Your website has a mission that’s far more important than looking good. Each page of your website should correspond to an overall marketing strategy. Thus, its primary function is more than being a flashy business card or a good-to-have digital news outlet. Your website’s main objective is to convert people from occasional visitors to regulars, customers, and loyal clients. So, in order to be most effective, your website should be brilliant when communicating with your audience. And while content, design, and colors do the heavy lifting in this regard, sometimes we want to draw the readers’ attention in a particular direction. We want their entire stay on our website to be as further away from mindless browsing as possible. Instead, we prefer that they have a journey that gradually but firmly pushes them toward the CTA. To help them navigate this journey, we enlist the help of visual hierarchy. 

Visual hierarchy is not an easy concept. That is why we decided to give you a simplified 101 on creating your own visual hierarchy. 

What is visual hierarchy?

Before we start, it’s good to know what we are discussing. Visual hierarchy prioritizes elements based on their significance to the overall marketing strategy. It usually follows the natural order users process the information on a certain page. Of course, this entire theory is based on countless researches on user and customer behavior and how people process information. As a result, visual hierarchy can massively impact the user experience and the website’s ability to convert.

The whole idea behind the visual hierarchy is the understanding that if everything seems important, nothing truly is. So, in simple terms, if you try to push all the information to your customer as equally important, the users will be overwhelmed by its massive amount and lose focus on what is important. On the contrary, if you design your website with a well-designed visual hierarchy, users will instantly be bombarded by the relevant information. If written well, the highlighted information will push them down the funnel, urge them to learn more, or simply convince them to execute the predetermined action of the page. 

So, how do we know that visual hierarchy actually works? Well, it’s human nature.

The psychology behind the visual hierarchy

To be effective, visual hierarchy must be based on actual psychology. Otherwise, it’s just placing random elements in the hopes that they will do the trick. An effective visual hierarchy should follow several key concepts.

Gestalt Principles

The Gestalt Principles are the cornerstone of visual hierarchy. These psychological principles describe how humans perceive and understand visual information as a whole instead of focusing on individual elements. They explain how our minds organize and give meaning to what we see. Of course, understanding the entire psychology behind these principles will take a lot of time and learning. Still, there are several fundamental principles to take away from this concept. 

Figure-ground relationship:  

This is the natural tendency of separating elements from the background. People instinctively perceive objects or subjects as distinct from the surrounding area. If there is an object or a subject, it instantly captures people’s attention, while the background loses meaning. 

Proximity: 

This principle dictates that proximity is equal to relation. In other words, if any elements are positioned close by, people will subconsciously perceive them as related. 

Similarity:

 Similarity suggests that objects that share the same attributes, like color, shape, size, texture, or anything in between, in people’s eyes, belong together. This is a trick of our minds that helps us organize an otherwise chaotic world. 

Continuity: 

Following your lane at crossroads, where the lines are separated, manifests this precise principle. Human minds fill the gaps when a certain pattern is interrupted. Thus people continue to follow the pattern regardless of its existence. This is crucial for design patterns and how you arrange your information. 

Closure:

This principle dictates that people’s minds can not accept unfinished patterns or objects. Thus we mentally fill in the missing information based on what we already know. For example, if we look at an uncompleted circle, we will instinctively fill in the missing information and consider the shape as a circle. However, this principle applies to any information. This is a gold mine for designers, who can save time on complex visuals and leave our minds to complete them. 

Symmetry and Balance: 

People are naturally drawn to equilibrium. Symmetry creates a sense of order, stability, and harmony. Thus following a balanced pattern in design will always make your website look much better than when it is chaotic.

Visual Weight

Outside Gestalt Principles, visual weight is the second most important psychological concept behind visual hierarchy. It refers to the perceived importance which we assign to an element. This visual weight can be influenced by size, color, contrast, or placement. For example, what’s the first thing you see on our website?

It’s the word “Cloud.” The word is not only part of the headline but also deviates in color from the rest of our H1. Thus your attention is instantly drawn to this keyword.  

Focal Points

The Cloud keyword is also our Focal point as it heavily contrasts the rest of the copy. Focal points are created with the help of visual weight and aim to draw the user’s attention directly to them. They are a cornerstone of visual hierarchy as they represent the top of the pyramid. 

Cognitive Load

Cognitive load is the amount of mental effort a person needs to understand certain information. The cognitive load of certain information depends on various subjective factors like education, proficiency in the subject of the information, and several others. For example, complex concepts like visual hierarchy are hard to grasp fully. It requires a lot of knowledge and understanding of various fields. As you can imagine, the heavier the cognitive load, the smaller the chance someone will invest in understanding the information. That’s the entire point of visual hierarchy. To reduce the cognitive load behind your product by creating a visual learning path, highlighting the most important parts, and leaving the pesky details in the background. 

Now that we know the basic psychological concepts behind visual hierarchy, let’s dive right in and learn what we need to create one excellent visual order.

How to create a visual hierarchy 

Creating a visual hierarchy is not an easy task, and if you have the budget, we would suggest leaving this to a professional. Still, if you prefer to give it a go yourself, there are a few points you need to take into consideration.  

Consider reading patterns

Receiving information has been embedded in our minds ever since we were little. From the first time your mom or dad opened a book to show you pictures, they did it in a particular order. This order was cemented by school books, comics, and practically every piece of information you ever read. In other words, we often follow the F pattern of receiving information. This means we look for information from left to right, top to bottom, just as if reading a book. Naturally, the pattern can differ depending on the culture. For example, in Arabic culture, writing is from right to left. Japanese write from top to bottom, with multiple columns progressing from right to left. Naturally, users from these cultures are prone to receive information based on the way they were taught how to read. 

The F pattern is predominantly used for heavy-on-the-text websites. Lighter websites or print usually follow the Z-pattern. In the Z pattern, the page is divided into four sectors. Instinctively, people will first check the top left sector, then go to the top right. Next, they will scan the bottom left and go to the bottom right. So, if you don’t mingle too much with the visual hierarchy, placing your headline (or the so-called offer) in the top left sector is a good idea. Then place your product’s image or visual in the top right. Finally, add some additional information like benefits, promotions, or other useful data in the bottom left, and add the CTA in the bottom right. 

Mingling with the Focal Point

However, thanks to the concepts we discussed above, you can rearrange the natural flow of how humans receive information. Ask yourself, where will the viewer’s eyes land initially looking at your design? This will be your focal point. As explained, you can place it anywhere you want. Still, you need to follow either the Z or F patterns to make it the most efficient. So, if you put it in the bottom right corner, be sure that only a few people will go back to read the rest of your copy, rendering it pointless. 

Amazon Prime has one great example of changing your focal point and retaining the natural flow of getting information.

When you open their website, you have the headline on the left, which, to be honest, is not that great. Their selling point, however, is the fantastic shows and movies they offer, so they represent them in the image to the right. The image is disproportionately bigger than the text, and it dominates the Hero’s section, naturally drawing the user’s attention. To finish it up, they placed a highly effective contrasting CTA that will capture your attention even if you are focused on the image. So the main idea behind this design is to see the fantastic shows and click on “Start your free trial” without any additional questions.

Speaking of size…

Use different sizes to your advantage

Just like Amazon, you can also use size to your advantage. The psychological concept of visual weight heavily (pun intended) applies here. People perceive bigger objects as more important. So, of course, the most significant thing on a website will get the most attention. That’s why copy has a hierarchy of its own. For example, we place the headline in the hero section (header). This is usually our main selling point, and we want users to give it the extra attention it deserves. Moreover, we even tag it as H1 in our metadata so that the search engines are also aware this is the most important piece of information on our website. 

However, just like with Amazon, if our imagery better addresses our selling point, it stands to reason to enhance it and draw people’s attention there. 

On the other hand, if we want to devalue information, we tend to make it smaller. This way, people will perceive it as insignificant. This is most often done when we are required to give a piece of information, yet it works against our own interests. For example, the renewal price devalues Amazon’s free trial, which is an added benefit. Thus, the designers used much smaller letter sizes than the rest of the information. 

So, when designing your website, consider your most important message. Think about what is good to know and what is a filler. Finally, note what you must add, but you’d prefer it if people don’t see it. 

Direct user’s attention with colors

Size is not the only thing that can give a piece of content value. You can enhance the value of elements even higher by introducing a brighter, contrasting color. So, using contrasting colors is perfect for capturing attention and highlighting your main selling point. 

For example, take the MartinWrites website.

The entire website is predominantly in cold colors, yet it uses bright yellow to highlight its primary selling point. It further uses a brighter blue color to underline the main benefit positioned in the headline. Moreover, the contrasting yellow color corresponds with the CTA color, which addresses the continuity and similarity principles from the Gestalt Principles. 

Before starting to use colors, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with the color theory. Otherwise, the colors will look a bit forced, just like with the Martin Writes website. 

On the other hand, you need to control the urge to make everything rainbowish. Adding all sorts of colors will devalue all of them. Still, you can make it work if you accent the saturation, brightness, and other factors. Still, it will make your work that much harder. 

How to use white space like a pro

White space refers to the background of your website and the empty space in your design. Utilizing the open space to your advantage is instrumental to your success. It can separate elements and give them additional value in the process. The white space underlines and highlights the few elements within, overwhelming the user with information. When done correctly, it can affect the closure principle. Thus, people will fill the empty space with the needed information. Bod is an excellent example of how to utilize empty spaces properly. 

The white space underlines the contrasting raspberries. At the same time, the heading gives you the main selling point. It’s a fiesta of small info pieces which your mind automatically connects. 

Of course, using white space successfully requires a lot of experience and understanding of your target audience. After all, you wouldn’t want them to make the wrong conclusions. 

Use typography as a navigation tool

Typographical hierarchy is one of the cornerstones of visual hierarchy. That’s quite understandable, with almost all websites having text as a primary information medium. While there might be some deviations here and there, modern website designs usually follow the good old typographical hierarchy established by newspapers and magazines about 3 centuries ago. In other words, using a three-level approach is what people would expect. This includes a headline, subheadings, and body. Unlike blogs, introducing additional levels on a regular web page is not wise. This will devalue the headline and divert attention to way too much additional information. 

• The first level of Typography is usually referred to as the headline or the H1. This is the most essential piece of information, which should ideally be the focal point of your website. So, naturally, it’s way bigger than the rest, and it should be short and sweet. 
• The second level helps designers to organize the different information into groups. It should be smaller than the first level but still big enough to highlight its importance. If done correctly, this level will improve your website’s usability and navigation immensely. 
• The third level is the general information. It adds additional explanation and details about the specific aspect of the service or product advertised by the second level. In other words, this is the paragraph under the subheading. The length of the third level heavily depends on the page’s goal.

Is your visual hierarchy effective?

There are a lot of ways to check if your visual hierarchy is working as intended. One of the most common ways to check is by conducting a usability test and implementing an eye movement observation tool. This will give you a clear answer, whether your hierarchy does the trick. However, such tests can be highly expensive. So, if you are on a tight budget, it’s definitely not the first thing you should try. A slightly less accurate but immensely more affordable will be to use a heatmap analysis. It will provide you with information on where the mouse of the users is while they are on your webpage. 

Most important, however, are the results of your visual hierarchy. So if you implement a new hierarchy that leads to a higher click rate on your CTA, a lower bounce rate, and more time spent on your website, your hierarchy does its job well. Still, when it comes to these measurements, other factors like website speed, loading speed, and security risks can come into effect. To eliminate all of these pesky problems, you need a fast, reliable, and secure hosting provider. Luckily, HostArmada is just the right spot. We offer lightning-fast hosting, with guaranteed 99% uptime and high-end security. So check our plans and contact our team to help you get your website going. Only then can you worry about visual hierarchy.