Web Design Based on the 4 Decision Making Styles
For website designers, one of the biggest challenges and opportunities with any website is determining three things about a visitor:
1. What they are looking for.
2. How they make decisions.
3. How both of these things can be aligned with a client’s business objectives to create results for the organization.
One of the most effective tools to help web designers understand if their website messaging, copy, functionality, layout and design are helping their visitors to make decisions is the Decision Making Quadrant, a tool for understanding how visitors make decisions online.
The Decision Making Quadrant
This tool, adapted from the Eisenberg books, is a quick way to think about how to address these decision making styles in every aspect of web design. The core principle for this tool is to understand that people make decisions in two main ways:
1. Fast vs. slow.
2. Emotional vs. logical.
These two axes combine into a quadrant for looking at four different decision making types online.
The 4 Types of Online Decision Makers
Fast-Logical: The Competitive type
“Tell me WHAT you will do for me and what makes it better than other options.”
Fast-Emotional: The Spontaneous type
“Tell me WHY I should use your product or service.”
Slow-Logical: The Methodical type
“Tell me HOW you will deliver your product or service and give me all the details behind your approach.”
Slow-Emotional: The Humanistic type
“Tell me WHO you are and let me make a connection.”
How to Use This Tool in Your Marketing
The Decision Making Quadrant is a tool to help designers engage with their customers or visitors in the manner in which they wish to engage. As with most marketing tools, the goal is to create empathy with customers. It is important to remember that you are only concerned with the dominant decision making mode of a specific customer segment or persona when they are interacting with your brand; people are complex and may engage in many different decision making styles in different contexts.
Every component of your website design is geared toward at least one of these decision making styles. It is easy to look at a website and think of what we would like to see or what appeals to us, but we face two huge challenges in being effective critics of our own web marketing efforts. One, we are afflicted by the curse of knowledge; we know far more about our business than any typical prospect ever will. Two, we are afflicted by the natural human tendency to think of our decision making style as the best or only natural way to make decisions.
Once you have the Decision Making Quadrant as a part of your frame of reference for looking at a website or any interactive marketing element, you can quickly see how different components appeal to different styles. A page geared toward a methodical personality type will have lots of details and be extremely thorough; that same approach can be extremely off-putting to the other three types. Similarly, a page geared toward a competitive personality type will clearly show why your product or service is best and clearly quantify the results achieved; this approach may seem cold, tactical and irrelevant to a spontaneous personality type.
In our experience, simply asking why any specific element on an web design looks or is phrased in a specific way immediately creates productive discussion and improved results. The Decision Making Quadrant is a great tool for creating a more productive and effective discussion.
Contact Synotac Web Design to have Oregon website designers develop a site that’s perfect for your business. Synotac is composed of some of the best Oregon web designers, graphic artists and programmers. Visit Synotac’s website to find out what they can do for you.
Author: Cameron Madill
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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