When Web Design Discovered Psychology
The purpose of the web designers company has changed over the past few years as the pendulum swings to heavily favor conversion results and return on investment versus professional web site design that was all about the “look”. What was once the mystic of graphic design and slick software tricks has come to focus on ease of use and sales conversion.
In the earlier days of the internet, it was enough to have your web designers company throw up an online store that was nice to look at. Now you have to make it nice looking, but you also have to fine tune all of the links and calls to action to induce customers to make a purchase or provide contact information for future marketing.
With the evolution of user experience as a part of web design, your web design experts may find more value for you by tweaking the buttons or reordering content than providing graphical updates. The sweet spot for design has moved to get the best return on investment and maximum consumer conversion. It all comes down to the potential for reclaiming those lost sales.
Web design consulting used to be focused more on colors and themes. Today it is part psychology and part user experience. For example, Amazon was one of the big internet corporations to tackle ideas of categorization, search ease, and customer conversion as it applied to internet commerce. When they sold just books, the categories were simple, but once they added different lines of products they had to arrange them systematically on their website.
How do you set up a website that sells both books and kitchen cookware? Or electronics and packaged food? Web designers services these days have adapted to look at web browsing patterns and user profiles to make profitable decisions on websites. Before producing design samples, or comps, there is likely considerable effort applied to creating rough wireframes, diagrams of the business logic, and to establish user “personas” to guide the design.
If we look again at Amazon, the different personas might include a teenager visiting with a tablet or smartphone, a time constrained office worker (sneaking online at lunchtime), or a mom multitasking online while watching their favorite shows. You can imagine how each one has a different tolerance for the layout, search functionality, and supporting product content. Once you understand how they browse and search for products, you can better stage the experience. It also explains why some seemingly lesser designs have become more prevalent from your web designers company.
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