Let’s start with a basic assertion; fluid and responsive website design is integral to the long-term growth of your business in the digital age.
Conversely, bad or poorly designed websites can significantly damage your business, undermining your relationship with clients and any reputation that you may have cultivated within a specific marketplace. It is estimated that 75% of consumers judge a businesses credibility based on the design of its website, for example, while confused calls-to-action are also known to trigger higher bounce rates.
The question that remains, of course, is how exactly bad website design impacts on your venture? Let’s take a look: –
-
Slow Loading Websites Hint at a Poor Quality Service
Make no mistake; your branded website is part of the offering that customers must buy into in the digital age. This means that any deficiencies reflect negatively on the brand as a whole, causing potential customers to consider taking their business elsewhere.
If you have a slow loading website, for example, this is considered to be indicative of a poor and substandard service that does not deliver value for money. This is reflected by the fact that 79% of consumers would not return to a slow loading website, with many expected individual landing pages to appear within two seconds.
The good news is that this issue is easy to correct, with tools such as Google Speed Insights enabling you to highlight individual, on-page elements that are proving to be problematic. It is crucial that you recognise the fault in the first place, however, before taking practical steps to correct this.
-
Website Clutter Can Confuse Customers and Undermine Their Journey
On a similar note, a cluttered or poorly laid out website is liable to confuse customers and undermine any CTAs that you have included. This can damage your business and its long-term growth irreparably, primarily by undermining the consumer experience and preventing visitors from understanding your primary messaging.
The best examples of website clutter have emerged as a result of technology, with an excess of flash animations, advertisements and video content likely to draw the customer’s attention away from key design elements.
This is why you need to follow a carefully defined lay-out that guides customers in their approach, using elements such as whitespace and minimalism to highlight prominent CTAs and messaging. Similarly, colour can also be used strategically to enhance the design of your site, guide the customer journey and solicit specific emotions form consumers. There are three core factors that drive this, including cultural, psychological and physical, each of which contributes towards an optimised conversion rate.
-
The Lack of a Clear (or Visible) CTA Fails to Drive Sales
Ultimately, the purpose of most commercial websites is to drive and optimise sales levels. In this respect, your site must be a sales funnel and that converts unique visitors into paying customers, but this is not possible without clearly-defined or visible CTAs.
So whether you have failed to determine a viable CTA or buried it under an avalanche of graphical elements and moving parts, it is almost impossible to guide the customer journey and direct them to take a desired action.
The development and placement of your CTA’s must therefore play a pivotal role in the design of your website, particularly when you are creating a responsive site that can adapt to all types of device. In simple terms, this means cultivating concise and easy to understand CTAs, which are placed above the fold and ideally made actionable for the customer’s convenience.