Since most customers get their first impression of your company from your website, it is imperative for your website to impress them. You have invested a lot of money in marketing techniques to get traffic to your site. Once they get there, it is important to keep them there as long as possible, and have them leave in a good mood. To help give visitors a good user experience, you can incorporate psychology into your website. These psychological techniques will encourage visitors to stay longer, and invite them to buy in a subtle manner.
Color Psychology
One of the easiest techniques to incorporate into your website is color psychology. Color is often used in many places to set a mood. You can see this most often in home decor and fashion. One example is that doctor's offices are often painted soothing subtle colors. In clothing fashion, black and red are usually designated as evening dress-up colors.
For your website, color psychology can be used to nudge customers in the direction you want. Which colors you use depend on your target audience and where you are using it. Studies have shown that women prefer blue, green and purple and men prefer blue, black and green. Women do not like brown, gray and orange, while men do not like purple, brown and orange.
Blue promotes trust. That is why blue is the primary color on sites that need your trust the most.
Yellow is a color used on warning signs to alert people.
Orange is happy and fun.
Black is the color of mystery and sophistication.
Incorporating each of these colors into your site presents a different message on your website. Case studies show that changing a CTA button from one color to another can increase conversions by significant amounts. Color can get people to pay attention, change their mood and increase sales.
Influence of Fonts
Fonts are another factor that is often overlooked that can add to the psychological impact of a website. Fonts are more useful on print advertising, images or pdf files because most browsers only have a few font choices. Fancy fonts are defaulted to standard fonts on user computers and mobile devices. However, you can insert more unusual fonts by adding images to your headers or within articles.
The wedding industry offers a good look at what fonts can do. If you look at the different fonts used on wedding invitations, you can easily see how each font adds to the design. You can use this same concept on your website.
White Space
Another more subtle use of psychology is how you incorporate white space into your webpages. White space is a term common to art and design, but not as familiar to website developers. However, since people are more apt to scan webpages, white space between short paragraphs with headlines helps them find what they want more easily. It also helps people understand what is on a page more quickly. In the same way that artists use white space or negative space to make their artwork stand out, you can use it to make your content stand out.
Content
Content itself can add to the psychological impact of a website. It is harder to pinpoint what the ideal amount or configuration of content is right for a site. However, if you find the right mix of content, white space, color and font type, you can push your customers in the direction you want using website psychology.
