Good design is good business.
Whether we're willing to admit it to ourselves or not, we choose products, services, and people based on beauty. And successful business owners know this well.
According to Adobe, companies with strong design outperform companies with weak design by 219% (on the S&P Index over the span of 10 years).
Tyton Media found that 38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content/layout is unattractive.
Tyton Media also found that 94% of people cited web design as the reason they mistrusted or rejected a business.
So not only is good design directly tied to business success, it's also tied to trust. And we know people don't trust just anyone. Crowdspring.com wrote the following:
When people work with a company, they want to know they're working with professionals. Investing in professional design shows that your business values professionalism and sends a powerful message to potential clients or customers. You only have one chance to make a first impression, and using a professional designer helps you make it as effective as possible. Investing wisely is key to sustaining and growing your business, and design is no exception.
Smart businesses know investing in professional design will help them win more of their market share, therefore increasing their profits. Think of your biggest competitor. No matter the industry, I'm willing to bet that they use a professional designer.
Here are 6 reasons why good design is good business.
Most people can't tell you exactly why they don't like bad design. They'll say something isn't quite right, or something is off.
Good design is about using shapes, textures, space, images, colors, forms, and content in a balanced, harmonious way.
Good design starts with a strong brand. And a well-designed logo is an important part of a company's brand.
"A great logo design can be the difference between blending in and standing out from the competition. But while we often recognize the value of a great logo, we don't always prioritize it.
New business owners often incorrectly believe that a good logo will cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. As a result, they sometimes buy premade logos in an online logo store or try a do-it-yourself approach.
In fact, entrepreneurs aren't the only ones who make the mistake of using generic logos - businesses of all sizes sometimes use logo shortcuts, only to find out that it's even more expensive to rebrand later. After all, memorable logos are 13% more likely to get consumers' attention, and 71.6% more likely to get a positive response from consumers. In a world of noise, that can make a big difference." - Arielle Kimbarovsky
In a digital age such as ours, companies only have a matter of seconds before a customer makes up their mind. Those few seconds are crucial because they can make or break a sale - and design plays a huge role in the deciding factor.
For example, it takes people only 10 seconds to form a first impression of a brand's logo, but it takes 5 to 7 impressions for consumers to recognize the logo.
Good design is a signal that customers should buy from you.
No matter your industry, you have competition.
Good design can make or break your business.
If your designs are current, modern, and impressive, people will just gravitate towards your products. It's a fact of life. Next time you go to the grocery store, browse a random aisle that you never look through and ask yourself which items on the shelves catch your eye first. I guarantee it'll be the products with phenomenal design, branding, and modern packaging.
Creating a successful product, service, or website is all about getting eyeballs to it. What if you can spend less money but generate more eyeballs just because something looks better than the others? Would you not take the time to invest more upfront to get those kinds of results?
Don't take just my word on this. Steven Bradley, the author of Design Fundamentals, points out that people are inherently biased toward beauty:
Human beings have an attractiveness bias; we perceive beautiful things as being better, regardless of whether they actually are better. All else being equal, we prefer beautiful things, and we believe beautiful things function better. As in nature, function can follow form.
Arguably, consistency is the key rule to a successful brand, and therefore, a successful business. I know. It seems like a deceptively simple and easily reinforced rule, and it can be, but only when you have a good, strong handle on design.
I can hear you right now, "So Genia, what are the pitfalls when you don't appreciate consistency?" In short, inconsistency. You risk your logo being used incorrectly, your colors being changed, and your brand values being muddied. Sure, at first, using a similar color to your brand's signature color seems harmless, it's just one brochure, right? But in the long term, all of these little irregularities snowball and become a big problem.
Think of the children's game, Telephone, where one person whispers a phrase to the person next to them, who has to repeat their translation of what was said to the next person and so on until the person down the end has a completely warped version of what was originally said. This is brand inconsistency. While it may not be a big deal that you don't use the exact right color now, down the line, when all of the little errors culminate, your audience won't know "which way it up" for your brand.
An inconsistent brand is forgettable and is a critical mistake that could put your business out of business.
That's because the brand ties the customer to the emotions.
When a brand is inconsistent, it seems chaotic and disorganized. Potential customers don't want to get involved with chaotic brands because they trust the company less. Katie Lundin reminds us:
Put another way, your brand is your company's public identity. Ideally, your brand should embody the best (and most essential) attributes of your company. That's pretty unlikely to occur if you leave your branding to chance.
Start by making deliberate, informed choices about what elements of your company's personality and service philosophy should be featured. And once you've laid the groundwork, the key to branding success is consistency.
Customers can't get to know (and trust) your business if they don't have the opportunity to experience your brand in a consistent manner. Here are some compelling ways that consistent branding can strengthen your business:
Since relationships are based on emotion, customers are often emotionally connected to companies. This gives savvy business owners the opportunity to leverage this and build strong customer relationships through good design.
Good design uses color, layout, and smart font choice to connect to their consumer in meaningful, emotionally driven ways. Incorporating impactful, memorable, and emotional connection in the visual display of your brand is the best way to show the world who you are
Your designs should support the principles you have built your company around and strive to reach your customer's hearts (rather than their wallets).
Create valuable, sustainable customer relationships by building your brand's visual identity on the foundation of emotional connection. There's no better way to secure consumer loyalty than by connecting you through your shared values, and a great design is the most effective way to illustrate them.
Good design is not only a reason why your customers become customers - it's also why they stay.
Many of today's marketing efforts are done on social media platforms. No matter the platform, social media is one of the best ways to connect to customers, go viral, and make a name for your company.
But in the age of aesthetics, you won't get far with your social media strategy with poor design.
Customers aren't the only ones who agree good design helps companies on social media platforms. 60.8% of marketers said that in 2017, design was essential to their marketing strategies.
Buffer found that tweets with images received 150% more retweets than those without images.
Without design, marketing messages boil down to plain text and this approach rarely catches people's attention.
We've laid out a few reasons that good design is good business and hopefully, you're beginning to understand why.
Through building trust, making strong first impressions, building customer relationships, and even executing successful social media campaigns, good design helps make your business more profitable.
Ultimately, good design increases your company's value, boosts sales, and puts your business in a better financial situation.
Even though your business is small today, good design can help it be big tomorrow.
If you're interested in finding ways to implement good design into your business, give us a call today at (406) 534-9851.
