What Is Web Design, and Why Do I Even Need It?

You have an award-winning website, right?

It’s well-designed and you have more traffic than you can handle. Or not.

No hurt feelings intended but the average small business doesn’t have an award-worthy website. 

Most wouldn’t even qualify for an honorable mention.

Are you familiar with web design?

Maybe you have a home-grown website, which is fine if it’s bringing business to you. 

Maybe you’re not sure if you need anything special when it comes to the design of your site.

Don’t worry if your site isn’t as engaging as you’d like or if it isn’t doing much of anything at all.

We’ve put together a few ideas that will answer the question “what is web design” and “why do I need it?”

Continue reading and make web design a priority for 2019.

What Is Web Design?

In a nutshell, web design is the process of creating a website.

Be careful you don’t confuse web design with web development. Web development is directly influenced by design but it requires a different skill set.

Web design is about aesthetics. Aesthetics refers to “what is pleasing to the senses and especially sight.” 

People who visit your website will use their eyes first. If what they see isn’t visually appealing, they’ll move on.

Using the principles of aesthetics, web designers consider the following:

• Layout
• User interface
• Imagery

These factors work together with the end goal of a visually appealing and user-friendly website.

Essential for Your Brand

Web design is a critical component of branding your business.

Branding includes:

• Your logo
• A single typeface
• Color palette

Your brand also encompasses a consistent tone in your written content.

Web design creates a structure for your branding message. Everything about your company and its products and services resides within that structure.

A strong brand is easily recognized. When customers recognize a brand, they become familiar with it and over time trust it. When customers trust your brand they’ll be confident about doing business with you.

When you think about what is web design and how it relates to your success, consider the importance of brand recognition.

Represents Your Business

Businesses don’t simply create a website because it’s the hip thing to do. Your website serves a purpose, which should include:

• Selling products
• Increasing traffic-more visitors
• Lead generation
• Promotion 

Web design pulls the components of the website’s purpose together so that they effectively represent the business.

It’s About the Feels

We’ve all clicked on to a web page and cringed.

Maybe the color palette used too many hues. Chartreuse, magenta, and lime green are a little intimidating when used together.

Some websites overuse animation, videos, and large images, which can slow down a website. Do you hang around waiting for slow-loading images or do you navigate away from the site?

Imagine walking through a store. You’re shopping for a new kitchen gadget. You love kitchen gadgets. In the store, you can pick up that ergonomic vegetable peeler and imagine how fun peeling potatoes will be once it’s yours.

Your customer can’t do that on your website. 

Instead, your customer imagines what it would feel like if they held your portable fishing pole in their hand. They imagine how your socks knit from organic alpaca wool feels on their feet.

You need a web designer who uses their unique web designing skills in combination with an understanding of web design principles. The result is a website that enhances your useful and beautiful products.

Your customer feels a deep level of satisfaction before they even put those socks on their feet.

The design of your website influences in a big way how your customers see and feel about you.

If your website feels confusing, chaotic, or cluttered, say “bye-bye” to your customer, usually before you can even call them one.

The Doorway to Your Business

Cruising the internet is the way today’s customers window shop.

In the digital age, and every age group is doing it — people shop online.

Storefronts attract customers to brick and mortar stores. Think of your homepage design. Does it invite customers to open the door and come in? 

Imagine everything you experience when you walk through the doors of Danbury Fair or The Connecticut Post Mall in Milford.

Can you hear fountains splashing in the center court? Smell the cinnamon buns from the food court? Feel the excitement of handing over some cash and getting a beautiful shopping bag with the sweater you’ve been saving for in return?

Your homepage design should hand out a warm welcome and even though customers can’t smell or touch your products, their imagination should be sparked.

Think of your website as the doorway to your business.

Helps Customers Know You

A well-designed website helps your customers know you.

Not you personally but the “you” that’s your product or service.

It doesn’t matter whether you sell duck whistles or car parts for antique Jeeps. If your customer can’t tell what you offer when they first navigate to your site, you’ve lost them.

We’ve all shopped in (or tried) one of those stores where the displays are cluttered or all the products are heaped together.

You aren’t sure what the store sells.

It makes for a horrible shopping experience and for those customers who have short attention spans, it means they leave the store without purchasing anything.

When your website is given the golden touch of good web design, your customers get a clear picture of who you are and what problem you can solve for them.

Customer Service Representative

Think for a minute about your most recent interaction with a customer service representative. It could be a cashier at the grocery store or the person who helped you resolve an issue with a gift you ordered online.

Was the person warm and helpful or did they give you the brush-off? Did they make you feel welcome or did you feel lost and sorry you bothered doing business with them?

Regardless of how well they responded to your situation, at least you talked with a human.

That’s not usually the case with a website. 

A poorly designed website feels like the customer has just talked with an unhelpful customer service rep.

Your well-designed website provides warm and helpful service.

Customers can navigate easily from product descriptions to adding products to their shopping cart, to payment. If they have questions, your FAQ page or Chatbot isn’t hidden and doesn’t require several clicks to find.

You New Year’s Resolution

Were you aware that Connecticut is home to some of the most well-known worldwide brands? Chances are those brands at one time asked the question “what is web design?” and figured out how important it was to their corporate branding.

The year 2018 is almost over. Why not welcome 2091 by making website design part of your  New Year’s resolutions?

Optimum Systems Online (OSO) wishes you a Happy New Year! Contact us today for help giving your website a whole new look for 2019.