How Design Represents Your Business

One thing I’ve seen too often, is the release and approval of websites that certainly lack credibility in the design department. Sometimes these decisions are made by managers with no design experience, other times it’s a rush to get a product on the market.

Usually this happens with smaller companies with no in-house design department, but there are also some guilty parties with major design departments in which this shouldn’t happen but does anyway. Many times it comes down to an urgent business need and the rush to have it released rather than to think about how the design portrays credibility of the company to it’s clients is undermined. It is understandable for a product to launch quick and efficiently but always get the opinion and approval of a credible design source.

Here’s an easy way to think about it; you wouldn’t wear your gym clothes to a business meeting, and you wouldn’t wear a suit to go work out in the gym. Then why would you use a cartoon style to represent a strong financial business? Or use a stark minimalist approach for a kids daycare center. I think my point is clear. Design needs to be directly linked to your business. Visual representation is job one with an online business. It’s your front door that welcomes customers in, or confuses them and makes them turn away. So please do some research and put some time into the design of your businesses site.

Personally I have been turned off by a few sites with this backwards approach to design in which I would not do business with the company solely on my first impression of how they represented their business online. If a company cannot get it’s homepage right, there are probably other underlying problems about.

So get it right. Don’t just ask an intern if the site looks good.