Using design in business can bring about many benefits. It can improve your performance, your efficiencies, and the value of your products and services. It can also reduce costs and risks to your business.
Advantages of design to your business
When it comes to communicating the benefits of good design you will always go skeptics as other people who are not part of your organization will pay to use your software, and if the users are not happy with the design & developers, your organization not only going to lose customers but also its financial space. Your organization will be getting the perception that it doesn’t meet the needs of users& its customers, and this perception is extremely hard to overcome.
Long-Term Production Costs
Good design helps your organization reduce both your short-term as well as long-term production costs. New designs bring new software applications, new tasks, and new ways of performing tasks along with them, and users need to know how to perform those tasks efficiently.
Your organization saves money in production by focusing on your production teams, with early updating of the existing products as well as new products. Good design helps your sales and marketing teams learn from users about faults in the product and help in fixing that fault immediately without wasting your money and time. Good design makes you spend less money on fixing products that users have found unacceptable, and spend more time including improvements to help make the product and your customers’ lives even better.
Lower Customer Support Costs
Customer support costs account for more than 55% of a high-tech organization’s total costs. If users/customers find the user interface easy to use, they will likely not need to contact customer support. Without the guidance provided by good user interface design, users will use their judgments to get something to work the way they feel it should. The good design provides the needed guidance to users at the right time so they cannot ignore it.
If your product is well designed, your users will rely on online help and training materials less often and be more productive because they will find your product easy to use. They won’t make as many errors, but if they do make errors, then online help will get them back on their feet more quickly.
Greater Customer Retention
To seek for the answer to a problem customers are having, documentation is the primary line of support for most of them. The unavoidable result of poor or nonexistent documentation is that more people attempt reaching the customer support lines for help. The organization tries to reduce the costs of hiring and training customer support staff by charging for those calls. Customers, who don’t want to pay for these support calls, usually search the Internet to get solutions for their problem instead. Some users visit the organization’s site for those answers. Many organizations not only have lists of frequently asked questions (known popularly by the acronym FAQs), but also have online forums to ask and answer questions. Also, there are on regular basis online forums and also mailing lists not related with the organization that customer may consult with and have solutions to their problems.
The more the customers put time into solving the problem the more negative feelings customer will have about your organization. In the worst-case scenario, poor design can result in damage to customers’ computers or data and cause them to seek reimbursement from your organization for those damages. If you and your organization have very strong competitors in the market then this isn’t good news for you or your team. A very famous phrase in the business world is that it costs about 10 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain the old one.
Sense of unity to the brand
A good design provides a sense of unity, coherence, and individuality to products, services, and the organization itself. These aspects combined customize the brand in the minds of the customer. This way the organization can make a difference in the market and establish more appropriate communication with its target customers. The good design not only provide sense of unity to websites, packaging, advertisements, audiovisuals, stores but also with customer.
Good design creates the added value
Organizations mostly give lot importance to the quality of the product – which is important but design is equally very important. Good Design increases the value of the product and must be taken into consideration in the development of a good business.
Good design increases the competitiveness
A good design is not only enhances the value of the product and business but is a source of distinctiveness in the market. There’s a need to stand out and have differentiation in the market when other companies already produce and sell a similar product. A good product with a good design and marketing strategies can remain competitive in its market. Design helps the organization in obtain the intended success.
Good design enhances the innovativeness
The International business environment has changed as the globalization is erasing the national boundaries and today companies are competing on a global market .This rapid change in global environment puts high demands on companies to quickly be able to adjust to new situations in order to stay competitively strong. The organization must consider whether or not the product that it is launching has any characteristics (material ones or conceptual ones) that will set it apart from others in the market or not. To compete, companies must become more innovative. It is no longer enough to draw the attention of a customer with great prices, it’s adamant to strategically intervene in the concept and image of the product.
Good design improves the Commercial results
The organization must analyze the end consumer who will ultimately use the product/service. Good Design is good business. It’s important in the moment of purchase of products/services since it will allow them to stand out among many others and build trust. The Good design differentiates the product from competitors so improves the chances of commercial results.
Good Design helps in framing strong and improved strategies
The organization who does not give importance to designs actually neglects the chance of reaching high levels in the market. Communication design is a fundamental tool to consider in the implementation of a strategy and development of the concept of any business.
Conclusion
From the above discussion we can make out that good design not only results in less user frustration, but it also results in more positive reinforcements of your organization. Satisfied and happier customers not only means that you are retaining old customers but it also increases the chances that you will be able to attract new customers through testimonials and word of mouth, which till date remains the most effective marketing method.
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