No business can function successfully without a website today, hence the demand for website designers has increased, but the reality is that all designers are not competent enough to understand the fact that only designing a beautiful website is not their goal. Website functionality is utmost important, and they should design a website such that the users understand what to do next without any complication.

Here are a few reasons listed why functionality is more important than website beauty and how to achieve an integrated website for the users;

1. Website Should Solve the Purpose:

A website should be designed keeping in mind the function of the site and not the other way around. Most designers assume that designing a nice website would solve the purpose but that is not the case. You need to first identify the purpose of the website and the nature of customers to start building a website.

2. Beauty can Distract Users from Real Purpose:

A beautiful website may be good to look at, but it is of no use of it does not solve the real purpose of catering to your customers. Beauty can distract the designers and they may focus on the website appearance rather than the usability. If users do not understand the website purpose itself then what is the point of building it? Efficient UX designers understand how to blend beauty with functionality to gain the maximum from the website.

3. Speed Is More Important than Beautiful Elements:

You may design a stunning website but for that, you will have to add many elements on the homepage which will increase the size of the page, compromising on the website speed. Remember it does not matter if your website has one less flashy component, but it does matter if it is slow hence if you need to compromise on a few elements to improve website speed, do not hesitate. Users have a very short attention span and they will not want to wait for more than a few seconds for a page to load, sites which display blank pages initially and then load single elements one by one look really unprofessional and creates a bad brand impression amongst the users.

4. Websites that Lack Functionality Face High Bounce Rates:

When the users do not understand what they have to do on the website, they will bounce, increasing the website bounce rate. High bounce rates are bad for the ranking of the website hence often this occurs due to the preference of design over function.

Do not just focus on desktop website bounce rate but also take care of the mobile bounce rate as they are more important to be rectified. You can check if your website design is appropriate by keeping a track of the bounce rate through web analytics using software so that you can work on redesigning the site for your users if required.

5. Visually Excellent Websites are Complex and Cause Confusion:

The more elements on a webpage, the more confused your user will become hence add elements keeping in mind the function of the site and user usability. Just for creating a visual impact do not create a complicated website which the user will get confused to use. Using too many elements also takes away the focus from the call to action (CTA) button which decreases the user engagement rate. Design principles state that the more choice you give to the users, the more time they will take to decide what to do hence do not add too many CTAs on a single page, make every page function focused.

6. Focus on the Overall User Experience:

Apart from functionality and appearance, you should also focus on the user experience which is actually the most important aspect of designing a website. The website needs to be designed for the user to be able to navigate instead of just for them to look at. A website with many creative elements may be wonderful to the eyes but then if the users do not understand the purpose of the site and where to navigate next, your entire effort will go down the drain. Simpler designs which focus on the user experience have much lower bounce rates.

In Conclusion:

We are not pointing here that beauty and functionality do not go together, these two can exist in harmony, you just need to be aware of how to design a UX website which is good to look at and also has better functionality.