The Importance of Building a Good Website
Being a designer, having a well-built website is very crucial. This is the first thing that an employer or a potential client will see from you. Because of this, not only your designs but also your website needs to be clean and easy to use. According to the Young Entrepreneur Council, "Having a strong online presence, particularly a website, can be make or break for generating more revenue. Yes, the quality of your website impacts results, but the purpose of this article to stress the importance of making sure you have a website." This shows the importance of a website for businesses, but it is even more important for graphic designers.
It is important to build a good website because it shows the quality of your design skills. If you aren't able to design an easy-to-use and navigate site, then you are lacking the necessary design skills that are needed. In addition, you could very well be designing websites for other people or clients, so it is very crucial to have a good website yourself. According to a study done by Stanford, "75% of users make judgments about a company’s credibility based on visual design alone." This stat on its own is massive, as it shows that three out of every four people judge a website from their first visit. It is very important to make a good first impression with a well-designed website. In addition to this, Mike Dulebohn talks about how "38% of people will stop engaging with your website if your content and layout are unattractive." This is also a very important statistic as it shows that non-designers can identify poorly designed websites and will stop interacting due to it.
From my research, the most important part of a website is the home page. This is the first thing that consumers and clients see when they enter, and it dictates if they want to keep looking through your website. You need something on the home page to really hook your audience and make them interested. In addition, it is really important to stand out compared to others in the industry and have something unique and creative on your home page. The goal is to stand out, and there are many ways to do so. From the home page, you want to easily segway your clients to other parts of your website with intuitive buttons and other navigation points. The goal is to keep them on your website for as long as you can.
From there, you can have other relevant pages that show off your work. Some ideas for pages are a projects page, to show off all of your work, a blog page, to give consumers a taste of your opinions and thought processes, and a contact page, to make it easy for clients and potential employers to get in touch with you. The whole goal is to make it as easy as possible, so that's why it's important to have well-labeled pages that show the consumer where they are going.
Ryan Lopano
