How getting your design and branding right can boost sales and consumer retention

A small to medium business often runs on a shoestring budget. You always think that you do not have the budget to hire a professional designer to create a compelling logo, brochure, flyer, or any marketing material. Eventually, you resort to either DIY methods or some inexpensive websites that offer free graphic design resources. Either way, you are never happy with the results.

Only a professional graphic designer can deliver better, sharper, and well-thought design to evoke a response from your clients.

Here are some compelling reasons businesses should make graphic design a priority:

First impressions are last impressions

History bears testimony – whatever startup success stories you see on the news today were once in the same position you are today. All successful start-ups put a great deal of thought on their visual appeal.

Whether it’s a website, your logo, email signature, or even design work on your company vehicle, prospective clients will judge you and your company through your visual appeal. No matter how great your product or service is, without attractive packaging, it’s unlikely to hit high sales numbers.

By packaging we just don’t mean actual packaging design, but how the product or service is being sold. In today’s scenario, every company is focusing on customer acquisition and retention. When you market your product or even yourself, the design is the first thing that is pitched to a customer, even when you don’t do it verbally.

A design can tell a story

A lot of people get into the business because of a story. It could be a story of struggles or even a brilliant idea for a new product or service. A design can tell your story. The most important thing for any company who is looking to position itself as a brand is a logo. A lot of companies try to tell their story with just a logo. For example, take Amazon.

There you see. Right there in the logo, they are describing themselves. As everyone knows, Amazon is one of the world’s largest retailers. The above logo has a special design element – the arrow, which starts with A and ends with Z. That arrow suggests that Amazon sells everything from A to Z, thereby implying the wide variety of products that are sold through their e-commerce channel.

Often new businesses need to convey their story to their target customer. It could be about how they came up with the idea in the first place. Conveying an important message with a good design goes a long way in helping any business hit their target market.

A good design has recall value

Humans are indeed creatures of habit. One habit we have is to forget old things and focus on new things. That’s just how we are made. Small businesses really need to set themselves apart from everyone else in the market. With the right design, you can really stand out from the crowd. Every person that you really remember well has a distinct characteristic that separates him/her from others. Just like that, a small business needs to establish themselves with the right colours, typefaces, and imagery that will ensure that the prospects understand their business or their product.

A prospect or customer should make out that any marketing material they see belongs to a particular business. Having a good recall value through your marketing materials can go a long way to create a big impact.

A good design is a strong differentiator

In the world we live in today, it’s hard to imagine that no one else sells a product or provides a service that you sell or provide. Designing is just like your unique selling proposition – it can differentiate you from a pool of competitors. Creativity can help you stand out and gently put across your message. Whether you need to communicate pricing, quality, customer service, or anything else, designing is the best way to do so. Another great benefit of a design is emotional connect. Our heart and our intuition are always making decisions for us. If you make good emotional connections with your prospect, conversion chances become high.

In the above design, the thought process is clever. They have capitalized on mother-child bond to help drive admissions. The above poster conveys to a reader that the school values the fact that mothers want best for their children. By striking that chord, they can instantly develop emotional connect and compel a reader to call them.

It’s all about results, and design can get the ones you need

Design can get you the right results. A good design is not something that only looks good. Effective design can convert casual readers into actual customers. Let’s take an example of a website. A website must look good. But if you design it right and place effective call-to-action triggers at the right places, your conversion can drastically improve. Similarly in a brochure, how you place your content can compel the reader to keep turning pages. A professional designer will have more experience in this than you.

Get it right the first time, save hassles later

Let’s say you decided to skip graphic design and just focus on sales. Later when sales pick up, you throw in a new design and packaging. Customers who used to pick your packets from shelves suddenly can’t find that familiar box they always picked up. Whenever you rebrand your company, you will disconnect from old customers. Each time the customer will feel a little alienated. He/she may even not like the new design, or may shed a powerful image they have about your brand which took you months to make.

So the best advice is: spend money upfront and get it right the first time. Get a bold and attractive branding for your business and avoid the extra hassle of going through a rebranding and potential loss.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)