Have you ever wondered why we can visualise some websites more clearly than others? Or why we spend more time looking at one page over others? 

As the need for a perfect website becomes increasingly imperative, the team at Spotler was wondering what makes a website great…or not so great. We teamed up with registered psychologist Katie Hart to explore how to design the perfect landing page. 

Why does it matter? 

This study explored the result of altering images, videos, buttons, and text format; while you wouldn’t automatically think that the placement of a button could change much, we found that even the smallest aspects of a landing page can have a significant impact on the viewer’s response. 

The most impactful variable we discovered may shock you…

How could a page layout possibly affect my mood? 

If your website is filled with pictures of women, you could be making your customers very tense. We tested five different images and discovered that featuring a picture of a woman was the most common cause of high-stress levels in a range of demographics. Both males and females experienced high-stress arousal when viewing the female variation, with an average of 53

.29%. There was a 5.11% difference between this condition and the participants’ lowest level of stress.   

However, it’s not just images that make a difference. The layout of text can encourage a user to go from their lowest point of stress to their lowest point of relaxation. We found that users were the least stressed when we featured social proof in the squeeze text (48.18%), but relaxation decreased when it was a form (30.25% compared to 34.32% at the peak of relaxation). 

Both males and females spent the shortest amount of time on the page featuring a form, with an average of 6.09 seconds, greatly contrasted to the longest duration of 33.35 seconds. 

 

If you want to know more about do’s and don’ts of website design, download our one of a kind experiment report here.