You know it; I know it… the web is full of awwwwwful websites.

Do yourself and everyone else a favour -

DON’T get your site done by your mate down the road who has done at least one website in his spare time and is quite happy to bash out yours for a discount.

Why Good Design Pays

If your content is excellent but no-one can find it, it might as well not be there.

If your site looks like it was built by your little sister for a school project, people will turn up on your site and then promptly leave.

Design is more than just making things pretty. It involves usability, psychology and trust. Good designers are like a musical arranger – they take multiple components and marry them together.

Here are just a few of the things a good designer will take into consideration whilst building your site:

• Primary and secondary and possibly even tertiary navigation to ensure that people can easily find the information they’re after
• Your site map – the pages of your site and how they will be structured.
• The layout of your homepage – to ensure that all the most interesting and eye catching content is presented well to lead visitors further into the site
• The layout of your content pages – to ensure content is spaced nicely to ensure readability
• Typography – your typefaces and their styles and sizes. Typography choices strongly affect readability as well as general aesthetics.
• Colour – colours have strong associative qualities and therefore strong psychological influences.
• Search engine optimisation – the way titles and headings are used and the way in which the site is built strongly affect the ability of search engines to read and index your site
• Use of images – images are powerful. Incorporating images that say the right thing is crucial to the message you’re putting out.

We humans are highly visual creatures. Just taking notice of adverts on TV or in magazines and billboards reveals so much about us – our desires and needs. We’re highly susceptible to associations between images and brands. You may think that adverts don’t affect you, but think about that next time you’re putting a particular brand of washing powder into your trolley instead of another one – something has led you to trust that brand over others.

There’s not a lot of difference between the ads you see on TV and the look and feel of your website.  People will trust you more if you have a professional looking website. Somehow it says “I’m successfull and my brand can afford this level of promotion.”  It says that you care about what you’re doing and you’ve invested in something because you’re serious about it. People with “kid-sister” websites don’t present that kind of image.

If you’re looking for a strong contemporary image built on a bed of cutting-edge technology for your business, Dacoda Multimedia can help.  I build beautiful websites married to excellent technical frameworks that empower.  Check out my portfolio here or make an enquiry to see how I could help.