Understanding Consumer Psychology: The Key to Making a Web Design That Wins

Have you come across dubious pop-up ads and notifications while browsing websites? How many times has that happened? Plenty, we guess.

Back when businesses had just started out with online marketing, frauds and flashy emails became quite common. Internet users would be continuously flooded with exasperating and aggressive ads that didn’t make any sense at all.

And do you know what the worst part about all this was? These apparently senseless and infuriating ads actually worked! Users would click on these dubious pop-ups expecting to win a free iPhone, millions of dollars, and so on.

But today, things have changed entirely. People have become smarter than ever. Even though users are still flooded with such in-your-face ads, they are no longer naive enough to even think for a moment that somebody wants to give them a million dollars or the latest iPhone out of the blue.

Why? Well, to begin with, gone are the days when aggressive ads, shallow marketing, and poor web design were a thing. In addition to this, nowadays, user engagement is all about human-centered user interface and user experience design while minimizing the spam as much as possible.

Today, what you need to do is design your website in a way that strikes the right chord with your target audience, and for that, you have to appeal to their best emotions. Wondering how exactly you would do this? It’s quite simple, actually – by using the right web design elements like font, content, typography, colors, graphics, etc., depending on the fundamentals of consumer psychology.

While the majority of website design companies know how web design psychology works, building a site that wins requires much more than just understanding the fundamentals of how visuals and colors work.

We wouldn’t deny the fact that human brains are incredibly complex, and it is indeed challenging to impress the average consumer. But with just a little bit of practice, you can fine-tune your website to distinguish yourself from the crowd genuinely.

In this blog, we will look at how web design psychology can help you enhance your user experience.

What Is the Psychology of Web Design?

Before we start discussing how you should use consumer psychology, let us first talk about what psychology is and why it plays a vital role in website design.

In simple words, psychology refers to the study of how the human mind works. Since our thoughts and minds control almost everything we do, it only seems logical for us to first understand consumer psychology so that we can develop powerful branding strategies and website design.

In order to understand the fundamental part psychology plays in a user-friendly web design, take this into account:

• The limbic system is responsible for our memories and the way we react to positive experiences. Now, if you could help the users associate with your site on a positive note, there are better chances of them revisiting your website and recommending it to their peers as well.
• The neocortex is the part of the human brain which is responsible for ‘thinking,’ and this is the one component of web design psychology that designers feel the most comfortable with. Why? Because it is the most logical part of our brain that craves loads of information that makes sense. Therefore, incorporating lots of useful and informative content within your site could be an excellent way to appeal to the users’ neocortex.
• The way we think and process information is known as cognition. Nevertheless, making the audience think and like your content simultaneously is neither easy nor cheap. What the average user expects is an easy but pleasant experience from your website or app. Grasping how cognition helps can actually go a long way into building an engaging web design and boosting conversions.

Well, now that you know how web design psychology works, let’s discuss some ways you can channel the power of psychology to build a web design that wins!

Minimize Stress on Cognition

Today most people have limited patience levels and increasingly reduced attention spans. Hence, minimizing cognitive stress sounds like a brilliant idea because the average user can’t handle too much information all at once.

Plus, if you are considering delivering a positive user experience, you need to ensure that your UI and UX design are intuitive, simple, and easy to grasp.

For starters, you can explore pre-existing schemas and mental models. From the typical search button to sign in and checkout processes, these could be anything. Incorporate forms that your site visitors can fill out quickly and ensure that all the components on your web page are in rational groupings.

The majority of people scan things rather than reading them online, so it only sounds logical to include super simple banners, headings, and keywords.

If you are thinking about building a persuasive eCommerce web design, ensure that your site visitors fulfill their goal of purchasing products via a smooth process. There are a couple of things you can do to enhance your overall user experience, such as streamlining your search bar, minimizing the number of primary categories, and modifying the look of your input field.

Include Social Proof

As human beings, we all love things that we can personally relate to. We are all hardwired to think what other people like might be beneficial to us too. What could justify this better than reviews and star ratings? Whole organizations have expanded their businesses based on social validation (for example, reviews and ratings on IMDb, food reviews on Zomato, etc.).

Social proof has emerged as a crucial marketing tool that significant companies take advantage of in their website design as well as customer support. Now and again, we succumb to these biases and wind up purchasing products we were not even planning to buy in the first place.

You can include social proof on your website using images, reviews, star ratings, and customer testimonials to convey how consumers loved your products or services. Doing so will help you motivate your site visitors and potential customers to take the desired action or engage with your brand further.

Typography and Font Play a Crucial Role

Just the way colors matter a big deal when it comes to engaging your site visitors, so do typography and font. Both are closely connected to our emotions and can evoke various feelings.

There is a wide range of fonts and styles available for you to pick from – based on the type of emotion you want to elicit when users interact with your website, you can select the one that aptly reflects your brand voice and ethos.

For example, specific fonts such as Sans Serif fonts seem sophisticated, elegant, and classic. In contrast, the Irvin typeface used in The New Yorker emits serious yet innovative, artistic vibes.

Wrapping It Up

By now, you must have got a pretty good idea of how psychology matters in web design and how you can utilize it to build a web design that wins. All you need to do is take care of these points while designing your website to make sure it attracts and engages your target audience in the best way possible. Whether you have a web designer in your organization or are hiring a freelancer to do it for you, make sure they pay attention to these details to create a web design that actually works for your brand.