Visual Design & Psychology

Everybody knows that one of the keys to having a successful website is to have a clean, visually-appealing design. But user experience (UX) isn’t just about aesthetics, it’s also about crafting intuitive interfaces that guide users effortlessly. The rules for clean design didn’t just get invented by artsy types; they’re built upon sound psychological principles. Such as:

• Hick’s Law: This is fairly simple: increasing the number of options increases the amount of time it takes for a person to make a decision. This sometimes seems counter-intuitive, because people often profess to want more options. But like the Bruce Springsteen song, “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On),” with a lot of options people tend to get “choice overload” and will spend a long time mulling things over. So, to encourage clicks, you want to jettison unnecessary options and streamline the choices presented to your audience when you can get away with it — they’ll click quicker.
• Fitts’s Law: This is also pretty simple: this rule says that the amount of time it takes someone to move to a target (like the button you want them to click) is a combo of how far away the thing is, and how big it is. In website design, this means keeping buttons you want your users to click on close at hand — and big enough to do it quickly and easily.
• Visual Hierarchy: The human brain is really good at sorting stuff into categories, and using a consistent visual language in your site design can leverage this to your advantage. Using elements like size, color, and position to prioritize what you want your users to focus on can be really beneficial. For example, you can use size and color to make your clickable call-to-action buttons, special prices, and key points jump out.
• Color Psychology: The science behind this can be a little soft, and it can also vary a bit from culture to culture, but different colors can evoke different feelings and behaviors from users. Red can indicate urgency (or even emergency) while blue can be a calming color (which is probably why so many apps and tech companies use it.)

Additionally, you don’t want to give users the impression that your website is janky or untrustworthy. In your site build, focusing on your Core Web Vitals can help indicate to users that you’re a professional operation that can be trusted. Things like site stability and loading speed signal to users subconsciously that you’re the real deal. An added bonus, you’ll be better-positioned in Google’s search results.

Visual Element: a picture of a cartoon brain, with a dotted line going from it to an image of a website on a monitor.

Copy Psychology: Act Now!

A lot of sales language is already designed to play upon various quirks in human psychology. Deep down in our brains, people are basically apes with cell phones, and the same principles that kept us alive when we still lived in trees can now be used to sell us things. You’re probably familiar with a lot of them without realizing it, but providing explanations for how and why they work can help you use them more effectively.

• Scarcity: AKA, “Act Now! Supplies are running out!” This was a common sales tactic in the olden days of TV infomercials, and they’re still heavily in-use online. Users often talk themselves out of something by suggesting they’ll do it later, whether that’s reading your content or buying your products. If you plant the seed of doubt that maybe there won’t be a later, they’ll be more likely to act now rather than risk missing out.
• FOMO: standing for “Fear Of Missing Out,” this is really just a new phrase for an old phenomenon: loss aversion. People are more primed to avoid negative outcomes than they are to chase positive ones, so emphasizing the downsides of not reading your content, or not buying your product, makes them feel like doing what you want is “playing it safe.”
• Urgency: There’s a reason sales have expiration dates, and it’s not just that stores can’t afford to sell their products that cheaply forever. Like the above categories, implying that a deal is only good for a limited time, or that consequences are imminent, is often the nudge users need to click the button you want them to click.
• Social Proof: This is kind of nice, actually: people are social animals, and they’re more likely to go along with something if other people agree with them. Incorporating “social proof” in the form of testimonials and customer reviews can help build more credibility with your audience.
• Reciprocity: This is another nice one, actually: if you give someone something, they want to give you something back. So if you give users free access, free gifts, or special discounts, they’re more likely to feel obligated to buy something from you.
• Sunk Cost: Once people have committed enough time or effort to something, they’re more likely to see it through — otherwise, all that time and effort will have “been wasted.” This is why gradually ramping up to things like filling out a survey, watching a longer video, or signing up for a newsletter can increase sales. They’ve already done X, and Y, so why not Z?
• Anchoring: This one is a double-edged sword. Anchoring is the tendency to lock in on the first price you hear for something. If you first bought a flat-screen TV in 2005, you might have paid $2000 for a 55-inch TV. In 2024, a TV that size can be had for $300, which may always feel like a bargain even if that particular manufacturer is overcharging. This is why infomercials will emphasize that their product is “A one hundred dollar value” before following up that it’s on sale for $19.99. The dangerous flip-side of this, though, is that if customers get anchored to paying a certain price — like $5 for a footlong Subway sandwich — they may balk at paying $6 for a six-inch sandwich a decade later.
• Gamification: humans love games because they trigger the reward circuits in our brain, literally releasing happy chemicals when we do well. Including features that make a game out of your website, allowing users to earn points or rewards or achievements, can make them hang out longer and click more often.

These aren’t the only psychological principles you can use in your copy, but these will all help you drive clicks in the direction you want.

Headlines and Phrasing