How Does Good Design Lead to Marketing Success?

If you’re looking to be a marketing success, you have to understand the importance of design.

This statistic says it all; 38% of users will stop engaging with a website if the content/layout is unattractive.

Nailing the design for all your marketing processes is often the difference between engaging with a potential customer and putting them off.

Let’s dive into how we can help you with this.

What’s Your Websites Purpose?

To achieve marketing success, your website must have a clear purpose.

It’s imperative to communicate with potential clients what they can accomplish from visiting your web page.

Visitors should be able to see via your homepage what they have to do to achieve the benefit.

You need to answer questions like; who you are and how you can help them, very quickly. Otherwise, they’ll lose interest and click off your page.

To avoid this, consider the following;

• Who’s your target audience?

• How are you going to create engaging content?

• How are you going to organize your website, to make it user-friendly?

If you’re hiring a professional to design your website, it’s important to discuss the above questions in detail. This will help ensure your site contributes to your marketing success.

You Must Create a User Journey

By ‘user journey’ we mean the process the visitor takes from the moment they land on your site to the point they make their purchase.

This has to be at the forefront of your mind when selecting both the creatives and copy.

Your user journey is one of the most effective ways to communicate to your clients what they can expect from you and your business.

Nail this and marketing success is inevitable.

Visual Hierarchy

A visual hierarchy refers to every aspect of the design of your website.

However, some features of your site are more important than others, so you’ll want to draw more attention to them.

To achieve this, you should consider the following;

• Size: If something’s important – make it bigger. This is an easy way to demand your visitor’s attention.

• Color: Using color is a great way to organize your content and to solidify your branding. The better your branding, the more memorable your business (hopefully for, the better)! Try to use bold and contrasting colors to emphasize the critical areas of your site.

• Proximity: Most websites have several sections to them. It’s great to link to other parts of your website if they’re relevant. This helps to organize your content, makes your website user-friendly and will keep visitors on your site for longer.

• Whitespace: this is essential. Without white space, it’s difficult for your audience to read your copy. In addition to this, space can be used to organize your content and communicate elements that are related to one another.

F-Pattern Scanning

Studies show that visitors scan websites in the form an ‘F shape.’

With this in mind, you should carefully place the elements of your website, making sure essential features like your call to action fall in line with the ‘F shape.’

Engaging Design

To make your website more appealing to users, we recommend considering the following to make your design a marketing success;

• Ensure you mobile optimize all of your web pages. More and more customers are shopping using their mobiles. Think of all the potential sales you’ll miss if you alienate mobile users!

• Incorporate a collapsible menu. People are familiar with these, and they’re easy to use.

• As part of your mobile optimization process, make sure you’ve optimized your images to suit desktops, smartphones, and tablets.

• Test the loading speed of your web pages. Individual design elements will impact this so you’ll have to consider this.

• Incorporate Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages – this should improve the loading time of your web page on mobile devices.

This may sound like a lot of work, but we promise it’s worth it in the long run.

Have You Carefully Considered Your Call to Action?

A well-crafted call to action is essential for high conversion rates – and we all know successful conversions equals marketing success.

When designing this element, consider the following advice;

• Size: Make sure your call to action is big enough to stand out from everything else on the page. After all, it’s by far the most important. For example, if the buttons situated below a contact form, it should be at least equal to the size of the fields on that form.

• Text: You must communicate with your designer the desired text for your call to action. This is vital information to have when figuring out its size.

• Color: As previously discussed, color is essential to attracting a viewers attention. Be sure to select the color of your call to action with this in mind.

• Button Shape: The shape of your call to action must stand out from all the other elements on the page.

• Split Testing: When figuring out the design of your web page you must split test each of the elements. Be sure to trial a variety of colors/ button shapes/ copy, etc. to see which converts the best.

You probably know this already. However, a strong call to action is key to marketing success. It usually consists of a headline and button.

This button takes visitors to your desired goal. i.e., purchase through a sales page, an opt into your email list, etc.

You can scatter your calls to action throughout your website.

Please find below the most common places to insert this element:

• Near the top of your web pages
• Sidebars
• The footers
• Homepage popup

Arguably, the best place to put a call to action is the first section of your homepage.

This page usually gets the most views, hence increasing the exposure of your call to action.

Is Your Website Hard Work?

By this we mean, how hard does the visitor have to think about your website to be fully engaged with it.

Naturally, the harder the process, the lower your conversion rate will be.

People are busy. They want a user-friendly interface, something that’s quick and simple to use. Otherwise, they’ll leave your site and head for one of your competitors.

To tackle this, you should consider the below when designing your website;

• Make sure you use a minimal copy to communicate your point.
• Ensure the purpose and organization of your website are clear. This increases the likelihood of the visitor making a purchase.

This is also where your websites navigation system comes into play.

You have to ensure the most important pages are easy to find. These typically include the sales pages and a contact page.

It’s essential these are accessible to achieve marketing success because they’re the pages most likely to make money.

Enter the Mind of Your Target Audience

When designing your web pages, it’s important to predict user behavior.

When you’re considering this, take some time to think about the following;

• How are users interacting with your content? – Are they scrolling, clicking, using a stylus, etc.?

• What aids user participation the most? – Color, size, shape, text, etc.?

• Have you gone over seven points on one web page? If so, consider reducing the information on that page. Consumers are more likely to remember between five and nine things in their short-term memory.

Have you ever taken a survey of your audience? If you have, use this to steer you in the right direction.

Forms

If you have an opt-in form of any kind on your website, keep the fields to the bare essentials. For example, first name and email address.

You have to understand people are more reluctant than ever to give out their information. So asking for a lot of it will immediately raise a red flag. Don’t get greedy by asking for telephone numbers, Skype ID, middle names, etc.

This is very likely to hinder your marketing success.

Plus, people just don’t have the time to fill out lengthy forms. They need information quickly. If you don’t give this to your audience, someone else will.

Create an Attractive Website Design

A beautiful design is worth a thousand words. It communicates to potential clients how seriously you take your business.

The more professional you appear, the more confident your customers will be that they’ll receive a high-quality product or service. People want value for money, so assure them they’ll get it.

Your home page often creates the first impression people have of your business. You design should focus on building trust with potential customers.

Consider having your website professionally designed or at least swot up on the subject. This will dramatically increase the likelihood of marketing success.

Designing Your Email Marketing Campaigns

To be a marketing success, you need an effective email marketing campaign. To crack this (like your website), you have to consider how you design your emails carefully.

First, it’s important to take a quick look at past email design trends so we can fully understand what’s working now.

2016 Email Design Trends

A lot of these methods still work today, so be sure to take note.

• GIFs, these have dominated emails since 2016. They’re perfect because they aren’t large files. As these attachments are animated, they’re ideal for capturing the reader’s attention.

• The minimalistic design has become increasingly popular. Not just for emails but also for brand logos and websites. The key to a high-converting minimalistic email is to reduce both the elements and text. Only give the reader essential information.

• In contrast to the above, unconventional email designs have also surged in popularity. These often surprise the reader. The intention is to brighten their day, so they remember your brand. This is a brilliant way to stand out from the crowd.

• Email Master Templates – these are essential for speeding up your email campaigns. Additionally, they help keep your branding consistent. This is essential for creating an identifiable business. One of the effects of this is cementing your relationship with your subscribers, which will lead to them getting to know, like, and trust you.

Maybe focus on utilizing one of these, to begin with. This should avoid it being too overwhelming.

What’s Working This Year Regarding Email Design?

Throughout 2017 we’ve seen a focus on giving customers a thrilling experience via email design. Time again we’ve seen entrepreneurs strike marketing success using the below elements in their campaigns.

This not only encourages the reader to engage with your emails but to also respond to them. This is great for opening up a personal line of communication with members of your following.

You can achieve this by including the following elements in your emails;

• Keyframe Animation
• Cinemagraph
• Live Backgrounds
• Interactive Elements
• Dynamic Content

The above features highlight the future of high-converting email design.

Let’s look at each of these elements in further detail;

Keyframe Animation

This is animation using keyframe. This is an excellent development regarding animation used in emails because it’s so much smoother.

By this, we mean the frame changes are less noticeable and more natural looking.

Cinemagraph

The use of this feature is ideal for getting readers to interact with your emails and for keeping them engaged.

These Cinemagraph GIFs are flawlessly looped videos that create a cinematic effect.

Live Backgrounds

This refers to designing your emails so that the backgrounds changing in some form. This is perfect for increasing reader engagement.

You can use looped videos, or other animation to achieve this effect.

Use of Interactive Elements

The purpose of interactive elements is to increase recipient interaction – and it sure is working.

Interactive elements include; interactive menus, countdown clocks, call to action buttons, calendar invitations, etc.

The Inclusion of Dynamic Content

Content should be dynamic and tailored to each recipient.

When creating dynamic content, you should consider the following factors; location, age, gender, purchasing power, device used to access email, etc.

Are You Ready for Marketing Success?

If you’re looking to boost your marketing success, look no further.

We’re more than happy to provide advice on how to market your products or services. Please feel free to reach out to us, and one of our team of experts will answer any questions you might have.

Alternatively, please feel free to check out our blog. We have plenty of articles that provide further information on this topic.

You might find these two blog posts of particular interest: 10 Web Design Trends That Will Define 2017 and 4 Reasons Why UX Design is Good for Business.