It can be difficult to put a number on what design should cost. Should it be valued by the time it takes to create? No, not necessarily. The benefits of design done right are much more than a “pretty facade”.
Let’s talk about all the ways great design can benefit your business and your bottom line.
Improve How Your Business is Perceived
Perception, when honest, is a very important piece to your business. When you meet someone or visit their website, you are forming an opinion about their business. So when someone comes to your website, what might they think about the way you do business? What would they say about your products?
As much as I hate to admit it, looks ARE important. We are all judgmental about our purchases and decisions. Think about when you are grocery shopping. If you have a certain amount of money to spend, you look for off-brand products that look less attractive. This is done intentionally because those designers want their target customer (value shoppers) to have a great experience in the store. They know they can afford the product because it doesn’t look expensive at first glance.
Great design can give your potential customers the right perceptions of your business. A common problem for small businesses is that they spend too much time handling inquiries from customers that aren’t qualified. Either they can’t afford the product or service or they don’t understand clearly what it is that you offer. A well designed website can help customers understand what you do, what it costs and if your business would in fact be a good fit for them.
If you are selling a high priced luxury item you wouldn’t want a design that looked cheap. This would waste the customer’s time and likely yours in the end. A design that accurately portrays your business can save you time in your sales funnel and improve your bottom line.
Great design is an investment that keeps on giving.
Elicit Positive Feelings
If you can make things easier for your customer by improving the design of your website or app, they’ll likely be pretty happy. From a customer’s perspective, I get pretty excited when websites I use on a daily basis make things faster and easier for me. It saves me time and that increases my bottom line too.
It’s not just about your business, think about your customer’s time as well when going through a re-design or creating a new website.
My favorite example of a website that is quite fun to use is MailChimp. Many of our clients use their service and we often help them setup templates and organize their mailing lists. It’s not a very fun task necessarily and MC recognizes this. When creating a campaign, there is always a funky monkey in the top-right corner. He has funny things to say and shares videos and random facts. It sometimes is facts about monkey’s or correlates to email newsletters.
It makes the process a little more fun and positive. Leave your customers with a positive feeling after they use your website or app. There are enough bad things in the world. Make your mark with great design.
More Profit
You’d be surprised how much pull the color of a button has to help your customer make a purchase. Placement of specific content can hurt your online sales flow. Design details are incredibly important and often overlooked and undervalued.
Consumers have the attention span of a lit match,” he says. Or they just don’t care, don’t want to take the time to learn how to use the search. -Tim Ash*
Crazy Egg is a great tool to see where visitors are clicking, how far they are scrolling & so much more. Investing in design analysis and making educated changes can lead to more sales. Place content where your customers are looking for it and not where it is distracting them from making a purchase. Guide them to do what you are intending. Your designer or user experience pro should be asking you what your end goals are with every page.
User experience is incredibly important and is tied tightly to design & your bottom line.
Design for the Future
One of the things we think about every day is how the design can extend into a business’ future. Our hope is you are able to take advantage of the design for many years to come. Although you may want to make adjustments here and there based on analytics over time, you shouldn’t need to re-design the entire website in just a few short years. A website is meant to be an incomplete, ever-changing beast to be frank.
Technology changes so rapidly. In the blink of an eye, we are on to the next big thing. Lately that big thing is responsive design.
Responsive design allows you to cater your website to specific mobile devices with quite a bit of control. It also allows you to take advantage of larger screens. The biggest benefit is that you are setup for future devices that come on to the market. If you have a lot of customers visiting your website on their iPad Mini, which you didn’t expect in the beginning, your designer can help you adjust your website to take that into account. It wouldn’t require a whole separate website or a major re-design.
Think twice when you are choosing a designer for your project. Make sure you are being asked the right questions about your business during the process. A designer that cares about your business will ask.
Invest in great design. It’s more than just a pretty facade.
*Source: Little details—and mistakes—can add up for online shoppers
