User involvement: a set of exercises to increase conversion
Between the person who you like and the site that you are interested in, there are much less differences than you would expect.
To deal with this, let's remember how we communicate with other people in the real world.
There are three tools with which we interact with others (depending on how close they are to us and how close communication interests us):
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In the same way, using the same methods, we “develop relationships” with the site.
Here we need to understand an important thing: everything with which we can somehow communicate (that is, receive some feedback in response to our actions) subconsciously equates us to another living being with a similar way of thinking. Hence the habit of conducting philosophical conversations with an inoperative device, hence the urge of our ancestors to give a human face to natural and physical phenomena, hence even smiles.
After all, it is much easier to find a common language with another person than with an unknown soulless thing, right?
Returning to our communication tools: it all starts with evaluating external data. When applied to the web, this is a general impression of the appearance of the page; special attention is paid to illustrations.
The answer to the following questions will help us to display the overall impression of the site :
It is desirable that a group of five to ten people answer these questions. And it should not be the project developers, because during the work on the site they probably managed toplunge into the depths of delirium to learn how what works, even if it works against logic.
The most common errors on the pages:
For illustrations, there are at least two opposing points of view .
The first declared war "boring illustrations." Representatives of this direction as a visual rhyme for the concept of "business automation" may well choose pineapple. Because it is not banal, beautiful and tasty, which means it causes positive associations. Isn't that what we need to get a better product?
The point of view of the second side is as follows: the visual must be logically linked to all the other material on the page.
Here you can quote from the web dogma of the company “FatDUX” , evangelists usability:
Anything that is irrelevant must be eliminated.
Anything that is not directly related to the page content should be removed.
That is, the moral right to use photos of cute puppies on the main page appears to the designer only if the site sells puppies, or if the dogs are the company’s mascot.
My position is an arithmetic average between the two approaches: the connection between the illustrations and everything else should be, with what it should exist not only on the emotional plane. A good example is the illustrations, where the picture is a complete, thoughtful image that evokes associations of both emotional and logical character.
For example:
You can watch it on adme.ru under the heading "Wholesale Prints" .
And now - the most interesting. Let's talk about specific tools for communication with the user through a visual.
Number 1 on the list is the human face . Photos of people (and even their stylized images) have natural magnetism, representing a seductive visual anchor. Regardless of whether the face is beautiful or not, we will catch hold of him with our eyes and spend some time studying. It even works on babies and monkeys!
If you submit a resume with a photo, there is a greater likelihood that it will be considered. If you sell yogurt, which has a happy white-toothed family on its label, this will be at least one of the factors why people buy it: people subconsciously try to buy not only the product (yogurt), but the attributes that surround it (happiness, strong family, health, beauty).
Moreover, having a person's face in the zone of attention, we are more open to the perception of new information. We crave connection with other people.
That is why it is very important to carefully select a photo, because shades of facial expressions can cause not quite the result we expected. For example, a playfully smiling secretary on a page with contact information may cause the feeling that the office is not serious enough. But the same picture on the 404 page can brighten up the loneliness of the lost user, especially if it is accompanied by a simple, and maybe even an ingenious, instruction for further actions.
Not exactly a secretary, but also lepot - 404 on zeldman.com:
Further in our arsenal of illustration of the type was / has become .
Everyone remembers from childhood pictures “find 10 differences”? Such a visual has two advantages: a playful form of perception and a striking effect between the past, the dull, and the present, the improved.
So we came to another attention management tool: an unexpected visual .
Note Bene: "unexpected" does not mean "illogical." Here we are talking more about things
The task in this case is to cause bright, strong emotions, or curiosity. It is on this tool that the fans of the “non-traditional” visual most often travel.
Jacob Nielsen assures : users do not read. They are browsing.
Typical page browsing patterns are the letters E (attentive user), G (fast user) or F (this browsing scheme is most common).
Typical behavior in this case: the user looks at one or two top lines, then goes down a little lower and looks at a couple more lines, this time reaching about their middle. Then his gaze moves vertically, snatching words from the left side of the text column.
How can we use it?
We all love concrete numbers and countable expressions. Most are how much? About 60% is better, and even better - 63%.
Try to use simple phrases, avoid decapital turns and do not talk to unfamiliar uncles.
... Yes, and with aunts, too, is not worth it. The text on the site should be designed for your target audience . So, if you have just read the Encyclopedic Reference Guide of the head of the enterprise, and your Central Asia are young mothers, keep your great knowledge secret until a more suitable project.
I will not now delve into the topic of good copywriting, just tell me what to read for a general understanding of the issue:
David Ogilvy "About Advertising"
Joe Vitale "Hypnotic Advertising Texts"
Alan and Barbara Pease "Language of Writing"
To create effective methods of working with text, we focus on:
An extremely successful example is dirty.ru with their personalized phrases.
System messages that the user can customize for himself is also a big deal.
For example, the authorization message on diary.ru greets the author in a pleasant way.
Touch, a sense of space and its position in it - one of the main elephants on which stands our perception. And therefore, one of the basic needs. This is a thing that calms us down and gives us confidence: everything is in order, we know where we are and imagine where to go next.
On the Internet, we do not have the opportunity to lean on the plate or touch the buttons of the order form.
So what to do with it?
Same as always: create a feeling that the Internet space is subject to the laws of the physical world, and introduce a certain system of landmarks by which the user can determine his position on the site.
Three principles will help us in this:
Do not forget to allocate objects on the page with attributes of objects from the real world, for example:
Remember, your task is to simulate reality, not simple, but comfortable .
To deal with this, let's remember how we communicate with other people in the real world.
There are three tools with which we interact with others (depending on how close they are to us and how close communication interests us):
')
- eye contact
- verbal contact,
- physical contact.
In the same way, using the same methods, we “develop relationships” with the site.
Here we need to understand an important thing: everything with which we can somehow communicate (that is, receive some feedback in response to our actions) subconsciously equates us to another living being with a similar way of thinking. Hence the habit of conducting philosophical conversations with an inoperative device, hence the urge of our ancestors to give a human face to natural and physical phenomena, hence even smiles.
After all, it is much easier to find a common language with another person than with an unknown soulless thing, right?
Eye contact
Returning to our communication tools: it all starts with evaluating external data. When applied to the web, this is a general impression of the appearance of the page; special attention is paid to illustrations.
The answer to the following questions will help us to display the overall impression of the site :
- What do we see first?
- What is the most important thing on the page? Attention! The answer to this question must be the same as the previous one; if it doesn't match, you have a bad place somewhere.
- Is there anything distracting or confusing?
- Where do we think we should go next?
It is desirable that a group of five to ten people answer these questions. And it should not be the project developers, because during the work on the site they probably managed to
The most common errors on the pages:
- excess of links
- non-obvious or unusual names (“search” or “quick search” instead of “search”),
- too many variegations (with an optimal number of anchors on the screen - 3),
- poor navigation or lack of it.
For illustrations, there are at least two opposing points of view .
The first declared war "boring illustrations." Representatives of this direction as a visual rhyme for the concept of "business automation" may well choose pineapple. Because it is not banal, beautiful and tasty, which means it causes positive associations. Isn't that what we need to get a better product?
The point of view of the second side is as follows: the visual must be logically linked to all the other material on the page.
Here you can quote from the web dogma of the company “FatDUX” , evangelists usability:
Anything that is irrelevant must be eliminated.
Anything that is not directly related to the page content should be removed.
That is, the moral right to use photos of cute puppies on the main page appears to the designer only if the site sells puppies, or if the dogs are the company’s mascot.
My position is an arithmetic average between the two approaches: the connection between the illustrations and everything else should be, with what it should exist not only on the emotional plane. A good example is the illustrations, where the picture is a complete, thoughtful image that evokes associations of both emotional and logical character.
For example:
You can watch it on adme.ru under the heading "Wholesale Prints" .
And now - the most interesting. Let's talk about specific tools for communication with the user through a visual.
Number 1 on the list is the human face . Photos of people (and even their stylized images) have natural magnetism, representing a seductive visual anchor. Regardless of whether the face is beautiful or not, we will catch hold of him with our eyes and spend some time studying. It even works on babies and monkeys!
If you submit a resume with a photo, there is a greater likelihood that it will be considered. If you sell yogurt, which has a happy white-toothed family on its label, this will be at least one of the factors why people buy it: people subconsciously try to buy not only the product (yogurt), but the attributes that surround it (happiness, strong family, health, beauty).
Moreover, having a person's face in the zone of attention, we are more open to the perception of new information. We crave connection with other people.
That is why it is very important to carefully select a photo, because shades of facial expressions can cause not quite the result we expected. For example, a playfully smiling secretary on a page with contact information may cause the feeling that the office is not serious enough. But the same picture on the 404 page can brighten up the loneliness of the lost user, especially if it is accompanied by a simple, and maybe even an ingenious, instruction for further actions.
Not exactly a secretary, but also lepot - 404 on zeldman.com:
Further in our arsenal of illustration of the type was / has become .
Everyone remembers from childhood pictures “find 10 differences”? Such a visual has two advantages: a playful form of perception and a striking effect between the past, the dull, and the present, the improved.
So we came to another attention management tool: an unexpected visual .
Note Bene: "unexpected" does not mean "illogical." Here we are talking more about things
- which we rarely see,
- which we did not expect to see in specific conditions,
- which are shocking,
- ... or very cute.
The task in this case is to cause bright, strong emotions, or curiosity. It is on this tool that the fans of the “non-traditional” visual most often travel.
Verbal contact
Jacob Nielsen assures : users do not read. They are browsing.
Typical page browsing patterns are the letters E (attentive user), G (fast user) or F (this browsing scheme is most common).
Typical behavior in this case: the user looks at one or two top lines, then goes down a little lower and looks at a couple more lines, this time reaching about their middle. Then his gaze moves vertically, snatching words from the left side of the text column.
How can we use it?
- Place the most important information in the top lines.
- Avoid long texts. The more lines, the less likelihood that they will be read.
- Begin paragraphs with good abstracts, so they are more likely to be read.
- If the “sheets” cannot be avoided and you need to draw attention to something inside the text, make sure that the user's gaze stumbles over something. A good solution may be, for example, lists.
We all love concrete numbers and countable expressions. Most are how much? About 60% is better, and even better - 63%.
Try to use simple phrases, avoid decapital turns and do not talk to unfamiliar uncles.
... Yes, and with aunts, too, is not worth it. The text on the site should be designed for your target audience . So, if you have just read the Encyclopedic Reference Guide of the head of the enterprise, and your Central Asia are young mothers, keep your great knowledge secret until a more suitable project.
I will not now delve into the topic of good copywriting, just tell me what to read for a general understanding of the issue:
David Ogilvy "About Advertising"
Joe Vitale "Hypnotic Advertising Texts"
Alan and Barbara Pease "Language of Writing"
To create effective methods of working with text, we focus on:
- Attention. The user likes to be the center of attention. Or more carefully: he loves being cared for.
- Friendliness. People prefer to communicate with other people, not technology; love to see your name (or nickname).
An extremely successful example is dirty.ru with their personalized phrases.
System messages that the user can customize for himself is also a big deal.
For example, the authorization message on diary.ru greets the author in a pleasant way.
Physical contact
Touch, a sense of space and its position in it - one of the main elephants on which stands our perception. And therefore, one of the basic needs. This is a thing that calms us down and gives us confidence: everything is in order, we know where we are and imagine where to go next.
On the Internet, we do not have the opportunity to lean on the plate or touch the buttons of the order form.
So what to do with it?
Same as always: create a feeling that the Internet space is subject to the laws of the physical world, and introduce a certain system of landmarks by which the user can determine his position on the site.
Three principles will help us in this:
- Interactivity. All elements that you can interact with must have states.
- Informativeness . There should not be extra items. If it is possible to remove some element without harming the information content of the page, then it must be removed.
- Intuitiveness There should be no elements that could mean something else.
Do not forget to allocate objects on the page with attributes of objects from the real world, for example:
- textures on the buttons and plates, through which it seems that the element is made of some material;
- reflections on adjacent surfaces from an object that appears to be glass;
- the ability to change shape, size or position depending on what you do with it.
Remember, your task is to simulate reality, not simple, but comfortable .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/119732/
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