Building Your Website Toolbox

People expect imagery and text on a website: that’s simple. But how do you push beyond that simplicity, getting the user to engage? Well, engagement is a measure of UX. If your users are engaging, you can be certain they’re having a positive experience on your site. Website engagement tools make the user happier, and can be added with a little creative thinking and a little freedom granted to the designer.

How do you know if a user is engaging?

A happy user can be measured by the following:

• Page click throughs
• Conversions
• Responding to call to actions
• Spending a lot of time on your site
• Downloads
• Shares

Example 1: Interactive Calculator

Rethink Investing is a client of ours. As commercial and residential buyer’s agents, their expertise lies in the real estate market.

They have a Property Investment Calculator on their site, which we think is a great addition because:

• It’s relevant to their industry
• It boosts engagement
• It gives the user a preview of the advice they could get from engaging their services and converting
• It demonstrates their expertise in a free and instantaneous way

You can also add an interactive tool to achieve these goals. To do this, you need to consider the industry you are in, and the nature of the services you offer. Now, how can you offer that service to the user in a smaller way, in a way that still benefits you, is easy to add to the site (a simple form), and while sparking the user’s curiosity enough to have them contact you?

Example 2: Google’s Doodles

Google’s Doodles are a classic example of engagement done well. It is a simple concept, yet it leaves so much room for expansion. It can be used to raise awareness and draw attention to issues, as well as making a statement about the company’s branding and values. Google’s ‘wear a mask’ Doodle is a great example of this.

essica Yu, the Google Doodle Team Lead, said: “Doodles give people the opportunity to connect, online or off, over memories of someone or something that has been meaningful in their lives. Occasionally the Doodle itself will even facilitate connection.”

In short, website engagement tools like the Doodle boost connection and therefore, UX. User experience is all about connection – how connected the user feels to the brand behind your website – the consumer wants to feel spoken to and cared about, rather than sold to.

Example 3: Coloxyl’s Quiz

Quizzes are a great way of engaging the user, especially if your business sells products. One of our clients, Coloxyl, has just launched a new website which our team built. Its homepage includes a quiz to find the right product for the user, while using creative and humorous language which, in itself, is an engagement technique.

Finding ways to engage the user can be a fun and playful process! Let our team get a little creative and see what fun, useful elements your site could have to delight your users. At Vine Digital, we love the fact that the world of UX is so experimental – there’s always room to try out the extraordinary, in the hopes of getting extraordinary results.