Psychological Study of Web Designs

A website is the window to the soul of an Internet business as well as the people behind it. It may have a positive or may be a negative effect on your end result. If you take the time to think about what your visitors want and how they want to get it, then you’re already on the right track to creating a site that will tap into the psychological drives of your target audience. There are somethings more important to a successful website than its design. A good website is noticeable to not just designers, but to everyone who will visit your website. When you see a website for the first time, you tend to make an instant judgement on its quality and relevance. Even if it is done subconsciously, we are able to take a fairly accurate impression very quickly. Web designs busy with too many elements fail. In that, they attempt to express too much, confuse visitors and make interaction stressful. On the other hand, those which are too barren or sparse fail to build trust or convey purpose. Important Factors in Website Designing: There are some factors which act like determinants for making a good website. These actually contribute a lot in enhancing the usability and experience of the visitors on the website. The factors are listed below: You need to be very particular about images that suit your website the best. The focus of the page— the area where your eyes tend to look when you visit a page for the first time. Be particular about the object you tend to focus on— a single wrong move can ruin the expected traffic Get a hold of your competitors— what their website look like. Simplicity is the best policy and there is a need to create a balance between quantity and quality— be concise and qualitative. This is where psychology helps you! Psychological principles are either looked upon as unnecessary, or too complicated. The human mind is able to recognize a combination of general human psychological and website design factors in the same way where you are able to recognize several letters jumbled together as a specific word and assign meaning to it. When you break it down, web design is simply the manipulation of content and images on a website to appeal to the perceptions of a target audience. When you are trying to make a website that stands out amongst the rest, that has a high conversion rate and performs well, you need to get more specific with your designs. To help you with all this, here we load you with some of the best psyches of humans, which can actually help you to create not only a website that stands out but, the one which leaves a deep impression in the minds of the visitors. Don't let them think that they have landed up in a Wasteland There are certain things that someone naturally, or to put it in other words, have already made a perception that they would see certain things right away when landing to a page. The only things that people expect is the purpose of the site and the form of navigation menus. The designs compliment and reinforces the message. They even expect certain things to be at certain places. People expect blog posts on the front page of a blog. They expect products on the front page of an e-commerce site. And in most cases, they expect some kind of “about” information and a contact page. Trust, is What is In Demand Trust doesn’t come easily, especially in this age of scams, schemes, and unsavory characters, which are readily available online. No matter how recommended the website is, one becomes really suspicious if they visit a website and then, it asks for any personal information. Internet is often considered as a black hole of personal information and creates a terror in the minds of the users, be it clients or the clients' client. With this in mind, try and inculcate that trustworthy design in your website by making use of design psychology. Symbolism of Colours Colours are the non-verbal communicators and go beyond the limits of ink. It all depends on how our mind perceive and associate meanings with each colour. But the colours have a deep impact on how your visitors perceive your site, reinforcing the message you want to portray, only if the selection of the colours is right. Red Fiery and passionate, strength, boldness, excitement, determination, desire, courage. It stimulates people to make quick decisions. Orange Enthusiasm, cheerfulness, affordability, stimulation, creativity, and is highly accepted among young people. Yellow A warm, happy color. It is attention-grabbing, comfort, liveliness, intellect, happiness, energy. It stimulates mental activity. Green Durability, reliability, safety, honesty, optimism, harmony, freshness. Green can sometimes represent inexperience. On the flip side, green is sometimes associated with envy or jealousy. It has been known to drive people away, so in most cases, unless the website is associated with nature, it is better to use it only for website accents. Blue Depth, stability, professionalism, loyalty, reliability, honour, trust. It proves to be calming and cool, but too much can be depressing. It is often associated with corporate images. Purple/Violet Long associated with royalty and wealth. It’s also a spiritual colour— power,nobility, luxury, mystery, royalty, elegance, magic are its phenomenal characteristics. Black Elegance, sophistication, formality, strength, mystery, with a bit of chameleon touch. White Cleanliness, purity, newness, virginity, peace, innocence, and simplicity. Brown A wholesome and down-to-earth colour that denotes stability and reliability. Grey Neutral and balanced. Conservatism, traditionalism, intelligence, seriousness depicts “Grey”. Colours make us feel a certain way, so they can and should be used to support the purpose of a website. Reinforcing Concepts Psychological and emotional triggers are the most valuable tools in influencing visitors. The images you use on your sites can either help or confuse visitors. A well-chosen image can put your visitor at ease, making your intensions clear enough. Every page ought to have a focus. Your design needs to put the emphasis on the focal element of every page. Abstract images may prove helpful, and sometimes work quite well if they tend to focus on a vital subject. They may have different meanings to different people. Therefore, their use should be minimal. That concludes us to by far the most important concept of white space and breathing room. If a visitor arrives on a page filled with every possible thing imaginable, there are possibilities that they are likely to become claustrophobic. “Whitespace,” or “negative space” is the space between elements in a composition. More specifically, the space between major elements in a composition is “macro whitespace.” - MARK BOULTON - Whitespace article for A list Apart Don't let your visitors experience the negative space on your site. Try and encourage your readers to focus on a thing and then, take the appropriate action. Incorporating not so essential information within the 'Z' reading zone means your visitors may leave the site before they find what they’re looking for. People tend to read in a “Z” pattern on a website, starting across the top from the left and ending in the bottom right corner of their screen. So, try and follow this technique to be able to hold readers. Now that we are well aware of the psychological approach behind almost each and every website design, it becomes important to avail you with the information regarding incorporating these techniques into your website designs — Its high time that you start figuring out who your target audience is. It can range from a tech-savvy, to a layman who just checks out a website for photos. Being well aware of the target audience helps you to aim right at bulls' eye and nothing can actually stop that bait or in other words, trigger. Its advisable that you follow and act on customers' advices. Customer's satisfaction should be your soul motto and try and build up a strategy where you tend to interview customers and ask for their feedback and requirements. A sitemap, is very important so that it gives the reader an idea that every single page consists a single objective and it rules out. Try and make sure that you at least have a choice to figure out the best element. Rather than merely being the production of online decoration, web design is an effort of direction and communication. The main goal of such a psychologically triggered web design is to strike a balance between client preferences, design principles, and trial-and-error tests based on end-user analytics data. It should be an on-going process incorporating all the essentials. About the Author Jenny Warner is from PixelCrayons, a creative web design and development agency that specializes in custom web design & development, markup services, CMS & ecommerce solutions.