Is Your Website Built on B.S.? It Should Be.
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.
Surprised? Let’s clarify this.
Behavior Science (B.S.) is the foundation of every great website.
Without infusing behavior science principles into your site design, your website is more likely to hurt your business than help it. In short, people will leave your site instead of take a step to work with you, even if they were primed to. 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 problems on your website you may not even know are there. Even if you paid someone to design your website, unless it’s built on a solid foundation, like StoryBrand, there are likely some fundamental errors on your site… ones I see all the time.
Let’s look at some of the most common barriers on your website that might be preventing people from working with you.
Creating too much friction
Simply put, 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 brains need to conserve energy and brain power for all the decisions we have to make each day… about 35,000 conscious ones! Don’t add to that number with a website that’s hard to navigate. If people have to work hard to make a decision, they won’t make one.
On your website, friction might look like:
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.
The top priority for your website is to make it easy for someone to say yes. Scaled back websites outperform complicated ones.
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 they think people need to know, often on their homepage.
But the reality is, information alone is not usually enough to prompt a decision. In fact, too much information leads to overwhelm and indecision. Remember friction? 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
Information alone isn’t the antidote to these barriers of human behavior. In fact, stripping your site structure and copy back to the bare minimum is much more impactful, especially when it’s built on the power of story.
Assuming people know what to do
Behavior scientist BJ Fogg puts it this way… help people do what they already want to do.
If people find your website, they usually need to solve a problem.
They need answers
They need a service
They need a product
They want help.
Give it to them. Make it very clear and very simple.
Always include a CTA above the fold
Repeat the same language on the CTA
Offer a simple 3-step plan for people to work with you.
Even well-known brands often 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
So let me ask the question again… is your website built on BS?
One of the reasons we’ve been fans of StoryBrand for so long is because their 7 step story structure aligns so well with behavior science principles. It’s why StoryMatters only builds websites and produces cinematic videos on this framework, because it works with the human brain, not against it.
Take some time to make those updates to your website. Many of them are simply and don’t require much effort. But if it’s more than you want to tackle, StoryMatters can help.
We’re experts in BS.
And we can sprinkle just the right dose in yours.
