The doorway effect is a fascinating psychological phenomenon where walking through a doorway can cause us to forget what we were thinking about or what we intended to do. This effect demonstrates how our brain separates experiences into distinct events, with doorways serving as event boundaries.
When we move from one room to another, our brain processes this as a context shift and creates what researchers call an “event boundary” in our memory. This boundary marking essentially tells our brain that one event has ended and another is beginning. During this transition, information from the previous “event” becomes less immediately accessible as our brain prepares to process new information in the new space.
The relationship to short-term memory is particularly interesting. Our working memory, which holds active thoughts and intentions, has limited capacity. When we cross a doorway, the brain’s event segmentation mechanism appears to partially flush this working memory buffer, making room for new information relevant to the new environment. This is why we might walk into a room and suddenly forget why we went there in the first place.
I reckon these same principles apply when we are online: skipping from one place to another and being “called” to download some material or register our interest on a contact form.
Just as physical doorways create event boundaries in our memory, clicking through to a new webpage can create a similar cognitive boundary that disrupts our working memory and original intentions.
In the context of landing pages and form completions, this could present itself in several ways:
When we click an ad or call-to-action button, we experience a context shift as we move from our original environment (social media, search results, email) to the landing page. This digital “doorway” transition could trigger the same memory-clearing effect as walking through a physical door, potentially making us forget their initial motivation for clicking.
This effect might be amplified by factors like:
- Page load time creating a delay between environments – minimised by faster loading web pages
- Visual design differences between the source and landing page creating a switch in context – mitigated by having consistent design layouts between the two locations.
- New information on the landing page competing for our mental bandwidth – reduced by reminding us on the contact page of the proposition which caused us to act. Additionally, keeping us updated of progress (“you’re just one step away from…..”) would also be useful.
- The mental effort required to process a new layout and form fields – keep distractions and competing information down to a minimum.
I’m definitely not an expert in understanding why many of us leave contact pages before filling out forms and downloading information. My intuition, however, tells me that just sometimes it’s because we forget why we are there and who brought us to that place.
“There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors.” – Jim Morrison, front man of The Doors.
Thank you for reading.
Author: Richard Bull-Domican, founder of New Era Financial Introductions, a B2B lead generation consultancy with over twenty years of experience. The perspectives shared here come from two decades in the field; not theory, but practice.
I create small, digestible guides on Gumroad for business owners who hate aggressive tactics and prefer relationship-led approaches. New resources are added regularly. For longer reads on lead generation and the human side of sales, follow me on Medium and join the daily conversation on LinkedIn.
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