There’s a lot of things you want for your website and a lot of things you think you need. These principles are going to help guide you, center you, and ground you in what really matters for your website. These principles will help you understand what good design actually does.
When we talk about what design really does, you have to start with trust, because design builds trust. When I land on your website, I want to tell in a second or two if you’re trustworthy. You’re used to seeing this across the web.
You land on a site and immediately know that you don’t like what you see and you don’t ever want to give them your email address let alone your credit card information. That is communicated through the design and through the message.
Design should help you connect with your audience. It’s the difference between losing a reader or having them track with you. That is resonating. When you get someone on the other side of the Internet landing on your website and they’re begging you to tell them more. We need our web design to help us resonate with our audience.
Design helps your audience take action
We need to nudge our audience toward taking certain actions. This is how our business survives. It might be getting on your email list or it might be purchasing a product. Different businesses have different goals and different action that they’re asking their customers to take. But on your website, you will want people to take action. Good design of your site will help nudge them toward taking that action.
Now, I’ve been a designer for a long time and I’ve designed a lot of different kinds of sites, but I will tell you this– your web design (the trust, the resonance, the action that it’s going to help people take on your site) all of this is about the effectiveness of your site.
It’s not about the fanciness. It’s not about the prettiness. It’s not about the sexiness or anything like that. When it comes to design, choose effectiveness every time. I just bring that up because a lot of people are trying to make their websites look a certain way and they have no clue how it’s going to work. I want you as an entrepreneur to be thinking, “How is this going to work? How effective is this going to be?”
Now, of course you want the design of your site to look amazing. But simmer down on that because, yes, while you do want it to look amazing, you don’t know how to do that yet. Can you stomach that for a second? As a young business you don’t have the funds to pay for someone who can make your site look amazing. And you might also not have the design skills to make it work.
Because of all this, I want you to focus on simplicity.
Clutter is confusing. When you want your website to look amazing you tend to start adding more stuff to it. But this clutter is sending all sorts of visual cues and you’re probably signaling a lot of confusing things that visitors are trying to understand and they’re not resonating. So I want you to focus on simplicity in your design.
Now I know some of you are thinking, “If I go too simple, how am I going to stand out from my competition?”
It’s a great question because standing out from the crowd is one of the most important elements of modern business and the truth is you’re going to stand out with your message, your unique selling point. Your compelling reason why your reader would buy your product instead of the others that exist is because your messaging will hit home with them.
It’s about your message and that’s where you’re going to stand out.
When we talk about what design really does, you have to start with trust, because design builds trust. When I land on your website, I want to tell in a second or two if you’re trustworthy. You’re used to seeing this across the web.
You land on a site and immediately know that you don’t like what you see and you don’t ever want to give them your email address let alone your credit card information. That is communicated through the design and through the message.
Design should help you connect with your audience. It’s the difference between losing a reader or having them track with you. That is resonating. When you get someone on the other side of the Internet landing on your website and they’re begging you to tell them more. We need our web design to help us resonate with our audience.
Design helps your audience take action
We need to nudge our audience toward taking certain actions. This is how our business survives. It might be getting on your email list or it might be purchasing a product. Different businesses have different goals and different action that they’re asking their customers to take. But on your website, you will want people to take action. Good design of your site will help nudge them toward taking that action.
Now, I’ve been a designer for a long time and I’ve designed a lot of different kinds of sites, but I will tell you this– your web design (the trust, the resonance, the action that it’s going to help people take on your site) all of this is about the effectiveness of your site.
It’s not about the fanciness. It’s not about the prettiness. It’s not about the sexiness or anything like that. When it comes to design, choose effectiveness every time. I just bring that up because a lot of people are trying to make their websites look a certain way and they have no clue how it’s going to work. I want you as an entrepreneur to be thinking, “How is this going to work? How effective is this going to be?”
Now, of course you want the design of your site to look amazing. But simmer down on that because, yes, while you do want it to look amazing, you don’t know how to do that yet. Can you stomach that for a second? As a young business you don’t have the funds to pay for someone who can make your site look amazing. And you might also not have the design skills to make it work.
Because of all this, I want you to focus on simplicity.
Clutter is confusing. When you want your website to look amazing you tend to start adding more stuff to it. But this clutter is sending all sorts of visual cues and you’re probably signaling a lot of confusing things that visitors are trying to understand and they’re not resonating. So I want you to focus on simplicity in your design.
Now I know some of you are thinking, “If I go too simple, how am I going to stand out from my competition?”
It’s a great question because standing out from the crowd is one of the most important elements of modern business and the truth is you’re going to stand out with your message, your unique selling point. Your compelling reason why your reader would buy your product instead of the others that exist is because your messaging will hit home with them.
It’s about your message and that’s where you’re going to stand out.
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