Attention – Analogy of Website’s Layout effectiveness

Attention – Analogy of Website’s Layout effectiveness

The Web Semiotics angle of persuasion for Web Design/Web layout Design and its persuasion factor (captology)

Captology – as the name defines in Wikipedia

“Captology is a term coined by B.J. Fogg in 1996 to refer to the study of computers as persuasive technologies. This area of inquiry explores the overlapping space between persuasion in general (influence, motivation, behavior change, etc.) and computing technology. This includes the design, research, and program analysis of interactive computing products (such as the Web, desktop software, specialized devices, etc.) created for the purpose of changing people’s attitudes or behaviours.”

Fig 1.0 – Courtesy – DANIEL BERDICHEVSKY AND ERIK NEUENSCHWANDER in theis white paper – “The Landscape of PersuasiveTechnologies”

Classification on the Persuaders type of people as per the VALS model fo the LifeStyle segmentation of  SRI also gives us much of awaited notification to capture the differences about people VS their reaction towards what they are doing.  The persuation and perception has a real connection that determines the attitude of the person who inturn get connected to their self which detects and transforms the classification of their cluster where they belong to.

With the above statements clearly mentioning about the net persuasion of the net users, we are indeed thrown in aspects to the user experience dynamics with regards toe the Web site.  This can be taken up for the study perspective and inturn augmented for their aspects of relevance and their nature of attention seeking nature.

 Attention Seekers – Humans always loves to be get noticed and like people who are doing the same.  The concept of subsidies advertising and permission marketing is still in the verge of getting its pace, but people love getting surprised in whatever they do and whatever they get.  That’s the world and that’s how the system works too.  Such an attention seekers are a bit of challengers who will be encountered when a site is logically segmented.  Find below two examples of a same category product or related category but they use a different technique to attract and get the user to get over the website influence. 

Type 1 –

The Approach of this is set to hit the attention seekers eyes for puzzle and surprise. 

Formula – User is expected to get excited and then see the product.

Type 2 –

The approach is to give information about the product and make the user to get impressed with the product.

Formula – User is exposed to product and product impresses the user.

Gamble Analogy –

In the situation like above, the client is forced to play the psychological game “Gamble Analogy” – As it can be decided that the player has to take a decision that’s a gamble and he uses his past historical experience to choose to move thro the coins of this game.  Here when we talk about the users who are going to view the site.  The first analysis that we are doing is the “Attention”

Whats that he takes as his input to proceed with the site.  Interms of

1. purpose
2. relevance
3. need
4. motivation
5. anxiety
6. worthiness of time spent
7. speed of the site
8. what he feels as his kind of..

These are the factors that would go inside the basic engineering concepts of user experience.  But it all starts with the “Attention”.  What type of Attention you wanna take to make the user stop by your site. And Where will you make these impact upfront.

The study of eye ball and the people attention of the websites reveals 4 different zones of the website as it can be with relevance to the site’s nature.

For e.g in the same blog http://webanalogy.blogspot.com the halfs can be split as

In this case the appeal that we give the user is a rational analytical appeal as it’s a material published for people to read and understand and not any fancy material.  But these are the basic information that will be making the user to decide on the website and the appeal that someone gets to that.  In this case the trajectory is

Q1 > Q2 > Q4 – that’s linear and matches with the appeal of the site.  But incase audience of the site is a person who looks for information out of hand and not interested for a linear appeal then the site actually becomes a boredom to their expectation and so they leave.

Increasing the Eye ball exposure Density to one point increases Anxiety  - As an example to this the site which we took as example for the Attention Seeker can be taken as classic case for how they do it.  The eye ball density falls exactly in the conjunction point of Q2 and Q4 towards the ZERO point.  By this the entire attention of the user is taken in control and that’s the appeal of anxiety, excitement and waiting for surprise to happen occurs.  This is when the web developer wants the user to get into his control and inturn try to market the product or give the information.  We can probably name these users are “Controlled User”.

He from the point of this is being controlled by the web developer for the fact that he has already won the user with his expectation, anxiety.  So the outcome can be occur in two possibilities

1. User get extremely happy and inturn increases possibility of favourable actions what a web developer would expect.

2. Or users get rejected for their expectation and anxiety and leave the site out.

There is no intermediary user expectation for this kind of appeal. 

Psychology view of Controlled User:  typically now seeing the situation behind these kind of users or the layout based on the product, its imperial that the web users are hit by the anxiety quotient of the site for being different.  This implies that the layout has the first buy in. but also puts up a threat of limited information that could either make the brain unanswered and unsatisfactory.  The user gets attached the the layouts and the schemes rather than the content and the information.  So the recall quotient of these sites can work for the Layout of the site what user saw, and not for the content or the information portrayed in the site.

As in the other case for the descriptive appeal in the site for the similar product for the site given below

In this case of appeal, the user is perfectly augmented to get the first attention towards the image, which is the attention seeking factor.  Then the user is looking exactly on what he is intended to see and for what he is here.  So if we say the eye ball movement is Q1>Q2>Q3 then the user is basically a rationally logical user, who wants to get the information step by step and measures his exposure to the website.

There is yet another movement possible where in the user is in a hurry looking for information and so rolls the eyes straight from Q1>Q3>Q2.  In this case the user is getting the approach to take what he wanted and to see if he has landed up in the right page and website.  He is not bothered about the product overall description, but he looks for the functionality or the netigrities of the same.  So this approach and layout can also be useful for the audiences where the information is backed up with.  The product which is having unique accolades to its front can use such an eye ball exposure to keep the user to their use and inturn market the product thro the web layout.  In both of these the user patterns are predictable.  So the outcome and the possibility of the predictive turns are large.

The outcome can be

1. user likes the product and manoeuvres to the sections of it to read it
2. User doesn’t like the product but still he will be around looking for the other areas for getting information inside the site, as he is brought inside the rational logical appeal.
3. user tries to source information thro the site by either using the search or someway as he feels staying back in the site is worth
4. user quits the site as he feels the information what he needed is not available

Psychological View of Controlling User:

The user of this nature is life a galloping horse.  It takes a little time for them to get on to the touch of the site and its content as they are more stable. They are not instinctive and they always depend on the proof of existence.  They believe in concrete results and details for the product’s performance.  The layout of these nature would allow them to get that confidence as it maintains the corporate look and also makes the base context of product and their description as its primary explanation.

There are other eyeball exposure which we can bank on for other types of sites, basically the layouts of the sites that deals with lots of news and education, and other news paper site etc.. The layout can be portrayed that gives the comprehensiveness of the coverage and the diversity of the topics.  That’s where the 2 columns and 3 columns layouts help us to do the trick.  The eye ball for these kinds of things is so random that user likes to move the eyes more on to the headlines.  So the user is kept on to the site by having more of the snapshot headings etc..

These can be dealt in full detailing as it involves a completely different analogy study of minds.  The client will be expecting more information on the home page rather than the subpages.

There are other different formats of layouts which I am analyzing on their impact.  So these are a never ending discussion.  But layouts before being executed has to definitely see the impact analysis and then get its birth.