your rankings in the search engine results accordingly.
If you get too high of a bounce rate for a certain keyword, Google will start to show you less and less to your target audience.
Bounce rate describes the rate at which consumers leave your website without visiting a second page. A good bounce rate is between 26 to 40%, with rates between 41 to 55% to be average. Anything from 56 to 70% is higher than average and considered “undesirable” to search engine bots.
If your website isn’t aesthetically pleasing or easy to navigate according to your target audience, your bounce rate and search rankings can be hurt.
Admit it...you laughed a little, didn’t you?
But Avinash Kaushik has a point!
You can use bounce rate to measure if you’re living up to your audience’s expectations. Now, visitors bouncing from your website probably aren’t puking before they leave, despite what Avinash Kaushik says. Even so, you want them to engage with your site.
Key Takeaways
Web Design is not only important for aesthetics and SEO, but your audience cares too. Having an outdated or unimpressive website will not only cause your viewers to bounce and leave, but it could affect future sales with their friends and family as well.
When learning why web design matters, you first have to understand your audience and what they are looking for. If you an own eCommerce store, maybe they would like a progress indicator bar to show them how far along in the checkout process they are.
If you're a photographer, maybe they want to see a breakdown of your photoshoots based on the location.
Whatever that reason may be, Zoek web design experts know exactly how to design a website that converts. Give us a call, and let's figure out what type of website you need to attract and convert your audience.
Kellyann Doyle is a Content Marketing Writer at Zoek, an SEO, Web Design, and Digital Marketing Agency that assists small and medium-sized businesses with their online footprint. She earned her Bachelor's Degree in 2013 from the University of Houston with a Major in Communications and a Minor in Marketing and has been working in the Digital Marketing world ever since. When not working, you can find Kellyann trying new recipes, enjoying a good nap, or watching Friends for the 500th time.