9 Reasons You Need To Hire A Professional Website Designer

Web design can be very complex topic for small business owners who are not in the web development industry. To a degree, most people know a stunning web page design when they see it, but they may not be able to tell you exactly what causes it to stand apart from other websites.

This guide explain what professional web design is and will give you a 9-Point Checklist of the individual parts and what they mean.

If you are starting a complete redesign, or are already in the middle of an ongoing website redesign project, be sure to understand and check for these things in the website designs submitted by the design company you’re working with.

What Is Professional Web Design?

Professional web design can be technically defined as the design and development of websites that are created, and in many cases, maintained by professional web designers and developers in the future to be sure they work as intended. A high-level breakdown of this includes:

• Project Planning
• Layout Creation
• Aesthetic Design
• Technical Aspects (custom coding)
• Planning For Ongoing Maintenance Of The Site

All of these are done considering the needs and goals of the website owner, as well as the ideal customer for your business. A professional design should be aesthetically appealing, user-friendly, and effective at conveying the desired message or achieving the ideal business outcome of the website.

Why Professional Web Design Is Important

A professional website design is essential for your business if you want to establish your brand presence online.

Your website is often what will initiate the process of developing credibility and trust in your business with new and existing customers. A professional design goes beyond just being visually pleasing, and can be critical for the success of your overall digital marketing strategy, particularly when carefully chosen phycological web design tricks are used to improve your websites conversion rate.

Web design is often just thought of as how your website looks, but it’s also how easy it is to use and the experience people have while engaging with your business online. It’s not enough for a well-designed website to just look visually appealing but also must function smoothly and provide an exceptionally good user experience.

Providing your potential customers with what they are looking to find or need to know as easily as possible will leave them with a positive impression of your business.

How A Professional Design Demonstrates Your Values

One of the key ways that professional website design can improve your business’s credibility is by showcasing your company’s expertise and professionalism through its visual communication and attention to detail.

A thoughtfully created, custom website design can help demonstrate your business’s values, mission, and unique selling points in a clear and engaging way. When your website is easy to use, and visually engaging it will help establish your business as a trusted and reliable source of information, products, or services within your industry.

If building trust and credibility around your business are important to you and for your business, then you will need to seek out custom website design services from web designers that have a history of producing winning web page design projects.

What Is Custom Web Design?

It is not uncommon for some web designers to use the same template over and over again when creating websites for their clients. It’s true that some of those templates may very well produce a neat and clean layout for their clients, but they certainly won’t produce a unique website that reflects positively on your business.

Over time, a lot of websites built from templates will end up looking and functioning the exact same way because the web design is not customized for each client beyond some small, surface-level visual changes. The overuse of templates is common from certain CMS platforms, but particularly WordPress. Hiring a professional WordPress site designer who will create a customer-centric website is highly recommended to avoid this issue from the start.

In order for your business to stand out enough from the crowd to earn its own identity and feeling of trustworthiness, it needs to have a unique website, and that’s where custom website designs come in.

Custom web design services are normally carried out by multiple designers collaborating on a single project to produce a website that both looks and functions in a unique way that reflects the brand behind it.

When multiple designers work together on your project, they are able to be more detailed with their attention to not just the appearance of your website, but how it helps your customers engage with your brand to produce a positive user experience.

A custom web design process will involve not just custom web design, but also custom web development for the features that control how your site runs as well.

The Nine Elements Of A Professionally Designed Website

Here are the nine things web design projects need to feel professional and positively impact a customer’s perception of your business.

1. A User-Experience First Web Approach To Design
2. A Custom Design And Layout Just For Your Business
3. Great Logo Design
4. Responsive Design That Works On Mobile Devices
5. Uses Images From Your Business Or Of Its Products
6. The Web Page Designs Are Created For Your Specific Target Audience
7. It’s Built On A Content Management System
8. Plays Well With Search Engines
9. It’s Fast Loading

Here’s what all of those mean.

1. A ‘User-Experience First’ Approach To Web Design

When your website is easy to navigate and use it will encourage your visitors to stay longer, browse more pages, and ultimately, engage more with your business.

It can help build trust and credibility with your customers when you show that your business is committed to providing a positive user experience and put it at the front of your website design efforts.

2. A Custom Web Design

As you’ve learned, there’s a big difference between having a template website that looks like 30,000 other businesses and a custom design that is completely unique to your business and its values.

More experienced designers will tend to gravitate toward custom website designs, so if your website design partner is suggesting a template it may be a caution sign that they aren’t right for the job.

3. Great Logo Design

Your logo design may be the very first thing new customers see when they arrive at your website. As they say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

If you need help with your current logo design, your web designer may also offer some graphic design services, so don’t be surprised if they ask if you would be interested in a logo design refresh with the overall website design as well.

4. Responsive Design That Works On Mobile Devices

It’s uncommon for a website design project to not include mobile-friendly design when talking about a modern website that should work on mobile devices.

It is a fundamental part of most website development services. If the web developers don’t mention it and you have a dedicated account manager that you are working with, you will want to confirm with them or the project manager that it is being considered.

5. Uses Your Own Images

In order for your business to build trust and increase its credibility, it should be able to use images from its own products, services, and employees in its web design.

Websites that overuse, or exclusively use, stock art simply do not convey the same sense of trust and connection with their web design. A little stock art is fine, but overuse can interfere with your ability to build relationships with your customers online.

6. The Web Page Designs Are Created For Your Specific Target Audience

Keep in mind that at the end of the day, you’re not running a website design contest (not that there is anything wrong with web design contests). The website design ideas your design company puts in front of you must be based on your customer’s needs and how to best serve them.

As a modern business, your website design is a key element of your overall digital marketing strategy. The designs created must show an understanding of who your target audience is, and how they will engage with each web page and your overall web design.

7. It’s Built On A Content Management System

Content management systems (or CMS for short) allow you to easily update content, add new content, or remove old content from your website. This is particularly important for an eCommerce site, where you will have products to add, or orders to fulfill.

Higher-priced packages for website design services almost always include a content management system by default for any modern website design and project managers will normally let you know that ahead of time.

8. Plays Well With Major Search Engines

A professional website from a winning designer will normally always take search engine optimization (SEO) into account. That said, some web design services are built around complicated JavaScript frameworks that search engines often struggle with.

Ultimately, the suggested website design ideas you’re shown might be wonderful, but if search engines can’t see them and your website won’t appear in search rankings, they need to be re-evaluated.

9. It’s Fast Loading

Your customers expect a website that loads quickly. If your website takes a long time to load, and particularly as people move from one page to another, it will negatively impact how your business is perceived no matter how cool or innovative your web design is.

In addition to your customer’s expectations, search engines use page speed as a ranking factor. A truly professional website design will prioritize performance from the start, helping increase your potential visibility to new customers.

Related: How To Avoid 10 Common Web Design Mistakes That Might Be Killing Your Customers

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