It’s logical to assume that the more we know about the human mind and behavior, the better we are at design and marketing. A great article by Gregory Ciotti of Inspired Magazine gives us 5 examples of psychology studies that we can use toward the decisions we make in our website designs.
“5 Psychology Studies for Smarter Web Design” by Gregory Ciotti
1.) Too many options ensure NONE will be chosen
In the now famous study (well, among psychology nerds) by Sheeya Iyengar, we were able to get some amazing insights on how people react to different amounts of options. The overall conclusion? Choice is demotivating.
2.) Visitors read long widths of text faster, but prefer shorter widths
Seems like a paradox, right? Hear me out: the reason that people prefer to SEE shorter text widths is because it’s more inviting.
After they actually get reading though, they tend to read faster with long widths of text, and will prefer these wider traits since their reading becomes more fluid.
We know this thanks to amazing research by Mary C. Dyson in her piece on “How Physical Text Layout Affects Reading From the Screen”.
3.) Your headlines draw even more eyes than images!
In a recent study called Eyetrack III (which I cover in-depth here), it was revealed that large headlines actually hold far more attention (and more eyeballs in general) over even images.
4.) Image captions are the most consistently read in-post content
In the book “Cashvertising” (a well-respected book that looks at the psychology of ads), author Drew Eric Whitman reveals that captions are some of the most popular “body copy” (in-post text) of anything that you can utilize.
5.) People follow the “line of sight” of other people
People love big, bold pictures of other humans. Human faces draw the most attention of nearly any image type on the web.
Did you also know that people will follow the line of sight of other people…even if it’s just a photo?
Look at the homepage of Chemisty.com:
Chemistry.com homepage layout
