If you’re wondering why website design is important, we implore you to think back to the early days of the internet.
Imagine the blocky, primitive style of the buttons, navigation, and all forms of interface. Every single website was more or less the same. Sure, there may have been a unique image or two, but ultimately we were dealing with a world of mind-numbingly simple user interface.
In that world, it was no big deal if you didn’t have an exceptional website design, because nobody else did. Flash forward to today and there is a near infinite amount of websites, most with unique designs and thoughtful layouts.
So why is design important for you?
Why is Design Important for Websites?
There are a number of reasons that design is important for websites in the modern age. Someone could written a book about this but we’ll just be discussing the most fundamental reasons today.
Usability
You need to imagine your end user when you create a website. What’s the point of even having an online interface if no user will ever understand how to use it.
When approaching website design, you first want to make sure that the interface is functional. Meaning that everything works and everything is arranged in a way that people can understand.
Organizing information rhetorically will help users follow the path of your site, and get where they need to go before they get frustrated and log off. By this, we mean that links should be arranged in pods that group them.
For example, say you have 100 links on your television fan-fiction website, and there are 11 links about The Simpsons characters. Organizing those links rhetorically would mean that you keep those characters together, and don’t scatter Lisa with the cast of Lord of the Rings.
You also want to make sure that the site is enjoyable. Everyone else’s site works. That’s kind of a given in today’s internet world.
Your job is now to make sure that your website is set up in a way that is more appealing than everyone else’s. People will be more inclined to use your site if you can accomplish this.
Psychology
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if you think that website design is important. Design is fundamental to the way we interpret things. Visual cues inform our opinion of anything that we look at.
Whether we see a billboard with a bad color scheme, or a mural with the most beautiful arrangement of images and colors, our first impressions of those things are both significant and impacted by design.
Branding is another issue that is primarily psychological. Sure, the marketing team designs the slogans, the color schemes, and the jingles, but the brand really exists among people.
People who use twitter identify as users and that informs their identity. The same goes with every other website, product, show, movie- everything. People want to use products and services that will make them seem more like the person that they want to be.
Seems dystopian, sure, but unfortunately that is a cold hard fact of consumerism. So, how does this apply to website design? You have to design your website as an interface that your users want to see themselves using.
Imagine an individual in your target audience. Now imagine the person that that person wants to be. You want to design a website for the person that your target audience is imagining.
Ok, it probably doesn’t need to get that heady, but you get the picture. A cool, chic sort of website is bound to have a much greater appeal to people’s pyschology than a primitive website from 2001. That should be clear.
Trust
There is an insane amount of information floating around about trusted companies who have used and sold our information. For being so technologically dependent, us humans are slowly losing trust in those who create the websites that we use.
Beyond the big companies that we use every day, we’re forced to use sites that are lesser known and riskier. After five or ten years of using the internet we typically have a good grasp on which websites seem like scams.
It’s also known that most of the websites that seem like scams, aren’t. That’s unfortunate for those honest websites with poor designs because there is no way that anyone’s risking their credit card number on a sketchy website when they could go to Amazon and by the same thing.
The point is, a quality website design shows that there has been legitimate effort given to the construction of the website. That effort shows that you have something to lose, something to prove, and that you likely want to make your customers happy.
You may still have all of those great qualities but also have a poorly designed website. Unfortunately, those tried and true human values won’t always serve you if they don’t translate into your web interface.
Hire a Professional
You don’t need to do all of the design work yourself. Thousands and thousands of graphic design and IT students are exiting college each day. These are kids who have grown up using and experiencing the internet as it’s developed exponentially in the last 20 years.
Not only that, but they understand the modern trends, historical designs, and preferences of end users. These are people who are experts in creating and fine-tuning a website to the taste of a mass audience.
You’re not in it alone, and hopefully, by now we’ve answered the question: ‘Why is design important?’ If you’re still not sold on web design, here’s a little experiment:
Do a quick search around the internet and try and notice whether or not the sites you’re on have good website designs. Get a feel for how much more or less likely you are to use one website or the other.
Now pull it back and compare those websites to your own website. If you feel like your site is lacking and you wouldn’t be inclined to use it, reach out to us and speak with a professional.