Beautiful Designs Matter

Humans are visual creatures, and the first experience visitors experience when they come to your site is the “look and feel” of your website design. We process visual stimulus 60,000 times faster than text, as a result, people form first impressions of your business in less than 0.05 seconds based on your website design.

The design of your website is instantly related and perceived as a direct representation of your product, brand and business. As such, having a beautifully designed website is the most important opportunity for a business to make a good first impression and influence your target audience.

According to the Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility, researchers found that 75% of users make judgments about a company’s credibility based on its web design.

“We find that people quickly evaluate a site by visual design alone. When designing your site, pay attention to layout, typography, images, consistency issues, and more. Of course, not all sites gain credibility by looking like IBM.com. The visual design should match the site’s purpose.”
Fogg, B.J. (May 2002). "Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility." A Research Summary from the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab. Stanford University. 

In another study, Guidelines for Developing Trust in Health Websites, 83% of participants attributed the rejection and feelings of mistrust towards a website to website design factors. Content may be important, but, good content on a poorly designed website does not get read, indicating that design comes before content in terms if importance.

Responsive Web Design – Size does matter 

In early 2005, Google announced mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor in its search engine algorithms. The Mobile-friendly Update as Google calls it greatly affected search rankings of web pages on mobile devices. What it essentially meant was that web pages which were not mobile-friendly would be less likely to show up on the first page of Google search results. 

Fast forward to March, 2018, Google started rolling out Mobile-first Indexing which will typically start to use a web page’s mobile version for indexing and ranking (in the near future). So even though your website’s ranking may not be directly affected by Google’s Mobile-first Indexing at the moment, it most certainly will in the near future. You can use Google’s Mobile-friendly Test Tool to see where your website stands at the moment. 

It makes sense for Google to start focusing more on mobile users as it is shown that mobile users spend double the time online than desktop users, as such Google needs to serve better content to mobile users.  

If your site is not mobile-friendly yet, it’s best to get started in preparing your website to be responsive to avoid any ranking issues in the future. 

Content Relevancy and Usefulness 

You may have heard the saying “Content is King” before, it is true, and content is most likely to stay on that throne for a very long time. The reason is simple, stop for a moment and think what’s the reason you visit websites? It’s for the content naturally, be it to view the latest music video, or listen to the latest podcast to staying updated on your favorite celebrity or on a more serious note, to keep abreast of the business world and the market you are doing business in.  

We consume content daily, just as we consume food. It has become a staple of our daily lives since decades ago, people have been reading newspapers and books. Today the amount of content available for consumption has increased multiple times, and it is our duty as website owners to provide not just relevant information to our visitors, but content that is useful for them. 

Content on your website needs to address six major points as a business to visitors to improve their user experience: 

1. Who you are and who do you do it for? 
2. What do you do? 
3. Why you’re the best choice? 
4. Where are you located? 
5. How do potential customers contact you? 

Your value proposition needs to be clearly stated on the home page in short and concise sentences. People have short attention spans, and studies show that averagely, people spend 7 seconds or less on more than 90% of the websites they visit. 

Your content should also serve as a guide to conversion, providing visitors with a logical pathway to eventually make a purchase, inquiry, subscription etc. The effects of conversion can be further increased by having a personal tone unique to your business which can connect to your visitors, potentials and customers. Great content coupled with beautiful web design will create an experience that is easy to navigate and understand, remember that your content needs to be presented in a simple and clear way to make it easy to understand.