The Key to Attracting and Retaining Attention With Web Design

With more than 2 billion websites on the internet—all of which are vying for consumers’ attention—the brands and web designers working on these need to continually find new ways to attract and retain their audience’s attention. As internet users themselves, web designers understand that the daily barrage of content on the internet can be fatigue-inducing and counter-productive.

To solve this problem, web designers turn to research done on cognitive psychology to understand how human attention spans work. By having a better grasp of what grabs people’s attention, web designers can find ways to cut through the noise and reach their target audiences.

What is attention?

Most researchers agree that humans have a finite amount of attention that can be used in any given situation. For the most part, humans are excellent multitaskers and can focus on multiple events at once. Mileage may vary among individuals, but the amount of attention that can be spent will peak at some point.

For example, the act of driving an automatic transmission vehicle requires that a driver maintain their eyes on the road, hands on the wheel, and their feet controlling the brakes or the throttle. If that’s not demanding enough, a driver needs to focus on the traffic in front and simultaneously glance at the side and rear-view mirror when making a turn, changing lanes, or backing up.

But if humans are such good multi-taskers, why are car accidents due to distracted driving commonplace? This is because the human attention span is limited, and trying to place too many attention-grabbing elements in front of a person’s face is bound to cause confusion and errors in judgment. This fact holds true for both driving and web design.

Distracted driving causes accidents, leading to injuries, and even death. Having a messy web design is thankfully not fatal, but it will surely confuse your users. If your website design is too cluttered, then the chances are that your users will close the tab and go somewhere else.

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