The art of using website design psychology extends beyond aesthetics. You may have heard about marketing psychology, using colour, designs and text to motivate a consumer to act. The colour red is said to make people feel passionately hungry and is the reason McDonalds, Hungry Jacks, Wendys, KFC and Red Rooster use red in their logos. It’s not simply because the graphic designer was in love with the colour red. The same marketing psychology principles can be applied to website design.

When hiring a website developer, it’s important they understand design psychology and use it to motivate your website traffic to take action.

What is website design psychology?

When it comes to website development, a beautifully designed website is simply not enough. It should take your website visitors on a journey, from the page they land on to funnelling web traffic to purchase products with easy navigation and clear calls to action.

Every colour choice, every smiling photograph of your team, the typography, even the white space plays a psychological role in triggering subliminal actions. Understanding the art of using website design to empower customers into making decisions is undeniably important.

Let’s take a closer look at using the psychology of web design

1. Branded smiling images
People connect with other people. So if you have photos on your website, your website visitors are more likely to connect with branded photos that include your smiling team members rather than stock photos or empty offices or buildings. Happy people near the call to action button subconsciously indicate that when you purchase goods or services from this company, you’ll be dealing with helpful, friendly team members.

2. Geometrical shapes
Did you know the elements such as geometrical shapes such as triangles, circles and lines are influential in helping website visitors ‘feel’ a certain way and help navigate through the website? Triangles are good for pointing to where you would like the customer’s eyes to focus. They also represent strength and power. While circles and ovals can highlight important text as well as symbolise commitment. Lines draw the eye to important text.

3. White space
White space gives the appearance of organisation and cleanliness. White space allows the website visitor to focus on one idea at a time. Clutter or trying to fit too many different ideas onto one page can be confusing.

4. Colour
As mentioned in the introduction, colour can play an important role for aesthetics and creating subconscious emotions. Renowned marketing guru, Neil Patel believes that the right colours can boost your brand recognition by as much as 80%. Colours can be associated with different brands. For example: Cadbury were allowed to trademark their distinctive purple wrapping (Pantone 2685C). Purple is associated with royalty, creativity and a lavish lifestyle. As a graphic designer or web developer, it’s important to think about the type of feelings you want to create.

5. Typography
The kind of font used for the website design is also important, not just to ensure it’s websafe, but that it’s easy to read, saving the fancier fonts for H1 headlines. San-serif fonts like Arial or Helvetica are generally thought to be easy to read. The art to good typography is also knowing how to structure the text. It’s harder for a person to read paragraphs in caps. It also doesn’t follow the natural eye movements if the text is centred.

6. Website content
Take a look at the content you have on your current website? Are you simply rattling off a list of services you provide with no context, or are you talking directly to your website visitors. Personalisation in website content speaks to your users. If well utilised it will highlight their pain points and provide simple solutions. Let’s take a look at the difference personalising your content can make.

Example 1: WRONG
In a digital saturated world, small businesses can get their brands noticed. Branding goes beyond new logo or catalogue design Sydney and Brisbane, XDesigns Advertising is ready to drive businesses to get maximum results from their advertising spend.

It could be safe to assume that as soon as a person who is an individual or a big business would assume this content did not apply to them. The copy tells them It’s for small businesses that XDesigns Advertising are talking to someone else. It may deter someone from finding a business better suited to their needs and they’ll be instantly less interested because you are not directly talking to them.

Example 2: CORRECT
In a digital saturated world, make sure your brand gets noticed. Branding goes beyond new logo or catalogue design Sydney and Brisbane, XDesigns Advertising is ready to drive your brand and get maximum results from your advertising spend. Are you ready to begin the journey?

It’s not a huge difference in content, but example 2 personalised the message and includes a call to action. If the customer isn’t quite ready to begin the journey, they may search out customer reviews or explore other parts of the website before thinking about what to do next. However, you can see the difference in personalising the website content psychologically.

Real life example
Let’s take a look at the art of using web design psychology on our very own website XDesigns Advertising. The selected colours are generally associated with friendliness and happiness. The large X in the banner drives your eye from the top of the page down to the first call of action - Get Started. If you’ve landed on our website, you can already tell from a glance what we are, so if you’re in a rush, you can quickly contact us and get on with your day! Scroll down a little further and you’ll notice with our icons, they’re contained by a circle and surrounded by plenty of white space.

Colour is also used to segment the website, as you get to the bottom, you’ll see that there’s another call to action with a reminder of what we do again. If you need more convincing, the next step will clarify two simple decisions—what kind of graphic design you’re looking for and highlighting the fact that there are retainer packages available.

Now take a look at your website design and apply the top 6 points mentioned above. How does it stack up? If you have any questions on how to improve your website and incorporate design psychology, contact us today on 1300 881 204 or reach out online.