Neuromarketing Through Web Design

Human behavior and motivation has a critical role in the design of websites.  Does the website for your startup cater to your audience and create a pleasant user experience?  How can you utilize the subconscious decision making process and instinctive reactions of your users, as well as appeal to their logical side, to get them interested in your product or service?

Neuromarketing is an exploration of this question. It borrows from research on motivation, decision-making and neuroscience to create more engaging websites. Many of these questions are explored in Dr. Susan M. Weinschenk’s book, Neuro Web Design: What Makes ThemClick?  These concepts are even more important in the age of usability and user experience, where a site must cater to a specific audience in order to increase sales or risk losing customers to a site that meets their needs.

Under the concept of Neuro Web Design, Dr. Weinschenk posits that visitors react to a particular website based on three areas.  These areas – emotion, logic and instinct – can provide clues into what it means to design websites that motivate user engagement.

1.    Emotion.  Focus first on the design elements and formulate a bond with your product or service.  The goal is to stimulate an emotional effect appropriate to your service or product, and give it a personality.

2.    Logic.  Does your website make logical sense? Usability of forms and fields, as well as ease of use, is key.  Each page on your site should be “intuitive.”  Remember the frustration you experienced the last time you went to a poorly designed website and you couldn’t accomplish what you set out to do, the font was unreadable, or the gaudy flash gave you a headache?

3.    Instinct.  There are parts of human nature that are automatic and work without so much as thinking about it.  Utilize some “persuasion tactics” on your website.  Many of these tactics are the focus of neuromarketing and much of our decision-making behavior is ruled by unconscious processes.  These are the reasons you “click” without knowing exactly why, or return to a product or service because it appeals to instinct.

Understanding the user experience through the lens of human behavior can help you create a site that inspires greater customer engagement and repeat visitors, which may, in turn, translate into increased sales for your venture.