Web Design & Viewer Behaviour

The last thing you want from your store is visitors having a poor user experience, losing interest because of this and leaving, losing you valuable business and reputation. 

If viewers cannot locate their ways around a website, they will eventually leave with the thought of trying their luck elsewhere. The website they leave loses valuable viewers and the traffic shoots down with it as those visitors will be reluctant to return. Supermarkets and department stores are spending millions of pounds testing to find out the right layout for products to increase sales. Now the question is, what are you doing to retain your website visitors?

The design of your website makes a much bigger impact on the viewers than some people may realise. When designing the primary thing that you need to keep in mind is the audience perspective. Think like the user and everything will fall into place. To make it easier for you, BED have composed a few elements of website design that influences viewer behaviour. Let’s dive in.

Usability of Your Website

While we were busy building exceptional experiences with web design, usability became a commodity. Usability indicates user-centric design, something that will make a lasting impression on the viewer’s mind while meeting their requirements. Basically, usability indicates how easy to use your website is:

• Availability and accessibility: Your website should work
• Clarity: This is at the core of usability, visitors will leave the website if they get confused
• Relevance: How relevant is your website design to the user requirements?
• Credibility: Make the experience real, back it up with authenticity
• Learnability: Have you created something that is easy to learn?

If your website satisfies these requirements, then you are on safer ground. Make sure to test the usability of your web design to improve conversion rate.

Visual appeal

Your website needs to make people feel welcome and let their time in your website be a visual treat. This is because 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual. Following elements make a visually appealing website:

• Color
• Font
• Images
• Simplicity
• Consistency
• Usability

People respond to specific colors in different ways. For example, blue seems to be a popular color in the internet with big names like Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr and Twitter all going for different shades. Fonts have a large impact on the  subconscious mind. They have the power to intrigue and the authority interest. Use them wisely and do not forget to keep things simple.

An unusual fact: Using an image of a person who has large pupil increases the effectiveness of your marketing campaign from 1% to 3%.

The power of the content

The words on your website affect people. The information you provide to people in your website design has the power to say who you are, what you have to offer and how you will make their lives easier. It can help viewers relate to the company, engage your audience, help them experience positive emotions and generate conversion. The presentation and placement of content matter too. The following tips might come in handy:

• It is important to make your content understandable. Appropriate images can work that magic for you.
• Provide proper gaps between paragraphs
• Font size is important. You don’t want your viewers to go blind reading the content
• Consistency is a lifesaver.
• Relevant information can work wonders. Do not hesitate to get rid of clutter.

Quick Tip: When it comes to design, an informal tone and simple words can change lives.

Call to action button

Call to actions can make all the difference in the world when to comes to converting audience by creating an urgency. You can take it up a notch by adding words like ‘guaranteed’ and ‘security’ since they create a sense of safety among the viewers, while pushing them to make a decision. However, you should keep in mind to keep the number of call to action buttons to a bare minimum and make those prominent.

Design psychology plays an important role in audience behavior. Your part in this is to provide them with subtle cues through your design and let your work talk for itself. The rest will follow suit.