Website is a very powerful tool that can help you grow your business. There are three major questions every website owner asks himself.
Who are my website visitors or my clients?
How do I make them come to my website?
How do I convince them to convert into leads or paying customers?
The design of a website can play a big role in determining whether or not the site is a success. However, it’s important to remember the human element when designing a website.
With a small tweak here and there, you can encourage visitors to take action and convert.
Website design is not just about keeping everything looking pretty. Website design is about showing the customer what you want them to do.
Here are 6 ways to use psychology in your website design.
1. Gaining Visitor’s Trust
Gaining the trust of the website visitors is not an easy task. A lot of companies have tried many ways to get the trust of website visitors.
They have spent a lot of money on advertisements, emails, PR etc. Many have even tried to buy the trust of visitors but all of them failed. Here is what you can do to make people trust your business.
Social proof influences customer action
Cognitive biases are a big part of why humans behave the way they do – and understanding how these biases can impact the behavior of your website visitors is crucial when it comes to convincing them to buy from you.
One of the most important cognitive biases used in marketing is “social proof”, which is also known as social influence.
This is when people assume that the actions of others can outline the right path to take.
To show social proof on your website, all you need to do is use testimonials, reviews, and even display how many people follow your brand on social media.
Familiar experiences also help us to build strong relationships with others
You want your website to feel inviting and comfortable for your customers, rather than sterile or confusing.
If your visitors can easily imagine themselves interacting with your company or product, they’ll feel more committed to your brand.
One way to make this happen is by using images that feature human faces. Studies show that people naturally react more positively to images that include human faces, because they can relate to them better.
However, it’s important to avoid using standard stock images, as they are often not relatable.
2. Hick’s Law
Have you ever gone to Walmart to buy bread and been overwhelmed by the sheer number of options? 2,072 to be exact. That’s a lot of bread. Croissants, bagels, brown bread, white bread, baguettes, multi-grain buns… the list goes on.
It’s incredible that so many different kinds of bread can be made from such simple ingredients as flour, water and yeast.
While it might seem daunting at first, having so many choices is actually a good thing. No matter what sort of bread you desire, you’re likely to find it among the 2,072 varieties on offer.
And that’s just at Walmart. That doesn’t take into account bakeries, delis or other supermarkets.
So how does bread tie in with Hick’s Law? Well, Hick’s Law implies that the more alternatives a person is given, the more time it will take for them to come to a conclusion.
Hick’s Law in UX Design
Now what does Hick’s Law have to do with UX design? Can we use Hick’s Law to improve the user experience?
Let’s say you’re designing a new website for a local library.
Imagine that this library has specialist books and information and therefore a lot of different, but useful, categories for visitors to browse. Call it 50 categories.
When it comes to designing the navigation menu for the website, you wouldn’t realistically want to show visitors 50 categories.
No, that would be madness. 50 different options would disengage a visitor immediately and they would probably leave your website.
Designers can apply Hick’s Law when designing:
- Control display
- Drop down menus
- Contact pages
- Sign up forms
- Button selection
- Navigation menus
3. Cognitive Load
Whenever our cognitive load is greater than what our working memory can process, we’re at risk of experiencing cognitive overload. This happens when we’re trying to process more information than our minds can handle.
Cognitive load theory was first proposed by John Sweller. He explored the mental paths that help us understand messages.
According to Sweller, understanding is heavily influenced by the way content is presented to us. For example, it’s simpler to show an image of a square than to describe it with words.
Why it is important to reduce cognitive load
Digital experiences typically start with some sort of goal or intent in mind – we want to view photos on Instagram, or send an email via Gmail.
However, if it’s hard to reach our goal, the experience is often worse and we feel more frustrated.
This is known as the Peak-End Rule, which states that we judge an experience based on its most critical and final moments. If we feel confused or anxious, these negative feelings are likely to be associated with your brand.
To create a better user experience, we must consider using effective cognitive design techniques.
This means making sure the user can easily achieve their goals without feeling frustrated, confused, or anxious. By doing so, we can create positive associations with your brand.
Clear and to the point
While it might be tempting to show a variety of content options to users so they can easily find what interests them, it’s more important to simplify the path to the goal as much as possible.
Having too much information in one place can be overwhelming and ultimately lead users astray from what they were originally trying to find.
Guide your users
Designing an interface is a lot like telling a story. One of the main causes of high cognitive load in UX is when a story is told poorly.
To avoid this, try to maintain a consistent narrative structure with a clear beginning, middle, and end. This will help guide your users through your interface and make it more enjoyable for them.
4. Anchoring Bias
Anchoring (or focalism) bias is a cognitive bias that happens when we focus on one initial piece of information (the “anchor”) to make decisions.
This bias is commonly used by marketers and developers because it can be effective.
Anchoring bias is often thought of as a negative thing, but it can actually be used in a positive way to help your target audience make better decisions.
Anchoring is a technique that can be used on website headlines, banners, and sliders to catch a user’s attention immediately upon arrival on the website.
This is a great chance to let users know what your brand is all about, make any important announcements, and pique their interest right away.
Anchoring bias happens when we allow our first impressions to color our decisions and understanding of a product.
As designers, we can use this to our advantage by being mindful and guiding users to the desired journey.
Good anchors have the potential to lower the cognitive load of decision-making and make for a positive user experience. By being aware of this bias, we can create better anchors that will lead users toward the desired outcome.
5. Fitts’s law
Fitt’s law is a model that predicts the speed of human movement, often used in human-computer interaction. The time it takes to select an object is based on the distance from the object and the size of the object.
Smaller objects that are farther away or related objects that are far apart from each other will take longer to select. Larger objects that are closer or related objects that are close together will take less time to select.
In the physical world, the biggest button on a microwave is the door button because opening the microwave door is the most important action. In human-computer interaction, it’s just as simple – the larger the call-to-action (CTA), the easier and faster it is to click on it.
This is because when your cursor is far away from a small CTA, you need to be more precise to accurately click on it, increasing the time and energy you spend moving your mouse toward the CTA.
But when your cursor is close to a large CTA, you don’t need to be as precise to accurately click on it. So if you want someone to take an immediate action on your site, make sure your CTAs are big and easily visible!
Though Fitts’s Law is a helpful initial step in the right direction for usability, it’s not gospel. Always trust data over theory – the best way to know for sure if your design works well is to test it out on actual users.
It can’t hurt to ask questions and try to gain a fuller understanding of the concepts at play.
Use theory as a jumping off point, and then consider how it applies to the real world scenario you’re working with. “Laws” like Fitts’s are simply guidelines to keep in mind, not rules to rigidly adhere to.
6. Color
Choosing colors for your website is one of the most important aspects of web design. The colors you choose can have a strong impact on your website’s visitors, setting the tone for their experience.
As there are thousands of colors to choose from, it’s important to select those that will create the desired emotional impact and meet the purpose of your website.
The colors we choose for our websites can have a profound effect on the people that visit them.
As a web developer and designer, it’s important to always keep the message of the website in mind when choosing colors, as different colors can create different emotional reactions in people.
For example, blue is often used by social networking websites because it conveys a sense of trustworthiness.
Similarly, red is often used by web designers to emphasize the importance of a specific place or function on a website. Carefully selected colors are thus a vital component of the design process.
Final Words
Psychology and web design go hand-in-hand – you can’t have one without the other! By considering psychological factors during the web design process, developers can create websites that have a real impact on their customers.
By carefully planning and executing the psychological aspects of web design, developers can guide customers to specific information, or create a desired mood or theme for the website.
Professional and experienced web developers always think about what effect they want their website to have on visitors, as every element of the design should support the business goals of the website.
