How To Apply Persuasive Techniques In Web Design — CXL Institute, Digital Psychology & Persuasion Mini Degree (Review)
This article is part 9 of my on-going series reviewing & sharing what I’ve learned from CXL Institute’s Digital psychology and persuasion MiniDegree
From time to time, we all find ourselves in situations where we’re trying to persuade someone to do a specific action.
How do we do that?
We have to be confident, talk fast, maybe swear a little, but what about persuading somebody without using words?
It may seem like a mission impossible, on the other hand we have 5 principles of persuasive web design that are proven to work in any related case.
Before I begin, we need to have a clear start!
A nice first step, before the actual first step ( is that a zero step then?) is
-get to know your audience.
Why identifying your target audience matters
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself”. -Peter Drucker
That’s why digging deep in terms of our audience really matters. The best part of it, it’s all there, completely transparent info, waiting to be found.
If you know:
- Who the people are, you know how to get to them (the blogs they read, the sites they visit, the stuff they search in Google, etc.)
- How they describe the type of services you offer, you can word the copy on your site to match the conversation in their head (very important!);
- How they choose and compare products in your category, you know how to structure and prioritize content on your site;
- What they want, your value proposition can state exactly that and the whole site can be 98% relevant to them;
- What they don’t care about, you can dismiss and cut it from the site;
- How their life is better thanks to your service, you know which end-benefits to communicate.
Think about your offer, how is it presented? If it matches the customer’s mind, you have gained a new customer.
In addition, you can use the findings from talking to people, surveys and analytics data to write a killer, relatable copy or for deciding what to sell in the first place.
When you become expert in finding your target audience online, they’ll look at the content and go “this is exactly what I’m looking for”, That’s how you’ll know you’ve nailed it.
If you want to know more about tips and techniques to identify your online target audience and sell more, check out this article from CXL Institute.
Moving on to our next step..
Clear and understandable
According to a relevant study from HubSpot, people say that the most important thing on a website is ‘finding stuff they’re interested in’.
Meaning: your hero page should already have the answers to questions like, What is this site? What can I do here? Is it what I’m looking for? Why should I do it? How is it useful to me?
Our customers need quick answers. Therefore, your job is to provide a clear and understandable content on every page of your website.
Start with creating a powerful value proposition, that clearly states why should a customer buy from you and not the competition. Luckily, there are numerous how-to guides made for crafting a compelling value prop.
Effective Web design doesn’t have to be colorful and pretty — it needs to be clear and intuitive.
What makes a web design good?
The most asked question of all time.
We all know that a good website design doesn’t come easy — its entirely in the eyes of beholder.
The worst part — It takes about 50 milliseconds (that’s 0.05 seconds) for users to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they like your site or not.
So, how do we fight that?
Google conducted a study back in 2012., and their key findings were that websites with low visual complexity (the simpler, the better) and high ‘prototypicality’ (how representative a design looks for a certain category of websites) were perceived as highly appealing.
As much as I love to be creative, and innovational when designing websites, the truth is that simple and familiar websites will always convert better. On the other hand, if you go for innovative, unconventional layouts, people are less likely to like them.
If you ask yourself, what design is considered attractive, and what type is labelled as ugly? There is no true answer, except the functionality itself.
Here are a few examples,
Even though you probably don’t understand anything on the site, you will find it appealing because it meets your expectations. You’ve seen many sites with a similar layout before.
The bad design,
Would you find this complicated, busy layout, attractive? Probably not.
Here’s the opposite. A site with a simple layout:
Visual hierarchy — principle behind effective web design
Humans are visual creatures.
Given the fair amount of visual related studies, we can certainly say that visuals influence the split-second purchase decisions that consumers make without even realizing it.
In terms of web design, visual hierarchy is the way in which the page is laid out to visually communicate order and importance of the content by mapping out certain cues such as:
- Size
- Color
- Contrast
- Shape
- Positioning
- Arrangement
to create a sense of depth, meaning you should rank elements on your website based on your business objective. If you don’t have a specific goal, you can’t know what to prioritize.
Peep Laja, from the CXL Institute gave a great example of visual hierarchy well done:
This is Williams Sonoma website, where they want to sell outdoor cookware.
The biggest eye catcher is the huge piece of meat, followed by:
- the headline (say what it is)
- the call to action button (get it!)
- fourth place goes to a paragraph of text under the headline
- fifth is the free shipping banner
- the top navigation is last
This is a great article if you want to know more about creating visual hierarchy in your next website project.
Conserve attention
It’s great if you managed to come this far, because people know that your website has something they’re interested in.
Next, our visual design of the site draws them in, we are in the process of getting attention, and through strong visual hierarchy they focus on what matters.
Seems like a job well done, but getting attention is not that difficult, sustaining it is.
What are the two easiest ways to kill attention?
- A wall of text (instant killer) — See this if you don’t know what it looks like.
- Irrelevant jargon
Besides that, you’re safe.
Try to focus on creating relevant, interesting content, and presenting it well by:
- stylize the text
- add eye paths
- use visuals
- break the text apart
- avoid patterns
Another key element if you want to create a lot of “ easy to digest copy”, is providing novelty, through the whole text.
According to various studies conducted by neuroscientist: Our minds seem to gravitate toward novelty, it appears to be an essential need of the mind. Our brain pays close attention to patterns, and quickly learns to ignore anything that is routine, repetitive, predictable, or just plain boring.
So novelty is what gets people to pay attention, therefore the reason why so many sites constantly alternate the position of text paragraphs (text on the left, then text on the right, text on the left and so on)? Like here:
Besides novelty, if you’re building a product page or a e-commerce, help people choose, because too much choice paralyzes.
Choosing is hard work, we’ve all been there, make it easier for people by applying these easy principles:
- Employ filters — it helps people narrowing down the selection
- Use high-quality, product images. Studies have shown that people buy based on the picture. Product images are huge for conversions
One action per screen
Start with a clearly defined most wanted action for each page — and optimize them for it. Use high contrast colors , that pop from the rest of the content.
When is the right time to ask for action?
The rule of the thumb is that the more expensive and/or complex the product, the more information you need to provide before people are ready to take action. Start with this principle in mind and A/B test from here.
You’ve reached the end!
We surely can persuade someone, without a word. These five principles leave you with enough of design freedom for execution. If you implement around them, you will end up with a more persuasive web design.
Keep them in mind whenever you start a new design project.
