How a great design can impact your business
At our annual Forum event this year, Wes McChristian, Americaneagle.com Production Manager, and Elin Alexander, Americaneagle.com Web Graphic Designer, gave a presentation on design and how a great design can positively impact your business.
Wes and Elin began with a mission statement: To provide meaningful education on design trends, common roadblocks in the design process, and to outline industry expectations with the intention of ensuring that your web design has a positive impact on your business.
They then went on to explain what design trends are working today, and what to expect for tomorrow. Today, they noted, content is king, and that minimalism and micro interactions are popular. For tomorrow, they predict that content will continue to be king, ADA/508 Compliance will become increasingly important, responsive design will continue to grow, and that originality will help you stand out from the crowd.
Wes and Elin continued their presentation focusing on distinct site goals.
Goal #1 - I don’t like the way my site looks
At Americaneagle.com we see so many sites, with so many standards of design, design issues and design successes. If you don’t like the way your site looks – we can help.
- We will use analytics to make informed decisions on which to base our site changes.
- We are intentional, and encourage you to ask ‘why’, when making design decision.
- We encourage you to think outside the box – push boundaries to refresh your site and choose intentionally forward thinking choices, because comfort in design is in the past.
- The Chicago Auto Show website is a great example of a site that is constantly modernizing – we redesign their site every year to give it a fresh, cutting edge feel.
Goal #2 - The design must represent my brand
- Less is the new more. This means having a clean, intentional design – allowing users to find where you direct them to go. Titles, text and call to actions should have a character cap.
- There is so much to think about when designing your site – brand guidelines, background, buttons, colors, images and fonts – we can help make these work together to create an appealing site that represents your brand, and that you are proud to share with your online community.
Goal #3 - Design must engage my audience
It is important to not only consider how your site looks, but how easy the design is to use. Elin and Wes discussed how, in order to engage your audience, the user interface and user experience must complement one another and work together – when both of these elements are spot on, you’ll have the successful site you’re looking for.
Goal #4 - Design must be mobile friendly
The need to be mobile friendly is only going to increase in the next few years, as we make more and more use of our mobile devices.
Americaneagle.com recently designed a website for the Green Bay Packers called Packers Everywhere. The website allows Packers fans to find a bar playing the Packers game wherever they are in the world. For this project, the Americaneagle.com team designed the website for mobile first, and then created the desktop version.
Wes and Elin also covered the difference between responsive and adaptive design:
Responsive: Fluid movement with browser screen size
Adaptive: Designed for specific screen sizes.
Goal #5 – Design must support functionality
It is crucial that your site design supports the needs of your users. Americaneagle.com is committed to providing the very best website design and development services, and would be sure to understand your site audience and their needs before beginning the design process. Our strategy team can also provide a range of services to get a more in-depth idea of who your target audience is. With these ideas in place, you can focus on personalizing your site, providing different designs for segments of your audience interested in different topics – a site viewer that has previously shown an interest in car insurance, for example, might see more images, links and content related to car insurance in the future, as opposed to home insurance or other unrelated products.
If you have site design issues you’d like to address, get in touch with the Americaneagle.com team today – we can help!
