Interesting Website Design: attracting users to enhance website stickiness

As a Web designer and developer, each project we design has specific goals and needs. But at the same time, there is a common goal, that is, to impress users and make them hard to forget. An interesting experience can often bring pleasant feelings to people, but pleasant feelings are often unforgettable. Therefore, to design an impressive website, adding interesting elements is one of the design methods.

Jeremy Girard posted A "A Fun Approach To Creating More Successful Websites" on Smashing Magazine, which illustrates A series of Successful Websites that use interesting elements, it has achieved great success-it has moved the user's mind and left a deep impression on the user. CSDN has compiled the document, the content of which is as follows:

　From The Fun Theory website

Some time ago, I received a link to The Fun Theory website (a project invested by Volkswagen ). The website uses a competition as its main content to encourage users to redesign or think about what they encounter in their daily lives-and to add some interesting content to it. Design Works Should be interesting enough to attract more people to use them conveniently.

Among the many videos published on the internet, I like a video named "Piano Staircase. In this video, the design object is a stairway in the subway. There is an elevator next to the stair. As we expected, most people usually use the elevator during the round-trip, instead of patronizing the stairs.

　　

 

The Fun Theory website

One night, after the subway station was closed, the elevator turned into a huge piano key, which was accompanied by music. The next day, when a pedestrian passes through the station again, they were attracted by this huge piano stair. Many people preferred to try the piano and gave up using the elevator. As a matter of fact, after the stairs were re-designed, they increased by more than 66% of users-a surprising growth value.

　Adding some fun to our website

After watching this video, I first thought of how we can use the experience of the above success stories as a Web design professional to make our work more fun.

By adding fun to create a pleasant user experience, the user will not only be happy to use and be impressed, but also share the experience with others.

　First, define the fun

It is not recommended to make your website a circus (unless your customer is a circus) to make your website interesting ). It is only recommended that you add some interesting elements and Interactions during the design process to help websites provide users with a pleasant experience over a long period of time, it is easier to remember.

"Fun" does not mean "Naive ". You can add a pleasant user experience for your product, but it should not make your customers look naive and unprofessional.

Next we can look at some successful Web sites to see how they use "fun" to create a pleasant and unforgettable experience for users.

　Improve the fun of a single regular page

Almost all websites are composed of many webpages. Select a specific webpage or experience (such as "About Us" or "Contact Us") to make it more interesting and impress users, this normal page will stand out from this website.

Take the "About Us" Page mentioned above as an example. Mutant Labs is a British design and development company. The "About US" page on the company's website is not only interesting, but also has some personalized elements. As long as you move the mouse over a team member, the corresponding member jumps out to make a "Signboard" action. This makes the original boring company profile very interesting.

　　

 

Mutant Labs's "About US" Page

What about the "Contact Us" Page? English Workshop is an organizational unit that provides English language learning opportunities. The website designs the pages that provide feedback into the control panel style of the machine to try to better fit the theme of the Workshop.

　　

 

English Workshop's "Contact Us" Page

Find some ways to add some fun to the ordinary pages on the website that want to provide special experience, which will bring an unforgettable and unique impression to the visitors of the website.

Add fun to the 404 error page

For most pages, another special page is "404 error. Adding new and personalized elements on this page can help you dispel the user's frustration caused by this page. Many interesting instance pages can be seen in Smashing Magazine's previous articles.

In addition to the above, a good "404 error" Page should also contain links to key pages, which should be most accessible to users. By precisely locating these pages, users will give you a smile and easily return valuable content they want.

　　

 

404 error page in Pumpkin-King.com website

Add interest to search engines

Google is famous for its search engine. It often adds interesting things to search results, which is an important part of Google's experience.

First, Google's Logo will become an odd "graffiti" on a special day ". These graffiti include simple graphics and user interaction content, such as a toy game and a simulated guitar designed to greet the legendary guitar Les Paul. There are also a large number of words and terms that can only be searched on Google. You can see more interesting designs on this page ".

This interesting design added by Google produces good results because it does not conflict with other service experiences provided by Google. This is the key to adding fun to the project-ensuring that it does not interfere with the purpose and main characteristics of the site.

　Accurately grasp the degree of interest

One of the challenges of adding interest to a website is that it can be used very well. Adding fun appropriately can create a website that is impressive. However, over-emphasizing fun is often counterproductive and users will be overwhelmed by such exaggeration. In fact, in many cases, such exaggeration in website and trademark design is also useful.

CaptainDash.com uses interesting illustrations and interactions on the entire website, including an interesting library-like layer on the "What We Solve" page. This experience is interesting, unique, and personalized. However, it is difficult to tell exactly what the website is doing after a long time on the Internet. So for interesting experiences, this is one of the potential traps-your website must be able to quickly answer users' most basic questions: What is the company doing.

　　

 

What We Solve page on CaptainDash.com

Meomi.com is another well-designed and interesting website. When you move your website, there will be a lot of interesting design elements on this webpage to interact with you. What I like most about this website is that no matter how complicated it is, I can still quickly see what it is. At the top of the website, there is a very striking slogan: A small design room that focuses on and plays, has fun and beautiful things.

　　

 

Meomi.com page

Over-emphasizing fun on websites poses certain risks. However, if you do it right, you will also receive good results-from beginning to end, creating a pleasant and memorable experience.

　Fun will deepen users' memories of website content

A good design can well support the overall content and purpose of the website. Therefore, we should try to create an unforgettable experience through some interesting methods and make the content more memorable.

The website of the Converge Conference claims that it will "perform layer-by-layer anatomy to study the relationships between design, development, and market personnel ". This website shows an electronic Tyrannosaurus Rex. When you scroll down this page, an interesting experience begins. This dinosaur is always shown from the bottom, but its performance gradually changes and fits well with the theme of "layer-by-layer anatomy" of the website, which also deepens your understanding of the content of the webpage.

　　

 

Converge conference website

The Seamco website said they had built a "workflow line for efficient loading and packaging of liquid items ". The website expresses this content through a wonderful animation that imitates the efficient bottle loading process line. From the top (starting with a bottle) to the bottom (eventually a large truck quickly ships packed goods), the website shows this process line, which is rich, interesting, and impressive.

　　

 

Seamco website

Increase website interest through storytelling

Another way for users to quickly obtain website content is to tell stories-this is an interesting way to ensure that your "story" is impressive.

The promotion site of the Combine Conference uses the "US core zone" of India to tell us an interesting story ...... A farm machine is working in the field, and a huge corn is being injected with a large amount of radioactive material. In the middle of the page, this radioactive corn begins to crash wildly ......

　　

 

Combine Conference promotion website

Another success story is to detail the "Sharing cars with Bright Future" website. By using the left and right arrow keys on the keyboard, you can "Drive" the cars on the website to view all the "scenery" and learn more about "shared cars. In this way, you can access a large number of contents. By clicking on relevant content, you can learn more. All the information on the website is displayed in a wonderful way of interaction.

　　

 

Some websites cannot add interesting elements. Is that true?

When I told Web designers to add interesting elements to their websites, they always refuted the fact that the projects they were doing could not be interesting.

Yes, it is really difficult to make some projects interesting. However, if some websites use the principles used in the above case, they will be more successful.

SlaveryFootprint.org is a "helping users imagine how they fell into the status of modern slaves ". This website does not seem suitable for containing interesting content. But when you access this page and select the "What" Arrow, you will start the experience journey. Scroll down the page, color and animated hand illustrations to bring out corresponding content blocks, telling users about the relevant content. The content finally ends with the prompt "take the survey, the "take the survey" page also uses this interactive method-transforming a simple form of web page into an impressive and effective experience.

　　

 

SlaveryFootprint.org page

Another good case is the Dangers of Fracking website. You can log on to the website to learn how it expresses a serious topic online.

　　

 

Dangers of Fracking website

There are indeed many websites that involve sensitive topics and it is difficult to add interesting elements to them. However, as demonstrated in the previous two cases, you can learn from the solutions used by other websites without compromising the seriousness and importance of website content, creates an impressive experience.

　Emotion-centric design

Aaron Walter elaborated on the benefits (and potential traps) of Emotional Design in his famous book "Designing for Emotion ). This book has designed a series of emotional designs, including trust, Hope, surprise, happiness, and even love. At the same time, I have cited many examples to express these emotions by adding interesting elements.

　　

 

There is a wonderful appeal in this book, which calls for us to add some emotional design when creating a Web experience:

"We designed an availability interface as if we had a ready meal. Of course, we all want to eat foods that are both edible and nutritious. But we will also pursue a good taste. When we can make the interface both available and satisfactory, why is it only available ?"

As a Web professional, we should design and develop unforgettable experiences and interfaces. Whether you use Photshop to design a new design or HTML and CSS development pages, I hope you can learn from the experience in the case mentioned in this article. Do you want to design an amazing and unforgettable experience? Try the following small suggestion:

Enjoy it.