It’s only when connecting with your audience that a brand is able to have a high conversion rate and improved engagement on your website.
So, your brand’s message isn’t limited to the word choices that you make.
The environment under which you present your message is equally important. Particularly in encouraging user interaction and media engagement.
Aspects, such as colour, shape, and font, matter. I’ve already shared details about typography, colour and a few design mistakes that will ruin your SEO.
We respond to visual stimuli subconsciously. When starting your website, you need to ditch the notion that it has to be elegant. Having an elegant website that doesn’t function well has high bounce rates. And, they don’t convert well.
The priority needs to be shifted to a functional website that’s easy to use and loads fast.
So, here are a few psychology principles to learn that will help you to improve the usability of your website and thereby increase user engagement.
In this article, we’ve compiled five proven design tips for improving user engagement on your website.
Let’s get started…
#1. Study Your Audience
Knowing the target market of your client will help you in understanding how to evoke the right emotions that will improve engagement.
Ultimately, it’s all about connecting with your audience.
And this is where your brand expertise may need to come into play. As a company, you may need to have a clear objective for the target audience.
In the case you are unable to communicate the relevant offer to the customer/user on visiting your website, the outcome might be a result of to drop in sales.
Being able to improve the user experience of your website will depend on your level of consistency of your content, ease of navigation and readability of your content by the target audience.
So, have a platform for response and feedback on your website to be able to gauge the human experience and interactions.
#2. Storytelling with visuals
One of the most compelling ways to grab a website visitor’s attention without overwhelming them is by storytelling through web visuals.
This has emerged as one of the biggest design trends in the market.
It is not easy to master the art of storytelling using web design. It takes a keen eye, an understanding of your target audience, and a well-thought-out storyline that will resonate with visitors.
However, when done right, people will remember your brand, your website, and your amazing story.
When it comes to storytelling in web design, brand promotion is not limited to websites.
In fact, visual platforms such as Facebook and Instagram can have powerful effects on people’s desire to take action and buy or subscribe based on the images they see in their social media feeds.
The point to note is that the visual story they tell on their site supports their core values and dedication to finding solutions. This is powerful enough to convince people to get involved.
Certain actions are quite commonplace on digital platforms. For instance, clicking and scrolling are actions that users complete without a second thought – you might as well add some interactive value.
However, ensure consistency between the tone of your copy and the images.
#3. Use of colours and fonts to evoke emotion
As human beings, we respond by taking action when evoked emotionally. When it comes to persuasion on a website or a business brand, emotion is the primary target.
As focusing on emotion is fairly obvious, trying to accomplish too much within a single design will dilute your efforts.
For instance, ask your client a specific question: What do you want customers to feel when they visit the website or encounter your brand?
Colours and fonts have an impact on defining the mood and influence responses. Regardless of when developing software, web design or simply branding your business the psychology of colour applies to everyone.
However, the psychology of colour is often a very complex subject in website design, because colour preference varies widely among individuals.
Establishing a single primary emotion, that eliminates a lot of non-ideal design work, and the targeted sentiment becomes your website design objective.
A typeface is a powerful tool for expressing personality, grabbing attention and creating memories. Web designers would use typography on websites to engage their audience.
As people scan through pages, you have to organize information for their memory in such a way that there is a sense of control and the task can be completed.
Usually, the emotions a brand would wish to evoke in a website visitor are confidence, trust, and consistency among others. The typefaces used are simple, clear and classical like serif, sans-serif and also, and slab serif will communicate this clearly.
Typography, along with colour, is one of the design elements that could be used on the website to draw attention and evoke emotions.
An important point to remember contrast in the choice of colours and fonts is important in depicting eye movement and also creating a dynamic and engaging user experience on web pages.
#4. Responsive Design and Mobile-friendly Website
As smartphones have emerged with all sorts of sizes and features, there is an increase in the need for responsive design. Businesses need their websites to be accessible and engaging to your target audience.
Having a responsive design ensures the website is functional by improving the user interface and user experience, making it easier for customers to access your content.
It’s important to ensure your content is consistent across all platforms from a mobile devices to desktop screens.
As mobile-friendly websites improve engagement on your website, you have more chances of not only securing customers that use smartphones more often, but also retaining the ones who use other devices such as tablets, laptops, and desktops.
One of the reasons why you would need to improve engagement on your website with a mobile-friendly website is because Google values mobile-friendly websites, so it helps search rankings (SEO) while decreasing your bounce rate for mobile traffic.
#5. Simple Navigation
Having a reliable and easy-to-follow menu for your website navigation is imperative for generating user engagement.
Like everyone else, your web visitors value their time and for every second they spend on your website, you must present your most compelling and relevant offer to them.
Your website menu should be simple enough to interact, with yet elegant enough to attract visitors into its fold.
Also, a clear and concise navigational menu helps your website’s SEO. A lesser number of links from the homepage will lead to its authority flowing well to the internal pages.
For the form fields, keep the number to a minimum.
Instead of providing numerous choices to your visitors and overwhelming them, cut down the options that you provide to the absolute, bare minimum.
Having a social media share option is important to promote engagement on your website. However, for every additional social network share button on your website, it contributes to increased loading time.
So, find the social networks where your audience hangs out. Only show those sharing buttons on your blog, and not all the options available.
Conclusion
Your website design should reinforce your brand’s personality and the central message that you want to convey in a situation.
The focus needs to be on connecting with your audience and understanding the parameters needed to ensure engagement.
Your website loading speed, with concise navigation and improved mobile friendly, is effective in increasing engagement on your website.
Leverage the principle of storytelling and the psychology of colour and font to have consistent and loyal website, visitors.
Share with us how you have improved engagement on your website in the comments below.
