"There are three responses to a piece of design — yes, no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim for.”
- Milton Glaser
Visual Design may just be one of the important aspect of a company. It is the visual representation of a brand and helps the audience instantly recognize one company from another.
First and foremost, a good designing team will make sure that your company’s visual layout is unique and stands out in the crowd. This, consequently, attracts customers and makes conversion much more effective. You have only 10 seconds to impress your customers, so it’s probably best to put up a website that gets the message across to the other side of the screen and keeps them engaged. In this sense, the design layout not only draws prospective clients to your website but it also directly affects your marketing and sales.
It’s only basic human tendency to be drawn towards something which is aesthetically pleasing. And in the past few years, businesses and companies have started to realize that and have been putting in significant investments in the designing of the product.
The layout of the website plays a major role in the user experience and helps market your product well. In fact, studies have shown that design-driven companies have outperformed S&P over 228% in the last ten years.
Bad Design Vs Good Design
“The public is more familiar with bad design than good design. It is, in effect, conditioned to prefer bad design, because that is what it lives with. The new becomes threatening, the old reassuring.”
- Paul Rand
You never get a second chance to make a first impression. So make sure it counts. Even though there are countless examples of a good design, bad designs are also unfortunately as common a sight to see. Superfluous animation, frustrating UX, and information overload being some prime examples of bad design.
Your homepage is the first thing that your customer will see and it is important to make sure that you get the basic questions out of the way. Who you are, what you do and what your visitor can do here are fundamental questions that your customer can have on his visit to your website. Ideally, the design should offer a compelling value proposition and include CTAs. It should be effective in building trust and communicating value.
Here’s an example of a great design:
It’s great because it’s simple, doesn’t contain any jargon and conveys a clear message. Its CTA: “Sign up for free” is also simple, compelling and direct.
Now here’s an example of what could typically be described as a bad design:
The homepage only contains a bunch of pictures with no other information. These pictures are linked to other pages of the website but the user has no clue where these links lead them. This is known as the Mystery Meat Navigation, a term coined by Vincent Flanders.
Not only does this mean the customers would have to guess which link leads to where but it also reduces the practicality and effectiveness of the website.
Design: Then Vs Now
Back in the old days, there was no such thing as “high-speed” internet. It was either a dial-up modem or nothing. Websites were built for slow internet connections and hence the website designs very basic so that loading up pages would not take up too much time. Even though later versions of HTML allowed greater and more complex designs, they were still pretty basic and consisted mainly of paragraphs, links, and tags.
Here’s a look at the world’s first website (which went live on August 6th, 1991):
Then there was a time when designers used table-based layout to organize content on web pages and these web pages used to be filled with spacer GIFs and on-site page builders. Other design elements that we say in this time period were animated text, page hit counters and dancing GIFs.
It was truly an era for turning points in web design and with time, graphical design elements achieved immense popularity:
We’ve come a long way from 1991. In the era of digital marketing, a good website design is seen as a critical factor to online marketing success. With the explosion of the mobile web, the way how websites are being structured is also being seen as important factors to website design.
Now, the focus is on creating minimalistic but hard-hitting designs that connect with visitors on a more personal level. It is the age of the big and bold. It is the age of innovation:
And of course, a great desktop website is nothing if you aren’t equally great on mobile:
Graphic Designing Trends — 3 Key Elements
Here a few key elements that you should keep in mind the next time you set out to plan your website’s design. Communication should (ideally) be clean and clear through your visuals. The site’s color scheme sets up the mood and vibe and it is at this moment that your customer forms a complete opinion of your company as a brand.
Here are some of the latest graphic design trends to help you better understand what works and what does not. These trends will not only improve your website but will also directly influence your marketing and sales and help you climb the ladder to success.
Being Mobile Optimized
Nearly 60% searches now come from mobile devices and Google recognizes this important fact. The search engine tends to give a higher priority to the sites that are mobile friendly over the sites that are not. In fact, Google will use the mobile version of your website to rank you, even if users are searching on a desktop, to determine your website’s rank on its results.
There are plenty more reasons to make sure that your website is mobile optimized. According to MarginMedia, 52% of the users say that if they arrive on the business website that is not working correctly on a mobile phone, they assume that business is not simply caring enough. A post by Econsultancy says that about 68% of the companies that developed mobile-first website noticed a significant increase in sales.
These statistics should be more than enough to place sufficient significance on the mobile optimization of websites in the digital era.
Motion Design
This increases the level of user interaction on the site and keeps consumers engaged in the process. Motion graphics capture your user’s attention better than simple pictures or videos and decreases bounce rates. Interactive product demos and product-based animation make sure that users experience the product beforehand and set up expectations accordingly. Motion design gives more energy to the layout and adds personality to your brand. This gives you a chance to use dynamic elements to your brand’s advantage.
Motion Graphic videos are popular because of this exact reason. They show information in animation and use real imagery to back up the service being offered. One more advantage is that they are also easily adaptable to all sorts of industries including training, gaming, education etc.
User Experience
UX is a critical factor that can majorly determine the user’s overall impression of the company. It has been considered to be a key element in determining a company’s online success and is now considered to be an integral part of the design process. If the site is glitchy and the visuals are messy and unorganized, this will send the wrong type of message to your would-be consumers and prospective clients.
The right tools are essential in making great designs. Although Photoshop and Illustrator still remain widely used, tools like Invision and Sketch are also being welcomed with open arms by designer communities around the World. This has consequently led to designs being made bigger and better than ever before.
So many amazing businesses fail to understand the power of beautiful design and experience. Paying attention to small details can help you attract and retain visitors who will eventually become your customers and advocates.
Brandhero helps you become a winner by taking care of the UI/UX design needs of your organization. In doing so we bring out the best strategy for your brand that is achieved with the help of stunning design elements.
