You’re scrolling through your Instagram, and suddenly you see an advertisement of a perfect cardigan you’ve been dreaming of for years. But when you follow the link for the online shop’s website, you find that the page is poorly designed. What will you do? You’ll instantly close the shop because it will appear to you to be scammy.
If this scenario is way too familiar for you, trust us, you’re not the only one. According to statistics, 38% of the visitors will leave the website and stop engaging with the content if the design is unappealing. Moreover, in 2022, 48% of people mentioned the website brand design and UX as their number 1 factor in determining how credible the business is.
So if you want to win the trust of your customers and make them stay on your website and with your business in general, you need to work on your brand design and UX.
Brand identity, UX design, and graphical user interface creation — all of these are integral parts of your business’s success, and your company can’t function without it.
But don’t worry. We know how to help you create the perfect web appearance your visitors can’t resist. We have collected some tips from experts in the industry that will guide you in creating brand identity, UX design, and UI.
We’ll start with the:
Branding Tips
Before we get into our tips and tricks, let’s first make sure we’re all on the same page. First, we’ll go through some definitions.
What is branding?
Branding is one of those ambiguous marketing concepts everyone seems to understand, but not everyone can define. To put it simply, branding is the process of giving meaning to your company, organization, services, or products so that they stand out in the competition. The brand is usually connected to a specific philosophy, ideology, or values that the company aims to hold. To understand the concept of branding, let’s understand how it is different from the product’s design.
Branding vs. Product Design
Many companies wrongly assume that creating a logo, a header, or a business card is enough to have a brand. However, branding and product design are drastically different.
You can think of product design as the job of a team of tailors, stylists, and makeup artists to ensure the movie star looks good all the time and has a specific image that reflects his personality. But the personality itself cannot be created by stylists — it already exists. The creation of the personality is a way more complicated process.
Same works for companies. The brand is like the personality of the company. It is its values, vision, mission, and everything in between. At the core of every good brand is a strong ideology.
Let’s take Apple — one of the most valuable global brands existing today. In the minds of the consumers, it is associated with prestige, simplicity, liberty, and passion. When you buy an iPhone, you don’t simply buy a product. You buy the “think different” philosophy; you do believe that it is “Your new superpower,” and it’s “Oh.So.Pro.” This is when you know that you’re dealing with a company that did its branding really well.
But all these ideas need to be represented to you somehow, and that’s when their product design comes in. In the website layout, they keep the “less is more” approach: mainly showing you the large product shots, filling the website with a lot of white space, and, in general, keeping it simple.
So, we hope the difference in the brand design vs. product design is cleared out now, and we can quickly move to our three tips from branding experts:
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Tip 1: Share About You
Write it all down: have a proper About Us page, where you tell your existing and potential customers about your brand, its unique identity, and how it is different from competitors. Of course, all of this should be presented beautifully, and it would be perfect if you could convey it all through a story to which your website visitors could relate.
On your About Us page, you can:
- Share some photos that show who stands behind the brand
- Show testimonials of your happy customers
- Share your values and explain what you stand for
- Tell Your story: how and why the company was created
This way, your customers will feel that they can trust you, which is the essential purpose of branding. Here are some About Us writing tips that will help you craft the perfect page.
Tip 2: Share About Your Customers
After you’ve successfully told your story, it’s time to tell the story of those who use your product or services. Trust us; a little bragging will not hurt your business. In other words, include some client testimonials who were happy with your company and who achieved some kind of success with your products. This way, you will show that success to your potential customers and make them want to come to you too.
According to a study, the regular use of testimonials and reviews will result in roughly 62% more revenue every time your customers visit your brand. This is because when people find an ordinary person, a person just like them, giving their opinion on your brand more credible and relatable.
Tip 3: Keep Your Social Media Active
Finally, for better customer engagement, ensure that your company builds and maintains a strong presence on social media. Today, many people use social media platforms as their main source of information. Here is where they will come to for any updates or news about your brand. Social media is also a means for your customers to reach out to you and get engaged with your brand.
So, respond to their questions or comments, keep quality content and invest time in your social media accounts.
Design Tips
Brand design and UX/UI go hand in hand. Once you understand your company’s position in the market, it will be easier to represent it to the audience. But no matter which stylistic and approach you choose, there are some universal design standards and proven methods it’s better to follow. We have singled out the three most important ones:
Tip 1: Keep Your Homepage Free of Clutter
The homepage should be where your visitors can instantly understand your company’s core messages. Keep in mind that almost no one reads every single word on the website. Instead, people usually scroll through it, skimming over the key phrases and images. So you don’t want to stuff your homepage with too much information as eventually your visitors will get confused and leave the website.
Take a look at the homepage of Arngren.
Would you stay here for longer than two minutes? Or, more importantly, would you trust this website? This is a case where the website has so many things going on that you ultimately lose track of it. It denies all the modern principles of web design and fails to communicate the primary purpose of the business right away.
Some of the reasons arngren.net can stand as an example of a poorly designed website are:
- Wrong color usage
- Bad navigation
- Confusing and small typography
- And of course, the absence of clear messaging
You can look at other examples of bad web design to know exactly what to avoid.
Tip 2: Remember About the Visual Hierarchy
Visual hierarchy is one of the core principles of web design. It helps you to display the content most efficiently. If you use the hierarchy correctly, you’ll be able to lead the attention of your visitors to the correct pages or elements which have more priority and contain the most important messaging.
Here are two of the main components of the visual hierarchy:
- Weight and sizing: Your business logo and name should be larger and more prominent than the rest of the assets on your website. Readers naturally move towards larger and bolder items or titles first, only after that switching to smaller pieces of text. So you want to make sure they remember your brand name and visual right away.
- The placement of elements: The place of your elements matters too. For instance, you could place your CTA button at the very center of the screen so that it catches your reader’s attention. On the other hand, you can keep the more insignificant pieces of information at the bottom left corner of the website.
If you create the right hierarchy, your readers will subconsciously follow it, and you can communicate your message the way you’ve chosen to. To take it to the next level, don’t also forget to apply color, spacing, and contrast to make the crucial sections stand out even better.
Tip 3: Keep it mobile-friendly
Your website should be accessible from all the devices and it should look equally good on all of them. Remember that today many of your visitors might stumble upon your page while using their mobile phones or tablets. So you want to ensure that your messaging is still clear and that your website is easily navigated through even on mobile.
Remember that the mobile version of your website should be even cleaner and less cluttered than the desktop version. So you might want to scale down some of the elements or assets.
Nowadays, a popular approach is to use the responsive design method, which automatically adapts your website to different window sizes and screens. This way, no matter which device your audience uses, your website will be able to adjust accordingly.
These were the main tips for the design, but keep in mind that the design approaches and methods might change depending on the industry you work in. For instance, if you’re building an online shop, you should follow some guidelines specific to eCommerce websites. The same principles would hardly work for the gaming website. But in general, the three tips that we mentioned here work for nearly all the industries out there.
UX tips
Our last tips are about UX. Not only should your website be visually appealing, but also be easy to use and navigate through. This is when UX comes in. Ux is all about the functionality of your website — how intuitive it is for your users.
Here are some recommendations for creating the best UX for your website:
Tip 1: Understand Your Users
You can’t just choose the design of your website based on what looks or feels good to you. That would be way too subjective. And this is a mistake that company owners make a lot. Remember, your company is not you. It is built for your target market, and if it does not resonate with them, you’ll lose your conversions.
So spend some time to properly understand who your user is. For instance, try to create data-driven buyer personas that will help you have an idea of your potential consumer. Do your market research and find out your competitors’ customer base. Then, you can mimic their UX and see how it works with your audience. Remember, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. You should simply understand what your customer is used to and offer the same experience.
Tip 2: Be Ready to Change and Adapt
Designing a good UX is not a one-time thing. Your website’s UX should be like a living organism: it should constantly change and be modified. So once you design your initial UX, keep working on it to make it even faster, more relevant, and more intuitive.
The modern design principles are always changing so if you want your website to stay in the competition, you should be ready to change it accordingly. Just think about it, 5G will be a thing very soon, so logically you will have to enhance your website to attract modern users.
In short, always modify and update your UX to stay on top of the competition!
Tip 3: Keep it accessible
When designing your website, you should keep all of your users in mind. Remember, some of your visitors might have physical impairments: according to WHO, around 15% of users have some form of disability. And unfortunately, 98% of websites are not adjusted for people with disabilities and do not offer full accessibility.
But your website should not be among the 98% percentage. If you want to make it available for all your users and do not make anyone feel excluded, try following a website accessibility guide and making it open for all kinds of visitors.
Sum Up
Now that we’ve talked about website design, brand design, and UX, it’s your turn to use these tips in practice and improve your company’s digital presence. Let us know in the comments section which of these recommendations on brand identity, UX design, or overall website appearance you liked the most, and if there is anything we’ve missed!
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General FAQ
How does a good UX of a website increase business?
If your website’s UX is good, it not only will improve your users’ experience but will also bring more conversions to your website, which means a well-designed UX is literally generating profit and value for your company.
What's the difference between UX and UI?
In simple terms, UI is about the appearance, the look of your website, while UX is about the feel of it. UI is about the visual aspect, while UX is about the experience. The terms themselves have the definitions within them: User Interface vs. User Experience.
How does branding help a website?
It’s essential when your website visitors have a clear idea of what your brand is about and the kind of services or products it offers. In a way, having a brand allows you to differentiate and position yourself in the market, which in it turn, helps you gain more customers.
