The power of web design runs deeper than colour schemes and appropriate banner placement. At a fundamental level, it determines how people will interact with your site and what they will take away from the experience. Here’s how sticking to good design practices can help you guide consumer behaviour and foster better business relationships.
The Basics of Consumer Influence
There are many ways to influence consumer behaviour, but you don’t always have to use an in-your-face advertisement or call-to-action button. The key thing to remember is that smart web design empowers you to subtly direct consumers’ attention. From menus that make it easy to request quotes through to headers that sport your corporate colours and logo, web design is critical to creating a uniform overall experience and imbuing consumers with confidence in your brand.
Web site design can also funnel people towards specific actions. For instance, if you’re running a seasonal clothing sale in NSW, you might write a blog post about the latest summer styles as a lead-in. Your blog could then include links that let readers explore the same trends in your online store.
Good websites make it easy for people to navigate to high-value actions, but it can be hard to pinpoint what works. Whether you’re trying to boost transactions or raise social media engagement, always take the time for in-depth consumer response research and A/B testing.
Avoiding Dark Web Design
Dark web design is a blanket term for practices that intentionally make it harder for users to take certain actions. For instance, sites like Facebook are notorious for hiding features like account cancellation buttons in the hopes that people will give up when searching for them.
While engaging in dark design practices may seem appealing, they’re ominously named for a good reason. These strategies are very annoying to customers, so the minimal gains that you get from using them pale in comparison to the bad taste they leave in the mouths of your users.
Fundamental Concepts to Keep in Mind
Influencing consumer behaviour can be a complex undertaking, but you should always remember to keep it simple. Even if you want your site to accommodate many different kinds of actions, you can only present so much information at once without overwhelming visitors.
No matter which direction you want to nudge customers in, you can’t do it unless you design a clean, well-organised and thoroughly tested site. For more great tips on how to get started, check out the ZOFELA blog.
