How to Establish Functional Design in Your Digital Marketing

Design is a significant element of your digital marketing strategy. You want to design pieces (graphics, marketing materials, etc.) that attract and engage your users. Whether you are a veteran designer or design is one of the many hats you wear for your senior living community, with every design, you should ask yourself – Is it functional for your audience?

From design for a website, packaging for a product, magazine insert, or logo design, each one needs to be functional. “One of the main characteristics of the functional design is to show the purpose (paldesk.com).” It should be clear to your audience why the design matters to them – is it solely for entertainment, or does it answer a question they have?

Markentum is sharing the terms that every designer needs to consider to add functionality to their designs:

• Effectiveness
• Usability
• Satisfaction
• Efficiency

1. Effectiveness

Effective design is what separates good design from great design. Effectiveness is built into our work from the initial approach to the outcome. In the initial stages of design, think to yourself, have you included all the basic design principles into your work – composition and focal points, hierarchy, balance, color, movement, negative space, repetition, structure, grid, and contrast?

Choice of design elements can make or break your design’s effectiveness, resulting in a functional layout. In digital marketing, an effective design will attract users and convert these visitors to leads.

2. Usability

Usability is a tool of how well a specific user can use a product to achieve a defined goal. Your website is the perfect example of usability in the design process.

Throughout the development process of the design, usability is tested by creating wireframes, concepts, and sketches. The goal is to make the design as easy as possible for the audience or users to view. To make your design functional, the designer should utilize consistency, repetition, aesthetics, minimalist design, and documentation (making it easy for the user to search and focus on the goal of the design).

“A 2017 LucidPress report noted that consistent design across all the places your brand appears in can increase your revenue and recognition (99designs.com).” Just like consistency in digital marketing, messaging is critical; the consistent use of a similar set of colors, design look and feel, and overall presentation is equally important for a brand to maintain.

3. Satisfaction

Purposeful design choices effectively resonate with users. Functional design is both an outcome and a process.

• As an outcome, it describes products that work well to perform their assigned tasks.
• As a process, functional design is a set of practices guided by the principles that produce that positive outcome.

Satisfaction will provide a positive and an enhanced experience for the user.

4. Efficiency

“The efficient design is said to ensure the overall efficiency of the structure. The qualitative measure of the performance of structures widely depends on the effects of stability, strength, and determination. The cost is an effective quantitative index for evaluating the structure (chegg.com).”

While this applies more to design associated with construction, in the digital design world, this can be seen in your ROI. Too often, we see companies spend thousands of dollars for a third party to design a flashy ad or campaign. While the design is engaging, it’s often inefficient because the company sees little to no return on its investment. It may look good, but it’s ineffective if it’s not converting the audience into measurable results.

If you are spending more to create your designs than you are getting from their execution, you may need to reevaluate your approach.

“The right balance between creative and functional web design catches the attention of your users… Having a functional [design] that gives the user a satisfying experience is what converts.  You can turn your [designs] into a profit-generating machine for your business (paldesk.com).”

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If you’re looking for ways to add creativity and momentum to your digital marketing efforts, we encourage you to reach out to Markentum for a free evaluation.