08 Apr The Psychological Design Tricks Websites Use To Keep you Hooked
The question as to how long will website visitors stay on a web page before leaving is a perennial one. With over 644 million active websites on the internet to check out, most visitors will stay very briefly on a website, depending on the quality of the site. On average, a page visit lasts barely a minute (that is around 30 minutes or so). Nevertheless, if users like a site, they can stay on it for as long as they can. Every website owner knows that the first 30 minutes are what determine whether visitors will stay longer or will not. Consequently, they have come up with some clever psychological design tricks to keep visitors hooked. These design tricks not only manipulate users to stay longer on the page, but also lead them to do stuff they did not intend to do, like purchase a product, subscribe to a service or retain their accounts if they had intended to cancel them. Let us look at some of these design tricks today.
- The Use of Conspicuous Bonus and Offer Buttons
Most websites today manipulate their users to buy products or subscribe to services by offering bonuses as well as vouchers and encouraging them to take advantage of those goodies. What will grab your attention first are the striking bonus and offer buttons displayed on some of these sites. A website like comeon.com, for instance, features a very conspicuous, green bonus button on the top right corner. It also features an eye catchy text, above the “open a free account” button that says, “deposit & get up to €25 extra!”Apart from the welcome bonus, this sport and live betting casino features several comeone voucher ads, encouraging users to sign up for amazing ComeOn voucher code. With all these amazing goodie displays, one would want to sign up right away even if they did not intend to do that.
- Roach Model Tactic
Amazon uses a certain tactic known as roach model to prevent users from deleting their accounts. It is a dark UX design tactic that makes user account deletion a very painful process not worth undertaking for many. With it, Amazon hides the delete account option deep within the site’s framework, leading the user down to a dead end where they have to convince a company representative to facilitate the deletion. Many users prefer to avoid the process hence remain hooked to Amazon, even if they want out.
Conclusion
For a very long time now, websites have been using ingenuous UX design tactics not only to keep users hooked, but also to manipulate their behaviors. Many websites will conspicuously display bonus and voucher buttons to entice users to sign up and order a product or use a service. Some websites go a step further to use questionable design tactics all in the name of keeping visitors or customers hooked. A site such as Amazon compels users to stay even if they want out, thanks to the painful account deletion process they have put in place, using their so-called Roach Model Tactic.