PGW
- Jul 4, 2019
- 4 min read

The 9 laws of Website Design

THE 9

LAWS OF BUSINESS WEB

DESIGN

The 9 Laws

Law #1 - The Hick-Hyman Law

Have you ever heard of the Hick-Hyman Law?

It states that the amount of time required for a consumer to make a decision is directly correlated to how many options that consumer has.

You’ve probably heard of the study that showed that people were less likely to buy jam in a supermarket if they were shown 12 samples of jam, rather than just 6.

You need your customers to make a simple, easy decision to buy with you or work with you as quickly as possible.

Limiting the information overload they experience upon visiting your website is crucial.

The best way to utilise the Hick-Hyman Law is to figure out what you want from your customer the most, then optimise for that.

Just a few tabs or rows on a sidebar will do, don’t swamp your customer with options, like Overstock did in the example below.

Law #2 - The Law of Action

CTA’s (Call to Action’s) are essential for any website. Odds are, you know what CTA’s are, or at least you should.

CTA’s solicit the customer with a request to engage with your website in a meaningful way (I.e. book a consultation, order now, etc.)

Many websites include CTA's as a pop-up, but CTA's can be used in other ways, too. Even simple messages encouraging customers to follow through shopping increases the checkout process rates.

With many of my clients, simply adding a CTA can increase customer conversion by 60%.

Law #3 - The Law of Thirds

The Law of Thirds is based on the rule of thirds in photography.

In photography, you’re supposed to visually divide an image into thirds both horizontally and vertically, which leaves you with nine squares.

The four middle intersections of the squares are natural points of interests for viewers.

Images and text at these intersections have the most impact.

Many websites place their most important subjects on these intersections. You don’t have to design your website strictly according to this, but rather, consider this a worthy guide.

In fact, many websites don’t include the navigation bar anywhere in these intersections, because they prefer their call to action (CTA) to be on these intersections.

Law #4 - The Law of Speed

Customers are incredibly impatient. The internet has been around for more than 20 years, and customers are accustomed to fast, reliable, attractive websites.

One study by the Aberdeen Group stated that a mere one second delay in page load time results in a 7% reduction in conversions.

Run your website through any one of these tools for insights into what slows down your website and how to fix it:

Google PageSpeed Insights Kingdom GTmetrix

KeyCDN Sucuri

Law #5 - The Law of F

Researchers have found that a user’s natural eye behavior pattern when browsing the web is an “F” pattern.

Most people, and especially ones in English speaking countries, read from left to right and then down the page.

So naturally, the first points of interest for a customer are the top line across the webpage, then down the page to the next section along the left side, then across and down again. Like so:

So again, anything you want your customer to do or read can be aligned in these hot sections.

Law #6 - The Law of 8 Seconds

The average human’s attention span is 8 seconds.

Every business must capture that attention as quickly as possible and utilize it before it is lost.

To grab attention and boost conversions within those 8 seconds:

Use a large, benefit-driven headline that is brief and to the point. Use eye-catching imagery that conveys the main point or purpose of your page and draws the eye towards your main call to action.

Make signup buttons large, simple and clear.

Use power words to make your copy more enticing and engaging. Incorporate multimedia such as video, audio, or other interactive content.

Use hover effects on your buttons (e.g. make them change color on mouse-over) to make them more satisfying to click.

Use animated exit-popups to re-engage visitors who lost interest.

Law #7 - The Law of Familiar Faces

Biologically, people are social animals. People love human faces. When people see faces, they are instantly triggered to feel a small emotional connection or to empathize with that person.

Tai Lopez, the famed internet marketer, regularly bashes websites without any human faces. He has pictures of himself on almost every page. This is his home page.

Putting a human face on your website's page instantly draws people in subconsciously.

Law #8 - The Law of Responsive Design

You have to ensure your website has a responsive design.

Appearing professional no matter where your customers are is of the utmost importance.

Nearly 60% of searches are now on mobile. Non-mobile websites will NOT rank. You can view your site’s responsiveness on responsivetool.com.

Law #9 - The Law of Originality

BE ORIGINAL.

You have to be absolutely certain that your content is unique. Duplicate content can impact your rankings in search engines.

Search engine algorithms are designed to find copied text.

Depending on the severity of it, your rankings could suffer or be excluded altogether.

Test out copyscape.com to check your website.

What's Next?

These 9 Laws are the laws that I've used to redesign multiple local businesses and ecommerce stores over the past few months.

These businesses have gone from total obscurity on the the second and third pages of Google to the first page of Google where they get hundreds of customers in organic traffic every day.

These laws, combined with consistent, quality SEO can take any business no matter how small or new to being highly regarded leaders in their industry and be swamped with new customers.

It's my hope that this guide will help you gain control of your website's conversion and customer acquisition.

If you'd like to speak with my team and I more about customizing this guide for your business and more marketing strategy, we'd love to talk to you. There is never any pressure on our calls. Our

goal is to figure out where you need help, and how you can get that help.

If you'd like to book a strategy session with us, follow the link below.

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