The Role of Graphic Design in Web Development

Did you know that the design of your website is responsible for about 94% of all first impressions you get? In our digital world today, the way your websites look and work together is incredibly important and cannot be over-emphasized. There’s a lot of psychology behind a user’s interaction with your website and graphics design plays a major role in that. Read on for the role of graphic design in web development.

So, whether you’re a web developer, a graphic designer, or a business owner trying to make your website better, it’s important to know how graphics design can affect website performance over time.

What is Graphic Design and Web Development?

Graphics design and web development are basically two sides of a coin. However, these two have different roles to play when it comes to achieving the ultimate goal of your business website.

Graphics design involves using visuals to entice or capture the attention of a visitor. If a person were to visit your website and all they see are blocks of text and lines without any colors, designs, or images that can engage the mind, then you can be sure that that person would quickly leave just as soon as they arrived. That is because, although your website may have everything that they need, it didn’t engage their minds. 

On the other hand, web development, in terms of website creation, can be referred to as a twin to graphics design. However, while graphic design is essentially meant to grab the attention of viewers, web development helps to hold viewer retention. It’s like a fisher’s bait and hook. One aims to bait the mind of the viewer by grabbing their attention, while the other keeps that attention for as long as possible. 

But unlike graphics design, web development doesn’t entail visuals like images, designs, and the like. Instead, it comes from a more technical approach by using coding, search engine optimization, site structuring, and other technical things to improve user experience across all devices. 

By combining web design and web development, you end up with a potent strategy to improve your website’s performance in the long run.

5 Major Ways Graphic Design Impacts Your Website

Why is it that two business websites that offer the same thing can have two very different outcomes, one with excellent performance, and the other with less than average performance? No, it has nothing to do with website promotion. 

Ultimately, it all comes down to user experience and their ability to solve the visitor’s problems. Let’s take a look at five ways graphic design can impact your website in these ways and improve your website’s performance.

• Aesthetics and Visual Appeal

It’s easier for the human brain to engage with things that are visually appealing. As mentioned before, this has nothing to do with a user’s personal preferences, it’s just brain science. 

The way your website looks and feels would give your visitors that sense of trust that you can actually solve their problem. 

Using graphic elements like images, themes, colors, and designs subconsciously helps visitors feel like they can get what they need from your website. It helps solidify your impression in their minds and ultimately improves your business’s credibility giving you a firm position in your chosen industry or field.

• User Experience and Engagement

You must have come across one or two websites that had all the visual elements it needed, however, navigating it seemed to be a hassle. Yes, having visual elements will capture attention, but if your website’s visuals are not well structured in a way that it can actually be helpful to any visitor, then you will quickly lose that audience and your bait will become ineffective regardless of how skilled your web development team may be.

What you need is a proper graphics design team that knows how to weave visuals in a way that tells a story and guides the minds of the readers to help them get what they need from your website. You might want to hire professionals to help get the task done in the most efficient way.

• Brand Identity and Recognition

Graphics design plays a very important role when building your brand. This is because your website is a major aspect of your brand and is most times, the first point of contact that a potential client would have with your product or service.

Using consistent colors, logos, themes, and overall style that match your brand and what it represents, graphic design can help create a memorable pattern that visitors can learn to trust over time, especially when you are actually solving problems. 

This way, your leads wouldn’t even need to recognize your name before realizing that you’re a brand they can trust. This is a very potent strategy that subconsciously subtly improves the impression of your brand to prospective clients, and ultimately boosts your reach.

• Better Conversions

The ultimate goal of any business website is to generally improve conversion rates. In order to achieve this, the way your website is perceived holds the utmost importance. But it’s not enough to offer solutions to problems and expect increased conversions. This is because, many times the majority of your leads may not know that you can actually solve their problems, especially if they don’t stick around to know what you are offering. 

The way to go in order to achieve this is to tell a story that your potential leads can relate to. And what better way is there to achieve this than using graphic elements? Weaving these graphic elements into your website to convey a story or pass across a message that tells your leads you can solve their problems is the way to go. 

• Improving Site Rankings

In order to improve your website’s ranking, all you need to do is offer the best help possible. Search engines like Google often look favorably upon websites that can offer help to people, and it determines this by analyzing your click-through rate and bounce rate.

To improve click-through rates, you need to have a good web development team that can help with search engine optimization. But what good is that if visitors leave just as soon as they come? 

To fix this you need to improve your audience retention, and there is no better way to do this than by using the very thing that appeals directly to the human brain, which is- graphic design. 

Conclusion

There is a science behind aesthetics that goes beyond personal preferences and ultimately influences the human brain which can keep it awake and longing for more even if you don’t have much to offer. This is the power that graphics design holds which can really impact your website’s performance.

Remember, good graphics can help your website in more ways than just providing a visual appeal. There is a brain science to it that helps engage the mind of a visitor, working like a bait that entices and engages the mind in more ways than you may think. So ensure you take action today. Hire professionals and get an excellent graphics design team that can help elevate your brand and boost website performance in the long run.