The framework of behavioral website design
This concept takes the historic experience of offline marketing and brings it online. Just like in everyday life successful trade is based on mutual trust and fast an efficient service, behavioral web design considers the simplicity of navigation and choice together with the trustful environment of the brand itself.
- A simple solution is the best one. The main thing you should remember is that for any use your website is supposed to be a fast and easy solution to solve his problem. Adding some extensive functionality to your Webdesign might seem attractive, but hardly any user will appreciate it if it makes your site hard to navigate. The best example is Google – while the company offers various IT solutions, the main page of this giant is a search bar on a white background – a fast and easy satisfaction of needs for most visitors.
- Pop-down! At the dawn of online sales, pop-ups were considered to be a pretty handy tool. And until customers became tired of them, they were! But nowadays this pushy sales technique causes a lot of irritation and makes you lose customers who most probably will never return to your website again or recommend it to their friends and family.
- Avoid the labyrinth. Just like there is nothing more annoying than getting lost at a new mall, complex navigation is a huge turn-off for any user. When a person visits your website, he needs to be sure that he knows where he is right now, where he should go to find whatever he needs and how he may take a step back without having to go to the home page every time. Once a person gets lost or has to take multiple actions to get somewhere repeatedly, he will lose interest and you will lose a customer.
- Go visual. 91% of users prefer browsing to reading. It means that long homogeneous text files are one more reason why a person would close your page before even scrolling it to the bottom. While some text explanations and blog posts are important, make sure that they are significantly watered down with images, infographics, or video add-ons.
- We browse as we read. Since the times we`ve been taught to read at a very young age, we are used to browsing pictures, graphics, and websites in the same manner. That is why it is quite common for Western-market websites to place logo and navigation at the top-left corner, while Arabic and Hebrew resources put the crucial info at the top-right.
- Build trust. Do you know how much time you have to attract a customer`s attention and engage him in a relationship that will end up in a sale? 3 seconds. No pressure though! You don`t have a second chance to make the first impression, that is why the way your website looks and the image that it creates is crucial for the success of your business. Just like every person would address a certain pedestrian to ask for directions and avoid another, your website should look like a safe and comfortable space that can offer a simple and relevant solution.
Behavioral Webdesign combines two spheres that did not have too much in common before – psychology and IT. While humanity is surely and firmly moving online, technology does not stand still taking significant steps towards humanization.