No matter what you do, how much work goes into a product, how perfect the landing page copy is, some users still somehow miss the button and go off into space. And it’s not even because you’ve made a typo. Let’s take a look at why this is happening from the scientific perspective.
When people speak of ‘gut feelings’ in UX/UI and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), they actually mean the strict processes of our cognitive system. To influence your audience’s decisions, you need to think about the “fast” system of the brain.
The 50-Millisecond Verdict
According to research, users form an opinion about your web interface in 50 milliseconds. Within those 50 milliseconds, the brain doesn’t really analyze your value proposition, it performs triaging.
It’s time to introduce Visual Hierarchy to you. This principle is aimed at showing the importance of each page element, thus, helping our brain allocate cognitive resources efficiently. If no visual hierarchy has been applied, then all the elements will compete for this scarce resource, resulting in cognitive overload.
1. Levering the Isolation Effect
The isolation effect, otherwise known as the Von Restorff Effect, posits that one object within a collection of similar items is more memorable when it significantly varies.
Therefore, if your entire page is done in minimal colors, you need to make your CTA button stand out like the sore thumb. Designers often remove background from lifestyle shots to create high-contrast product cutouts. This technique strips away visual noise, ensuring the user’s foveal vision locks onto the product rather than the distracting wallpaper or busy environment behind it. This way, you are stripping away any distractions to make sure that your foveal vision focuses on your products and not the wallpaper or anything else surrounding them.
2. The F-Pattern vs. The Z-Pattern
Depending on the type of content presented to users, humans’ scanning patterns vary in predictable ways:
F-Pattern: Common in blogs or pages with many texts. The user scans the first horizontal line, then skips to another one below it before reading vertically to the left.
Z-Pattern: Suitable for landing pages with little text. The eye moves from top-left to top-right and ends in bottom-right.
The Z-Pattern: Perfect for landing pages where there’s very little text. The gaze starts in the top-left corner and proceeds to the top-right. Then, from there, it goes down to the bottom-left and ends in the bottom-right.
The Strategy: Position your most important “Anchor” information in the corners and crossings of these two patterns. If your call-to-action happens to be located in the “dead zone” (center right of the page if there’s plenty of text), it doesn’t matter much since no one sees it anyway.
3. Directional Cues & Gaze Following
We’re evolutionarily predisposed to track the gaze direction of other humans. If your landing page includes a picture of a person looking straight at the visitor, it becomes a “social stop.” It can even detract from the conversion goal.
But if your hero picture includes a person who’s looking towards your lead capture form, the user will automatically follow the gaze. This effect is achievable through:
Arrows: (a little redundant but efficient nonetheless).
Lines of sight: Leveraging the natural lines of your product or graphical elements pointing towards the “Next Step.”
4. White Space – As An Actively Used Design Element
Many confuse white space with empty space. From
Zoom out and squint until all the text becomes impossible to read and nothing more than shapes and colors.
What catches the eye?
If the most apparent shape isn’t what you want viewers to focus on (your call to action or product), then you have an ineffective hierarchy.
Conclusion
Design is not about looks. It’s about drawing the attention of people. With the knowledge of how human vision works, you can stop creating visually appealing images and start working with high-performing designs. Contrast your subjects, scan accordingly, and don’t be afraid of whitespace.
