All of the efforts that you put into your business’ website are almost meaningless without keeping in mind the importance of doing your best to have high conversion rates. This is where web design plays an essential role. This includes various aspects, from general aesthetics to various other items, such as CTAs, links, and so on. It is exactly where various psychological principles kick in. You don’t need the help of a psychology major to understand how they make your design have a greater impact. Basically, it is crucial to comprehend the way your users tick – what grabs their attention, what is merely a hindrance, and what drives them to become engaged.
While you do have to account for different demographics and other social factors, deep down all people tend to react the same to certain psychological stimuli. This is why you need a thorough understanding of their thought processes, preferences, habits, wants, needs, and so on so that you can use them to your advantage. Your site needs to stand out and play the right cards design-wise in order to make sure that the majority of your visitors convert to customers.
Cognitive ease
Relying on the so-called cognitive ease in terms of web design is a very important psychological principle. It is based on how easily a person’s brain intakes and then processes information, as well as what kind of reaction it has to it (positive or negative). The idea is not to overwhelm your website visitors with way too much information.
Some web designers turn to minimalism in order to make the best out of this principle. You don’t necessarily have to do that, but your navigation has to be intuitive, and your pages mustn’t have way too much content so that a visitor can find exactly what they are looking for without any trouble. Another very useful design approach is implementing a lot of white space. This way you will be able to highlight what is important, as it will stand out from the white space that dominates the pages that you create.
Curiosity
While the fact remains that people look for familiarity in a great number of situations during their visit to your website (the checkout process, for example), it is also true that there are places where you can do the opposite and make them interested by provoking their curiosity. If there is a promise of an exciting and engaging experience down the way, people will very often be inquisitive enough and want to find out what it is.
It is usually a great idea to tease users with chunks of information that are intriguing enough for them to want to learn more. Of course, you still need to be careful so that you don’t overcomplicate things because this will end up turning people away due to feeling tricked into a messy experience that doesn’t feel like a payoff. However, if you approach this psychological trick carefully, you will be able to generate a great number of conversions simply due to the fact that people are eager to find out what lurks around the corner.
Breakthrough action paralysis
One of the big enemies of conversion generation is certainly action paralysis. People are very often unsure about whether they should do what you are asking of them. However, the solution isn’t really all that complicated, as it is usually the case that all that they require is a little push in order to act. Basically, they need to be motivated.
One of the best ways to break through action paralysis is to set minimal parameters to what you are asking. There is actually a big difference between just asking people to donate for a certain cause and doing the same followed by the line “Every cent counts”. This is bound to make your audience feel a lot less pressured and a lot more motivated to help out. When selling something, include a prominent mention of a free trial. Or, you can allow every customer’s first shipping to be free of charge.
Fitts’ Law
A psychological principle advised by experts from a web design agency in Sydney that we have talked to is certainly Fitts’ Law. This approach is all about making sure that the time required for the user to take the desired action needs to be as short as possible. This means that moving the mouse cursor to an important item such as a CTA needs to have a short distance. However, the target item also needs to be big enough in order to instantly attract attention.
When a CTA is placed at an expected location, the users’ attention will instantly focus on it. On the other hand, when it comes to actions that you don’t want people to take (but you have to include) such as canceling the given action, they need to be placed farther away and come in the form of a smaller text link. This way, a person is more likely to finish their action then go looking for a way out.
In Summation
The fact is that web design and psychology go hand in hand. In order to improve your conversion rates, you need to make use of a variety of psychological principles (such as the ones we have discussed in this article) in order to affect the way people think and perceive certain items on your website. Essentially, the majority of these tactics aren’t really all that complicated and can be applied via careful planning and testing.
