Why You Need A Website Gestalt by Jerry Bader
'Wired' magazine published an intriguing article entitled 'Very Short Stories'
where they asked a number of authors to create a story in only six words. At
first this seems to be an impossible task, but as you'll see it's an excellent
example of how the principles of Gestalt can help marketers develop powerful
marketing messages on their websites or in any other marketing venue.
One of the best 'Very Short Stories' was by Canadian novelist, Margaret Atwood,
"Corpse parts missing. Doctor buys yacht.
" This macabre six-word tale tells us a complete story. We need no further
details or explanation to understand exactly what has happened. This is an
example of what the Gestaltists call 'closure' the ability of the brain to fill
in the blanks in order to complete a picture or in this case to tell a story.
Since the early days of the Gestalt movement visual artists have had an
affinity for the psychological implications of the theory. We are all familiar
with Op Art's visual tricks and with Rorschach images and how we interpret
them, but as you can see from Atwood's clever six-word story, this principle
also works on a conceptual level.
Although proponents of Gestalt have been mainly concerned with the visual
implications of the theory's principles, these same principles can be applied
to more sophisticated problem solving issues. The ability to form almost
instantaneous conclusions from relatively little information as discussed in
Malcolm Gladwell's book 'Blink' could easily be attributed to the analytical
implications of Gestalt theory.
Delivering a marketing message on a website quickly and in a manner that is
easy to understand and remember is the primary problem-solving task confronting
the professional website designer concerned with achieving his or her client's
marketing objectives.
There are many examples of how this principle of closure works. Someone gives
you something to read. The text on the page at first appears to be gibberish as
none of the words have any vowels, but despite their absence, you find that you
can still read the message and understand what is being said.
These examples illustrate how the human brain puts pieces of information
together until it recognizes a pattern that has some meaning. This phenomenon
has often been boiled down to the familiar phrase: the whole is greater than
the sum of its parts.
When websites disappoint, the cause most likely starts with a failure to
recognize that websites are communication vehicles and that communication is as
much a psychological design problem as it is an artistic or programming
exercise.
The Significance of Pattern Recognition
Direct marketers have successfully used the natural human need for resolution,
to fill-in the blanks, to sell all kinds of products. A common approach is to
offer a reduced price starter kit for some collectible item like a spoon, dish,
or coin that includes the first item of a series and a display case with room
for several more products. When customers get the first collectible and place
it on the display provided, the empty spaces cry-out to be filled. It's an old
marketing gambit, but one that works because human beings are hardwired to
fill-in the blanks and complete the display or pattern.
The Gestalt visual designer will use five pattern producing contextual
techniques in order to provide the viewer with clues for completing the pattern
that in-turn communicates the message;
1. Closure
: the mind is predisposed to complete a pattern by filling in the blanks from
the available information.
2. Continuance
: the mind will follow a path seeking a conclusion or resolution from clues
that point in particular direction.
3. Similarity
: the mind fights abstraction by trying to put the pieces of a puzzle together
in some familiar form.
4. Proximity
: the mind draws conclusions from the physical relationship of clues that
clarify associations that help make the unknown known.
5. Alignment
: the mind demands organization and will use association to create meaningful
groups of information.
The Significance of Story Telling
Successful marketers don't need to provide every detail of a marketing message
in order to deliver a meaningful presentation, in fact too much information can
actually get in the way of delivering a sophisticated communication. Like
Margaret Atwood's six-word story, meaning can be both concise and precise when
the right combination of information is presented.
A story is nothing more than a conceptual pattern with a beginning, middle, and
end. When your brain has to do a little work to put the pieces of information
together to form a complete comprehensible message, that story becomes more
memorable and that is exactly what marketers and advertisers strive to achieve.
If we want to maximize sales we have to look at the big picture. What do we
want from our website visitor or prospect beyond a one-shot sale of a product
or service? The answer lies in how we learn, how we come to conclusions, and
how we develop our personal belief systems. Our belief systems range from our
political affiliation to the brand of toothpaste we buy.
Developing A Marketing Belief System
All marketers have learned Al Reis and Jack Trout's axiom that a brand is
owning a piece of your audience's mind, the problem has always been how to
actually acquire that valuable piece of real estate?
The management of a business is an all consuming process that leaves little
time for contemplation of conceptual problem solving, but if we step back for
just one moment and think of our customers as human beings, animals with the
need to resolve problems and form conclusions based on a unique mental process,
then maybe we can present our marketing case with more long term impact.
Everything we believe in is based on a four-part mental process that is best
executed by means of a linear narrative - a compelling well-formed story.
1. Retention
: the message we deliver must be retained in order for it to have any long-term
affect.
2. Comprehension
: the message must be understood in order for it to achieve the desired goal.
3. Interpretation
: a well-formed message will be processed by the audience who will draw it's
own conclusions based on previous knowledge or pre-existing belief systems.
4. Cognitive extension
: once a message has been retained, understood, and interpreted, the mind will
file it away and use it as a way to filter future information that relates to
it.
Implications of Gestalt To An Evolving Web Environment
The principles of Gestalt and the need for human beings to resolve problems
through pattern recognition have greater implications than just visual design.
As early as 1890 Austrian philosopher, Christian von Ehrenfels wrote an
article, "On Gestalt Qualities' in which he pointed out that a piece of music
could be recognized even when it was played in different keys where all the
notes were different. The inference is clear: the need to resolve ambiguity and
to solve problems is fundamental to how we think and applies to how we process
signals to our brain from all our senses not just visual ones.
As website design slowly evolves from the presentation of mere text and static
images to a richer more eloquent environment, the sophisticated Web-marketer
will need to incorporate the psychology and principles of Gestalt to better
deliver their marketing story - a story best told by tapping into as many of an
audiences senses as the environment used will allow.
The power of this approach lies in it's ability to influence an audience's
belief system by establishing a set of mental patterns that help your targeted
audience resolve purchasing dilemmas in your favor, and at the same time, act
as a barrier to competitors' less sophisticated marketing approaches.
About the Author
Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that
specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com,
http://www.136words.com
http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or
telephone (905) 764-1246.
|
