5 Overlooked Web Elements That Make Visitors Love Your Site

The contribution of web design to the success of a website cannot be stated enough. Every aspect of design –from the layout to the logos to the navigation and page transitions – affects user experience on the site in a definitive way. This is probably why web design has been the subject of such intense debate, scrutiny and testing in the age of Web 2.0.

Freely available site optimization tools look for a number of design cues that contribute to a heightened user experience on the site and give recommendations on design modifications based on these template set of design cues.

However, the human site experience goes far beyond machine learning about checkout processes or colors of buttons or even the number of fields in a form. It includes a number of factors that cannot be quantified and standardized into site optimization test templates. These are not typically considered ‘design elements’ in the traditional sense of the term, but it’s essential to include them at the design stage of any website. I would like to call them ‘human factors’ that affect website design.

Let’s take a look at these ‘human factors’ that make a user actually WANT TO linger just a tad bit longer on Site A vis-à-vis Site B.

Personality

There is a certain je ne sais quoi that is an integral part of sites like GetResponse or BaseCamp that make them favorites of users worldwide. It’s not the features or service they provide (thought they DO provide some great service) it’s just the personality of the brand that jumps out at you when you are on these sites. This personality is experienced in very subtle ways – the effective use of smart copywriting, the interplay of copy and images, the tone of voice used across the site and so on.

When designing your website, keep in mind the personality of your brand and what it stands for. Add a dash of that personality in the design of your site to make it resonate with the brand. Leaving out your brand’s personality will give you a cookie cutter site like Disney’s, which while being clean and well designed, does absolutely nothing to bring alive the warm, friendly and wonder-filled personality that Brand Disney stands for.

Gorgeous Images

If pictures speak a thousand words, why not use them to make your site design a little more eloquent? Great images are easy to integrate even if you don’t want to splurge big on designing your site. A mind-blowing example of using just images to describe your product is the Oakley site.

Gorgeous product images take center stage especially for e-commerce sites. Ditch the stock product images that you get from the manufacturer. Use custom images with high resolution zoom capabilities to help your user see exactly what they’re spending their money on. Asos does a fabulous job of blending great product images with videos of the products actually in use!

Microcopy

Another winner in the oft-overlooked design elements category, microcopy adds usability and character to your site in one stroke. What is microcopy you ask? It is those little pieces of innocuous looking text inside form fields, drop down lists, error messaging and so on that pop up when you least expect them.

Mailchimp uses some witty microcopy to put across a simple point. Another reason to love it!

It’s the unexpectedness of discovering microscopy, especially when it is useful and aids in the UX of the site that makes microcopy so delightful to users. Add a touch of whimsy to your site experience with some witty microcopy – I promise you’ll not regret it!

Gamification

Truth be told, we are all kids at heart - give us something fun to do and it does not matter what we were originally doing; we’ll quickly forget everything else and immerse ourselves in the gamified environment we find ourselves in.

Even though we all recognize the potential of gamification, we still see it restricted to apps, tools and learning aids. The gamified elements don’t have to be elaborate, expensive animations. They can be simple reward mechanisms when users perform certain tasks / activities on your site or interesting transitions that take a user to the next level and so on. The element of interaction adds a personal touch to the site and makes the user’s experience that much more memorable.

Play the Hurdles London Olympics Google Doodle game

Google with its interactive doodles is a great example of websites using gamification to drive traffic and engagement. The gamified Google Doodles from the London Olympics saw record numbers of users logging on to Google simply to play and compete with each other, even if they had nothing to search for on the site. A fabulous way to cement brand loyalty and create fans for life!

Outbound Resource Links

Web designers have long been blamed as irresponsible by digital marketers in general and SEO practitioners in particular for their scant regard to findability of pages in comparison to fancy design integrations. SEO teams in most companies go overboard in creating hundreds of inbound links that point towards the website in a bid to boost search rankings of the site.

While this may well happen making the SEO team really happy, what gives true value to the user is the fact that your site does not live in a bubble. It gives outbound links to other informative websites in a bid to offer the best value to users. This is also a good SEO practice in the long run – sites that you link out to will eventually return the favor and make it a win-win situation for everyone concerned.

Two great examples of sites that do not shy away from outbound links are Moz and About; both of which are rewarded by users with high traffic and high brand value. So, don’t be a link hoarder. Spread the love (OK, not to competition, but to non-competing sites).Your users will love it.

In Closing

As always, the devil is in the details. Take the time to figure out what works and what does not work in your site design. Consider the points mentioned here to take your user experience another notch above the ordinary.

In the long run, its sites that pay attention to the little things that win the war for eyeballs and conversions.After all, who would have thought that a simple innovation like 1-Click Payments would make Amazon $2.4 Billion in 2011 alone!