Enhance user interaction experience with "social design" as the center

Social media should be an important part of the user experience, and many sites are randomly added to a Web page as an appendage. How to make better use of social media in product design to improve the user experience and thus win higher business value? Headscape founder Paul Boag , the UK web design company, posted a blog post on the issue,Social Media is a part Of the User experience, CSDN compiled the article as follows:

In general, we all classify social media as the work of market personnel. Indeed, social media is not our area of responsibility-we build sites, but we don't participate in marketing activities. Is this really a reasonable view? is social media really the responsibility of some other people?

In my opinion, social media is what we should pay attention to. Because social media is part of the user experience, we are user experience designers. The user experience does not just happen in a single channel (such as a website or a Facebook page). Users switch across multiple channels, and all of these channels should have a unified user experience.

At this point, we have failed to integrate various channels of communication with the user. Although most social media are good at driving the flow of the site, few sites get the same level of revenue from it.

As Web designers, when we think about social media, we just add a "share" button to the bottom of each page, but there is little transcendence.

Beyond "sharing"

Recently, I have subscribed to some travel insurance for my future trip. When filling out the form online, I found a "Share this page" button. Why do users share this travel insurance form? Even if they share, will their friends see it? Of course not.

Will users share this travel insurance policy?

The problem here is that this "sharing" option is randomly applied throughout the site. Without considering its true purpose. Obviously, this may be due to technical limitations. But if it is easier to implement technically, there is no reason to compromise on the user experience.

Now compare it to a Web site I visited previously on the environment. I read a blog post in the environment website and I was surprised to find a fact:

"According to EU guidelines, only 5.6 million urban residents living in China are breathing safe air," he said. ”

This is a piece of information that is worth sharing, and the author is aware of it. Instead of being buried in words, the author highlights the content. Add an option directly below this quote to make it easy to share with my Facebook friends.

Particularity It is identified as something special and worth sharing, without placing a general "share of the page" button.

Easy to share. Consistent with Steve Krug's book, Don t make me, the site tells users what to share and makes the sharing process simple-just click the button.

This is the idea that we should apply it to the "sharing" link. Of course, we need to focus not only on these links, but also on the "focus on US" button.

Why should I care about you?

In addition, generally related to the "Attention us" button, many well-designed sites seem to have abandoned these user interface design principles.

Take an E-commerce website for example. I want to buy a digital SLR camera, but when I came to this site, I first saw the "Watch us on Facebook" button. This button is based on the brand style of Facebook, not the design style of the site, and it doesn't seem to fit here.

Sometimes the "focus on US" icon may distract the user from the main task

In my opinion, this button here is a disturbing factor. I came to this site to buy a camera, not to pay attention to the sellers on Facebook. This "Call for action" distracts me from the task and also disrupts the commercial purpose of making the site profitable.

Finally I finished the purchase and saw a "continue to buy" option on the final "Thank You for purchase" page. Who's going to click on this link again? Why do I keep buying? I just finished buying, why should I start again?

This unnecessary link should not appear, and it is time for the user to "focus on us". I have reached my goal and the site has also achieved major commercial goals. So now is the perfect opportunity for the second "Call for action".

If you give me a proper reason to focus on them, this "request" will become very powerful. There are a lot of celebrities, famous brands and so on, please I pay attention to them, why should I pay attention to this E-commerce site? What can you bring to my attention?

Do not simply ask the user to "focus on us", should be slightly modified, such as:

"For more advice on the use of new cameras, please pay attention to us." ”

That way I might be more inclined to focus on them.

In addition to the "focus on us" and "sharing" button, there is no lack of good ways to help us link the site to social media. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn provide powerful APIs, and they also offer gadgets that are easy to use.

Beyond "sharing" and "attention"

The perfect use of social media on our website does not have the technical challenges and the high cost. All the major social media are trying to make this easier.

For example, the @anywhere services provided by Twitter provide a range of capabilities for our web site, which require no technical capabilities. Includes the following feature options:

Automatically converts the user name of Twitter on the website to a link;

Provide a floating box to display the user's information;

Tweets that come directly from your site;

Insert a tweet into your site that is the same as the tweet you will insert in the YouTube video.

Twitter offers a number of ways to integrate with your site. My favorite is Twitte's floating card.

Facebook offers more easily implemented social plug-ins, including:

A comment system controlled by Facebook;

An active feed that allows users to see what their friends are doing on your site;

Recommended Plug-ins, for the page on your site, to provide users with the personalized suggestions they may like;

Live Stream, in the on-site activities, users can always share comments on your site;

Register Plug-ins to allow users to easily log on to your site using their Facebook account.

Many tools tend to integrate multiple social media rather than one

With so many tools available to help us increase our social functions, we have no reason to use them. Adding these basic tools to our site is just the beginning. I think the real role of social media has only just begun.

Social design

On Facebook, they have a saying called "Social design." It's a sign of their job responsibilities: to take socialization as the core of whatever it is doing. For them, their Web services are focused not only on the content of the user, but also on the interaction between users.

I think this principle applies not only to social networking sites, but also to other types of websites. We are all social animals. Many of our actions and decisions often depend on others. This is well understood in the market area and we should focus on web design.

When we consider whether to buy or buy a car, where to go for a meal, and where to send our children to school, we all like to ask for a friend's advice first.

On the line too, we are social creatures. When buying a product on Amazon, we pay more attention to comments than the official description of the product. Similarly, when we see that many people have done "call for action" before, we will do the same.

When it starts selling, we pay more attention to the user's comments than the promotional information.

The exploration of the social parts of human nature has only just begun. For example, although it would be nice to provide users with comments from other buyers, it would be better to have a trusted friend (for example, a friend on Facebook) at the top of the comment. A comment from a stranger is one thing, and a comment from a friend is another.

Remember that Web site I mentioned above about the environment? It would be great if I were allowed to share that particular reference with my friends. But if the share button below prompts some of my friends to share this reference with their social network, I would be more than happy to share the link. I believe in my friend's judgment. If they share this quote, it must be worth sharing.

If I see one of my friends sharing a Twitter message, I'm more likely to do the same thing.

Some websites have started to use our circle of friends. Etsy, for example, is a company that sells handmade products. Through its website, you can login to Facebook. It will recommend the right products to your friends based on their hobbies. Although the recommendation is not perfect, it is already powerful for a broad range of recommendations for "gifts for him" and "gifts for her".

Etsy uses Facebook to recommend gifts for your friends.

Lenovo for a moment, if Etsy not stay here. Use Facebook's data to determine the difference between the products they sell. This information can be used not only to improve the user experience, but also to recommend future products. Social design has the potential to change the direction of the entire business.

This is not limited to e-commerce sites. Sites like smashing Magazine can also use the reader's tweets and comments to show the article's focus. You can even ask users to make recommendations directly to articles, products, or new services they want. Traditionally, such readership research and product development are often costly. But the ability of social media to provide such feedback is free.

As you begin to see, social networking sites not only allow us to use our circle of friends, but also have the ability to do more things. To achieve this, however, we need to integrate social integration into the entire Web site architecture, instead of just placing it as a later addition.

The problems of social media as appendages

Many sites are simply using social networks at random, without a co-ordinated design. Every time a new social technology emerges, we will place it on our website without a global plan.

Take my website for example. Like many other websites, the site has been improved over the years to add a lot of social-networking features. On this site you can:

Comment on a blog post;

Post forum posts.

Enter the Facebook page;

Communicate with me through Twitter;

I can even comment on the audio articles I post.

With so many options, no one has any reason to complain that this is not a social networking site. But the problem with the site is that the content is too fragmented--people who post on Twitter can't see other people's blogs posted on Facebook. Similarly, readers commenting on my blog will not be able to see more in-depth comments on the article in the Forum.

This is because I have only used the technology and not integrated it into the community to create a more complete community. Imagine, from the beginning, I didn't have the idea of social networking in web design. Instead, every time I post a New Boven, the system can create a discussion post in the forum. Comments about the blog post will also appear in the forum, and vice versa.

Similarly, when posting a blog post, it will also be posted to Twitter and Facebook. If someone replies to either of these two social networking sites, the reply will be crawled and present in the comments on the site. It's not perfect (for example, Twitter users still can't see comments from Facebook users who don't have access to the site). But it has taken a big step forward.

The role of the Web site

This is the main point I want to tell you. Your site should be a social hub, not an outsider. It has the potential to integrate communication content from multiple social media to allow users to interact with their friends, whether buying a camera or sharing a special reference.

Original from: Smashing Magazine

Article Source: csdn.net