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A good website design is important and should be noticeable at once to those who will visit your site. Many will appreciate the value of a good design as compared to other websites. An instant judgment may be made on its relevance and quality when you see a certain website for the first time, that’s what you call first impression. There is a study saying that the first impression will be analyzed by the readers followed by the website components like professionalism and content. This goes to show really that a good first impression is essential.
This is simply because of recognition. Our mind recognizes the mixture of the factors of web design and the general human psychological factors as well. These are evident when you are recognizing letters that are jumbled as a word and meaning is assigned to it. Web design is merely the content and image manipulation on a website so as to provide appeal to the target audience’s perceptions.
Even before, the psychology community conducted some studies and results have shown that websites with brown or blue color themes have a better response from user than those sites with other color themes. It is maybe because of our natural instincts or simply just the world around us. Or maybe it is because the surface of the earth is made up of 70% water which is very important to us or maybe our body is also made up of the same amount of water, in addition to the fact that most people are attracted to the clear blue sky.
We are also used to reading black writing against a white background. Since we were babies we were trained to read papers and books that are simply black on white color. So it is indeed easier to read black writing on a white color background.
Factors of Web Design
Most people that are not web designers just do not know why a particular site looks good. They may base it on the web design basic principles like easy navigation, and clean layout with relevant images, among others. You need to be specific about your design because you need your website design to be unique and different, aside from its performance and a high conversion rate. You should consider the following in website designing:
- The main focus of the website page
- The content should go together with the images on the page
- Location of the eyeline on the page wherein the eyeline is the line of site which the eye follows on the page when scanning it quickly, that is from right to top left and down the sidebar, top left to bottom right, among others
- Focus of the correct item and the process on how to focus change
- Features and characteristics of other major websites in your industry. Better to make a market research among your competitors and is essential if you look at the blue chip industries like law, news, education and medicine.
- Remember always that less is more. The more the simpler the design, the best it is for the eye of the reader. Do not overdesign any of your website pages; do not put too much images and content, etc. Balance everything; just make sure that everything in your site is ready to use and thereby make your site look neat and orderly. It will be more professional in nature and easier to look at initially and when your reader lingers longer at your site.
It is best to analyze other websites as compared to your own to better understand the factors stated her. Check to see what the other designers did, if it is right or wrong and you will eventually learn from them. Improve some of your site aspects that you are presently using.
Psychology and Web Design: Are they independent?
There is always an overlapping between psychology and website design. One factor to consider is security. Basically humans have the psychological need to feel secure, and if you are accessing the internet the need for security increased tremendously. The reason is basic—there are an increasing number of fraudulent websites and internet scams found all over the world whereby security is turning out to be biggest hindrance in the e-commerce industry. Because of this, websites need to stimulate a feeling of security for the visitors before any action will be done by the reader.
To accomplish this, brand name security logos or disclaimers or privacy policies, etc are included in the website. This is variably important for your website, business or product. Take note that people know at once if you misdirected them and you seem to lack information on your site. If you have an informative and honest website, people will sense that you are honest and they will feel secure.
If you have an e-commerce on your site, better use a famous merchant account with secure ordering like Paypal, bank, SecurePay, ClickBank, among others. This will make people feel safe to follow the purchase rules.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Great article – thanks. :D
looking at a redesign at the mo, so certainly be making use of this!
Great Article. The best shade of blue for marketing is robin egg blue #9DEBE9.
Thanks for this useful article.
“One factor to consider is security. Basically humans have the psychological need to feel secure, and if you are accessing the internet the need for security increased tremendously. The reason is basic—there are an increasing number of fraudulent websites and internet scams found all over the world whereby security is turning out to be biggest hindrance in the e-commerce industry. Because of this, websites need to stimulate a feeling of security for the visitors before any action will be done by the reader.”
A need to a feeling of security operates on another level too … when the visitor is presented with a proposition on the website, whether for a product, or service etc, then the fundamental sense of security over this proposition must be present before they will even consider engaging with it. So, for example, if you are an unknown brand, giving this sense of security by heightening attention to what will lend credibility to your brand is a must.