Why does good design matter for your business?

Why does good design matter for your business?

The biggest reason? Trust. You work hard to build trust, not only with your existing customers, but with new business. You probably do an excellent job of responding to emails quickly and creating the best product/service for your customers. You do everything in your power to build and keep their trust. The design and the way your brand looks can actually be a huge factor of whether or not your potential customers trust you.

As humans, we naturally trust what we see with our eyes. If your brand looks all over the place, people will think you’re all over the place. If your website is purple and your social media is green and the flyers your printing out are orange, then your potential customers don’t know what to expect from you. If you look unpredictable and inconsistent, people will spend their money elsewhere. Think about the last few purchases you made. Did you buy from someone who felt inconsistent? Likely, you bought from someone who made you feel safe. People don’t want to spend money if they’re not going to be taken care of. This is especially important if you’re making sales on the internet, or inviting people to make large purchases with you.

What does it look like?

Here is an example of an instagram account with no consistency. Every post has different colors, fonts, and types of photos. It feels chaotic. The individual posts are not bad, but they don’t fit together well. (This is a fake account we put together for this example.)

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Here are a couple accounts with good consistency. They have a cohesive look and everything they post fits into it.

Left @stollerparentcoaching Right @kc_printing

How does design can affect a customer’s experience?

Let’s say you’re a coach, not only are you asking people to invest quite a bit of money with you, you’re also asking them to trust you with their pain. If someone is considering coaching with you they’re probably going to check your website and your social media before they book your services. If they check out your website and see lots of calming water images and blue tones and then click to your social media and everything is bright and wild, they will be thrown off. They will feel confused and, probably on a subconscious level, they will feel like they can’t trust you to do what you say.

Now flip that. Your potential customer comes to your website and sees calming water images. They click over to your social media and see the same calming theme, the same colors, the same types of images. They feel calm. They’re not confused. You’ve started to build trust. Now they will move to the next level and start to read what you have to say and read your current customers’ raving reviews. They’re more likely to dig in and then set up a consultation or book a session. If your design is inconsistent, however, you may never get to that level because you’ve broken trust before they even get to know you.

The same holds true for non-profits and product based businesses. If you want to build trust with new customers you must have consistent design.

Keep reading in the upcoming weeks and we will talk about ways you can improve the consistency and quality of your design. Need some help getting unstuck right now?