Psychology-Based Web Design: Proven Way to Increase Brand Awareness

"A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist." Louis Nizer

The web is crowded with millions of resources trying to win the hearts of their audience. However, not all of them manage to gain success and stand out among their competitors. Designing a website only for the purpose to bring your brand online isn’t enough to get crowds of visitors. There should be something to catch their attention and make them keep coming back again. This is when psychology-based web design should come in handy.

Taking the psychological drives of a target audience into consideration should be of the highest priority for a web designer. Thus, you will be able to engage more viewers in and effect how frequently they respond to calls-to-action. Paying attention to the way users commonly assimilate information and appeal to their conscious and subconscious inclinations, you will be able to find a more successful way to control their actions when on your site and, therefore, increase brand awareness.

Psychology-Based Web Design Tricks

The things people mention when reaching your website depends on what they were looking for. For instance, if one searched for an outfit online store and came up with a fashion news blog, he or she will hardly stay there. That is a clear practice. However, there can be something that would catch their attention and motivate to stay and keep on browsing further. So, let’s find out how to apply psychology of web design in practice and find out what tricky things we should keep in mind in order to achieve success.

Building trust is the first thing any web designer should care about when developing an online resource. People are always skeptical about websites, especially the ones that are selling something. If a website is poorly designed, this is most likely the first reason of bad conversions. If you see that people are reaching your website but in most cases leave after a few minutes without a purchase, then it’s time to think about site redesign using, for example, some psychology WordPress themes.

Users better perceive information when it comes from an authority. Share your Better Business Bureau accreditation somewhere on your site or display accepted payment methods. If you are cooperating with world-known partners or there are popular company names among your clients, don’t forget to share this valuable information with your visitors. This will not only increase your brand awareness, but also help you attract plenty of new clients.

Text is the king and the way you format it highly influences the way user will perceive it. Will you enjoy pages of written data without any pictures or headlines to help you differentiate ideas within a post? It’s a well-known fact that modern users prefer skimming to reading, so adding large headlines and highlighting important information in bold will help you draw their eye to the focal point and keep them reading. According to a study done by the Nielson Norman Group, a user reads about 20% - 28% of content on a web page on a normal visit. So, making calls-to-action easy to read and differentiate will make your text look more user-friendly and let them get the message of your post in a few words only.

You may be surprised, but the choice of typography also matters. The properly chosen font can persuade one to buy, motivate to click a button to learn more about the product or services provided, etc. While many claim that standard fonts like Times New Roman are the optimal choice for making your content readable, others claim that choosing typography with elegant curves would help in making the content more pleasant to the eye. Tastes differ, that’s no secret. Try to experiment and see what attracts your audience the most.

Make use of emotional triggers. People are always impressed with something that awakes sentimental feelings or, on the contrary, cheers up. Psychological and emotional triggers are among the most effective means to push readers to take certain actions. Adding such elements to your texts, you may also apply imagery, colors and other visual elements to increase user engagement.

Color importance in web design can’t be underestimated. Psychological effect of colors determines whether you can send a positive or negative message to the audience, cheer them up and motivate to make a purchase or, vice versa, calm them down. Depending on the type of a website one is running, the choice of color scheme may greatly differ. For instance, red combined with yellow are considered to be amazing appetite triggers and are often seen on food related websites, whereas green is thought to be a color associated with nature and freshness, which is often met on environment-oriented, healthy lifestyle, and other websites. Have a look at the image below and discover the psychology of other colors in web design.

If you do a bit of research, you will find out that the majority of web developers put logos in the top left corner of the page. And that isn’t entirely unfounded. People are commonly reading a website in a ‘Z’ pattern. So, it would be a clever step to put all important information within this.

Make sure that every page on your website has an obvious focus. Whether you are running a news blog or an ecommerce website selling some stuff online – you should put it clear for the audience to understand what kind of a resource they have reached. Try to emphasize the focal point in orders for your viewers to understand what exactly they are supposed to do on your web page. The clever use of negative space and properly picked imagery should significantly help you with that.

To conclude

To sum it up, for every web designer (whether a beginner or a pro) learning the basics of human psychology can bring big rewards. Knowing your target audience and providing them with engaging online experience you will not only look more reliable in the eyes of your clients, but also ensure that they will spread the word and attract more prospective customers to your brand.