The Psychology Of Web Design

By Rodney Laws | Design

Oct 10

Web design is a complex and often underestimated part of any web development project, whether it’s an informational website or an ecommerce store.

Many novices do not put much thought into the design of a website. But good web design not only attracts more visitors to a website but also raises the website’s importance and credibility.

A poorly-designed website, on the other hand, diminishes its purpose and serves no good to the business. Good web designs come from well-thought-out page layouts, carefully-picked colors and typefaces, and well-structured unique content.

This logical process is often called the psychology of web design. Many web designers design their websites by employing psychological concepts in their designs to influence their customers.

Color

Choosing a website color is one of the essential parts of web design. Color is a strong tool that has a great impact on the website’s visitors. The colors that web designers choose help to set up the customers’ emotions and mood towards a website. There are thousands of colors and therefore millions of color combinations. Each color has a different emotional impact on a human being and thus has a different purpose of use.

For example, blue is often used by banks and social networks on their websites because most people associate blue with certain feelings such as trust, calmness, and loyalty.

Red, on the other hand, displays power, importance, and energy. Many websites often use red to grab the attention of the customers or highlight the importance of something on a web page.

Clearly, every color has its own psychological effect on a human being. Web developers and designers should always choose the colors for a website based on the message that they are trying to convey.

Page layout

Page layout also has a significant role in the process of web design. The design of the page layout involves organization and arrangement of visual elements and text on a web page.
Web designers can use the psychological patterns of human behavior in order to better communicate the main ideas of a website to its visitors. After all, it’s the page layout of a website that will guide its visitors.

Hence, web designers need to establish elements on web pages that lead the reader’s eyes guiding them to the key element and message. For example, focus on attention-grabbing titles on web pages, call to action buttons, link, and buttons.

Research has shown that visitors on websites tend to look at a web page from top left to right, up and down, in a “Z” like pattern. This means that web designers should place important information at the top left, middle, and bottom right parts of the web page as these are the most common places where the visitors will look.

Another example of how human psychology can be utilized in the design of a page layout is the use of blank space on the web page. Most people do not like to look at large blocks of text. Space should be used to create a visual break for the visitors. Any top web designer will have mastered this art, and get this part checked off during the design process.

Different places throughout a web page have a different influence on a customer and need to be placed accordingly. Positioning the most important information in the areas that have a stronger influence on people increases the bounce rate and visitor retention.

Typeface

A typeface is a group of several fonts that are similar in design. These are an essential part of the psychology of web design and can evoke emotions and feelings, as well as set up the tone for the text.

Typefaces vary in size, shape, design, as well as purpose. There are thousands of typefaces and each one is designed to be used for particular situations and to spark a certain feeling.

For instance, Serif typeface has a history of being mostly used in professional fields of work, like law firms, news websites, and schools. For this reason, many people associate the Serif fonts with professionalism, thus using Serif fonts on a website would create a feeling of seriousness and importance.

Research has shown typeface is associated with a certain feeling and mood. When people see a text with a Serif typeface, they feel that this text is important or knowledgeable.

On the other hand, Sans-serif typeface provides a more modern and futuristic feeling to the readers. Other typefaces can also be used to create a specific feeling or mood for the reader.
Web designers use typefaces to create distinct emotions that they want customers to experience. It ensures that visitors are connected and continue to explore and delve deeper into the website.

Unique content

The content of a website is arguably the most important part of web design. It is one of the first things customers see when they open a website. This includes numerous elements on a website such as text, images, or videos. Good content builds trust, educates customers, and keeps visitors onpage, amongst other functions.

Unique content serves as the major way for website customers to learn more about what a website has to offer. For example, an ecommerce website should have several original images of the product, carefully crafted and worded descriptions, and specifications. Especially with Google search algorithms improving through AI, it’s become a necessity to hire content marketing professionals that know what content is required.

One of the most common mistakes that web designers make is that they have too much content or just too little. It is good to have well-populated web pages but the amount of content needs to be balanced.

The best way around this is to hire a content writer that creates unique content specific to the business. Unique content on any website will help page ranking as well as separate your website from the competition.

In fact, a website with too much text could result in visitors immediately leaving. Large amounts of text tend to intimidate people because it is hard to find any information in large blocks of text. Web pages with too many images or other multimedia are also not good for websites unless they are organized correctly.

Takeaways on web design

Applying aspects of psychology to web design is a must for any individual creating websites, or thinking of designing on. Usage of psychological logic during web designing will allow web developers to have a greater impact on their customers. Careful planning and execution of psychological aspects of web design can guide customers to certain information or set up a website’s mood and theme.

Psychology of web design is often applied through various elements of a website like color, page layout, typefaces, and content. Qualified and professional web developers always consider what effect they want the final website to have on visitors.

Author Bio: This article was contributed to EcommercePlatforms.io by VisualWebz.com.