There are many reasons you need an awesomely designed, well thought out website to really help get your brand out there and spread your message. People are so quick these days to bounce away from your site if it doesn’t immediately grab their attention, and it takes them quite a few visits to your site to decide whether they’ll spend their hard earned money with you or not.

Not only do you need to grab people’s attention quickly, but you need a website that truly shows your brands essence and properly conveys how you can help your people.

Think about it; how often have you judged a brand by their website? Did you decide whether or not you would contact them, book them, visit their site again based on what their site looked like?

I think people make this snap decision based on a site’s design more than they actually realise they’re doing it. Personally, I often find a new brand on social media. If they seem interesting or like something I need, I’ll head to their website or Google them. If they sell a product on something like Etsy that’s brilliant, but I like an actual website so I can learn more about them, what sets them apart, how they got started, etc. If I take the time to Google them or look them up and they have no website at all, chances are I’ll forget they exist.

So does great web design really make a difference to how your brand is perceived?

I understood in principle how important great web design is, but recently found myself in a situation where it became very clear to me exactly how important good web design is to help build brand credibility. 

As well as my web design, I’m also a musician and have been for most of my life. I play folk music and have a BA in Scottish Music from the RCS in Glasgow. I’ve performed, recorded, gigged and taught music for over 20 years now, but launched a new brand for my online music lessons (Modern Bodhrán) nearly one year ago. So; not very long ago!

I really wanted to get back into teaching again after taking a break for a few years following the birth of my older son; I taught extensively around Glasgow for about 8 years and really loved it. Late last year, I decided to launch some online music courses so I could still teach in a way that worked for me and would allow people from all over the world to learn how to play. Luckily, my husband is a recording engineer and has also just started making music videos so we set up at the studio where he works, recorded and filmed 30 lessons, I built my own website, and I launched! It was such a great learning experience and I’m loving being able to connect with people in a different way like this.

I wanted everything to be very high quality and to look good, but I hadn’t thought that much more into how having my videos and website done to such a high quality level would really speak to the general perception of my brand.

What was the general impression of my brand?

I won’t pretend I’ve launchd and made 6 figures my first year promoting and putting everything into my courses. At this point it’s fun, I’ve got a great group of people who love the courses, it’s enjoyable and very rewarding! In the beginning, I never really thought further of how my brand was perceived by people even though I had people buying the courses without me really marketing them too much.

I should also note, while I love what I do and have been doing it for many years and I know I’m good at what I do, it’s not like I’m ‘known’ on the scene and everyone was excited to see my courses come out and rushed off to buy them. 

Generally though, the impression of my very new brand was that it had been around for way longer than it actually was. And it turns out, most of this was due to the quality of the website’s design when I launched.

Great web design builds trust in your brand

The first lesson here is trust: if you have a solid and credible online presence with your website and digital marketing, you will be much easier to trust. Do you think people will want to put their credit card details on a website that looks really old school, isn’t mobile optimised and doesn’t have an SSL certificate? I don’t think so. They likely won’t even enquire about what you’re offering; they’ll just leave your site.

When people come to your site and it doesn’t look very good, doesn’t work on their mobiles and is hard to navigate, it gives the impression that you don’t care. Do you want to work with someone who you think won’t really care about you? I doubt it.

If you truly want to serve people and share what you have to offer because your work can change their lives, you need to show them that you believe in what you offer, that you care enough to invest in yourself, and that you’ll look after them that well too. If you can’t believe in and invest in yourself, why should anyone else?

Great web design builds credibility

As much as it would be nice if you had time to get to know people and for them to learn more about your brand, people make snap judgements and don’t have the time to spend forever trying to navigate your website or figure out what you do. There is such an overwhelm of new content, new websites, new businesses, and new products these days; people can’t consume everything that comes across their paths. 

The first time I realised my website really spoke to my brands credibility was when I got an email from a lovely player in Germany who wanted to know if I’d ever thought of translating my lessons into German. She thought there was space for me to do really well in Germany if my lessons were translated so that they would be more accessible for people based there to use them.

After much discussion, I eventually decided that it wasn’t quite the right time to translate them into other languages yet, mainly as my brand is so new and I feel my time would be better spent in other areas of that brand before starting to offer them in different languages. After all, they’ve been out for less than a year!

When I explained I felt the timing wasn’t quite right and I had other ideas I felt would be better explored first since my lessons were so new, she was really surprised; she thought my lessons had been online for at least ten years.

The quality of my website and the videos we’d produced were so good, it gave the impression that I had been online and developing them for years.

Invest in your web design to build trust and credibility in your brand

If you follow me on social media, you’ll know I often say you shouldn’t stop yourself from launching your dream business just because you don’t have the budget to have a website designed. In fact, I think that’s a really common excuse that a lot of people use not to put themselves out there. Investing in a web designer already feels like a big step, never mind dealing with all those beliefs around how scary it feels to put that money behind your own brand and put yourself out there!

Taking that step to getting a beautifully designed and well thought out website will go a huge way to building your brand credibility and gaining trust from your followers. Don’t you want people to feel they’d be in good hands with you when they come across your website? 

You’re putting yourself out there and have something amazing to offer the world; helping people take that step to investing with you by making them feel sure they can trust you is something you can easily do if your website is up to par.