How to use Emotion in Web Design to Increase Sales

by Lindsey Winsemius - Posted 7 years ago

Emotion is the number one reason people make a purchase. From stay-at-home-moms to CEOs, we all use emotion as the main factor in determining whether we buy or don't buy from a certain brand, or at a certain time. Marketers often use emotion to increase sales.

How can you build emotion into your website?

1. Create a company persona.

Your customers don’t want to buy products from a “Business”. They want to buy from a person. In face-to-face transactions, the customer service representative is crucial to closing the sale and determining the customer’s satisfaction with the business. But how is an online business represented?

There are many ways to personalize the online experience and appeal to the emotional side of your customers. It starts by creating a strong personality for your business. 

Consider what you’re trying to sell. Should your persona be serious and concerned? Caring and motherly? Humorous and slightly sarcastic? Create a persona that will be relatable to your target audience, and that fits the products/services you’re trying to sell. 
For example, if you’re selling baby products, you probably want to take on a gentle, maternal persona that will speak to the mothers who are buying your products.



2. Use colors and imagery to match your persona.


You have only a few seconds to make an impression on visitors to your website. The right colors, images, and even fonts can influence their perception of your business before they’ve even read a word of your text or tried your products.

Let’s go back to our example of selling baby products. Would you want to have dark colors, squared fonts, and images of babies with rashes or crying? Of course not. Rather than being too afraid NOT to purchase your product, they’ll attach that negative emotion with your business and probably not return to your site, or ever buy from you.



That is a bit of an extreme example, but you get the point. A suspense author would definitely want dark colors and intense imagery, because they want to show people the kind of adrenaline-causing content they have to sell.



Choosing the right colors and imagery is the first step to connecting immediately with website visitors before they’ve even read a single word of your ad text. 


3. Reinforce your persona with social media

Social media is a really great way for businesses to develop a real relationship with customers. It gives you as a business a chance to become more personal than ever before. Your posts, pictures, and content should all reinforce the persona of your business. Sudden deviations from your normal personality will worry customers, so stay consistent.

How can social media help your website? Connect your accounts to your website, and even consider a widget so visitors can see your latest posts to further personalize your site. Just be careful, as some widgets can slow your loading time, which is a big no-no for both search engines who are ranking you, and impatient site visitors who don’t like to wait more than 4 seconds for a site to load. Read more about how to improve loading time.



4. Make sure your images and text are telling the same story.

Your text and headlines should all reinforce the overall impression your colors and images are supposed to give your visitors. Your images and text should all be focused on leading the customer to the sale, and should send a unified message of your company’s persona.


Giving your website a personality through design is a crucial way to gain the trust of your visitors, and leverage the power of emotion to increase your online sales.