What Is the Anchoring Effect, and How Does It Impact UX?

Cognitive biases play a massive role in people’s decision-making. As a result, they also affect how users interact with your designs, so it’s important to understand them. One of the most prominent of these from a UX perspective is the anchoring effect.

What Is the Anchoring Effect?

The anchoring effect — also called “anchoring bias” — is the phenomenon where people weigh the first piece of information more heavily than anything that follows. Whenever you see a series of items, you’ll likely view them from the lens of whatever came first. It’s one of the strongest cognitive biases in human decisions, and marketers take full advantage of it.

Think of how stores typically highlight sales prices. They don’t put the discounted amount first. Instead, they often list the larger, original cost before introducing the new, lower one. Because customers see the bigger number first, the difference between the two seems larger — the sale looks like a better deal than if they would see the discounted price first.

How to Use Anchoring Bias in UX

While it’s most familiar as a marketing tactic, you can use the anchoring effect in UX in several ways. Here are some common examples.

Encourage Sales

E-commerce sites and apps can use anchoring bias to generate sales. Whether you’re preparing for Black Friday or trying to move inventory without a price cut, anchors can help.

Use a larger price as the anchor to make any subsequent costs look smaller by comparison. Importantly, you don’t need to discount anything to capitalize on this effect. Listing one of your most expensive items first will make everything else feel cheaper.

Brick-and-mortar stores often employ this tactic by placing big-ticket items like TVs near the entrance. After seeing those prices, everyday items seem affordable, even if customers might think twice about their cost otherwise. Applying the same idea to your e-commerce store can have a significant impact on your sales.

Promote New Features

Alternatively, you could use anchoring to encourage users to try out new app features. The first thing your audience sees will draw the most attention. Putting a link to a recent page on your website or a button to activate a new feature where it’ll appear before anything else will therefore encourage interaction.

Generally speaking, users will focus on the top-left corner of your page first, as this is where they’d start reading in English. Consequently, this is where your anchor should be to draw the most attention.

Putting chatbots, menus or other navigation tools in this corner is a good idea, too. Anchoring your UX in a straightforward way to find what users are after will make your site or app as a whole feel more convenient.

Build a Cohesive Design

Similarly, the anchor effect is a handy way to make your UX a cohesive experience. The key here is to ensure all options or design cues look and work the same way as the first.

When a menu or feature doesn’t follow the same logic as the first one users see, it will feel disjointed. That applies even when most of the design works differently than the first. Because of anchoring bias, it’s less important to ensure things fit in with the majority and more important that the majority matches the anchor.

Save any necessary deviation from the design or functionality for options users will see later. Use the first to set the tone for the rest. This cohesion is crucial because any point of confusion will stop users from completing intended actions, leading to higher bounce rates and churn.

Streamline the User Experience

You can take the same concept further by using anchors to personalize experiences. Many websites and apps adjust to specific visitors’ history. Putting such customizations where users will see them first amplifies their benefits.

Consider how Amazon puts its “Keep shopping” options at the top of the screen. The design anchors customers in their own history. In addition to streamlining the process of continuing where they left off, this emphasizes that Amazon wants to cater to each person’s unique needs.

Personalization is all about making UX more convenient for individual users. Consequently, when you use personalized features as your design’s anchor, you make it as streamlined and easy to use as possible.

When to Avoid Anchoring Bias in UX

As with many design principles, the anchoring effect is something to use with care and consideration. There are times when you should avoid leaning on it or be aware of your own anchoring bias to ensure a better UX.

Deception

The biggest downside to anchoring is that it can be deceptive, depending on how you use it. Making prices seem lower than they are, for example, can feel unfair if taken to extremes. Using anchors to make a countdown timer or loading bar feel faster than it is can similarly deceive users.

Roughly 56% of e-commerce shoppers have lost trust in a brand after encountering design practices they felt were manipulative. Once you lose your audience’s trust, you’ll likely lose their business, too. Money aside, UX should be ethical and inclusive, so you want to avoid deceiving anyone, even unintentionally.

Use anchors as a way to promote items and features or to ensure a smooth, convenient UX. Avoid using them as a way to trick people. As a rule of thumb, if it feels dishonest while you’re designing it, rethink it before publishing.

User Testing

It’s also important to consider anchoring bias when testing your UX. People are more likely to prefer the first design they encounter because it acts as an anchor. Once they get used to the first, subsequent iterations may feel harder to use than they really are, which can hamper reliable results.

The solution here is to perform several rounds of testing, ensuring you provide a different first design each time. Alternatively, you could use multivariate analysis to compare multiple designs simultaneously among separate groups. By giving each segment a different first design, you can offset any biases from anchoring.

Design Iterations

Similarly, be aware of your anchoring’s impact on your own sentiment when designing your UX. It’s easy to become attached to your initial design because your mind weighs it more heavily than later versions. However, this does not necessarily mean subsequent UX iterations aren’t as good.

Once you’re conscious of this effect, you can recognize it and try to approach redesigns more objectively. You can also counteract it by getting feedback from others if you present them with the updated UX before introducing them to the original design.

Use the Anchoring Effect Carefully

The anchoring effect is a powerful tool for UX design once you know how to use it. However, it does not always work in your favor. Learning when it’s beneficial and when it may hinder you is key to capitalizing on its potential.