Have you ever bought a pair of shoes from a gorgeous looking brand? Or worked with a wonderful creative who had an amazing website? Chances are you were pulled in by the power of good design.

Ok, I’m a little biased as a designer, but trust me when I say that good design is not just making your business look pretty. It is a powerful marketing and sales tool that, when used properly, can propel your business and draw in dream clients and fab customers.

In my five years working alongside amazing creative women on the businesses that they built from scratch, I have seen their wildest dreams come true by utilising a clever combination of beautiful and purposeful design (and a lot of hard work on their part!)

So why is good design so important? And how exactly can it boost your business?

Grabbing the Attention of Your Audience

Having an intentionally designed brand, website or any part of your business will mean that it is targeted directly towards your dream audience. Whether that’s clients you want to work with, people you want to follow you online, or customers who would love your product, you will be attracting these people with your beautiful design.

Once you have the design in place, a good chunk of your job here is done. Your target audience will be naturally drawn to you because your beautiful design is made to get them to like you.

Making sure the right people are seeing and, more importantly, LOVING your brand and your business will lead to better conversion rates for your services or products. This is because your brand is talking to them and making them want to work with you.

Professional Design Means Professional Business

Have you ever landed on someone’s website which is messy, poorly organised and badly designed and thought - “I’m not sure I want to work with this person, they seem super unprofessional”. Well, that’s because a well designed and professional brand represents an organised and professional business - and this works the other way round too.

A badly designed and unprofessional brand makes your business look unprofessional which stops people working with you. It’s a hard truth but a truth nonetheless.

You don’t have to have all the bells and whistles, but you do want every part of your design to represent your business practice, so you make people think you will be amazing to work with. Which you will be - of course!

People Like Pretty

As superficial as it sounds, us humans are uncontrollably attracted to pretty things. We like symmetry, we like nice shapes, we like fun colours and we just can’t help ourselves! Naturally, we are hard-wired to be drawn to things which look nice and it’s these things which will take our attention and keep it.

If we see something which is pretty and nice to look at, it makes it automatically easier to interact with and relate to. This doesn’t stop when it comes to your brands' design.

Remember your target audience? Those dreamy people who you want to be interacting with your business? They will find it much easier if things look nice and this can entice them to buy or drop you an email.

First & Lasting Impressions

The impression we make on anyone who comes into contact with our business is split into two parts. The first impression and the lasting impression, and both are equally as important as each other and both require your design to be in shape.

Our first impression is grabbing people’s attention. Your colours, logo, layouts and fonts need to be appealing to the eye and pull people in to want to find out more. And the lasting impression is keeping people interested. Your brand must be consistent so your audience can find you anywhere and you need to keep your design standards up so whenever people come back to you, they get the same experience.

Most people won’t buy or work with you from the first impression but it does hook them in to keep following along and then the lasting impression means they will possibly work with you in the future.

Design Psychology

I’m not for a second going to try and make it seem like I know how design psychology works but it totally does. Our brains are attracted to well laid out elements and are put off if things are too squished together or too far apart. We automatically connect certain colours with certain emotions, like yellow with happiness or red with anger. And certain styles can help us connect with a brand where another style would put us off.

If we can tap into the subliminal way our mind works and gear all of our design towards the people that matter - we are one step, if not many steps towards harnessing design as a sales tool for our business.

Now tell me, is your design representing your business as well as you want it to? And is it pulling in those dream clients and customers who want to buy from you?

If not, what changes can you make to bring it up to scratch?

Want to create your own brand design which helps your business sell like crazy? My online class, Be Your Own Designer, gives you all the advice and design mastery you need to make your design dreams a reality!

BE YOUR OWN DESIGNER