Is Your Website Built on B.S.?
You may be thinking, wait a minute… isn’t authenticity and trustworthiness the foundation of a strong online presence?
Absolutely. And the kind of B.S. I’m talking about leads to all of that.
Let’s clarify this.
Behavior Science (B.S.) is the foundation of every great website.
Without infusing behavior science principles into your site design, people will leave your site instead of take a step to work with you, even if they were primed to when they found you. If people don’t quickly understand what you do, who you serve, and how you help, they won’t stay.
Know how long you have to get them to stay? Less than 8 seconds.
That’s not much time.
Behavior science is at the heart of human-centered or UX design. After studying psychology and behavior design for over three decades, I have a deep understanding of human behavior and how it impacts decision making.
My heartbeat is to use that knowledge to help people, not manipulate them. Knowing how, and where, to apply behavior science in your website can be the difference between staying in business, or closing your doors.
I’d like you to stay in business.
So, it’s important to identify the places on your website that people hesitate, get lost, or are confused. You probably don’t even know they are there, and even if you paid someone to design your site, they may still exist. Without a fundamental understanding of human behavior, they’re easy to overlook.
Let’s look at some of the most common barriers on your website that might be preventing people from working with you.
Creating Friction
Friction is anything that gets in the way of people doing what you want them to do. We are naturally hardwired with an easy button, so it doesn’t take much friction to stop forward movement.
Our brain needs to conserve energy for the 35,000 decisions we make each day. If your website is hard to navigate, you add to the fatigue. If people have to work hard to make a decision, they won’t. They’ll just leave.
Friction on a website includes:
Missing CTA’s
Buttons that blend in
Pop-up boxes and animations
Long contact forms
Copy without enough white space
A color scheme that’s jarring
Too many CTA’s with different words and options
The more effort that’s required, the less likely someone is to act. People will leave your site and say yes to a competitor, even if they have an inferior product or service.
Your website needs to make it easy for someone to say yes.
Giving people too much information
When you’re proud of your business, you want to talk about it. As a result, many businesses use their website as a one-stop-shop to tell potential customers everything at once, usually on their homepage.
But information alone isn’t enough to prompt a decision. Too much information actually leads to overwhelm and indecision. If it’s hard to take the next step, they won’t.
Some of the barriers you face as a business owner are:
People are busy
People are distractible
People don’t do what you think they will do
Stripping your site structure and copy back is much more impactful, especially when it tells a great story.
Assuming people know what to do
Behavior scientist, BJ Fogg, suggests that the purpose of behavior design is to help people do what they already want to do. People find your website because they’re looking for help. They have a problem to solve, so they:
Need answers
Need a service
Need a product
They want help.
Your website should deliver it clearly and simply. You can do this by:
Always including a CTA above the fold
Repeating the same language on the CTA
Offering a simple 3-step plan for people to work with you.
Even well-known brands skip these best practices. No matter how big your brand, a pretty design can’t overcome a lack of clarity.
Want a short B.S. check-up for your website?
Here are some of the common culprits that prevent people from choosing you over your competitors:
Pop-up buttons
Text that’s too dense
Not enough white space
Colors that are distracting
Animations that look cool, but are distracting
Missing called action button
Call to action buttons that say different things
Broken links
Dead end page
Poor mobile design
Take some time to make these updates to your website, or if it’s more than you want to tackle, StoryMatters can help.
I’m really good at BS.
And I can sprinkle just the right dose in yours.
