Good Webdesign
Good webdesign is more than just a pleasing web page. It’s more than having pleasant looking colours that complement each other and get nodding approval from your friends; it’s more even than getting a feel good warm fuzziness every time you look at your grand achievement. Creating good webdesign is a planned affair. There is art in it too, but that only comes after the careful planning stage.
One of the first questions anyone should ask themselves before launching into the making of a web site is this: who is the web site for? Who will the typical visitor be? What will he or she want to see on the web site, and how are they likely to act once they are on the web site. All this is dependant on the industry that the web site targets. It also depends on the specific product or service that is being promoted within that industry. This is the kind of information that you need to consider carefully at the planning stage of good webdesign.
A web site that only targets the emotional side of your visitors will, by and large, do much better than one that targets the visual impact as well as the emotional side, and tries to balance the two. When the emotional side of things is the key focus for the design, the visuals will follow naturally. They are essentially part of the process and they must follow rather than lead or joint lead. Most of our human reactions are driven by our emotions, whether we realise it or not, which is why the emotional aspect of good wedesign is so important.
People buy through their emotions. They read a sales page on a web site that makes them feel good. It pushes all the right buttons, outlining the benefits they will gain from owning the product. The features of the product are great too, but the benefits are what drive the emotions, which make us decide to buy. Later, with perhaps a tinge of buyer’s remorse, we justify our decision to buy through logic. Often, the more expensive the product and the less we can really afford it, the more logic we use for justification.
Good webdesign understands how the buyer emotions can overturn any rational decision made through logic. Everything is designed to make it as easy as possible for the visitor. It leads the visitor on an exciting journey through words that drip promise with smiling ease. Without the visitor realising it, he or she has already decided to buy, but they need just a little more persuasion. As soon as they find that extra something, they are hooked.
Anyone who thinks that good webdesign is a purely technical thing that requires a purely technical solution can indeed produce excellently designed web sites. They may also be profitable and well worth owning. However, if the emotional elements of good webdesign are not in place it will be a good web site and never a truly great one. Really good webdesign has an extra oomph to it that can sometimes be difficult to pinpoint, but it’s there.
