Driving Web Design with Emotion
There is more to designing websites than just making your online presence felt. Websites are also designed to commit your visitors to a relationship with you. While it takes nothing to achieve the former, companies still struggle to accomplish the latter because of a glaring oversight – the need to connect with visitors at an emotional level. It’s this one thing that lends an abiding charm to your website.
Today’s web browser is in a tearing hurry. Those who leave your website may forget what you sell. But what they’ll never forget is what you made them feel. A design that conveys emotion can communicate on an instinctual level and make your visitors feel good. It is this good feel which will make him remember the experience long after everything else has faded.
It doesn’t take much to stir human emotion, for those who are creative, and know exactly what it takes to connect emotionally. However, in this blog, I would like to talk about the basics of emotional design, one that doesn’t pack surprises, but actually meets basic requirements to fulfill visitor expectations.
A basic design that appeals to emotion should have the following: distinct navigation nomenclature and a visually appealing layout. These two together play the all-important role of creating the right first impression, one which can induce the visitor to stay on and have a closer look. Once stopped, the visitor starts looking for value for staying on the website. Here comes the next basic requirement – delivering content bereft of pretenses.
Hubspot’s home page is a good example of a basic web design development which connects emotionally with the customer right from the word go. The website is well laid out, has a neat navigation structure and offers value to the visitor straight from the headline. The site greets a visitor with a screen sized image of blurred figures and contrasting colors so that the focus is sharply on the headline.
The question which bring people to the site – “what do I get?” is directly answered by the headline “Grow your business”. The color, size, shape, and copy blend together to create the right first impression.
The services and solutions section is laid out to retain hold over visitor’s attention – with appealing visuals and bare minimum content. The CTA buttons clearly tell the user what they are supposed to do next. The two things that particularly strike a chord are the case studies and “follow us” section.
The case studies are showcased more as testimonials, something to which a visitor can relate easily. The “follow us” lay out is again designed to make the visitor pause and wonder. Instead of standalone logos of twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, the designers embed the logo in big full circles with the follower count figure ticking prominently before the reader’s eyes.
This is a clever way of inducing the visitor to think how the company has grown as a brand. The messaging too is couched in brief, but punchy terms to appeal to the reader instantly.