Gestalt Principles
How our brains naturally group visual elements together and how to apply Gestalt principles to improve your marketing design and user experience.
In this issue
Hey 👋 The Crew here.
How does your coffee habit change during summer?
Do you switch to cold brews, or keep it hot?
We feel like hot coffee hits the brain better. Maybe it’s just a psychological effect (no pun intended), but hey, we stick to what works…
What about you? Hot or cold coffee during summer?
Reading time: 3 minutes, 59 seconds
New to Psychology of Marketing? Join us for free 🤝
Are you a marketer? Earn up to $600/hr as a research participant with Wynter
Yeah, you read that right!
Wynter is looking for marketers to become research participants.
What would you have to do? Participate in surveys and 1-1 meetings, get paid for your feedback and comments. Up to $600/hr. Super low-key commitment.
Not sure? Here are five reasons real research participants gave for why any marketer should sign up:
- Your professional opinions will be heard and acted upon.
- The feedback you provide will lead to better products and services for the market. Your market, since you are the requested audience.
- You’ll help others improve their messaging and value propositions so that it resonates better with their target audience, which is you.
- You’ll discover new products and services that resonate with your current professional role.
- You’ll make some spare cash while learning something new, in just 2-10 minutes.
Sounds good?
Remember when you tried to bake cookies and ended up with one giant cookie because they all merged together?
That can be what your brand and funnels look like to prospects when you’re not aware of the Gestalt principles.
Here’s why: When we look at the world, our minds strive to make sense of what we see, and oftentime, it takes shortcuts.
The Gestalt principles describe the different ways our minds perceive order in the visual stimuli around us.
The Gestalt principles are a psychological framework that explains how our brain naturally groups elements together, recognizes patterns, and creates a coherent perception of our surroundings.
There are 10 primary Gestalt principles. Today we’re going to look at:
- Proximity and similarity.
- Figure ground.
- Closure.
Let’s get down to business.
Three ways you can leverage Gestalt Principles
Increase AOV with proximity and similarity
Grouping related information or products together can impact how users interact with your offer.
An example is grouping different products in the same visual, to make the user perceive them as part of the whole group.
Zalando’s Shop the Look feature is an obvious example, where the brand proposes a complete outfit, rather than just a single piece of clothing.
You can apply this to any niche.
List all your products and see if you can bundle them so they accomplish all the outcomes your prospect desires.
Stand out using the figure ground effect
If you check the ads that Meta runs on its own platform, you’ll see most of them follow the figure ground principle.
This effect describes how our mind tries to identify which part of an image is the figure or object, and which part is the background.
If you look at ads run by Meta on its own platform, they follow this principle.
Most of the real estate of the visual is background, with smaller elements in the center of the image that stand out.
With the plain background and the centralized elements, it’s easier to first separate the ad creative from the rest of the Facebook and Instagram feed.
Hey, if Meta does it, it must work, right?
Make people scroll using the closure principle
This principle is similar to open loops. When an image is missing parts, the brain wants to complete what we see.
You can leverage this principle in the “above the fold” section of your landing pages.
Check out this example by Superside. Your brain perceives there is an incomplete image at the bottom of the screen. So you automatically scroll down to complete the picture.
HIGH-RESPONSE SURVEYS: Customers not taking your surveys? Take a page from the playbook of Swytchback. They consistently achieve 90% completion rates, and their free guide reveals how to make your surveys compelling to even the shortest attention spans. Download it now.*
COPYWRITERS: Do you want to grow your career as a copywriter? The Copywriter Fast Track shows you a system to get premium clients the easy way. Without competing in crowded job boards. Or lower your prices because of AI. Check it here.*
AI MARKETING: Grok can generate images now! X’s AI tool has made the feature available for its premium members and—just like the rest of the platform—restrictions don’t seem to be as rigid as with other generators. For better or worse.
ADVERTISING: Is it all connected? TikTok now displays Amazon products in its “For You” feed for US users, allowing users to complete their purchases without leaving the platform. Moreover, Pinterest recently signed a similar deal with the tech giant. Interesting…
DIGITAL MARKETING: Money, money, money… The digital economy continues to grow and is predicted to hit $16.5T by 2030, making 17% of the world’s GDP. It’s mostly driven by AI advancements, the rise of e-commerce, and cloud computing. Good sign for us, marketers?
*This is a sponsored post.
ICYMI, last time we looked at In-Group Favoritism.
The “Order-striving” Crew
Get the next psychology effect in your inbox.
Receive cutting-edge, science-driven marketing insights and tips every Thursday, for free.
