A clever, interactive website design is crucial in the hyper-competitive online market of today.
Basic, static business websites were passable when the internet was still budding. These days, there is simply no excuse for a poorly designed website. And business will suffer if this isn’t done right.
Java, Flash, HTML5, and other interactive script environments have become the standard. Sites with these features are more appealing and easier to use.
If you’re lagging behind with a web 2.0 style website, you’re losing visitors to the competition. It’s time to do something about it.
Responsive, dynamic websites are a necessity. This article will show you how and why.
What is Interactive Website Design?
Interactive websites are ones that incorporate an element of interaction in the user experience. This is achieved with the help of scripts and software that create an interactive page environment.
It simplifies the visitor’s use of the website and facilitates more active and increase engaged interaction with the site.
Let’s imagine an example.
A good weather forecast website has interactive maps and charts. You can choose regions and dates for the forecast. Perhaps you can zoom in and out, choose temperature scales, enable and disable various data.
Compare this to a static page, where the user would be met with a static picture instead.
Interactive website design is more attractive to visitors. The content is always up to date, it looks better, and it’s easier to use.
Websites without interactive design tend to look boring and unprofessional. Potential customers often leave before long, and find an interactive competitor website.
Reduce Bounce Rates
The term “bounce rate” refers to how many users come to your website and leave before doing anything.
A high bounce rate doesn’t just mean missed opportunities. It can have a negative impact on your search rankings too.
High bounce rates indicate that your website is lacking something. It doesn’t engage the visitor, doesn’t provide the information they want fast enough. Or it’s just uninviting or hard to use in general.
A steady stream of high-quality website content is an important part of SEO and website success. But design plays a big role too.
First impressions are crucial to prominence in the oversaturated online market of today. With average attention spans of 10-30 seconds, you need to deliver quality upfront. In a neat package.
Your design must grab your customer’s attention right away and allow them to get what they want with a few clicks or taps.
Interactive website design offers scrolling information bars, dynamic menus, animations, and more. These elements make your site pleasing to the eye and easy to use.
Improve Communication
Consumer communication is where interactive web design really excels. Interactive sites can bring your users closer to the site and company. It’s a more direct interaction.
The back-and-forth exchange makes for a better user experience. It can also make things easier for anyone tasked with customer interactions.
Interactive communication solutions include things such as:
- Live chat channels
- User forums
- Integrated e-mail and shortcuts
- Support forms
- 24-hour service on call
- Surveys
- Polls
These solutions bring your visitors closer to you. It makes them more connected to your website. It sends a strong message that you care about their experiences and opinions.
It’s a great way to increase customer satisfaction. This factor is crucial in the modern competitive market. Reliable customer loyalty isn’t common anymore. With so many promising options available, people always look for a better candidate.
Providing users with free, open communication channels will build trust and loyalty over time. This keeps them on the site longer and tends to yield better reviews. All of this improves your SEO rankings.
It’s not just a one-way street. You can use these channels to send out important messages and calls to action.
More importantly, you can learn a lot about your customers. Every poll, survey, review, and forum post can give you very useful information. It’s most useful kind of feedback. It’s organic and detailed, and you can get the exact answers you seek.
You’ll discover the most common problems and wishes. From there, you’ll have a good idea of what you should change and how. This can boost your success a whole lot.
And it won’t cost you anything to conduct a poll or survey. You can monitor your success in real-time and find the best solutions to please and entice your audience.
That’s how you develop a loyal crowd who come back for more.
For more information on this concept, check out drydenlabs website development.
Customer Engagement
An interactive website has a different feel to it than a static website. It’s engaging, stimulating, and feels less mechanical.
Instead of feeling like an anonymous visitor out of thousands, it feels like you’re interacting. People engage and provide information. In the typical scenario, by creating an account.
Their preferences and usage patterns provide you with useful information. The more you can interpret and adapt to this, the better their experience will be.
In addition to this, the time and privacy they’ve invested constitute a “micro-commitment” toward you. Psychological studies have shown that this makes repeated visits more likely.
Personalization
The better you know your visitors, the more you can help them. The more you help them, the better the interaction.
You can show them the most relevant services, products, ads, and information. Instead of throwing random stuff in every direction, you send each piece of content to where it will be best received. Where it’s wanted.
It’s a win-win situation. Visitors see what they’re more interested in, so they’re more likely to take preferable action.
This is most important for marketing. As long as the personal recommendations are relevant, the users benefit a lot as well. This makes them more likely to keep visiting your website.
Being able to customize their experience of the site adds another layer of personalization. Only interactive website design can achieve this. This makes the interaction more enjoyable, and more likely to inspire repeated business.
Understand and Adapt
Among the biggest advantages of collecting user data via interactive website design is better decision-making.
You can analyze the data to find out things such as:
- Who’s your typical customer
- How different types of visitors differ
- What gets the most attention
- Where they found your website
- How updates are received
- What path visitors take through the site
There are many more things you can discover, depending on your needs.
One big advantage of this is the ability to test a new idea on one group of users while leaving things as usual for the rest. This lets you measure results without unnecessary risk.
Data collected via interactive website design is much more useful than conventional marketing research. The data is more real and organic, it’s direct information from the real individuals who use your site.
This data is more reliable since it shows what people actually do. Not what they claim they’d do.
Bringing It All Together
Interactive website design can enhance your SEO in a myriad of ways. From improving your website’s appearance and functionality to getting more information and positive reviews.
In this day and age, subpar web design is no longer acceptable if you want to stay relevant.
If you want to learn more about web design and SEO, check out our blog.