pyramid image of four levels
Your site must be available, be usable, instill confidence and create desire for your users to transact.

Web specialist are on the look out for good solutions that can effectively communicate ideas and information to their audience. Good visual communication is to explain larger ideas into short sample designs, by way of effective graphical solutions, to help users scan information effortlessly - without heavy instruction.

The pyramid (triangle) is a classic symbol for explaining progressive steps from one point to another, volume or weight and hierarchy.

For example, the below statement is an exempt from Andrew Chak's book, Submit Now: Designing Persuasive website, and in the same page is a pyramid graph, the graph demonstrates a series of steps from bottom to top. The illustration below is different then the original in color and line weight.

A Web hierarchy of user needs

Abraham Maslow was a psychologist who proposed that human motivation could be explained by a desire to meet a hierarchy of needs. He suggested that people would be motivated to take care of their basic physiological needs such as food and shelter before they world concern themselves with " higher-level" needs such as being loved or having self esteem.

The same can be said of Web users. They have basic fundamental needs that must be addressed before they can be ready for the higher-level activity of bring willing to transact with a site.

The Web version of the hierarchy of user needs can be described in four levels:

Pause for a moment and think of your own site: Is it readily available? Can people figure out how to navigate through it? Do you provide information, photos, or demos that make people want your product or services? Do you help your users feel confident that they can trust you enough to do business with you online? Do you create a desire within users that prompts them to transact?

Andrew Chak, Submit Now: Designing Persuasive websites