How Can Web Design Affect the Success of A Business? Principles for Designers
Thinking about becoming a website designer? If you are, you should know that this fast growing field isn’t just about aesthetics and fun graphics– the design principles you’ll use everyday could determine the future of the business on whose site you are working. The first impressions a browser gets of a site helps him or her form an opinion about it. In fact, studies have shown that businesses have only 10 seconds to leave an impression and tell clients what’ll they’ll get out out of their company before the client walks away.
Your efforts and artistic choices as a website designer have huge tangible consequences — up to $1.1 trillion sales in 2011 were web influenced. Getting into web design and development is lucrative, and gives you a chance to lay your creative mark on many different platforms
Complement the business
A public relations firm requires a very different presentation than does a special events management company, for instance. Like any service provided, it is important to take the customer’s special needs in mind. It is doubly important when designing a website, because the way and the speed at which information is conferred has a big impact on consumer sales. It has been shown that users prefer visual information, with content video views topping 50 billion every month. PR companies might be more conducive to a visual collage of published news articles, while a special events company might need a video montage of past events. Don’t just apply the website design formula — personalize it.
Consider it an experience
When designing sites, a website designer should always be aware of the experience they are creating. This includes interface design, how easy the components are to use, how accessible the information is to access, and what aspects of the website make the company stand out. A prospective customers click is only a small part of their overall Internet use experience, and in an age where consumers are used to instant gratification, 88% of users are much less likely to return to a site if they had a bad user experience.
Don’t let the 48% of people who said that the credibility of a company is largely determined by it’s web design down. Creating a user friend, attractive and memorable website is to a certain extent a science — a careful combination of many different ingredients– but it is also an art. Whether you’ll work for a web design company or on a freelance basis for businesses,