Most people, if given the choice, choose to look at something aesthetically pleasing over something that looks old, bad, rushed, or incomplete. This is the same for a piece of artwork, a landscape, and it is also the same for website and internet browsing preferences of internet users, especially when planning to make a purchase. That means your websites’ design is critically important to the success of your business, no matter if you sell products or services, operate in-store or online only.
Creating a First Impression
Web Design NYC
First impressions are important. Whether you’re on a job interview, out on a first date, or doing some online shopping; what you feel when you first see something will play a major role in how you think about it. Let’s look at an example.
Consider a homeowner shopping for a new home pool installation. They pull up Google and do their search. The first two ads are quite different though they offer the same products and service. Website “A” looks like it was built 20 years ago, the fonts are off, the color schemes don’t make sense, images are unclear, and the overall look of the site doesn’t give a good impression. Website “B” looks fresh and new, with modern styles, clear images, bright colors, and an easy-to-use site navigation system. Where site “A” doesn’t show any good images of work they’d done, site “B” has an entire portfolio section of complete pool installation projects to view.
Which business do you think the homeowner will wind up calling for an estimate? Website “A” with poor pictures and an old-looking sloppy website or website “B” with their professional website design, simple navigation, and ease of use? Of course, website “B” will win this battle. Even if the quality of the work website “A” does is better than website “B”, that is not illustrated through the look and feel of their website and they, therefore, lose the customer to website “B” for simply having a better-looking website.
Beyond Products & Services
The look and feel of your website is critically important to your online success when selling products and services. But, web design also goes beyond selling just goods or services. Consider a platform like Facebook, where the product is the platform and isn’t for sale, it is free to use for all users. If we look at Facebook historically its main original competitor was MySpace. So, why did Facebook succeed and MySpace failed? There are a lot of reasons we can point to, their business model, user base, historical timing, etc; but one of those was also the easy-to-use and great-looking functional web design that Facebook has employed and evolved over time. People loved using Facebook because they could connect with family and friends the world over. But they started using and continued using the platform because it also looks great, is aesthetically pleasing, and is constantly learning what people feel looks good, and isn’t afraid to change something up where needed.
Web Design Aids in SEO
SEO (search engine optimization) is the practice of optimizing your website in terms of its visible and invisible (coding) structure so that Google and other search engine display your website for certain search terms and phrases. For example, a website selling “laser pointers”, will optimize its SEO towards laser pointer search terms. Web design plays an important role in SEO because Google prefers certain design pieces over others. The important part to remember is that web design isn’t just what you see on the surface, it is also the “under the hood” pieces that get your site moving. What is beneath the surface is as important as what users see for search engine optimization.
Do I Really Need to Pay for Web Design?
You can answer that question very easily. Do you know how to use Dreamweaver, Photoshop, HTML/PHP coding, SEO, Google search console, Google shopping feeds, deprecated data, plugin updating formats, navigation development, email capture forms, FAQ pages, website troubleshooting, and more? The internet has come a long way in the past 20+ years and it is more complicated than ever before to develop a great looking and properly optimized website. Professional web design is critical to businesses large and small, local or international, selling products or services.
You only have one chance to make a good first impression, don’t you want to make the most of that chance? Let’s discuss your business goals and how a great-looking and properly optimized website will help you meet and exceed those goals. It all starts with your visibility and presence online and making the most of that means offering customers and prospective clients a great-looking secure website to browse.
