WHY INVESTMENTS IN GOOD WEB DESIGN PAY DIVIDENDS

You want an exceptional website and to better understand how to prioritize your spend. Hint: give your site visitors what they want. According to a Stanford research study, 94% of a website user’s first impressions are design-related and 75% of users admit to making judgments about a company’s credibility based on their website design. A website is often the source of “first impressions” and look and feel are deemed the primary drivers for those first impressions.

But how can you learn more about the behaviors of site visitors and how to build a great website? If websites have elements that include look and feel, navigation and content, which ones are most important and how should they be prioritized? We have statistics to answer that too.

First impressions are made in 50 milliseconds

That’s right. Far shorter than it takes to even think about this, humans process visuals 60,000 times faster than they do text, meaning they make snap judgments about your site in about 1/20th of a second. If you think about your own experience it makes sense. We’re all seasoned experts at visiting websites and, if we’re like most people, we now have a tendency to “scan” these sites…in seconds…rather than to read them. It’s how we process information, formulate an opinion about something, and make quick decisions about what we want to do next.

1-2-3 website priorities are design…navigation…and content (in that order)

Wait, content isn’t important? No, that’s not what we’re saying. All three of these elements are important and content should be a cornerstone of your site’s overarching strategy to build awareness, educate, and generate sales. What we’re emphasizing is that 94% of first impressions were design-related. It’s how we’re wired. We quickly focus on the overall visual design of a site, including layout, color schemes, headings, typography, font size, and the like. After the design, website navigation was the next most important element for site visitors. It makes sense, then, that even great content would become ineffective and rendered powerless when it’s embedded in a poor design.

Researchers generally found that great design gets people to trust you, engage more and increase the overall likelihood for return visits, referrals, and future purchases. Poor design, conversely, creates mistrust, causes most people to not explore beyond the initial home page, and to exit your website prematurely.

Key takeaway: visual appeal matters. Perhaps nowhere is that more true than on the web. Today’s users have an infinite amount of options as to where to go and where to commit their time and attention. In a crowded competitive landscape, it’s imperative to protect your brand and to make it stand out from the rest.

A free offer: just email [email protected] if your team would like to sit down with ours for a free discussion of your website and to explore together areas of opportunity for improving it. We’re experts at building modern, responsive websites that create positive, lasting impressions with your audience(s). We also help clients, who may not have refreshed their website in years, with simple refresh strategies designed to maximize positive impact over a short period of time.