What’s one word people associate with web design? Some may say creativity. Creativity is often described as “making something that has value”. That’s one definition. Another one is “recognizing ideas and concepts and using them in solving a particular problem.” Let’s just define ‘being creative’ as ‘producing something useful’. The next question would be: How do web designers know they are producing something useful? Many rely on intuition to tell them that. We know, however, that intuition can be deceiving. Maybe this list of cognitive biases will enlighten you. Because, web design is not an exception..
Web designers can learn a lot from some psychological principles and research on how the human mind works. This week we will mention a few studies / theories and how to apply them in your overall design framework. Do people visit websites to achieve particular outcomes?
Marketers often use ‘focus groups’ or ‘segmenting by demographics’ in order to gain better insights into how to sell their products better. This is market segmenting. A better way to understand what people want is to understand the tasks. People often come to websites for the same reason people are coming to buy something: This can be a product or service. Maybe it’s to inform themselves about a particular company or it is to research about a product. It’s your job to find that out before you start designing. Also, that’s the best way to make the site useful for the visitors. There are a huge number of web tools that can help discover what are people trying to do on a website.
While brand doing something for the people, are using the psychology of persuasion. Customers need to be convinced for purchase or opt this brand. The same is true for the web site. Your website design and content should convince your visitors. So you can take advantage of the Psychology of Persuasion for web design. Brain wave analysis results concluded that 50% more concentration was required for participants on confusing sites. The important thing here; You are to avoid of design sites that accomplish outcomes and eliminate unnecessary and ‘fancy’. Another research concluded that attractive women make men impatient. This resulted in men thinking more ‘short-term’ or in a mating frame of mind. What’s the lesson here? You don’t want to put pictures of beautiful women on products/services with a long-term reward like life insurance or a product for saving money. Putting beautiful women there can have the opposite effect.