If you’re in the boat of thinking of your marketing strategy and your website as two separate things, think again. 

In fact, your web presence should be the very first place to begin when developing a strong marketing plan. Your website has the potential to be your best sales asset, and works at the front lines of communicating your story to key audiences and solidifying your brand voice and personality. 

For organizations who aim to captivate their audience from the first click, a generic website or a design built from a template won’t cut it. But what makes for a strong design that aids your overall marketing strategy? 

Great web design goes far beyond just function and visibility. Every small detail of your website contributes to the way users will engage with your brand, from layout to color to movement. 

Read on for 3 ways strong web design that checks all the boxes can impact your overall marketing strategy, and how small but key details on your website communicate big meaning for consumers. 

1. A well-designed website builds client trust. 

The Stanford Web Credibility Project, among a plethora of other studies, found that web design can have a powerful impact on the amount of trust users extend to the content and information on an organization’s website… and in turn, the organization itself. 

In Stanford’s survey, they found that 46% of respondents assessed website credibility based on the site’s overall design, from typography and layout to color schemes and other perceptibly minor elements. Clearly, there’s a powerful tie between design and trust. 

You’ve surely come across a website at some point—whether it’s an e-commerce site selling something that interests you, a local doctor’s office or restaurant, or a visitor attraction in a city in which you’re planning a trip—that strikes you as unbalanced, lackluster, or clunky. How did it affect your overall perception of the organization? 

Moreover, if a website’s design and function offers users a negative experience when they’re trying to purchase goods, tickets, or services, they’re more likely to feel uneasy about providing their information or making a payment on the site. 

On a subconscious and psychological level, aesthetically beautiful things inspire positive emotional responses. Attractive websites are perceived as more user-friendly, more valuable, and more trustworthy than other sites that aren’t design-forward. 

Recent research has shown that feelings of trust have a major impact on how online customers behave. One study found that 79% of consumers said a brand would need to establish a trusting relationship with them or demonstrate care for them as a potential customer before they would consider purchasing a product or service. 

It doesn’t take a designer to recognize good web design. Participants in the Stanford project noted the following elements as design red flags that contributed to distrust of a website: 

• Overly complex or unorganized layouts

• Too much text on a page

• Small or difficult-to-read copy 

• Aggressive or unappealing pop-ups

• Slow load times

• Lack of strong navigation

• Lackluster or boring color scheme 

Clearly investing in a web design team that knows design best practices and can build an eye-catching website that compels users from the moment it loads, you’re not only investing in aesthetics, but in improved client trust and ultimately more leads, sales, and conversions. 

2. Strong design helps you stand out from the competition.

More likely than not, as potential customers consider what your organization has to offer, they’ll also visit your competitors’ sites before they make their purchasing decisions. When a website is outdated or poorly designed, it’s more likely to see higher bounce rates, especially when it’s being compared against newer, more compelling websites. 

Web traffic will be more likely to convert when your website is able to clearly communicate your story, value, and mission and move users through your site to the pages you want them to find with clear CTAs and engaging design elements. 

When it comes to winning out over your competitors, don’t take a chance on a template or an outdated site. Investing in a unique design will have a greater ROI in the long run, and working with a creative, strategic web design team like Speak can help get you there. 

3. Consistent and compelling design develops brand influence.

It’s more important now than ever that brands build and nurture a consistent relationship with customers and potential customers. In this day and age, your target audience is being inundated with digital marketing touchpoints from thousands of organizations – keeping your brand consistent and consistently impressive is vital to standing out. 

With more and more people discovering organizations for the first time online, your website becomes your most valuable tool for communicating your brand. 

That’s not just your brand colors, fonts, and logo. Your website communicates professionalism and competency with every link, load-on scroll feature, and impressive UX function. Beyond that, when you invest in web design that demonstrates your story, mission, and voice, you can powerfully shape the way people perceive your organization. Who it’s for, why it matters, how it connects to your audiences. 

Take, for example, the small detail of these two button hover effects:

Which one communicates a more lively, youthful brand personality, and which communicates sophistication and elegance? Both are equally engaging, but offer different ways to represent brand personality. 

Over time, and with consistency, this translates to brand alignment and influence, which becomes brand loyalty. When people feel like they know your brand, they’ll keep coming back and convert time and time again. 

Work with web design pros. 

When considering how to build a marketing strategy that will effectively increase your leads and sales, investing in a well-crafted website is the best place to start. Our team of designers, strategists, and content specialists are passionate about getting to know what makes organizations unique and creating one-of-a-kind websites that drive clicks and conversions. Ready to refresh your best marketing and sales asset? We’d love to work with you this year! 

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