For those that know little or care little about web design, it is probable that if asked what a great web design should have, their answer will contain nothing other than “look great”. Of course, every web design should look great, but there is much more to it than that because every web design should have one or more objectives to achieve.
It might be that a website’s primary purpose is to generate email subscribers. Another website could exist to showcase products. The next website’s main priority could be to get prospects to fill out a quotation request. On eCommerce websites, the main task is to sell products via product sales and checkout pages.
You can take those four and probably add another 100 different objectives that a website might have, and it is the web design that is going to play the biggest role in determining whether those objectives are met or not.
You may have spotted from what you have read thus far that almost all the objectives revolve around the person who is visiting the website taking some form of action. It is the user taking action to enter their email address, make a telephone call, fill out a form, or make a purchase. For them to do so, the website, and in particular, the web design elements within it must have had the effect of persuading that visitor to act in a specific way.