Nusrat Jahan

Attention-Grabbing and Retention are the Most Powerful Act for this Digital World This week, I’ve learned about the attention-grabbing process for a website from the course Attention Basics, which is included in the Psychology Foundation track of the mini degree ​Digital Psychology & Persuasion​ of ​CXL Institute​. Getting attention and retaining the attention on a website isn’t an easy task. For the massive numbers of websites and blog posts existing on the worldwide web, we need to give a lot of effort into placing our copy to grab the attention of the user. And only grabbing the attention doesn’t help much, if we fail to retain the attention of the visitor. Oxytocin - The Love Hormone is the Basis of Trust There is a neurochemical basis for trust. The oxytocin hormone helps to increase trust. It is also called Love Hormone. To help this hormone to take action digitally, we need to reform our Website, and App design to help people gain trust for ourselves, we need to work a lot on the first impression. The first impression means a lot! The overall trust of the visitor influences a lot based upon their first impression. Ways to Grab the First Impression Research shows that first impressions are formed within 5 microseconds. There are 4 factors, that influence the first impression on a website: 1. Visual Design 2. Your Value Proposition 3. Compelling Imagery and Graphics 4. A personal “touch” that exudes trustworthiness Visual Design refers to how a website is designed, and how a visitor will see it when they first come to the website. The more distractions will be there on the website, the less interested visitors will feel after landing on their website. To maintain the visual hierarchy, you need to use low contrast color, the conventional design that people are already familiar with. Also, keeping the website structure simple is the key to aesthetic visual appeal. Your ​Value Proposition tells your customer how you’re going to benefit them, how you are bringing the value to your customer, and why they should buy from you despite other existing competitors of yours. To structure your solid value proposition, you need to keep your eye on the headline, sub-headline, bullet point (enlisting 3 key-feature), and the visual of your product, hero shot, or graphic reinforcing the main message of yours. But you need to keep your conscious eye on the clarity of the message, how your customers are going to be benefited from you, why they must buy from you, not from your competitors. You must avoid hype words like We are the Best in the market, You have never seen this kind of miracle-making service of ours, etc. And, you need to focus on the point that your value proposition is easy to read and understood within 5 seconds. Compelling Imagery and Graphics refers to the images, and graphics you’re going to use on your website. There are some things you need to keep in mind while choosing a graphic or image. Keep your target consumer in mind, what their age range, what their personality. Include professional pictures, don’t provide low-quality pictures, low-resolution ones, And, don’t go overboard with your pictures. Use it avoiding all kinds of distraction. And, if you use images of people, take a note on it, the people should be smiling, it makes the visitor feel you are welcome here! If you place your copy next to the person’s image, the person must look towards your copy. A personal “touch” that exudes trustworthiness is the most crucial part. People prefer to buy from people who resemble themselves. So, please use simple, and common languages to communicate. Don’t go for the stock images, use photos of realistic-looking people. Internal & External Factors that matter to gain the Attention There are some internal factors and some external factors for gaining the attention. External Factors include ​Intensity, Changes in Intensity/Quality of a Stimulus, Movement, Size, Contrast, Novelty, and Repetition​. And the Internal Factors include Interests, Habits & Attitudes, Motives & Organic States, Emotions, and Past Experiences​. Here external factors are considered as objective, whereas the internal factors are considered as subjective. External factors remain the same if the web developer doesn’t decide to change them. So, it’s more consistent across the web. But the internal factors change in every single minute. It’s more like a variable factor. People’s habits, buying behavior, everything is subjected to change based on their lifestyle. So, there’s no guarantee about the internal factor. Considering the internal factor, and internal factor, you need to analyze carefully whether you’re grabbing attention or distracting by the offer of your website. If your value proposition doesn’t stand out on your website, if it’s not clearly visible due to the other flashing graphics, bright-colored icons, or colors of your website, then it will not create any value for you. How can you Reduce the Cognitive Load? The factor which tends to distract the customer, and makes understanding harder instead of paying their attention is termed as Cognitive Load. Carousels that rotate too quickly, the irrelevant graphics, unclear value proposition, poor navigation, confusing copywriting, everything is included in the Cognitive Load part. The more load exists, the more customers will be driven away from the website. There are 3 different forms of Cognitive Load: 1. Intrinsic Cognitive Load 2. Extraneous Cognitive Load 3. Germane Cognitive Load Intrinsic Cognitive Load can be reduced by breaking the information given into small, simple clear steps. By doing so, customers won’t be overwhelmed by the seemingly impossible tasks. It’s more like an instruction manual showing various steps. For example, while buying a new product, that you haven’t used before if you see there’s a simple user manual included, which shows step by step how you need to use the product, doesn’t it seem easier for you, and convince you more to buy the product? Extraneous Cognitive Load is reduced by making the customer stay focused on their mission by showing different pricing plans for a certain product/service, and also showing which plan is the best for which kind of business. This type of price plan comparison makes it easier for the customer to choose the plan effectively. Germane Cognitive Load refers that people have some kind of common behavior pattern for certain things. And, if we consider those factors, it’ll be easier for us to make them convinced. How Distracting the Homepage Banners can be? In the later part of the course, CXL Institute showed research of their regarding how distracting homepage banners can be. And there I learned that advertisements on the website homepage are clutter, and confuses the first time visitor about the purpose of the website. How Visual Cues help in the Lead Generation Form? There was another case study regarding the lead generation form on landing pages. It showed which type of visual cue on the lead generation form helps more. The study showed: 1. The visual cues do not differentially impact the speed at which users first notice the form. 2. The visual cues do differentially impact how much a user pays attention to the form. 3. The visual cues do not differentially impact how viewers remember the form. Eye-Gaze Pattern: What are those? To retain the attention on the website, the eye gaze pattern plays an important role. There is 3 most common type of reading pattern: ● F-Pattern ● Layer cake pattern ● Spotted Pattern To retain the attention, you need to make the text more scannable. And you need to position the most important text along the F-line breaking the text into convenient paragraphs; that each line starts with the catchy word. Also, there was a recommendation from CXL Institute to make the text more scannable. They were using ​Bolded words, Underlines ones, words in color, showing numeric numbers instead of the text, Capital Lettered words, long words, using Quotation marks, and symbols​. Furthermore? There were few more studies which showed how a visitor reads the whole posts of a blog post, and how their reading pattern changes. And how different age grouped one's read different parts of the website. Personal Insight The attention basic course from CXL Institute made me understand a lot of things during this time. And, I understood why UX design is so important for a website. Whatever ad campaign we do over the Digital Platform, the last part of the ad campaign is landing on the website, and if the website doesn’t seem like a trustworthy one, can’t grab and hold the attention, all the budget spending on the ad campaign seems valueless. And in this digital era, Attention-grabbing, and Retention is the most crucial part, and if done effectively, it gives the most powerful fist.