How Web Design Impacts Content Marketing in 2023

In this turbulent economic environment, brands worldwide are employing cost-cutting measures to ensure their books stay balanced. One would assume that the content marketing departments at these brands would face the brunt of these cost cuts. But, in 2023, that hasn’t been the case. According to a survey published in WordPress VIP’s “Content Matters 2023 Report”, that involved thousands of content marketers:

• 58.4% of content marketers claimed that they expect their budgets to increase this year.
• 49.2% of content marketers claimed that their content marketing budgets have grown consistently since 2021.

So, are content marketing departments immune to cost cuts?

Of course, not!

But, new-age businesses make safe, smart, and data-driven decisions on how to spend their marketing dollars.

According to them, content marketing is one of the most effective avenues for marketing spend. In this article, we’ll define the concept of being successful at content marketing. We’ll also discuss a hidden aspect of content marketing success: high-quality web design. But, first, let’s define content marketing success.

Content marketing is the practice of creating, publishing, and promoting content that is relevant to both your brand and your target audience. This content does not need to be outwardly promotional; it can be relevant and helpful for your target audiences. It can also be something that generates strong interest in your brand or your industry.

Ever since the advent of search engines, content marketing and search engine optimization have been joined at the hips. The combination of these two practices has enabled brands to gain online visibility. So, if a website’s SEO is fruitful, it’s highly likely that the site has a lot of high-quality content that people genuinely enjoy consuming.

In addition to success in SEO, here are some other key metrics that professional content marketers use to determine whether or not their efforts are successful:

The number of leads (Marketing Qualified Leads or MQLs) the content generates. For instance, if a user interacts with your content and is inspired to sign-up for your services, that counts as a lead.

Lead engagement, i.e., a measurement of the quality of the leads one generates.

Share of voice: a metric that defines how well your content boosts your brand in comparison to similar content published by competing brands.

Share of search, i.e., the amount of search traffic received by your content relative to your competitors.

Lead value, which is the multiplication of your brand’s traditional cost-per-lead (CPL) and the number of leads your new content marketing efforts generate.

Lead attribution, which helps marketers understand the optimum marketing methods for generating leads.

These were just some metrics that you can use to determine the success or failure of your content marketing efforts. So, how does web design play a part in all these?

Well, a good web design helps your site visitors navigate through the content easily, thus making your efforts on content marketing successful.

Content-heavy sites can easily feel cluttered, and when that happens none of the content on these sites is accessible.

If you publish informational, entertaining, or promotional content on your website, it has to be easy to access, read, and understand. Web design plays a key role in this. Efficient web design can make your website’s content more accessible. An efficient navigation design can guide more users toward the information published on your website.

Efficient page structuring and layout design can also help users easily navigate through pages of content to find the info they are searching for. Even a simple web design trick like creating a drop-down menu on your website can instantly make your website content ten times more accessible for the average visitor.

Overall, high-quality website design is the key to making the content you publish on your site more accessible to your target audience. But, that’s not all. Website design can impact your content’s success in a multitude of different ways. Here are some of the most important impacts of web design on content marketing.

Comprehension

If a piece of content is not clear, concise, and well-presented, it will fail to engage people. Web designers deal with the latter. They create clear visual hierarchies on web pages so that users can easily scan through them and engage with the most eye-catching pieces of content. This involves the use of many web design techniques, especially the tactical use of white space and typography.

Would you like to read a continuous block of text or the same content broken into small sections? Certainly, everyone will prefer the latter, and web designers have to address this preference by reducing clutter and providing individuality to each piece of content on a website.

Brand Consistency

The average Internet user determines whether a webpage is useful or not in less than 0.05 seconds. So, if your website is confusing to navigate, it will be deemed “unusable” by a lot of people pretty quickly. No amount of high-quality content will convince them otherwise. That’s why web designers have to maintain a certain level of design quality across all pages on a website.

That means keeping fonts on all content pages consistent, using a clear method of structuring and spacing content, and using the same color palette across all pages. Such consistency in design quality creates a sense of familiarity in the minds of target audiences. This sense of familiarity is vital for creating a base of loyal customers on any website.

Plus, the design choices that professional web designers make are all rooted in years of research. For instance, some studies suggest that bright-colored call-to-action (CTA) buttons on websites yield higher conversion rates. Hence, a smart web designer will ensure all primary CTA buttons feature eye-catching colors instead of dull or dark ones.

User Flow

Website content is often shaped to guide users to take specific actions. Making all content pages super-easy to navigate is an easy way of achieving this goal.

Good content can inspire your target audiences to take the steps you desire, only if it is easy to understand and navigate through. Web designers can add this quality to your content by adding visual hierarchy, scale, whitespace, color contrasts and other design elements to your site’s content pages.

Appearance

Even if your website content is SEO-optimized and super-easy to discover, users may turn away if it is not designed or presented well. Websites that look and feel outdated don’t attract many readers. Web designers can add a sense of visual appeal and professionalism to your content and make it appear more trustworthy to visitors.

Professional web designers have spent decades designing content-friendly websites. They know exactly what the average internet user is looking for in websites in terms of presentation, aesthetics, and visual appeal. If you publish content on your website, a good web designer can take your content to the next level and help you secure more traffic, leads, and overall content marketing success!