Web design communicates your brand’s personality. It is the first thing that catches the attention of your site visitors and potential customers. If done correctly, it becomes one of your most substantial assets in terms of marketing.
A good design has the power to create long-lasting emotional connections with your consumers, and it sets you apart from the competition. When building a relationship with your website users, trust is essential to your marketing efforts.
Why Does Online Trust Matter?
A study revealed that the lack of trust in online transactions brings about aversion in online shopping. The same study explored the relative importance of website design factors for building trust among customers of various cultural values. The results revealed that trust in online stores represents a mechanism wherein the independent components of web design can positively influence purchase intentions.
Beyond purchasing behaviors, trust can help establish customer loyalty over time. In a 2019 Gartner report, the information encountered by 88% of questioned B2B customers during recent successful purchasing decisions garnered a high-quality rating. That’s because people buy from companies, websites, and brands that they trust; what better way to establish trust than with quality design and content that exhibits your company’s authority and credibility.
Consumer standards for websites are higher than before. Therefore, no business owner can ignore the importance of web design, especially since a top-quality brand website is considered a crucial factor of an effective marketing strategy. Your business can’t afford to lose any potential leads if you are managing a lead generation website.
How to Use Design to Build Trust With Customers
1. Decrease Visual Clutter
One of the most common ways to establish trust effectively is to have a user-friendly website. A user-friendly website starts with removing visual clutters, including excess ads and pop-ups and unnecessary animations. If you include ads and pop-ups on your site, make sure that the visual noise is not overly intrusive.
Focus on increasing white space and eliminating distractions so you can provide a better user experience. To ensure that you can easily direct users to where you want them to go, provide a single call to action free from distracting widgets and ads.
2. Focus on Design Consistency
Keeping all web design elements consistent throughout your site is key to maintaining the trust of your users. If your user encounters an element out of line as they navigate a new page, it may have a jarring effect that can significantly negate their trust. To resolve this, Appcues suggests conducting a regular consistency audit and making all outside elements on your website appear native for users to have a seamless experience.
3. Adhere to Existing Design Trends for Credibility Boost
While you don’t necessarily need to follow every web design trend, it’s important to lean towards modern design standards. An outdated design suggests outdated products and even leads users to question your company’s credibility. In general, giving your website a modern look shows constant effort and care for customer satisfaction. Doing so also builds rapport and appeals to your customers.
4. Emphasize Security and Transparency
Your web design should place transparency and security at the forefront. To do this, you can apply the following strategies:
- If you own an e-commerce website, consider creating a page layout that directs your customer’s attention to your company’s security policies.
- Include an expertly-designed team and contact information pages.
- Provide accurate explanations of how you protect customer data, and use design elements to highlight them in page sections.
- Simplicity is key, so use everyday language and simple terms to write about your products and services. Also, make sure to maximize legibility to promote transparency.
The Impact of Good Website Design on Marketing
1. Differentiation
Standing out against the competition requires branding and emphasizing uniqueness. Otherwise, you may end up losing the interest of visitors and experience high bounce-back rates. Although there are tons of free templates for web design, it may not be enough to rank your website. The best way to steer clear of this problem is to align visuals in a custom-made website.
2. Improved SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is essential for websites to appear on top ranks of search engines. Incorporating this into website design is important for users to locate and interact with your website with ease. The best SEO practices involve implementing links and keywords that apply to what your target audience is currently searching for. Constantly updating your content helps you stay relevant and increases your visibility in search results.
3. Conversion
If you properly strategize web design for conversion, it directly impacts your conversion rates. Conversion rates allow companies to gain authority in making marketing decisions, as it is directly related to how users engage with a website. If your users encounter difficulty locating the information they need due to unclear navigation or poorly-placed call-to-actions, they may leave and go on to look for the information on other websites.
Benefits of Web Design Services
Building trust online takes months or even years. With the stakes being high, is it better to work on the web design by yourself? Although it may save you money initially, hiring a professional website design company can help you produce a better website that ranks at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs).
Take a look at these benefits for entrusting your website design to professionals.
1. Better Designs
No matter how much you think you know about building a website, there’s only so much that your efforts can provide. You want your users to feel excited about your website, and a professional web company can help you. They offer a “personal touch” to your website design. Plus, they maximize its navigation and user-friendliness.
2. Improved SEO Optimization
A website design company houses a team of SEO experts who can help improve your search engine ranks so more people can find you. If your site lacks this feature, it may be difficult for clients to locate you, and you’ll potentially lose customers.
3. Reliable Website
Although you can design a website yourself, it takes expertise to guarantee its reliability. For instance, you can try and change something on your website after long months of operation, but as soon as you do, your website starts to shut off or experience other issues for reasons you may not be aware of.
Instead of spending a lot of money for someone to conduct emergency fixes, hiring a website design company in the first place can help you achieve a reliable website right away.
4. Conveyed Trustworthiness
A website that is not well-made will not reflect a reputable company. That’s why professional website designers strive to create an aesthetic, functional website that gets you more clients who feel more comfortable navigating through your website.
Choose ADMS for Reliable Website Design Services
Let our pros help you with an effective trust-building marketing strategy if you plan to upgrade your web design and content.
As a long-standing SEO company in the industry, Advanced Digital Media Services is your partner in achieving your online marketing goals. With our team of professional web developers, web designers, SEO specialists, and content creators, you can have a website that has an edge in terms of rich content and functionality.
To learn more about what we can do for your website, feel free to contact us today.