To Design a Business-Generating Website, Consider These Key Visual Design Concepts

In today’s rapid-fire, ultra-saturated marketing environment, digital platforms rule—and the website is king. An organization’s website is both the most visible articulation of its brand as well as the statistically likely first touchpoint for new customers.

Accordingly, embarking on a website redesign isn’t just about divesting from an old, ugly, clunky visual language and investing in something shiny and attractive. It’s about marketplace differentiation—about generating a spatial concept that reasserts your brand promise, about providing customers with an optimal user experience, about building processes that deliver your message with clarity and consistence across every digital channel.

In order to develop a website that capitalizes on these opportunities, it’s important to consider best practices in the visual design field, particularly information architecture (IA) and user experience (UX). These foundational concepts are valuable because they encourage synergy between content and visuals, yielding a cohesive strategy that puts real, live customers first. Put more simply, they’re problem-solving tools.

I. So, Your House Is Built on Shaky Ground

Opportunities arise from challenges. Every organization contends with them, even the ones that enjoy major brand recognition or turn an incredible profit. Far too many websites act as a ball and chain, hamstringing business development efforts while undercutting the excellence of their brand’s services. Typical website pain points include:

• Unclear segmentation of audiences

• Content that does not honor the brand

• Cluttered pagination

• Structure that reflects internal politics rather than customer needs

• Lack of intention or differentiators

• Technical difficulties (security, responsiveness, mobile interface, speed)

II. First, Gather Your Tools

Fortunately, the concepts of IA and UX go a long way toward solving most of these issues.

IA is the creation of a structure for a website, app, or other products that allows users to understand where they are—and where they information they’re seeking is—in relation to their current position.

A website is your organization’s home. Because it houses a wide variety of different elements that constitute your brand, it needs a solid foundation to thrive. IA builds that foundation with clarity, simplicity, and focus.

Bad IA is like a maze. It takes users on a long journey to find key information. It wastes time, energy, and resources. (According to a Microsoft Research report, users will decide within 10 seconds of loading a webpage if they want to stay or leave.) Worst of all, it can puncture a big hole in your marketing funnel.

Good IA is like a travel guidebook. It organizes and labels content clearly and logically. It ensures that users can effectively navigate complex sets of information. Ultimately, it helps drive the customer journey, shepherding prospectives from awareness to consideration to conversion.

Good IA is also the basis of good UX.  

UX is a design approach that looks at a user’s behavior, goals, motivations, and context. What would any given user consider a valuable experience? UX uses the combined powers of visual and verbal storytelling to answer that question.

Any interaction you’ve ever had with a website falls under the UX umbrella. Are you frustrated when trying to locate information? Impressed by the visual flair? Persuaded by the content? Do you perceive value as you make your way through the website? Negative user experience creates friction, while positive user experience drives lead generation and cultivates brand loyalty.

III. Then, Architect Solutions

Once you’ve applied the dual goggles of IA-UX vision, you’ll be able to diagnose—and cure—your problems much more accurately.

Are your prospective customers unable to locate they information they need to make the proverbial purchase? Conduct user research to better identify their personalities and preferences, then use those data points to refine your market targets and create information pathways that meet their specific needs. (In the corporate law realm, for example, a homepage is often not the “front door” for a new user; typically, they will search a partner’s name that was provided via third-party referral and navigate straight to the bio page.)

Too many pages? Look to the eight classic principles of IA to plan a compact site structure that eliminates repetition, redundancy, and excess clicking, and connects your users with the information they seek.

Does your website copy fail to reflect your selling points as well as your customers’ needs? Take a content-first approach to your website redesign, thoughtfully considering how you might arrange content on each page to maximize impact. (Case studies that illustrate the full range of your capabilities and your track record of success, for instance, could occupy prime real estate on service pages.)  

Where IA is goal- and efficiency-based, UX is more holistic, situating brands both along the spectrum of human psychology and within the wider marketplace. Together, they form the glue that keeps the house standing tall and strong.