The Cost of Bad Design

Sure, there are a multitude of drag-and-drop website-building tools that allow you to quickly and easily put your own website together. However, you’re doing this because someone told you to and not because you think it’s necessary for your business to succeed (we’ll give you points for trying, though). We’re here to let you know the cost of bad design and why website design for businesses like yours is a crucial consideration in your success toolkit. 

The fundamentals of website design for businesses

Your website is more than just a portal to buy a product or find out about your services. Consider it your business’s online CV and the digital, very public face of what you do. A well-developed and well-designed website considers the following: 

• Your brand’s story. It’s an informative hub about who you are, what you do, and why you do it. You’ve worked so hard to get to where you need to be and people appreciate meaningful stories — tap into their emotions and show them what you’re all about, from your home page’s leading paragraph to your team photos. 
• Your target audience. If you’re a financial business catering to 50+ executives, for example, your website needs to be easy for them to understand, use, and find what they’re looking for as quickly and seamlessly as possible. The website design for your business doesn’t have to be complicated, it just has to provide a positive experience for your ideal visitor. Templated websites are often designed with millennials in mind and may not genuinely connect with your audience.
• What matters most to your audience. Following on from the above, many designers get caught up in showcasing the company instead of heroing the client and what matters to them. Identify the problem you’re trying to solve for your ideal customers and make the solution glaringly obvious on your home page and other core pages. 
• Your website from your ideal visitor’s point of view. Running a business and marketing involves a lot of empathizing. If you were in a prospect’s shoes looking at your current website, would you be happy with what you saw and be enticed to explore further, and even make contact with you? If the answer is no, then… do some thinking. You know where to find us. ;)
• The overall user experience. Let’s be real: users are getting increasingly impatient. They also don’t like to work too hard to get what they need. With technology and information at our fingertips, your business’s website design needs to focus on a seamless, sexy experience that gently but swiftly guides a user to where they need to be. If your website is taking too long to load or if the headline on your home page is a bit ‘bleh’, then you’re at risk of losing a potential client or customer. 
  

The cost of bad design 

A poorly designed website that does not put the user at the center of it all is going to perform poorly — there, we said it. We aren’t about mincing our words around here! ;) While many businesses yell a few expletives when they see the cost of developing and designing a website, the cost of a badly designed website far outweighs this. Building a thoughtfully designed website is an investment into the future of your company and brand — don’t you want to go to your website and be proud of how good it looks and how many compliments you receive? Vanity aside, a website that takes too long to load, is confusing to navigate, and doesn’t clearly communicate what you’re all about will see your competitors gallop ahead of you while you jog behind like an unfit and overweight Labrador, struggling to keep up. 

We want you to keep up. In fact, we want you to be like a majestic Greyhound, racing yards ahead with your super sleek, lead-generating, sales-creating website. Take a look at your website from your customer or client’s perspective and see how you feel — be honest with yourself because we know what it’s like to feel protective over the brand you’ve taken years to nurture and grow. But… that growth may be stunted if your website stays where it’s at now. Let’s chat about how we can breathe new life into your brand with a refreshed website.