Design is the visual component of your brand. But there is a lot more to it — design can serve as an effective tool to drive your sales or… undermine your business completely. How can you build your image, and increase sales by improving design while avoiding the opposite effect? Let’s have a look.
1. Be relevant
Would you visit a beauty parlor with its signboard and interior design dating from the 80s for a new hairdo? The ambiance of the past is hardly worth the risk. Therefore, an obvious conclusion can be drawn: no one wishes to work with companies stuck in the last century or buy products that used to be relevant several decades ago. The design of the product, website, interior, business cards, and even official documents can indirectly tell consumers about the relevance of a company’s operating procedures, technology, and up-to-dateness.
A sophisticated design that meets the requirements of the target audience empowers you to dramatically level up your sales, save money, and improve your brand’s position in the market. For example, the sensational 2018 McKinsey report states that
This is why design should be perceived not only as a way to ensure the visual aesthetics of a brand but also as an excellent investment to contribute to growth.
Up-to-date means minimalistic
Top brands are looking to embrace minimalism or have already gone minimalistic. Minimalism owes its flavor to the prior abundance of styles. Today, it fulfills not only an aesthetic but also a practical function:
- the design of websites and apps has become simpler and free from superfluous graphic elements, which has greatly accelerated the upload/download of digital products;
- less sophisticated style facilitates faster design development for various media — from business cards to application interfaces.
Designers have long been inspired by simple forms. The design of Braun appliances or Apple devices (including iOS) has long been simple and moderate yet recognizable.
How does minimalism make money?
- Ascetic, understated design targets almost all consumers, whatever medium they use.
- Fewer visual elements help focus on vital information, highlight company/product advantages, and facilitate CTA.
- Aesthetically, minimalism refers to premium brands therefore logically contributing to price increases.
Be sure not to overdo
“First, not harm” applies not only to medicine but also to design. It is important to be aware of the design that your prospective customer expects to see. To succeed you should thoroughly research the brand’s target audience, its capacity and needs, study competitors, and use the data to identify brand positioning.
There is good news: there are many tools available today to study your audience/competitors/product shelf, etc.
Our agency is frequently commissioned to analyze the target audience and competitors, carry out design studies, and conduct in-depth interviews to collect data. We deliver data that is always useful and helps us achieve your objectives a lot faster.
2. Create a holistic brand perception
Ensure a clear link between the product and its manufacturer; reinforce brand positioning in the market with corporate identity. See below why it matters so much.
A well-designed scalable corporate identity that can be used effectively across a variety of media provides tangible benefits for the brand:
- it builds the audience’s trust in the product and the company as a whole;
- it improves employees’ brand loyalty without bloating salaries;
- it helps differentiate from the competition and stand out.
Each medium that a consumer may see must have a thoroughly developed identity. A company’s website is a priority as well.
The main thing is to have a high-quality idea underpinning your company’s corporate identity.
3. Highlight vital information visually
Inform prospective customers about the benefits of your brand, boost sales by placing stickers on packages, and encourage them to act by placing effective CTA buttons on your website. Design and animation will do the trick.
Designers often employ the Von Restorff (isolation) effect, implying that memory for an item improves as long as it is distinctive from the list of similar homogenous items. If you engage an effective designer to work on your project, critical information about the brand will be the first to capture consumers, but if your designer is uninvolved or inexperienced, there is a risk that your consumer will never learn about the true benefits of your product/service, and your website visitor will not be converted into a customer.
Package stickers used by John Dory, a client of ours, are an excellent example of the Von Restorff effect. The designers placed vital product facts on bright scarlet stickers. They attract attention and deliver information about the premium quality of the frozen product, i.e., they work to increase sales.
4. Be memorable and improve awareness
Be memorable starting from the first points of contact. This will help consumers find your product/company when they need it. You will only have 0.05 seconds to stick in your consumer’s memory
A mature, recognizable design, a color pattern, a set of visual elements, an unconventional font — these details can be remembered by consumers and bring them back to you at the right time.
How to improve awareness?
To be remembered, you need to be conspicuous.
It is differentiation from the competition that will make any design medium markedly stand out. What do you do to become more noticeable and be remembered? First, you need to study your competition:
- to understand what the product category looks like, or, simply put, with what set of visual elements a user associates a particular product/service;
- to assess which color niches, fonts, and design elements are not yet used in a given market segment or product shelf;
- to find the best idea for implementing the visual image of a product or service.
Specialists at our agency make use of a broad array of studies for our proprietary evidence-based design methodology. It enables us to differentiate your product from the competition and rules out any subjectivity from the designer/customer as they work on the visual image of the brand or product.
5. Generate the right emotional effect
A proper visual image of the brand can create the right emotional effect.
The brand sentiment that you require is derived from the color palettes, fonts, and other niche-specific design elements. Is it a cool advanced IT brand with a horizontal organizational structure? Or a conservative consulting company? To ensure trusting relationships with your audience and succeed with your CTAs, it is important to create the right image.
For example, the red, gold, black and white colors, or a combination of these, emphasize the premium nature of a company/product. Environmental compatibility is conveyed by green. IT brands tend to base their corporate identity on blue.
Fonts can also contribute to driving sales. Antique or Grotesque — which will deliver the main message better? By studying your audience and their expectations, you can choose a font that meets the brand’s objectives in line with its positioning.
Want to know how to convey your brand sentiment and create the right emotional effect? Our specialists know and will share with you when you contact us.
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Conclusion
A mature design is a must for any state-of-the-art business operating in a contemporary market. For a business to work and grow, it is crucial that corporate design effectively address every challenge: creating a holistic brand image, emphasizing relevance, and generating the right emotional effect. There is a “but”, though! Design is in no way a cure-all solution.
If your business has encountered serious difficulties, and the product is of poor quality, even the most creative design will hardly yield a positive result.
DO YOU WANT YOUR DESIGN TO ENHANCE YOUR BUSINESS, BUT DON’T KNOW WHERE TO START? CONTACT US — OUR MANAGERS WILL ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS.