Five Reasons Businesses Should Invest In Design Early

After writing a business plan and incorporating or forming an LLC or another business structure, your company’s logo design is often the next task an entrepreneur needs to outsource when starting a new business.

That’s because your company’s brand identity (everything visual about your brand) can be the difference between success and failure.

It can be hard for a small business owner to justify the expense of a professionally designed logo. But this is shortsighted. A logo is one of the most important parts of your brand identity.

Though cheaper options such as ready-made design stores and designing your logo exist, they rarely produce the type of quality design expected in today’s business landscape.

The problem is that many of these other options can seriously harm your business.

When it comes to design, investing in quality as soon as possible is the best way to get the most growth out of your business. Otherwise, you may work harder than necessary to earn customer trust and stand out from the competition.

And, importantly, a high-quality logo design costs as little as $300!

Here are five ways that investing in design early can influence business growth.

1. First Impressions Matter

During a study at Carleton University in Ottawa, participants were shown websites for only 50 milliseconds and asked to rate them for visual appeal. The participants were then shown the websites for a longer time and asked to rate the websites again. The study found that the participants rated the websites’ visual appeal consistently, regardless of how long they were shown the sites.

What does this mean for small business owners?

Use principles of marketing psychology to your advantage. You have 50 milliseconds to make a good impression on your potential customer, and quality design will play a major role.

Once your prospective customers form their first impression, it will be very tough for you to change their minds.

2. Communicate visually with your customer

When properly designed, your logo can say a lot about your company. It may be the only opportunity to identify what your company does or to separate you from the competition in locations like app download stores and social media. As branding expert and author of Designing Brand Identity Alina Wheeler puts it:

To rise above the clutter, a symbol or a logo is the fastest communication known to man. It unlocks associations with your brand on sight, so it’s important to get it right the first time around.

3. Make your business memorable

A memorable logo doesn’t just help customers create a relationship between your company and its services, it can actually make them more engaged.

An online study conducted by branding firm Siegel+Gale found that memorable logos are 13 percent more likely to get consumers’ attention, 7 percent more likely to make them want to learn more about the brand, and 6 percent more likely to suggest a company is more unique than others in its category.

What makes a logo memorable? Simplicity.

Simple was the word that came up above and beyond, more than anything else,” said Brian Rafferty, global director of research insights for Siegel+Gale. “When people were asked what makes a logo memorable, it was simplicity.

A simple design is harder than it sounds, and many low-quality logos have complicated elements to mask their shortcomings.

Don’t make the mistake of confusing complex with quality.

4. Stand out from the competition

As mentioned earlier, ready-made and generic logos can harm your business.

Ready-made logos such as those bought from online logo stores or pre-made template sites can be purchased by other businesses and could lead to brand confusion when shown next to competitors that went the same ready-made route.

The generic elements often used in homemade designs have been seen so many times by customers they can begin to ignore them completely.

As the visual representation of everything your brand stands for, it’s important for your logo to be unique.

Professional designers take the time to learn about your business and create a logo that represents your company in a way that a generic option never could.

5. Invest now or spend more later

Spending little to no money on logo design might make financial sense in the early phases of starting a business, but it is a short-sighted decision.

If the competitive advantages of investing in quality design from the outset aren’t enough, the financial advantage is also clear.

Low-quality or generic design has a short shelf-life and will likely require a redesign in the future.

Whether it is because you are unhappy with what the design says about your growing business, or you found that your logo design is not as flexible as your marketing strategies, a logo redesign is an additional expense that can be avoided by making the decision to invest in quality design from the start.

Ready to invest in good design? Tens of thousands of the world’s best entrepreneurs, small businesses, agencies and non-profits trust crowdspring for high-quality, professional, custom design. Get started now and request a free, no obligation design consultation for a new custom logo, website, print design, package graphics, or any other design, with one of our design experts today.