Imagine that you just received a lot of unnamed gifts on your birthday. They are of different shapes and sizes and with different package-designs.

Which gift would you unwrap first?

Your eye automatically lands on the gifts that are beautifully wrapped. Right?

Same is the case with content marketing. Those contents are well-received which make your audience feel special; With a web-design that is seamless and reader-friendly and gets the viewers excited to undo the wrappings right away!!

One of the best examples which highlight the importance of web design in content marketing is the Medium. With a clean design, this blogging platform optimizes user-experience for its readers, making it one of the top blogging platforms today.

Therefore, there are a few ways website design affects the content marketing. Namely:

Information Credibility

According to a research performed by the Department of Psychology at the University of Glasgow by collaborating with Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt, Germany, brain tends to save energy by anticipating what it is about to see/read next. It also judges if the information it is about to intake and the process is worth its precious energy.

“When an audience visits a website, the brain decides if it should spend energy on it by looking at the aesthetics of the website and predicting its credibility and originality.”

Thus, boring design or lack of contrasting colors, not only turns away the visitors, but also subtly cues that the information provided on the site is unoriginal or untrustworthy; thereby, turning the visitors away from the site.

 

Your Brand Message

Branding is the most important aspect of running a business. While a good brand image can run the company for years and years without having to invest much on marketing; a bad branding does quite the opposite or even worse.

Take, for example Apple.Inc. Their brand has been the key USP for years even when they don’t spend so much on marketing. They have clearly depicted that:

‘Branding is not about what you do; rather, why you do and how you do it.’

And, the whys and hows of your services/products are defined by your website-design. A good website design should complement the nature of contents within the website and the tone of a brand.

Similarly, a complex and busy layout doesn’t go handy with the contents that is related to travel, nature or yoga and thus, with a brand related to organic or eco-friendly products. Though, those designs may complement online shopping websites, like Amazon and magazines very well.  

Moreover, websites which constantly displays pop-ups and advertisements symbolizes the desperate nature of the brand: Thus, the audience predict that the contents are purely marketing-oriented which makes them leave the site without reading the full content.

Overall, the design aspects, such as the typeface, font-size, colors, layouts, advertisements, etc. contribute towards branding, and therefore, to content marketing.

 

Readability

When web-designers decide to overload the web pages with too much information, such as large number of tags named Related Contents, or Continue Reading on Next Page, it frustrates the reader.

Most designs also accumulate too much side-bar clutter and ads, which is a wrong way to present content.

With all the information on the page competing for the audience’s attention at once, it is obvious for the audience to get overwhelmed. This doesn’t do anything more than distracting or giving them panic attacks.  

Even the design aspects as minor as small print, font type or responsiveness affect the readability of the content. Therefore, a complex design also tends to push the visitors away and impacts greatly on content marketing.

 

Accessibility

There is a fine line between Driving and Guiding the audience.

When a content heavy site consists of too long menu or sub menus or too many content suggestions or tags, the design doesn’t tend to guide the audience. It attempts to drive them.

To be driven goes against the human nature; thus, they subtly tend to rebel this by leaving the site.

On the other hand, the slow-loading of website and lack of navigation aids, such as poorly facilitated indices and ineffective search buttons, kill the curiosity of users and push them out of the website; ruining the effectiveness of content marketing.

 

Engagement and Interaction

The current and the upcoming eras belong to the decentralization of media. Almost every website uses content marketing for engaging the target audience and inducing their interaction through informational infographics, articles, white papers, videos, etc.

But, the content alone can only do as much as catching a user’s attention; the users’ engagement and interaction is facilitated entirely by the design.  

‘If the design is not engaging or does not grab attention, the words may never be read.’

        -Joe Pulizzi, Founder of Content Marketing Institute

 

This is why the Back button is the most utilized button in the history of websites.

According to a research performed by the designer Joseph Putnam, the audience are much likely not to get engaged in a content if the website is poorly designed.

And the worst-case scenario: Although the article may be of high value, and the audience might view the whole content, the chances that they will leave their email address, subscribe the site or perform an act as simple as leaving a comment plummets.

 

Conclusion:

Thus, in order for you to organize and accomplish a successful content marketing campaign, you should never ignore the design aspects of the website. Because a good web-design makes the content credible, distraction-free, clear purposed, legible and helps you form the right brand in the mind of your audience.