Psychology plays a crucial role in web design, and banking on these elements can help you win more customers over. For designing a website, the main role of psychology is on predicting how the user will react to a piece of content or a certain element.Here are seven tips on how to improve the impact of your web design using the concepts of psychology. The goal of different websites will vary, but psychology will influence how engaging the website is to its target audience.
Build trust with the right image and colour
Which kind of images do you have on your website? Will the visitors be able to share it with their friends and family members?Having the faces of people on your website can make visitors feel safe. The sense of familiarity also builds trust.Colour affects people in different ways, so consider the use of colour in your website. Children love the colour yellow, but males over the age of 30 don’t like the hue.
Lead the visitor’s eye to the right place
Hierarchy has an important role in website design. Users need to know where to look, and you can aid them by using the right elements.Using headings, subheadings, block quotes, tag lines, and other groupings can help visitors assess how important a block of text is. Use the same tactic in leading the visitor to do what you want.Contrast, size, colour, and location are all crucial. Photos, for instance, will be the first thing people look at before they read the caption.
Use colour to influence user behaviour
As noted above, colour affects people in different ways. You need to understand the psychology behind colours when you design a website. Colours can help you achieve different goals as there is a science behind the colours we see.Colour contrasts, for instance, can help you increase the click-through rate. On a landing page, the buttons often have to be in contrast to the colour in the background. Bright buttons also work better.Colours can also help you create a visual path. Gradients, for instance, will lead the visitor to scroll. There’s a detailed guide to colours and how they influence people and using these guides will take out the guesswork in the web design process.
Guide visitors with repeated elements
The same heading format and styles are there for a reason – it allows visitors to identify items right away. By establishing a system, visitors will subconsciously know where to go or what to do which serves as their guide when navigating through the website.
Make the most of negative space
The unobstructed area around an element is what designers call negative space. If you have a big circle and you place a small dot in the middle, the space between the dot and the large circle is the negative space.Negative space can draw the visitor’s eye especially when there is a contrast in size between the element serving as a focal point and other elements. This technique is effective when you want the visitor to focus on a button, a product, or a certain element.
Practise minimalism
Although the options and content on the website are not under the full control of the designer, it’s also effective to avoid having too many elements on the page. You don’t want your visitor to feel overwhelmed.
In the early days of the Interweb, it was acceptable to pack all the content on the page. However, that’s no longer the case, and people find it annoying to have so many things fighting for their attention on your website.
Now, you need to keep your message short and focus on what you want to say. Less is more.To supplement the message you want to convey, you can use other elements in your web design to improve the user experience.
Do a visual tour
What do visitors experience when they visit your website? Try to do the walkthrough to see how users feel when they visit your website.Use all the tools you want visitors to pay the most attention to. Don’t let users arrive at the footer of the page without having anywhere else to go to. This is a lost opportunity to catch their attention and have them explore your page more.Psychology is an interesting branch of science, and it can help you improve your web design. Implementing changes while considering user psychology can help grow your business.
