What does your Website Design say about your Brand?
First impressions are everything.
The cover determines whether you buy the book, the photos on the brochures determine whether you choose the holiday destination, and the website design determines whether you do business with that brand.
Think about what you want when you visit a website:
- Easy navigation
- Appealing design
- Trustworthy feel
If a website has clashing colors and looks like it belongs in the 20th century, then it’s unlikely you’ll spend much time there. In fact, a recent study presented evidence that 94% of participants rejected a small business website due to design flaws.
Now, think about your own website. What does the design say about your brand?
If you’re not sure — don’t worry, because in this article you’re going to find out! We’re going to dissect website design to find out exactly what your website says about your brand.
Logo
Your logo needs to be synonymous with your brand.
Think about your favorite brand for a second…
…it’s highly likely that the first thing that came to mind was the brand’s logo. This is because visuals resonate with us more strongly than text. Studies have found that we only remember 20% of what we hear, and, in comparison, we remember 80% of what we see.
So, when you think about your logo, you also need to think about what kind of message you want to convey when people land on your website.
In 400 milliseconds, a logo can trigger emotional responses and even behavioral change, which is why it is so important for your logo to convey the message behind your brand. In the split second that people land on your website and look at your logo, they will have a response; your job is to make sure it’s the right response.
Colors
There have been many studies on the influence of color and what your color palette says about your brand. When it comes to website design, you want to make sure that the colors are inviting and clearly representative of your business. Studies have shown that a product’s color influences 60-80% of a customer’s purchasing decision, and that color is the first thing customers will notice about your logo.
So, let’s say you’re in the finance industry. Research shows a popular website color for your brand would be purple — it’s sophisticated and represents royalty and elegance.
On the other hand, a bad palette choice for a finance brand would be red. Red is passionate and attention grabbing, making it a popular choice within the food and automotive industries. However, red is also provocative and aggressive, so finance brands should steer clear.
For more information on customer reactions to colors, click here.
Navigation
Poor navigation is one of the leading causes of website bounce rates. If you’re noticing higher than normal bounce rates (for your industry), then your customers are sending you a clear sign that they don’t know how to make your website work for them.
Navigation is a tricky thing to get right. It’s good to be unique, for example, changing the bland ‘Who we are/About us‘ tabs to something that will further encourage people to click, like: ‘Get to know us/Meet the team‘.
On the other hand, it’s important not to be too unique. There are certain things that we all expect from a website’s design. For example, we want to scroll down, not across. We also like to see the tabs we need lined up at the top of the page.
The bottom line is that navigation should be intuitive and easy.
So easy that it doesn’t even require any thought. It has to be automatic. Instinctive. The more you enhance your usability and organization, the more user friendly your website design will be.
Mobile Optimization
It’s worth mentioning mobile optimization here, too. More and more people are accessing the internet via mobile devices, and if your website design doesn’t display correctly on their device, they’ll leave. It’s as simple as that.
Studies have found that 74% of customers will wait all of 5 seconds for a web page to load on their mobile device before abandoning the site, and 46% are unlikely to return to the site if it didn’t work properly during their last visit.
If your website design is not optimized for mobile devices, then it will give out the impression that your brand is outdated and even unprofessional.
Final Thoughts
Your website is likely to be the first place customers learn about your brand. So you want that first impression to be a good one. As we’ve discussed in this article, every factor of your brand, be it the logo, the colors, or the website design, has to be synonymous to one another.
Continue reading here: Our guide to creating a killer content marketing strategy
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