Four Ways Great Design Can Transform Your Business

Great design is an inspiration to both customers and employees. There are also four ways it can positively transform your business. Read on to discover these terrific tips...

Great Design - Examples of how your business wins from this important implementation.

Businesses across the globe are connected by one surprising attribute that you won’t often see mentioned in online articles or in management textbooks - and that’s great design. While many write off design as being a fluffy add-on that is more about the look of something than the substance, that is entirely missing the point.

Good design is actually about function as well as form. Marrying the two into a great user experience is what smart businesses do well. Four ways great design can transform your business are listed below.

1. Stating Your Intentions

It's all about intention. Designing things to facilitate the result you want: Usually moving customers further down the sales funnel.

So, from the design of your Ecommerce platform to thinking about presentations regarding your annual report due date, great design shouldn’t be an afterthought. It should be an approach that is woven into every one of your actions.

2. Increasing Your Conversions

Without prioritizing user experience on your website, you are limiting the potential of what your business can achieve. Our audiences are now mostly online. If your shop's window to the world suffers from poor design and a lacking user experience, the result is a very short attention span from customers whose options are now truly global.

It should be your number one priority to create a great looking, easy to use website that is fully optimized for:

• Search 
• A checkout process that increases average basket value 
• Rate of conversions

And engaging content that will draw users into your site and give them added value.

A well designed website is a huge asset and can literally make or break your sales. Yet many businesses still tolerate disastrous issues that are relatively easy to fix, such as not optimizing for mobile traffic or having a bad internal search function.

Working with a specialist UX designer can literally add thousands to your bottom line, so don’t relegate it to a wishlist item.

[caption id="attachment_7569" align="aligncenter" width="599"] Great design is an inspiration to customers and employees.[/caption]

3. Spreading Your Brand

Today’s marketplace is more cut throat than ever. While barrier to entry for business startups have fallen away thanks to the web revolution, every business now competes on a truly global stage. The consumer has more power than ever.

Old models of competition, such as going to war on new product innovations, can only go so far. And competing on price is a race to the bottom that leaves the customer benefitting monetarily, but can compromise quality.

So what can you do to differentiate?

Branding is the secret sauce that can:

• Turn casual customers into loyal advocates
• Secure your repeat business
• Net you a healthy profit

A visual articulation of what your company stands for - your visions and values - are what makes a customer buy into what you do. Branding is a language that communicates almost at a subconscious level to allow this alchemy to happen. So, getting it right is a matter of testing extensively with focus groups and polls of your intended audience, and making sure that what you’re doing resonates with them.

4. Attract The Best Talent

A business is only as good as it's best employee, and the people you choose to help run your company are critical. Your stealth tool: Great design - meaning, it can also help with this.

Attracting the top talent isn’t always about the salary you can offer. It can be about the opportunity, and the connection they feel to the sense of your mission. Good design communicates all this to potential staff as well as customers. It gives them something they can identify and align themselves with, and can even inspire morale.

Take the time to implement processes thoughtfully and you also get the best out of people. You motivate them. All this can lead to less turnover and a lower recruitment bill, plus give you the people power you need to reach the highest heights in your business.