![5 Reasons Why Good Website Design is So Important [Infographic]](http://blog.velocity23.com/hubfs/reasons-good-website-design-so-important-building-featured-image.png)
Think of your website as a well-oiled, lead generating machine. In order for it to perform at it's best, all facets of your website design need to be functioning properly. If one piece is missing or outdated, user experience will be impacted.
A good website design has five important elements that impact users the most. The below infographic from Red Website Design goes into detail about the aforementioned vital components that make up a website design that will see traffic growth, increased trust and an overall better experience for your website visitors.
Load Time
When it comes to building traffic and keeping visitors on your page, load time plays a primary role. Not surprisingly, 40% of Web users leave pages that take more than three seconds to load. On average, websites take about 2.078 seconds to load, but less than one second is optimal to see a noticeable increase in traffic.
Colour Scheme
Simply put, the colours you choose affect your site's performance. Dark colour schemes see 2% growth and are the slight favourites over light colour schemes. Can you guess which colour sees the highest growth? I'll give you a hint. It's the colour that is often associated with money. If you're seeing a lot of green on a website site, there's a reason behind it. The colour Green sees a 3% growth in traffic.
Layout
How do you find yourself reading pages on a website? Most internet users look at pages in an F-shaped pattern. Horizontally designed sited encourage a Z-shaped reading pattern. Because site visitors like to skim through subheads, bullet points and they only concentrate on the first two paragraphs, focus your website design with these areas in mind.
Trust
A whopping 94% of people cite design as a reason they don't trust certain websites. This is a very valid point. We are a visual species and everything we see has an impact on our emotions, decisions and perception. If you find your website could use a boost in trust from visitors, there are a few things you can do:
- Include links to media coverage
- Display logos of prominent clients
- Showcase your social media followers
- Avoid stock photography
- Avoid pre-made templates
HTML5
Did you know that 27% of all websites use HTML5? These sites also account for 49% of page views. There is the potential to double your site's page views if you make the switch. If you need any more reason to use HTML5, there is also an average of 2.3% traffic growth on this platform.
