10 Ways Design Can Make A Difference In Your Business
Where do design and business converge? It can be a tricky question to answer because there is no particular point where businesses and design combine. They’re just that deeply entwined and always have been. Going back in time to hand-drawn circus and movie posters, to cutting edge AR or VR ads, every visual representation of a business involves some kind of a design.
And it has to. When it comes down to it, people are just plain picky. Even if your product or service is the best available, if your designs promoting it don’t look good they won’t look twice at it. So always position your product in ways that show it in it’s best light, with it’s most appealing features highlighted. Because design can make a difference in your business.
1) Making A Good First Impression
Relationships with customers start off with good first impressions. Visitors return to websites or businesses they’ve had a good experience with, and that’s crucial to remember. Do not put design on the back burner while focusing on other aspects of your business. Expressing your value propositions, your reliability and friendliness through visuals is the quickest way to get your point across and build trust. Once a memorable first impression is made, people are much more likely to keep you top of mind.
2) Building Trust
These days, in our highly saturated ad spaces you have only a few seconds to make an impression on your customers. How good or bad that impression is depends very much so on the quality of design you’re using.
Clearly display your product or show your service being utilized with lifestyle images. When you showcase your company in transparent and consistent ways people are more likely to find your visual representation trustworthy. Include elements like your logo and website to show customers that you have an established brand to make them feel secure about using your product or service.
3) Increasing Your Market Value
Between a neat, beautifully designed packet of sugar and bland or cluttered packet of sugar, which would you buy? The answer is pretty obvious. Even if it costs more. Even if doesn’t taste as good, that well-designed packet is headed to your pantry.
Design increases your market value. Whether you have a physical product or not, when customers compare your offering with competitors, they’ll be looking at how much effort you put into positioning yourself.
4) Bringing In More Sales
Not only will good design increase your market value, but it’ll also bring in more sales. With the right designs, you can build effective marketing campaigns that generate interest, engagement, and demand amongst your customers. You can also highlight your value propositions and what makes you better suited to outperform your competition in meeting your customers’ needs.
Focusing on design is something that will help your company in the long run. Over the span of 10 years, Adobe found that companies with a strong design outperform companies with a weak design by 219% on the S&P Index (a stock market index).
5) Strengthening Your Brand Image
89% of B2B marketers say increasing brand awareness is their most important goal. Sales and lead generation are supported by this important function as well.
Your brand image, as the name implies, heavily depends on visual elements. And there are many factors to consider when determining the visual elements that make up your brand image.
Taking the time to evaluate all of this is well worth it. We all recognize brands by their unique colours and logos. Think about famous brands like Apple, Nike, Facebook, Coca-Cola, and McDonald’s. Whenever these names are brought up, you can instantly visualize their logos and the colours that make up their brands. Even before we think of the products they offer, we are reminded of these visual elements.
6) Making Your Content User-Friendly
You’ve got a great product and you want customers to buy it. But you don’t want to scare them off by being overly salesy. Thoughtfully designed ads and creatives can help you effectively connect with customers.
For example, let’s consider a homepage design. Only carefully crafted homepages actually draw people in and make them feel compelled to learn more. And this comes down to design and how each and every element is placed to increase the likelihood of clicks on your calls to action.
7) Keeping Your Brand Engaging
The more you get to know your customers, the better you can tailor your marketing to them. From images and illustrations to icons, and fonts – you can customize every bit of your messaging so that it resonates. This might even earn you some unofficial brand ambassadors.
That’s how effective thoughtful design can be in helping you connect with your target audience. Customers appreciate businesses that understand them and represent them in their content. Once you establish a look and feel that your customers like, consistency is everything. Across social channels, your website and any print and digital creatives you produce.
8) Appearing On Trend And Up To Date
The idea of brand loyalty has changed quite a bit. Customers used to be more likely to align themselves with a brand for a lifetime. But these days it’s difficult for any one company to completely establish a monopoly in an industry. The barriers to entry are often times much lower and there is an abundance of choice for consumers.
All this adds up to an even more important place for the role of design. You’ve got to develop a strong brand identity and evolve it to keep up with your customers’ interests and preferences. The same goes for your marketing campaigns. Patterns, typefaces and colour themes come and go like seasons. And you can’t afford to ignore this, because your competitors definitely won’t.
9) Differentiating Your Brand
Visit all of the sites of your competitors often. Check out their social media profiles and ads. Because guess what? Your customers are too.
It’s important to be aware of what’s effective, or not, in your industry and to find ways to reinforce the value you can uniquely offer. By standing out because of the quality of the designs that represent your brand, you’ll reinforce for your customers that you have something unique to offer.
And this doesn’t mean that you can’t be creative. Just that you should be consistent. Working with the right designers can help you incorporate new ideas or trends while keeping your brand guidelines in mind.
10) Winning Back Customers
It happens to the best of us. From time to time, a new product or “improvement” to your service turns out to be a big bust. And in worst-case scenarios, it might do a bit of damage to the credibility of your brand.
To regain what you have lost, you have to come back stronger. You have to come back better. And you have to consistently message this to your customers, both past and prospective. A brand that owns up to its choices and shows a commitment to constantly improving stands a good chance at winning back customers. Your marketing and design creatives can play a big role in this.
Design Matters, From Early On
Whether you’re in the early stages of your business or well established, design has an important role to play. And it’s not just about establishing your existence to your target audiences, or helping you build and nurture relationships with them either. Good design keeps you competitive by inspiring and earning you curiosity, trust, and accountability.