The way your site is designed can affect just about every part of the customer experience (CX) and so impact your company’s bottom line. Read on to find out how.
Helps customers see your business as legitimate
One of the most important ways that web design can impact CX is by helping to create a sense of legitimacy and professionalism for your business. In the online world, your website is the first thing that most potential customers will see.
Therefore it acts similarly to business premises or shopfronts in the real world. The better the impression made, the more customers are likely to see you are a real, competent business that they want to work with.
Important web design elements that can help legitimize your business include the layout of your site, as well as the typography and colors you choose. Colors, in particular, can help convey a sense of who you are as a business without saying a word.
For example, many financial-based businesses use dark blue and greens in their website design as these are relatively somber colors that inspire respect and trust. Additionally, providing facts, figures, and testimonials or links to independent reviews are also smart web design tactics that can help encourage customer trust and promote the legitimacy of your business.
Indeed, even something as basic as how many customers you have helped or how many successful projects you have been a part of can be enough to allay the fears of a new visitor and confirm that they are, indeed, in the right place.
Finally, when it comes to enhancing legitimacy and professionalism with web design, be sure to include a page that deals with the values your business promotes. You can think of these as the way you go about doing things. Indeed, values should always be doing words, and they can help you to connect with your target demographic.
Encourages customers to stay for longer
Attrition, as used in marketing, is a fancy word for loss. Customer attrition is where customers visit a site but then scroll away to another in the first few seconds. Of course, this is a problem because if customers aren’t staying on your site, they won’t be buying what you’re selling.
The good news is that web design that is sensitive to CX can help you here. Indeed, creating a visually pleasing website that contains the vital information customers need to decide whether you are what they are looking for you can minimize attrition and increase the chances that they will stay and make a purchase.
Important web design elements for this include choosing the right layouts and fonts. Clarity is crucial, so be sure not to overleaf your landing page with images or information but feature the most important pieces.
Helps improve functionality
Another vital web design factor to consider when you are looking to optimize CX is functionality. There are two main ways to improve the functionality of your website – responsiveness and load time. Responsiveness is all about ensuring that your site looks great no matter what kind of device it is accessed on.
Indeed, responsiveness is so important because more and more people are using their smartphones and tablets first when accessing the internet. This means if your website design is not responsive, you will be missing the opportunity to appeal to and impress a huge percentage of your audience.
Load time, on the other hand, is making sure that your site loads in the shortest time possible. Thereby giving potential customers little chance to get bored and frustrated and navigate away.
There are various tactics you can employ to optimize load time, including using as much white space on your site as possible, as well as uploading images as .jpegs. The latter allows maximum resolution at minimal file size.
Makes it easier for customers to read and digest information
White space is not only useful when opting for the load times of your site but is also vital in creating a pleasing experience for customers as they visit. Indeed, white space is just one of many important design considerations related to the visual distribution of content.
Others include headings, illustrations, summaries, and sidebars, which, when combined, can stop overwhelming walls of text, putting your potential customers off before they have even begun.
Make it easier for customers to find what they need
Another critical aspect of web design that impacts CX is navigation, which is how easy it is for visitors to find their way around your site. After all, you can have all the relevant information possible, but if people can’t find and access it quickly and efficiently, they will quickly navigate away and look elsewhere.
In particular, using a drop-down menu on your landing page can provide customers with fast and clear access to any additional information they need. Previous/next options at the bottom of each page can help visitors better navigate their visits too.
Help to humanize your brand
No one likes to think they are buying from a faceless corporation; that is why human faces are an essential part of great web design. They help to humanize your brand and encourage user trust, something essential in the customer decision-making process.
Of course, you need to use human faces in your website design in the right way. Lots of random cheesy stock photos aren’t going to work here. Instead, use real pictures of real staff wherever possible to help foster that all-important human connection.
Encourages customers to buy
Sales or conversions, as they are also known, are vital to the success of your business. The good news is that by designing your site in the right way, you can encourage customers to buy.
One of the most simple options for this is using contrasting colors to your advantage. This means if your company colors are warm, then you use cold colors for your calls to action. Then they will pop and draw your customers’ attention, directing them to the action you wish them to take.
Final thoughts
As you can see from the information above, great web design can have a massive impact on CX. To that end, WordPress’s professional web design is well worth the investment.