UX/UI design: why your website’s design directly influences your sales
UX, UI, what’s the difference? How a website’s design influences trust, conversion and even SEO, and the design mistakes that cost you customers.
By Léo Chuzel · Published on · 3 min read
A website’s design is often seen as a matter of taste: pleasing colours, a nice typeface. That’s a costly mistake. Good design is first and foremost about effectiveness: it helps visitors understand, trust and take action. Bad design drives customers away, even with an excellent offer.
UX and UI: two complementary disciplines
- UX (user experience) is about how things work: which pages, in what order, what information at what moment, how many steps to book or order.
- UI (user interface) is about how things look: layout, typefaces, colours, icons, buttons, animations.
- Both together: good UX with a neglected UI doesn’t inspire trust; a beautiful UI with poor UX doesn’t convert.
The first impression is made in seconds
Visitors form an opinion of your business almost instantly, before they’ve even read your copy. A dated, cluttered or inconsistent website suggests a careless business, even if your work is excellent. Conversely, a polished design consistent with your identity reassures and makes people want to know more.
The design mistakes that cost you customers
- A vague message at the top of the page: visitors don’t understand what you do or who it’s for.
- Too many choices: ten buttons of equal importance, and none stands out.
- Contact details that are hard to find, especially on mobile.
- Unreadable text: low contrast, typeface too small, endless paragraphs.
- Stock photos that show neither your team, nor your work, nor your premises.
- Intrusive animations that slow the website down and distract attention.
- Inconsistency between the website, social media and printed materials.
Design and SEO: a direct link
Design also influences your visibility on Google. A clear, well-structured page that’s fast and pleasant on mobile keeps visitors. An overly heavy design (background videos, carousels, multiple fonts) degrades Core Web Vitals. That’s why designers and developers need to work together from the start, not one after the other.
How a design phase unfolds
- Scoping: goals, audiences, competitors, available content.
- Architecture: list of pages and main user journeys, often as simple diagrams.
- Low-fidelity mock-ups to approve the structure, without being distracted by colours.
- Art direction: mood, typefaces, colours, image treatment.
- Final mock-ups for mobile and desktop, interactive, which you test yourself.
- Design system: the component library used for development and future updates.
We go into these steps in detail in our article on a website’s art direction.
Should you test with real users?
Yes, and it’s not just for large companies. Having five people from your target audience test the key journeys reveals most of the blockers: a misunderstood menu, a form that’s too long, information nobody can find. Half a day of testing saves months of lost conversions.
Measuring the effect of design
Good design can be measured: contact request rate, bookings, sales, time on page, exit rate on key pages. Compare these indicators before and after a redesign. Our article on conversion rate covers the most effective levers.
Want to give your website the image and effectiveness it deserves? Discover our UX/UI design and visual identity services, and if your identity itself deserves to evolve, read when to update your visual identity.