When designing a site you need to use your brain – or even better user their brain. That is to say you’ve got to take into account how people interact with your site – on the subconscious level.
In a recent post – Your Brain on a Website – The Psych File interviews Dr. Weinschenk author of Neuro Web Design. It’s a very interesting podcast in general, but one thing worth calling out is Dr. Weinschenk’s discussion addressing your customers three brains – old, middle and new.
Putting this into practice on your site:
- Address the old brain, subconscious, through posting customer reviews or testimonials – something everyone instinctively reacts to, and assigns a positive attitude with your site.
- Use colors and visual design to stimulate the middle brain into guiding a visitor along.
- Once the customer has chosen, using his old and middle brain, you need to give them an excuse to justify to themselves why they chose – this is called confabulation (love that word). Present them with impressive charts, lots of data and comparisons why intellectually they made the right choice. This addresses the new brain.
This is great advice and something we naturally have implemented on our customers sites, but always nice to have the theory to back it up.
(On a side note, Dr. Weinschenk seems to discount some of the theories in Predictably Irrational. I think it’s a great book and I will dedicate a post about Dan Ariely’s book in the future.)