Influence, persuasion and usability in web design
How data from influence, persuasion and Internet usability studies can help improve your website’s performance.
By: Joe Khoei
Your website is more than an online brochure of your company’s products and services. It’s your online agent tasked with helping your prospects make a decision to become your customers.
There’s been lots of studies done about influence and persuasion. What makes one decide one way or another. The results of these studies are publicly available. One pioneer in the field of influence is Dr. Robert Cialdini with his famous work chronicled in his book titled “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”.
Also, a 20 year veteran of usability consulting, Steve Krug spent years monitoring how people browse the web and published his findings in books about web usability. One of my favorites is his book titled “Don’t Make Me Think! A common sense approach to web usability”.
No business would send out a designer or programmer into a sales or marketing role and expect any decent level of success. Sales and marketing are specialized jobs requiring specialty skills related to those jobs.
Yet, most businesses put up websites that are designed and developed with little regard for usability, influence, and persuasion. And then when the results don’t come in, businesses think that there is a magic formula that they don’t know about.
Good news, there is a formula, it’s knowable, and we know it. You too can know it by either getting some help from us, or by rolling up your sleeves and digging into the following four critical works:
No time to read? That’s OK. Request a free evaluation and we’ll walk you through it.
