Creating a website that shows off all the key details about your company or business, while also being practical and helpful, is not always easy. Especially when you have a large volume of content to sort and categorise, and direct your potential customers to. But this is where your web design will be most crucial. In fact, directing users to the right part of your website, or your content, depending on their requirements and needs, is one of the most important roles of web design. But you need to be able to achieve this, with the least number of user decisions as possible, or you could cause decision fatigue. So what is decision fatigue? And how does this relate to web design? Well, here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester, we are Manchester’s leading web design experts, and we provide high quality, effective, web design solutions for a range of local companies and businesses across Manchester, and the surrounding area. This includes Blackburn and Stockport. As a result, we have produced this guide to everything you should know about decision fatigue and web design.
What is decision fatigue?
Decision fatigue is when the mind becomes tired or confused while attempting to make too many decisions. This could be one decision after another for a prolonged period, or it could be too many decisions being made at once. This feeling can prevent people from achieving their original aims and goals, and cause them to stop pursuing something altogether.
Decision fatigue and web design
So, how does decision fatigue relate to web design? Well, you need to consider the customer journey, and the user flow. And look at each decision along the way:
- First your user has to decide to actually search for the answer/information/product/service they are looking for
- Then they need to decide on a website from the search engine results page
- Once they load your website, your website users or potential customers need to decide where to navigate to. This could include deciding which option to choose from the navigation menu, or deciding what to search for in the search bar. Either way, this involves making a series of small decisions. And if this step brings up a product or services page, with further options, then your users will need to make even more decisions, to find what they need.
As you can see, throughout the browsing process, there are a number of key decisions that your users will need to make. Two of these occur before they have even loaded your website. That’s why its important to ensure that your website keeps the range of choices to a minimum.
Designing a website to minimize decision fatigue
To keep decision fatigue to a minimum, you should consider:
- Categorizing pages properly in a navigation menu- use sub-menus where appropriate to divide content and website pages into appropriate categories, so that users can simply scan the headings to find what they need.
- Including a search bar- this can help users find exactly what they need quickly and easily, without making decision about which page to choose. The search bar should be positioned at the top of the page, and be easy to see.
- Using appropriate headings- content headings and subheadings can help users skim through large pieces of content to find what is relevant to them.
For more information about effective web design, get in touch with the experts today, here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester. We are Manchester’s leading web design experts.