Good design can open up valuable opportunities for a company and it is an element which is often underestimated in its importance. The design process is composed of many parts and design processes can help you to discover your customer’s needs and preferences and enable you to make your business processes more efficient. There are various different ways that design can benefit your business from product development to business strategy.

Benefits of Design in Business

Most entrepreneurs would probably agree that good design can drastically improve business performance. The commercial benefits of design are:

• Increased sales
• Improved market position
• A stronger identity
• Creation of new products or services

It is equally important to design for your customer. With a constantly changing market and a vast array of choice, customers are looking for well-designed products and are often willing to pay more for high quality goods and services.

How Design Is Used in Business

The most obvious form of design within a business is graphic design, which is largely used for the website, packaging and marketing materials. This is an important aspect of the business so it’s essential to have the best design team possible, so that there is consistency and high quality throughout.

Design should be the major element within product development. The first step is to find out what your customers want by using market research and design-led user research. From this, the design team can begin to develop concepts for new or revised products and draw up initial designs. This then leads to prototypes being created, followed by user trials to evaluate the product so that revisions can be made before the product goes into production.

Design Should Be Part of Your Business Strategy

Formulating a successful business strategy is something most business owners will have learnt during their online bachelors in business. However, the teachings may not have emphasized how important it is to include design into that strategy. Involving design into your strategy from the outset can save you money and result in better products/services and a better experience for your customers.

It’s important to use design strategically and this can easily be done by following a few key steps:

• Pinpoint where and how design is being used within your company
• Look for areas where design opportunities are being missed
• Identify ways of improving the design process

Winning New Customers

A successful business leader will have acquired skills such as trend forecasting, from an online business degree or through experience, and will be aware that design processes can also be used to appeal to new customers and build new markets. A responsive business will use design methods and techniques to identify which customer needs aren’t being met and use this to create or refine a product or service to fill the gap in the market.

Design can also help your business move into foreign markets and it plays an important part in retaining your existing customers. Without good design it’s unlikely that your business would be successful so make sure it is a priority consideration at all times.