If you've ever visited a car show or motorsport event (and since we're from the Detroit area, we imagine everyone has), you might have seen the beautiful concept cars that manufacturers often put on display.
People might stop and ogle for a few minutes, but they move on. Concept cars are the automotive equivalent of clickbait. They might get your attention, but they can't actually perform on the road.
Similarly, if your website design isn't guided by a purposeful plan, then you might as well be trying to drive a car without an engine. Your site might present a beautiful visual front, but it's got nothing under the hood.
your audience and having a plan to convert them.
Cars serve a specific purpose: They transport their occupants from Point A to Point B. They might inspire parking lot envy, too, but that result is only a byproduct of design. At the end of the day, you don't want your car to serve as anything more than a driveway decoration.
Similarly, your website needs strategy if you want it to attract traffic and drive conversions. Beauty isn't enough.
To inject some horsepower into your website, you need to understand your audience and have a plan for surprising, delighting, and converting them.
This doesn't mean that you should strive for an ugly website. People who buy sports cars look for clean lines, beautiful colors, and shapely curves even as they compare torque ratios. The best designs pair form with function so that the two elements work seamlessly with one another.
This works with websites, too. Take illustrations, for instance. They add visual interest to a website, but they can also serve an important function. For instance, interactive infographics sport beautiful design while imparting a generous amount of information to the viewer.
Parallax scrolling offers a similar benefit. You can trigger specific events as your users scroll, which creates an almost interactive experience while still adding visual interest to your website.
Your website doesn't need to favor function over style (or vice versa), it can have both.
There's a reason why new cars debut every year. Manufacturers get 12 months to read reviews of their work, interact with consumers, and find new ways to upgrade their vehicles.
Similarly, a website should never be considered a finished product. Instead, it needs to evolve continuously as you collect more data and fine-tune your approach to design. The more you know about your website's performance, the easier it becomes to update it strategically. Your website design firm can incorporate this data into every bell and whistle so that it all functions together as smoothly as possible.
Great vehicles enjoy long production runs. They return year after year, sometimes with major overhauls, and sometimes with just a few tweaks of design or function. The point, however, is that they build on previous success.
Likewise, your website needs to evolve to suit changing sensibilities and preferences. Just as a car might gain Bluetooth connectivity and navigation systems, your website might adopt new applications or automation programs to enhance its performance. You're not scrapping it and starting over from scratch -- you're building on what works.
If you think that your website needs a little more than added horsepower, get some additional insight from another one of our blog articles, "Do you know why your website sucks?"