Everywhere you look online there are little boxes. Square adverts meet you every hour of the day and pictures are frequently framed in rectangles. Meanwhile, blog posts are often in boxed frames and when you type into a comment box, it usually is a box. It is as though web designers only have the ability to draw straight lines.

And when you go into a shop, you’ll see products in boxes. Shelves are full of things in square packaging. It all makes sense, of course, because squared packaging is easier to distribute and display on shelves. Online, getting rounded corners can require some clever “tricks” with CSS and HTML and so for most of us it is simply easier and less time consuming to present things in squares and rectangles.

But there is a problem with boxes and rectangles. We don’t like them much. We much prefer things which have rounded corners.

New research suggests that when we see things which are square, we don’t like them as much as when they are rounded. So, that implies when designing your website you should use rounded corners for those call to action items and rounded corners for your adverts. In that way you will get more clicks and more sales. Square is so square, you know.

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