Increase your sales by improving your Web site design

Getting Web design right is both hard and controversial. If you ask a cross section of the population their opinion of a particular design, there are usually as many opinions as the number of people. To try to understand design in a business context, I think that it's worth asking what the difference is between design and art? I would define design as the constrained application of art. Good designers are interested in the practical application of their creative output. And design is not just about aesthetics, it also embraces usability, cost and other more prosaic factors.

Designing a Web site that can sell successfully has many of the elements of ordinary sales and marketing, combined with creativity.

Design basics

The aim of design has to be to support the objectives of the site. In the case of ecommerce sites this is primarily to sell.

How can design help? First of all we must communicate the brand message that the company wishes to convey to the target demographic. If there is any disconnect between these two, this will jar with prospects and significantly reduce their likelihood of buying. To use an extreme and silly example, the brand communicated for extreme sports will be different from insurance sold to over-50 Saga types.

The next objective of design, and closely related to brand, is the prime message. Maybe the site wishes to communicate freshness, maybe stability. Whatever it is, it's the objective of the designer to create an emotional reaction in the people engaging with the site.

Design has the chance to bring clarity to what is offered on the site, establish trust and clearly explain how the offering can be accessed. The topic of usability merits a whole section.

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