Great news is that today it's not a problem to create a really stunning website. Everything is as simple as that: you come to one of the decent WordPress or Joomla template provider, like JoomlaUX, for instance. Choose one of their extraordinary products, like business Joomla templates or you can also prefer business & services WordPress themes, customize it yourself or order the service from their Service Center and you are ready to go.
Ok, now you have the prettiest website on the Internet but how will people see it without SEO? They simply won't be able to find it! It seems like quality design and SEO go hand-in-hand. By the way, if you are building your website on the basis of a template from one of the top providers, it comes to you SEO optimized, but this doesn't mean that you shouldn't be concerned about SEO of your website.
The question of what's more important SEO or design is similar to the mystery of what came first - the chicken or the egg.
Even if your design is not genius, but an average one, it will get a lot of visits with good SEO.
Now, even if your design is heavenly, it will roll down to the bottom of the Google results if it doesn't have a good SEO job.
What conclusion can we make? Neither is more important. It seems like we got into the deadlock. Let's try to take a fresh look at the situation.
What is the most important aspect of your website? It's your content, of course. Actually, the content is the most important aspect of any website. The visitors come to read/view the content. They stay if they like the content, and it is namely content that causes conversions.
That's why your content must be well organized, properly marked up, easy to navigate and "rank high" on Google. If the above points were taken into account, you get good SEO as a reward. It's simply impossible to have good SEO without good content.
But you need to remember that design is closely connected to content. A good web design supports and emphasizes the content. It makes the information visitors are looking for easy to find and understand. Such kind of design is considered effective and is a strong point of the website.
If your design is clunky, cryptic and confusing, with a lot of dazzle and jazz-hands, then it becomes more important than the content, which is totally wrong. The impact will be negative. Never let the design get in the way of the content and never think that the design is somehow separate from the content.
The current flat design trend, which is a minimalist approach that brings content into focus with a minimum of effects is a reflection of this. But minimalism is hard to create. It takes much more skills and imagination than bolting on a Slider filled with nice pics and mind-boggling animations, and writing "Content Goes Here" in the wireframe/presentation.
Grapghsign - Onepage Corporate Business Joomla template
Please bear in mind the following:
- Nobody except designers go to a web site to gawk at the beautiful design.
- Nobody goes to a site with a desire to be exposed to company branding.
- Nobody visits a corporate website to look at ads or be "marketed" at.
What visitors really want is useful content. In other words, information that helps them reach their goals. Their goals may vary. Maybe they just want to order a pizza, or find a new design company, or buy a downtown apartment. Nothing but content will let them reach their goals.
A cheesy and/or visually old-fashioned, slow web site will negatively affect the visitors' opinion about the company. As a consequence, this will kill conversion rates. But a good-looking, yet slow, non-intuitive and non-responsive site will do the same as such kind of design is also poor.
To make an awesome design you need to figure out who your visitors are and what their purpose for visiting your site is. You need to be a writer, a poet when you create content for them. Develop a design that makes the content shine and dazzle. Put it on an infrastructure that feeds out pages quickly. Always pay attention to you Apdex. Never let a "heavy" design drive your Apdex. Be sure that your website is 100% responsive including sliders, images, text, whatever - and you'll get a great site.
SEO will help you get the right visitor (target customer/prospect customer) to your website. Web design will contribute to the overall experience of your visitor that affects the buying behavior of your prospective customer that results in conversion.
Wrapping up
We hope this article answered the question what is more important SEO or beautiful design. We believe you agree that both are equally important since their functions serve the intricate part of your business - the customers. SEO is important (very important/crucial) but the user has to have a good experience once they are on site, otherwise you'll lose out.
You should be able to have your cake and eat it too. That's why both aren't mutually exclusive. We would say that both are linked. If a website is designed poorly people are likely to abandon such resource. But if a website's look is eye-candy but not optimized for SEO, then it will not be so visible in SERPs to the audience as Google will give preference to the fully optimized website. So, ideally, a website should look wonderful and be properly optimized for SEO.
We are sure you will easily cope with the task and wish you best of luck in eCommerce.
P.S. Have any questions? Suggestions? Thoughts? Opinions? They are welcome at the comments section.
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