How to stand out from your competitors using design

My best friend asked me to come with her to shop for a dress to wear to her high school reunion.

“I want to look good,” she said, trying on a pink dress. “‘coz I’m ready to date again!”

I rolled my eyes. She never liked pink. I know she was particularly keen to meet her ex, John, and show him who’s winning the breakup.

“You just want to attract John, don’t you? Why don’t you just cluck and flail your arms like a chicken?”. I managed to say before a dress flew to my face.

Fair, she wanted to look nice. But I thought she was doing it for the wrong reasons. Besides, even if John likes pink, I can’t let that happen because I know my best friend looks horrible in it.

Businesses want to stand out because they need attention. Attention is a prerequisite for sales. Logically, if buyers do not know the business exists and that it can solve their problem, then nothing’s gonna happen.

Any kind of attention-seeking attempt won’t work. Customers are wiser nowadays, they don’t like clucking chickens. Competitors definitely don’t make it any easier but on the flip side, their presence helps.

Ben Yoskowitz, in an Inc. interview said: “If nobody is competing in your space, there’s a very good chance the market you’re going into is too small.”

Use design to stand out

Design might not be the main component of your business but it is essential. It is not just what you look like, but also about what you do. A lot of people don’t realize that brand design is one of the most important factors to their business.

Since there are so many services and products to choose from these days, it can be difficult to stand out. We have to consider the attention economy. Our attention has always been limited and valuable.

Technological advancements have made an overwhelming amount of information available, all with the intention of capturing our attention.

A well-designed website, social media presence, and purposeful branding are opportunities for businesses to introduce themselves and showcase what sets them apart from the rest.

It welcomes the consumers to the company’s services and products and entices them to browse and eventually checkout something.

I listed some must-haves for online business designs below. It is critical to have those established for you to get the upper hand in the attention economy.

Show that your website design understands customers

There are 1.95 billion websites on the internet. As a speck in the World Wide Web, there is only one way to stand out – make your site user friendly. The design should be intuitive and should provide a seamless experience for the user.

Ideally, there should only be 1 to 2 click/s to do in order to go to another page.

Considering that your customers will visit your website from multiple devices, your design should be able to adapt to smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers to ensure that your customers will have a good experience on your website

It should also be aesthetically pleasing and complement the overall brand image of the company. With this consistency of the design, your customers would trust you as they know that you are reliable and that you are an established brand.

Use colors that your target market responds to

It is not enough that your target market likes the colours you choose. Remember that John, the ex, likes pink. But if my best friend looks like used bubblegum in it, John will still stay away.

Colours can evoke certain emotions, therefore you must choose them wisely so the users feel at home and enhance their mood as they browse through your website.

Colours can greatly influence consumer behaviour – from affecting the customer to quickly and impulsively “click” the red-checkout button, to making them trust you and gaining their loyalty with just seeing your laced-in-blue website.

Choose good typography

Websites have content that people read and digest. It should be readable and legible from different kinds of devices; that is why typography is an important consideration in designing websites.

It should also continue to carry the brand image of your company as choosing the correct typography can convey elegance, sophistication, and professionalism to your site visitors as soon as they land on your page.

There are more than 200,000 fonts available. You can invest time choosing one or two for your design or make it easier by leaving it to design professionals.

Produce purposeful visuals

Your customers want to see what they are buying and they want these products or services to be shown via high-quality visuals.

Images, videos, and other media help you highlight your products and/or services. Using such will improve engagement on your website and consequently increase conversion.

However, you should be intentional in your choices of these elements as having too many can overwhelm your customers.

In addition, your visuals should be compressed and optimized to help your website load fast. If not, your customer will lose patience and click the exit button causing you to lose a potential client.

Show don’t tell

There are many reasons why businesses fail, and one of those is failing to communicate the brand, just by simply not getting enough attention.

For your business or for your clients, you do not want to cluck and flail your arms like a chicken for nothing, right? You need the kind of attention that leads to sales.

This means the design has to put the user’s needs first and to show ultimately that your design is not just beautiful or inspiring but the company can actually help the customer, overcoming market competition.