3 Types of Design and How They Can Benefit Your Business

Often, business and design are reluctant partners. When your priority is growing your business, you want to concentrate on ideas and product development. Many business people assume design will just fall into place as they move along.

As with most business matters, design seldom falls into place without a lot of direction and help. Take the opportunity to create a symbol, color or slogan to define your company. Brand identification is vital in this competitive market. Here are a few reasons design types will benefit your business.

Web Design

The old saying that you only have one chance to make a positive first impression is the reason to invest in a web design that is well written, uncluttered and contains graphics that define your business. User interface is the key to attracting and keeping people on your site. If someone uses their smartphone to access your web page, they have little patience if your platform is not mobile friendly.

Relevant: How Simple Web Design Helps Your Business

An estimated 38 percent of people cease to engage with an unattractive web page with substandard content and poorly designed layout. Focus on responsive web design to keep people at your site. Here are a few things that go into responsive web design:

• A website that demonstrates up-to-date information to establish an active involved online footprint will create a sense of relevancy.
• Responsive web design contains relevant information for a positive user experience. This includes SEO optimization, so the user locates the keywords and information they searched for on the internet.
• Your website needs a seamless flow between multiple devices for an effortless user interface. If a customer locates your site using their laptop, they might follow up for more information later using their smartphone.
• An easy-to-navigate website is refreshing. When visitors locate pertinent information with little effort, they are more likely to return.
• Responsive designs have no clutter. Keep your landing and product page simple. Cramming in all the information you can about your business is a critical error made by many unsuccessful companies.

Source: How Responsive Web Design Helps You Get More Business

Product Design

A viable website and excellent brand recognition are useless in the absence of a well-designed product. Finding an opportunity to fill a need in the marketplace leads to the initial product design. Determine what problems prevented others from filling that need, develop an appropriate solution and test it with real people to make sure it works. Find out who needs the product and solicit their input for the right design.

Whenever possible, put yourself in the same environment as potential users and see if your product helps or adds to an already frustrating situation. Above all, remember that real human beings will purchase and use your product. Consider dexterity at different ages, visual acuity matters when trying to read directions for use and make your product accessible to everyone who needs or wants it.

Relevant: How Packaging Can Take Your Product To The Next Level

Practical things like hard-to-open packaging can doom your product to the trash heap. Remember the adage with brand design: A customer will heavily judge the quality of a product based on its packaging. If the packaging is shoddy, then the customer is not out of line to assume the product is shoddy as well. If the packaging takes an industrial-strength saw to pry it open, the customer may rightly figure that the product is hard to use.

Brand and Logo Design

A simple, colorful symbol that represents your business philosophy and related goals is a defining factor in your success. Forbes Magazine reports that color improves potential brand recognition by a whopping 80 percent. Advertising, brochures and target marketing cannot hope to achieve 80 percent brand recognition.

Source: Statistics To Help You Prioritize Business Growth Initiatives

Maintain brand consistency across all information platforms you use to reach customers. Everything from direct mail advertising to the brochures in your lobby needs to reinforce your brand with the same consistent message. Clearly, this goes for your web presence as well. Brand consistency is not only a color factor. It includes your logo, your tone, your core values and carries them across every platform including product packaging.

A business that skimps on product packaging pays a price. A customer will heavily judge the quality of a product based on its packaging. Applying a consistent brand message, color, logo, and quality to your packaging make the difference between a one-time purchaser and a long-term customer.

Once you have a well-designed product, distinguished colors and logos and an easy-to-navigate website free of clutter, you have a recipe for success. Leave out any one of these design factors and your business may quickly fail. However, if you have a great product, then have confidence to approach web design and brand recognition with a clearly defined purpose.

If you’re looking for help getting your business off the ground and don’t know where to start, then get in contact with us! We help all sorts of organizations and we want to help you succeed!