3 Design Mistakes That Drive Customers Away
How you showcase your business can mean the difference between attracting or repelling potential clients. Whether it be a brochure, a presentation, or any form of marketing material, design matters. Design includes anything that catches the eye, from the way you layout your written and visual content, to your choice of colors, fonts, and images.
With well thought out design, you can captivate the attention of your audience, build trust, and effectively communicate what you have to offer. Without it, you can cheapen your image, cause confusion, and lose credibility.
By avoiding these three common design mistakes, you can dodge the risk of driving customers away.
Mistake #1. Being Inconsistent in Your Visual Communication
Your visual identity includes all of the visible elements that differentiate your brand. When different fonts, colors, and style elements are used across various communication channels, your visual identity suffers.
Inconsistency is one of the biggest design mistakes brands make. Without a consistent design aesthetic, your brand lacks continuity, cohesiveness, and professionalism. When you fail to establish a recognizable look and feel, you miss out on building credibility and reputation with your audience.
Do This Instead
Develop a visual style guide that serves as the foundation of your marketing and communications strategy. Clearly establish the distinctive features that sets your brand apart. Define your logo, color palette, fonts, and graphic elements. Create a unified look and feel that aligns with your company’s vision and mission.
Once you have a guideline in place, you can create a cohesive impression across all platforms that people recognize and trust.
Mistake #2. Not Thinking of Your Target Audience
Knowing your target audience is Marketing 101. Designing for your audience is just as important.
Businesses often miss the mark when it comes to presenting their products or services to the very audience they are trying to attract. A tech firm may be targeting young professionals, but then use dated stock images on their website. A wellness company may be trying to win over large corporations, but then lose credibility by adding smiley face emojis to their pitch deck.
Not thinking about your target audience is a huge mistake that can attract the wrong customers and drive away the right ones.
Do This Instead
Develop your visual style with your target audience in mind. What do they want? What problem are you solving? How do they want to feel?
If you’re a professional organizer targeting busy moms who want to declutter, then design marketing material with light photos, minimal text, and lots of white space to evoke feelings of calmness.
If you run a matchmaking website for single seniors, increase the size of your font and call-to-actions. Keep your design ultra simple to provide an easy, user-friendly path to conversion.
No matter what you offer, put yourself in the shoes of your target audience, and design accordingly.
Mistake #3. Overcrowding Your Marketing Material with Too Much Content
Influential brands like Google, Apple and Airbnb have mastered the art of simple, approachable and user-friendly design. Yet many brands fail to adopt the less is more design aesthetic that has proven its effectiveness.
We get it. You want to share everything your company has to offer. You want to showcase photos and packages and special offers. You want to include lengthy testimonials that describe how your services have changed peoples lives. The problem is, by including everything, nothing stands out.
When you overcrowd your marketing material with too much content, you fail to highlight what’s important. When you overdesign with too many visual elements, you cause confusion and appear less professional. When you try to show it all, you risk turning people away.
Do This Instead
Adopt a less is more design aesthetic. Don’t feel the need to fill up every space on your page layout. Let your content breathe by adding blank space around elements.
Think about what’s most important. Pull one line from your lengthy testimonial that highlights how you make people’s lives better. Select fewer visuals that best represent your services.
Layout your visual elements strategically to create a natural flow. Use headlines, subtitles and short paragraphs to guide your audience through your content. Encourage your audience to take action with clear call-to-actions that stand out.
By removing distracting elements and designing with simplicity, you can effectively communicate your message and attract your target audience.
At the end of the day, people DO judge a book by its cover. Even if you have the best products or services, bad design can have a negative effect on your bottom line. When you establish a consistent look and feel, design with your audience in mind, and adopt a less is more approach, you can be more effective in your marketing efforts and keep your ideal customers engaged.
The Miluna blog was created to provide valuable design and visual branding tips to support your business growth. If you’re looking for additional support, book a free consultation with one of our design and branding experts. We would love to connect.
