You must have noticed several stellar websites having design, layout, and theme that are out of this world. Some of them even get design awards, and we get mesmerized by the sheer design and concept. So, ideally, all of these websites must be hot with their target market and getting good sales as a result. However, when you dig deep, you will find out that’s not the case. This is quite surprising, but that’s how things work.

Awe-inspiring and fascinating website designs is not a guarantee that your business will surely prosper. We all talk about attractive and useful web design, but exactly what constitutes such a design and businesses can be sure about it? What you need to look for, and what metrics you need to measure quality?

There are some key aspects that businesses need to keep in mind in terms of web design for a design that works for them. If you want to know if your design is a sure-shot winner or not, you need to judge it against some factors related to visual communication.

The following are five vital points for small businesses to consider when evaluating web design and graphic design quality.

1. Table of Contents

   Purpose of Design

Start with what you wanted to achieve with your current plan and what you have achieved after some time. If it was a logo, did it represent the brand and communicated the message well? Through design, you need to compel the visitor of the website to take action.

Don’t think about offering too much information in one design. Instead, look to strike the right balance between educating your audience about your brand through meaningful and precise information and the design.

Through the landing page, any business looks forward to generating leads and creating brand awareness. Getting vital information from the potential customer like his email address is the top priority here. A simple yet effective and engaging design is what you need so that you can get the attention of the visitor.

2. Strategy

Look at some of the most attractive and brilliantly designed websites. What is the reason behind their success? Being user-friendly is one thing so that it gets the eyeballs it deserves. So, what is your strategy to come up with a great design? If you didn’t have a plan in the first place, the chances are that your design will fall flat on its face.

Ask yourself: Do my visitors get a clear sense of who I am and what I offer to them? Does my design direct visitors to exactly what they are looking for? A clear strategy involving the design is what you need. Go through the following checklist and honestly answer them so that you can devise a clear plan.

• Your business category is that obvious on your portal?
• Purpose of the website, and is the design fulfilling it?
• Your target audience, and have they accepted/appreciated the design?
• What reaction do you want from your audience, and is your design encouraging them to do so?

Let me focus a bit more on the last aspect and describe it in detail.

3. Is your Message Easy to Understand?

For small businesses and startups, thinking about a great design will ensure your message is instantly lapped up by your audience through the content. Large headlines to catch the attention of the viewer, if any, is one of the examples in this regard.

Design from top of a page from left to right is the norm, and that’s why such a visual hierarchy is common. Well-executed design principles and typography will ensure that your viewers can go through it quickly and easily. In this digital age, shorter attention span means businesses don’t have much time to get the attention of people and need to excel with a top-notch design.

4. An Aesthetically Pleasing Design and Layout

Companies looking for a great design must look for a great layout, composition, and color scheme, coupled with images that can engage any visitor. A picture is worth a thousand words, so the use of a picture that is bright and uses a well-balanced color scheme will constitute a beautiful design.

Good design should be timeless, but it can be useful to take advantage of a trendy look in more temporary designs like posters or flyers. For logo design, ensure it is long-lasting and avoid trends that are done to death. Aesthetic trends come and go, so don’t compromise and lose focus of differentiating your brand from the others in your business by blindly follow them. Instead, go for a design that is aesthetic in real sense.

5. Usability

All the practical considerations of what goes into good website design are related to usability. For example, technical details like sitemaps, loading speed, security, etc. all carry a lot of weightage in making a design work for a company.

Think of you as a visitor on your website. If you can’t find what you are looking for because of poor navigation, or the page takes too long to load, you will surely leave that website, right? If any answer to the following questions is negative, then you need to redesign your site immediately.

• Does it take a long time to load my website? And visitors getting bored as a result?
• Is it easy to find information?
• Is there a search button for the visitors?
• Any broken links/error messages after loading a page?
• Support multiple browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, IE, etc.)
• Work the same on mobile devices?

Final Word

In addition to the above mentioned five aspects, the clever use of content and the style in which you present it is also important. Readability and usefulness are two factors that are critical to the success of web design. Think about your current or upcoming web design on the characterizations mentioned above and evaluate it for the best results.

If you feel that you can add something valuable to this blog, have a question in mind, or just want to offer your feedback for this blog, you are more than welcome. Speak up by using the comments section below.