How Much Does Design Matter for Your Business?

Eternal questions on what is going to win, good or evil?; what was first, chicken or egg?; what weighs more business and design? If the first two will probably never have a proper answer, the third one can be solved quite easily. Design and business cannot be separated.

Some people think that investments and a high-skilled team are two main ingredients needed for any business to grow and thrive. However, almost every company (including your competitors as well) has got these elements. Thus, the only thing that can differentiate you from other business companies presented on your market niche is a good design. And here are 3 reasons why.

If your business is about making your clients satisfied and bringing you money, design is all about your clients’ feelings. Have you ever wondered why we have a kind of tendency in design nowadays when an interface is clean, spacey and roomy? Nothing should distract your customers from the things that really matter for your business (e.g. your brand awareness and what brings you money - call-to-action elements).

If your interface design isn’t quite user-friendly, your customers will hardly want to spend their time on it. They’d rather choose another company with similar services in order to save their time and nerves. Interfaces are like checkout lanes in supermarket: you choose the one where there are fewer people with fewer goods.

Perception, awareness, experience - call it whatever you want. No matter what word you choose, it will still be connected with the client’s feelings design has a significant influence on. Sometimes, you get put off by wrong design solutions. It doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a color everyone loves or a font everyone adores; all the rest will be just a waste of space. In fact, it means quite the opposite: there is no common way to have a good design but one detail can spoil the entire perception and, therefore, can be repelling for your clients.

As a rule, if a design is “wrong”, you will notice it: your inner feeling will tell you that. The key to success in this case is hidden in compring. What do you need to compare? Everything! Your design before and after, other competitors’ websites, websites of the niche leaders, and even the websites you simply like. The impression your new website makes needs to be better than all the targets of comparison mentioned above. This way, your customers will feel “right” about your design which means they will more likely use the products or services you provide.

A good design sells. This has been proved by different statistical researches along with personal experience of hundreds of companies. It can be easily explained by the significance a good design has in terms of bringing a huge profit: if it’s original, clear, and smart, it has more chances not only to catch people’s attention (in a way, a bad design can also do it) but also to keep it and to get a project to the desirable stage (where a person becomes your client).Thus, you face a problem of finding the design that will make your customers buy whatever you sell.

Here is a simple design case that proves how significant a good design can be for sales. UkoalaBag, a fashion brand in US that sells modern bags for Men and Women, has recently decided to go for a complete redesign that also included a new logo design. To get a wider choice, the company turned to DesignContest for their future logo design. It was explained by two things: firstly, such crowdsourcing companies as DesignContest provide their customers with choice (instead of receiving one new logo you get fifty to pick from); secondly, because it’s much cheaper than a design studio and will bring you more money if a logo designed well. For UkoalaBag, these features were extremely significant because a new logo was supposed to appear on the bags they sell. It means that that logo has to be intriguing and increase a person’s desire to buy the bag. In terms of UkoalaDesign, the rebranding went really well: if you do see a person wearing a bag with a smart koala logo on it, you’ll be wondering at least where this person got such a cool bag. It will make you halfway on buying it.

Design was created to help a business grow in terms of being different, more interesting and more attractive. In the era of hard competition between business companies, a good design has been turned into a weapon that helps business owners win this eternal struggle for supremacy.