Dazzle Your Users With Slick Web Animations & Interactive Games
Transitions, animations and games can create engagement. But they must be implemented with a solid understanding of your audience, and without damaging user experience.
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Transitions, animations and games can create engagement. But they must be implemented with a solid understanding of your audience, and without damaging user experience.
I will keep this week’s issue brief. If you have kids you’ll be enjoying the magic that comes around when Santa and his elves do.
Want to track Santa on his journey? Then you’ll be wanting to use Google’s Santa Tracker. Google has really upped their game this year and delivered a web experience that provides more fun for adults and kids to explore up until the big day when you can then track the big man on his travels.
When you visit the homepage and simply scroll, they’ve invested time in slick visual design, but also the animation of Santa’s workshop and the elves at work.
This alone is enough to start your creative juices flowing for January.
There are a host of games to play and interactive features, including Santa Selfie, Elf Maker, Elf Ski, and Wrap Battle (like a dance-off). They also have an international translator which they’ve smartly used Google translate for, with some added festive animations to make it relevant.
Although the design is inspiring and creative, I felt the user experience on the website was less well executed in places. It is a bit busy and the elements blend in with their surroundings too much. It can potentially cause confusion over what is a game and what is just an illustration or standard design element.
The navigation items are visual but don’t necessarily explain what they are and what you can expect when you click on them. I thought this was bizarre as they take a while to load, and if you weren’t happy with your selection, you’d have to go through the wait again.
But this is just me being a scrooge.
The key thing to take away today is inspiration, igniting your creative flame. Perhaps with the added understanding of the need to strike a balance between animations and user experience, to get it right for your brand.
The games provide a simple way of creating engagement. Could a game be introduced to your website to keep users around a bit longer? Could the game also incorporate a call to action?
Although there are some good takeaways here for page transitions and animations, we have to remember that this is Google, and they have considerably larger budgets than most.
Alongside that, understanding your audience is vital. Page animations and games like those just looked at won’t work for every type of audience, and might just irritate B2B customers in a lead generation environment.
So I will leave you with one final thing. Visit the Santa Tracker website for fun. Play the games and share with your kids if you have them, but also your team if you’re still in the office or working today.
That’s a wrap for Swipe & Deploy #23. Join me next week when I’ll share another insight or piece of inspiration from around the web.
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