What does great web design mean to you?
Well, of course, it can mean different things to different people, but, on a fundamental level, web design boils down to two distinct elements: aesthetics and function.
And, while aesthetics are undoubtedly crucial for your branding and image, it’s the latter we’re looking at today. Specifically, how great web design integrates with your long-term marketing strategy, becoming so much more than just a pretty page on the web.
Web Design Directly Supports User Experience
Get to know what your users need by looking at analytics and assessing previous purchases. Then, make sure your website design provides a direct route to achieving those needs.
Did you know that 86% of customers now state that they are willing to pay more for a great user experience? If your website is designed in an engaging and intuitive way, you are supporting that experience directly and likely to be achieving outstanding levels of conversion rate optimisation by delivering potential customers exactly what they need.
A Well-Designed Website Sits Neatly in Your Wider Sales Funnel
Provide unique landing pages for each user access point — landing pages that help users continue their buyer journey.
The best web developers know that the sites they design do not exist in isolation. They need to be fully integrated components of the broader sales funnel so that customers achieve a seamless route from initial engagement through to purchase. Where are your customers coming from? Perhaps they are picking up physical promotional material at an event, or they are responding to a mailing list message. You need a website design that supports the next steps of their journey.
Top-Quality Design Nurtures Customers Effortlessly
Direct customers to products you think they will like or need based on previous interactions and provide personalised landing pages for returning customers.
What is the more cost-effective, labour-efficient option: to constantly reach out to your customers in the hope of nurturing them to the next phase of the buyer’s journey, or to have a smartly designed resource sitting right there on the web, ready and waiting for high-level customer interaction?
Of course, the answer is the latter. While you still need to invest energy and consideration in the former, your website design is an excellent opportunity to nurture your leads into long-term customers, while also saving on time, cost, and effort.
The Right Design Grows Alongside Your Business
Make sure your web design provides space and scope to grow in the future.
Marketing is not static. This is why you need a strategic digital agency in the first place — to develop an ongoing plan that scales over time. So, you need your website design to follow suit, growing with your business in order to keep offering your customers exactly what they need. This way, when it comes to adding functionality further down the line or taking your organisation in a new direction, you will be able to do so with no problems.
Make sure to keep these aspects in mind during the web planning, design or web redesign process, and development phase, and achieve a great website that not only catches the eye but also connects all the dots.