Does Design Really Matter? 5 Numbers that Will Make you Realize Why You Should Hire a Company with Website Design Focus

As the owner of an online business, you should already have at least an inkling of how important website design is in making sure that your business attracts customers and increases sales. When you consider the enormity of the impact that a good website design brings, you might even say that it’s a bad business practice to NOT have a good website design.

If you’re still not convinced, here are five interesting statistics that just might make you want to hire a company that provides unique, high-quality, and customized website design services.

94%- How much a website’s design affects a visitor’s first impression

Based on a study entitled “The Effects of Aesthetics on Web Credibility” by Farah Alsudani and Matthew Casey, it was determined that the majority of a visitor’s first impression of your website will be influenced by the design. Simply put, if you have a website design that’s clean, professional-looking, pleasing to the eye, and was obviously created with a lot of thought and resources put into the process, these are the same characteristics that a visitor is going to associate with your company. A positive web design impression equals a positive business impression.

However, it also works in the opposite direction: if your website looks shoddy, hastily-made, outdated, or just plain lazy, it will also send out a negative impression about your company.

86% – How many visitors will go directly to a website’s services/product page before anything else

According to KoMarketing, 86% of visitors, especially first-time visitors, will go directly to a company’s product page to see whether or not a company has what they need. They won’t waste any time with other bells and whistles on the page, so you need to make sure that your product’s page is easy to find, informative, and easy to navigate. Each product or service must be clearly outlined on the page with a corresponding image if possible.

If the product page is difficult to find, lacking, or has a user interface that’s hard to navigate, it won’t matter how beautiful the rest of your website is or how many other unique features it has. Your customer has probably left your page and is on their way to your competitor’s website.

5.59 Seconds – Average time that users spend on reading a website’s written content

A website’s written content is considered to be the true “meat” of any page; any website design is considered to be frivolous if the actual content isn’t useful! This is the reason why a good website development company is careful to balance the aesthetic quality of your website with informative content.

Think of it this way: a website is like a cake. The majority of the cake itself is the written content, while the toppings and decorations are the website design around it. It won’t matter how good the frosting is or how beautiful the decorations are if the actual cake itself is dry and tasteless!

Luckily, there are ways to spice up written content. Many website design companies present written content in other forms, such as through infographics, charts, or even interactive displays.

44%- How many site visitors leave when they see that a website lacks basic information

One of the biggest perks of looking for a business online is the sheer convenience of it all: you can have a variety of different companies to choose from at a few strokes of the keyboard. So, if a company disrupts that process of ease and convenience by, say, making it difficult to contact them, it turns off a site visitor in a heartbeat.

Always make sure that your company’s contact information is easily visible and prominently displayed on your website. You might even consider putting a clickable link to each page on your site, just to make sure that your customers know how to reach you.

88% – The percentage of consumers who will NOT return to a website after a bad user experience

According to a study entitled “Why Web Performance Matters” by The Gomez Report, customers who have a negative experience with a website is not likely to come back especially if they are a first-time visitor. The negative experience doesn’t even have to be a major issue! It can be something as simple as the loading page slowing down by as little as 3 seconds, or the font being too small to read easily on a mobile device.