The Importance of Web Design To Increase Traffic and Boost Sales

upqode | Aug 13th, 2020

As a business owner, you need an e-commerce platform to effectively sell your product line or services online. However, having an e-commerce platform isn’t enough in today’s competitive market. You need to understand the importance of web design in achieving an edge over your competitors. 

If you’re wondering why you’re not selling as much as you’d like to, the primary reason for that could be your web design.

In the status quo, where everyone is digitalized, you need a web design that not only helps you stand out but also attracts and encourages your customers to make a purchase. 

The right web design will check all the boxes to increase traffic and boost sales through its easy-to-use elements. However, creating an effective web design page requires extensive expertise in the field. This is why web development agencies are on the rise nowadays.

What Is Web Design? 

A web design is the process of organizing, planning, and arranging content on the internet. Contrary to popular perception, web design is not only for websites, but it is also equally important for mobile apps, user interfaces, and other applications on the internet. 

The importance of web designing in today’s world is far greater than before. Modern-day web designs are not only aesthetically pleasing, but they also fulfill all other functional requirements of a web interface. 

It’s for you to decide whether you want a responsive website or perhaps an adaptive webpage to increase traffic and boost sales. Important web design is not only restricted to the design itself, but it also sets the groundwork for the importance of CSS in web design and the importance of UX in web design.

Why Is Web Design Important? 

No matter how great your product offerings are, the first element of interaction with the customer is your web design. If they’re not impressed by it or they find it too difficult to use, chances are they will bounce off the website.

You need to understand the importance of web design and factors associated with it. So, here are six crucial reasons why web designs are important:

1. It’s the first impression 

Do you know how much time an individual spends while visiting your website for the first time before they decide to leave or stay?

A few seconds maybe and in those few seconds, your web design has to impress your audience. Otherwise, you just lost a potential lead. 

Essentially, the importance of good web design coincides with your brand perception. Whatever the consumer experiences upon logging onto your website may remain with the consumer forever. 

If, by any chance, your site was unappealing or low on responsiveness or content quality, your potential leads will leave your website for your competitor within seconds.

2. Importance of Content in Web Design and SEO Optimization

You can’t simply sell on the internet without improving your website rankings. You need effective copywriting and search engine optimization to ensure maximum results. 

The way you write and publish your content impacts your subsequent search engine rankings and the indexing of your website. The overall SEO process can be a little complicated because each of your website design elements contributes to your search engine optimization. 

That is why if you’re not familiar with web designing and its subsequent impact on your website’s SEO, you need to get in touch with professional web designers. 

If you’re running an e-commerce platform, you should probably hire an e-commerce building service. They’ll help create content that sells your product. 

However, if you’re operating on WordPress, you can opt to go for a web development agency. They can help you install elements that’ll boost your web design.

3. Customer Service 

The importance of web design does not only pertain to your brand’s reputation and lead generation. Web design is also crucial for your customer service. 

The way you publish and perhaps arrange content on your website exemplifies your handling of customers as well. For instance, if your website is upright, responsive, designed with bright colors, your customers might consider you approachable. On the other hand, if your site looks dark, dull and is less responsive, customers might not even consider staying on your site.

Place yourself in a customer’s shoe before making a decision. Would you want to interact with an unappealing, dull website regardless of the product offering? 

The answer would be no because you will have some serious concerns regarding customer service. A website is a bridge or more of a digital interface between you and your customer, and you don’t want to risk it. That is why it’s imperative to have a web design that sends out a positive image of your brand.

4. Trust Building  

If you’re a manufacturer or a bulk seller, you can get orders up to thousands of dollars, but for that, you need to build trust with your audience. None of the customers will pay if they don’t trust you, and since you have no brick and mortar, you can build trust through an updated and professional web design. 

If your audience understands the importance of good web design, they will trust your offerings.

5. Competition

The modern-day business rivalry is all about getting ahead of time or at least getting ahead of customers. To do so, you need to differentiate yourself from your competitors, and there is no better way than updating your web design. 

You just need one single element to make your website different than that of your customers. Maybe it’s your aesthetically pleasing yet minimalistic landing page or your visual elements, any of them can trigger lead conversions.

6. Consistency

When you’re working on a quality web design, you need to ensure consistency because, without consistency, you can never attract new leads. Therefore it is always better to hire a web development agency to ensure consistency across all web platforms. 

If your website is not consistent, existing users might jump off and will neither consider nor refer to your website shortly. If you’re a small business and you can’t hire a fancy web design agency, you can always reach out to affordable digital marketing services for your website.

Key Elements of A Web Design

The importance of web design can be further categorized into two broad categories. Let’s take a look at both of them and understand how they impact a web design:

Visual Elements

Visual elements establish the importance of responsive web design. They are essential for your web design to ensure that your website is aesthetically pleasing and equipped with all the necessary protocols and features to do so. Before you launch your site or if you’re going through website maintenance, you need to make sure that everything looks good. Here are six visual elements to look out for:

1. Copy

No matter how great images you have up there, the written text always goes hand in hand with the website design. Therefore your content writers need to work in close coordination with the website designers. 

A web design agency is essential to look after your written copy and graphics. A written copy means valuable information for your customer, and no one wants to get rid of a useful copy. They’ll probably stay on your website for the copy. An excellent copy further makes your website purposeful for the user.

2. Fonts 

You do have great content, but an appealing website requires further deliberation, such as your font choice. What fonts would be pleasing for your audience? To what extent can fonts contribute to lead generation.

These are some important questions to gauge the importance of typography in web design. If you’re confused about font pairings, check out different web design tools to optimize font type and size along with your website.

3. Colors

style guide colors Importance of Web Design

With colors, they are many misconceptions about the fact that colors aren’t that responsive. Colors are the most crucial aspect of your web design. When choosing colors for your website, you need to make sure that your colors align with your brand concept, the type of colors you use will resonate with the same perception in a consumer’s mind. 

You may want to check out the psychology of colors and what each color represents. For instance, if you are selling fitness equipment and you have a blog or two about working out, you should use red, black, orange representing energy, strength, and action, respectively.

4. Layouts

Layouts are essential in the overall positioning of the rest of the visual elements. The way you prefer to organize your content has a dramatic impact on the user experience. 

Now you need to understand that the visual element is directly related to the functionality of your website. Therefore a visual disruption can deter functional elements of your website.

style guide layouts

Your layout is essential for your website navigation and speed optimization if you’re using a low responsive layout with cluttered content, it may impact the user experience. If you don’t want to get stuck halfway through your design, you need to ensure a responsive and perhaps a strategic website layout.

5. Images & Icons

Even if your landing page has a couple of lines and brief content, a few images and icons can revolutionize the customer experience. One way to set an everlasting impression is to use powerful images and icons. Only then can you accomplish attracting new customers.

6. Videos

Videos are a fantastic tool to attract and perhaps retain customers. With massive content available on the internet, you’re just one click away from either converting a potential lead or losing it, once and for all. 

Videos are useful to enhance the user experience. But you need to be careful with videos as sometimes eye-catching videos can distract the user.

Functional Elements

Functional elements are the triggering force behind increasing traffic and boosting sales. Here are six functional elements of the importance of web design.

1. Navigation

The first and foremost functional element key in boosting sales is navigation until and unless the loser is comfortable in navigating through your website. Navigation is one of the main components to determine whether your website functions in the desired manner. It has a lot to offer to your first-time visitors and even return visitors who are looking for specific sections for specific products.

When any user accesses your website, it’s to find a simple solution without going through any hassle. If your website’s navigation proves out to be challenging to use and comprehend, the user will immediately move onto the competitor’s site. 

You know that the user attention span is way shorter for you to introduce challenging to use features on your website. You need simplified yet useful website navigation to assist your users instead of confusing them.

2. Speed

No matter how great and visually pleasing your website is, if it’s slow, you just lost another customer. No one likes slow websites; there is no space for slow sites on the internet. For instance, a user adds a product in their shopping cart, and the web page takes too long to load. 

The customer won’t even wait for a few seconds, immediately go back to the search engine, and look for a competitor’s website offering the same product. Therefore you need to look after your website’s speed optimization and check your page speed regularly through external sources as well.

3. Responsive Web Design

The importance of your web design and perhaps the importance of mobile web design is dependent on the responsiveness of your web design. 

Remember that your users can access your website from multiple devices, and all of these devices shall offer the same user experience. Your website has to adapt to the said device, adjusting site size and content display accordingly. 

You can keep your leads engaged through responsive web design if at any point in time your lead loses interest in your website, you just lost your lead.

4. User Interaction 

Your users are always looking for a comfortable experience. Therefore your web design has to ensure convenient user interaction.

style guide buttons Importance of Web Design

The more simplified and responsive your web design is, the better it can be your user interaction. There are specific steps to follow in guaranteeing better user interaction, such as:

  • Never auto play audios or videos, if the user wants to check them out, leave it to them with a snippet or a button. 
  • Never underline texts unless it’s a clickable link. Otherwise, it just gets confusing.
  • Make mobile-friendly forms since not every user logs in from a PC.
  • Avoid pop-ups, which can often disturb the user and turn them away from your website.

5. Animation

If you’re not comfortable with using animation, you need not to. But you can always introduce simple animations coupled with other website elements such as a call to action button or a shopping cart. 

Animations are always useful in attracting and retaining customers adding to your overall website guide.

6. Call To Action (CTA)

Your CTA buttons are the essential factor in determining sales. The way you design your CTA can attract or more leads or even repel customers of your website, given that the CTA was not designed probably. Once your customer is on the site between navigating through and exiting your website, you want the user to click on a CTA button. For that, your buttons shall correspond with your web design and stand out to the user. Some examples are:

Call-to-Action button example Importance of Web Design
Call-to-Action button example Importance of Web Design

To make CTA buttons stand out, you can use different techniques such as using a black or yellow color, enlarging them compared to other buttons, etc.

Ways To Improve Web Design To Increase Traffic And Boost Sales

Now that you know about web design and all elements of web design, how can you employ different strategies to increase traffic and boost sales?

You need to know the overall process from a user logging onto your website to potential lead conversion. Every step is essential to determine the importance of web design. A useful web design compels the customer to access the landing page, navigate through it, and then lead them onto essential pages.

 You can improve web design to achieve the desired traffic and sales objectives by:

1. Landing Page Optimization

Landing page optimization is to improve the elements on your website to increase conversions such as: 

  • Adding contact information.
  • Using newer ad formats.
  • Be scarce with your content so that users are compelled to follow up and navigate through your website.
  • Use mobile-friendly landing pages.
  • Use short conversion forms.
short conversion forms

2. Recovering Abandoned Shopping Carts

Let’s suppose your customer was about to purchase from your website and the shopping cart has been abandoned. Now you need to recover the abandoned shopping cart making the customer realize that they are preceding something useful.

 You can do that by altering your web design to:

  • Show savings at checkout, customers will know that they have enough savings to continue with the purchase. 
  • Use coupon codes or discount offers; if a customer returns to your website later, you can use push notifications or retargeting ads to bring the customer back to the abandoned shopping cart.
  • Simplify the checkout processes so that you don’t lose on potential customers annoyed by a lengthy checkout. The whole point of online shopping experience is to get away with comfort. Adding more and more details to the check out will just result in an abandoned shopping cart.
  • Adding Social Proof To Increase Customer Retention

The importance of good web design depends on how your users value your website and adding social proof to your website landing page always yields positive results.

If your customer sees another customer with a positive testimonial on the landing page, the customer might check out your products or navigate through more testimonials just to get a gist of your offerings. 

Adding social proof is a popular tried and tested technique for landing page optimization as well as recovering abandoned shopping carts.

3. A/B Testing

A website is always in an evolutionary phase; you need to try new elements, features, etc. To do so, you need to continually test your website for an enhanced user experience. A/B testing is to different versions of the same web page to assess user experience. 

Again, you need to reach out to professional web development agencies to A/B test your website for you.

conversion rate Importance of Web Design

Each variant of your website or web pages is checked for website conversions to check which variant brings in more conversions. In a typical A/B testing procedure, the website that leads to more conversion wins, and you can stick to the winning variant. You need to A/B test to identify visitor pain points. Visitors come onto your website with a specific goal, and you need to assess to what extent your website fulfills user requirements. 

Similarly, an A/B test reveals your returns from existing traffic and how you can alter website design to generate more leads and eventual sales.

Invest In An Excellent Web Design

Web design, customer traffic, and sales are all correlated. Even if one of these elements is disturbed, your website is at stake and on the verge of losing potential leads. You can’t risk losing a successful website. 

Therefore, you need to consult web design and web development agencies because they are an expert at what they do.

A web development agency will take a more holistic approach to your website and will lay out an optimization framework for you to follow. Generating traffic for your website is not an instant job, it requires you to follow specific steps and procedures, and you can’t risk losing the chain. 

When it comes to looking after your web design, you are losing out on content because you can’t handle content and web design at the same time. You need to make your website customer-centric looking at different KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) such as:

  • Bounce Rate
  • Unique Website Visitors
  • Pages Viewed Per Session
  • Average Time Spent on Page
  • Top Landing Pages
  • Top Exit Pages
  • Goal Completions
  • Onsite Search Queries

Only a professional web development agency can look after such KPIs for you. If you are willing to do all the work by yourself, then you’re just losing out on other elements of your website such as content and perhaps managing your inventory. 

There is no set criterion to boost sales and attract new customers to your website; it’s a combined process with tips and tricks from different elements of web design. You can’t simply excel at sales, content, images, impressions, leads, and conversions single-handedly, you need support and expertise from each of these agencies looking after different aspects of your website.

Filed under: Web Design

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