Your website can either make or break your business, depending on its quality and performance.
These days, people don’t usually bother with business cards or brick-and-mortar shops anymore. All they need is your website. And what they see there has a major influence on whether or not they decide to patronize your brand or not.
However, if you think that a visually attractive website would be enough to entice your visitors to stay and turn them into loyal customers, you’re in for a huge surprise. It’s important for companies to invest in good web design, but not only because it makes your website look great. There is so much more to excellent web design than meets the eye.
Good web design has significant impacts on your online sales. How? Read on to find out.
1. Boosts Your Online Presence
Online shopping is becoming the norm. And before customers buy anything online, they turn to Google for research and recommendations.
Google is all about offering users the best possible online experience, which means that bad website design can hurt your online presence and search engine ranking. No matter how good your products or services are, if customers can’t find you online, they’ll go somewhere else.
Investing in a well-designed website can boost your brand’s image and online presence. It also helps ensure that your target audiences find you when they need you.
2. Provides Excellent User Experience
Though it’s been around for years, UX has recently gained prominence after Google included it as one of its official ranking factors. UX is all about making it more convenient for users to access a website – faster page load time, easy navigation, and informative content, among others. And a well-thought out web design is crucial to creating the best user experience possible.
Visitors who are satisfied with their experience tend to stay longer and explore what you have to offer. Great UX usually leads to happy customers and happy customers are more inclined to make a purchase.
3. Inspires Users to Take Action
One of the main goals of a business website is to encourage visitors to buy a product or avail of the company’s services. But if a website is badly designed and lacks call-to-action, customers would simply browse through the site before moving on to another that makes it easier for them to make a purchase.
A well-designed website has strategically-positioned CTAs that make customers interact with the company in some way, whether it’s a purchase or an inquiry about your products. A website that does not inspire action could cost you lost sales and customers going to the competition.
4. Looks and Works Well on Different Devices
The way people access the Internet has dramatically shifted. Due to innovations in mobile phone technologies, the majority of the population go online using their smartphones and tablets. This means that eCommerce sites must be mobile-friendly or risk losing most of their qualified leads and prospective customers.
Any website designer will tell you that mobile friendliness is a top requirement for websites these days. You can achieve this by adapting a responsive website design. The finest responsive websites are intuitive, easy-to-navigate, and adjust to different screen sizes for better user experiences. As a result, you’ll have higher chances of gaining sales from both desktop and mobile users.
5. Streamlines the Checkout Process
Your website may be offering the hottest products in town, but a lengthy checkout process will keep you from generating more sales. Many eCommerce websites still require customers to go through multiple hurdles before completing a purchase. The longer and more difficult your checkout procedure is, the more likely shoppers are to abandon their carts.
To increase sales, you need a simplified and streamlined checkout experience, and a website redesign may help you achieve just that. Going for a one-page checkout where customers only have to provide essential information will be more beneficial to your bottom line.
6. Reduces Bounce Rates and Improves Conversions
The most significant impact of web design to a business website or eCommerce is, arguably, in terms of bounce rates. Your website’s bounce rate is the number of users that visit your site, view the first page, and then leave without spending any time on it.
Good website design can help lessen bounce rates because it encourages visitors to stay on your site for longer and increases user engagement. As people view more pages and spend more time on your website, they become more inclined to make a purchase or contact you. Eventually, this will result in higher conversion rates.
7. Creates a Great First Impression
We’ve been stressing the idea that user experience will determine whether or not people will stick around your website long enough to see what it has to offer. However, before they get a taste of your user experience, you’ll need to draw them in first – and that’s where amazing visuals come into play.
Make your website stand out from the crowd to entice a fair share of your target audiences. A website that looks as if it has not undergone any design updates since the 90’s is a major turn-off for customers.
When it comes to websites, first impressions matter – and in many cases, they last. It only takes 0.05 seconds for a user to establish an opinion of your website and decide whether they stay or go. Make the most out of this opportunity.
