Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click?

Citation

Crutzen, R. (2010), "Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click?", Health Education, Vol. 110 No. 6, pp. 508-509. https://doi.org/10.1108/09654281011087297

High rates of attrition are characteristic of the internet, especially in health education. Internet‐delivered interventions targeting health risk behaviours related to chronic diseases (e.g. a sedentary lifestyle) are efficacious in changing behaviour if people actively use these interventions. Nevertheless, evidence from efficacy trials indicates that e‐retention (i.e. the actual use of the intervention web site by the target group once they access it) is low. This holds even more when Internet‐delivered interventions are implemented in real life (in vivo) rather than in a research setting (in vitro). This touches upon the critical issue regarding Internet‐delivered interventions: How can behaviour change ever be established if people are not or only to a limited extent exposed to the intervention itself?

With this issue in mind, Susan Weinschenk's book “Neuro Web Design: What makes them click?” (2009, Berkeley, CA: New Riders, ISBN 978‐0‐321‐60360‐9) is very useful for health education practitioners. In 11 chapters, Weinschenk applies research on motivation, decision‐making, and neuroscience to the design of web sites. The book deals with unconscious reasons for people's actions, how emotions affect decision, and how to apply the principles of persuasion to encourage visitors to actually use a web site. From a health education point‐of‐view, this book can be used to encourage visitors to actually use Internet‐delivered interventions aimed at behaviour change and therewith improve the public health impact of these interventions.

The foundation of Weinschenk's book is that emotions and automatic functioning are, for the most part, unconsciousness, but human behaviour and decision‐making are mostly affected by these brain processes. Hence, instead of only a logical presentation, these emotions and automatic functioning should be taken into account to make a persuasive Internet‐delivered intervention. Weinschenk illustrates this, for example, by the power of social validation (e.g. providing testimonials of satisfied intervention users) and the principle of reciprocity (e.g. if visitors are given immediately access to information, then they are more likely to fill out a questionnaire later on).

Last but not least, two final remarks need to be made. First, numerous examples are provided throughout the book. It needs to be stressed, however, that these examples mostly stem from the field of marketing. Nevertheless, the underlying ideas can also be applied within the field of health education. Second, do not expect a step‐by‐step guide on how to develop a web site from a technical point‐of‐view. There are several other books that deal with this. This book could be a valuable source of inspiration, however, if you are to develop an internet‐delivered intervention and you aim to encourage visitors to actually use your intervention.