When is website design important for a business?
You have a tech business
When a person visits a startup accelerator website and sees something made on a WordPress template from 2005, he feels like Dominic Toretto, who accidentally wandered into a Barnaul garage cooperative. Explaining the joke: he feels discouraged: “So they will teach me how to do it technologically, build a modern business?”
You have a fashion business
The fashion business does not sell a product, but a feeling of belonging to something beautiful. Think you bought a craft burger to eat? Come on, stop fooling yourself — it’s damn good for you to think that he was not from KFC, but was made beautiful people for other beautiful people. The site of such a business should cause no less aesthetic orgasm in the target audience than its signs, menus and mustaches of the art director.
You use the site as a «business card»
For many companies, their website is such a “point of first contact”. You give a paper business card to a new acquaintance at the exhibition, and the site address and your direct contacts are written there. It is clear that a cautious lead will not judge you by the quality of the cardboard and gold embossing, but will first check what you are like and open the site. It will become a real calling card — so you should not skimp on the first impression.
You have a cool brand book
You planned a total brand renewal, ordered a corporate identity from a top agency, and then decided that everything together would turn out to be expensive, and entrusted the website to simpler guys. Thus, you will not save, but devalue the work of the designers who made your brand book. It’s like dressing a bum in last year’s collection from Kanye West (if you could still understand that sweater on Timati, then here, alas).
You have an online service
Weak design is not so much about scary pictures, but about inconvenience. In the case of online services, they pray for usability, as success is determined by tenths of a conversion. Therefore, saving on design in this case is almost like hara-kiri for business.
Your needs are specific
Website builders and template solutions are good and convenient. But only if your business is also template (or so young that you still don’t really know your services or benefits). Author’s design solves several problems at once: it allows you to design any interface for any needs and specifics, and it also reflects your personality, to be cunning.
You are not going to order a new site in the next 3-5 years
A design that is commonly referred to as “expensive” is a long-term investment. Remember if you or your colleagues have experienced this: you ordered a design from a “strong average” designer, launched a website, invited an external marketing consultant, found a bunch of inconvenient things, decided that it would be cheaper to redesign the entire design. And all this could not be.
You work in a toxic environment
No, we are not talking about hazardous production. The toxicity of society is the number of caustic comments per cubic centimeter of space. The reason for toxicity can be, for example, a long-standing feud with a competitor — remember all these mutual hairpins of European car brands. Try to launch a site with a mediocre design — you will not avoid comparison in the eyes of consumers and injections from competitors.
Your consumer is an aesthete
When people are brought up for years (not without result) with beautiful menus, signs, logos, and even social media posts, it’s hard to impress them with a site with a mediocre design. Aesthetic enlightenment is growing, and with it the need for quality things is growing. It is all the more important not to skimp on design if your clients are also related to any kind of visual art (3D graphics, architecture, interior design, artist courses, and so on).