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‍Tips on How to Use Micro-Interactions to Get Ahead of your Competitors

Website Design

UX can be an effective brand differentiator, providing a compelling reason why a user would choose to engage with you and your products over others. Make sure you set yourself apart from the crowd by delivering an outstanding user experience to your customers.

What Are Micro-Interactions?

Micro-interactions are the elements of your West Palm Beach web design that enable users to accomplish a single task or inform them that the task has been successfully completed.

They aim to delight users by making the tiniest interactions into memorable and fun moments. They also make these interactions feel natural and intuitive, simplifying how people engage with your app or website.

Overall, micro-interactions humanize a user’s experience with your brand. They effectively communicate your brand identity while establishing a connection with the user.  

As a result, customers feel a positive association with your brand.  

Common Examples of Micro-Interactions

  • Call-to-action buttons, such as ‘Book Now’, ‘Confirm Order’, ‘Buy Now’
  • Notifications to remind users about products in their cart
  • Button animations that move when hovered on or tapped
  • Animated text inputs that allow you to zoom while filling out fields

Why Are Micro-Interactions Essential for a Positive User Experience?

User happy about a business' web design in west palm beach.

Micro-interactions contribute to the overall look and feel of your web design in West Palm Beach. They convey your brand identity and beliefs, so the more they interact with your site, the more they can recognize you in an instant.  

Micro-interactions create an enjoyable and functional experience because they:

  • Encourage users to engage. By communicating that your system needs further details to accomplish a task, you encourage users to continue engaging with your site or app and input the necessary information.  
  • Let users know what’s happening. Users like to know what’s going on, especially if they’re doing the right things. By displaying a system status, you can let users know that the system is working on a task. Communicating these things helps prevent confusion and frustration.  
  • Communicates who you are and what you believe in. Just like the content you put out and your copywriting, your micro-interactions also have a tone of voice. If your brand personality is fun then your micro-interactions should also embody this by using bright, colorful animations.  

What Are Micro-Interactions Composed of?

Micro-interactions are comprised of four parts:

Triggers

Triggers are events that begin a micro-interaction. They can be broken down into two groups: manual triggers and system triggers. Manual triggers are user-initiated. They occur when a user intentionally interacts with a website or app.  

Examples of this are:

  • scrolling down the product page
  • tapping to book a cab
  • clicking on a button to make a payment

System-generated triggers, on the other hand, are automatic, only occurring when certain conditions are met. An example of this is when you hear an alert whenever you input the wrong password.

Rules

Rules are parameters that determine what happens when a user executes a certain task. Micro-interactions follow these tasks and respond accordingly. For example, on Tinder, whenever a user swipes right, it means they're interested in that person and the system matches them together.  

As users continually interact with your app or website, they soon get used to these rules. This can make the rules feel intuitive and comfortable.  

Feedback

Feedback is when the system verifies a user’s action through visual, auditory, or haptic cues. This encourages users to proceed in engaging with your website or app. An example of feedback is a progress bar of a download to inform you that the system is working on it.  

Loop or Modes

Loop or modes determine if a micro-interaction should repeat or change, depending on the way things function or operate. For example, changing your mobile setting into night mode. Another example is how eCommerce websites change "Buy Now" to "Buy Another" to get users to buy more. It's a way to get users to re-engage with you.  

How to Use Micro-Interactions

Not everything a user does on your website or app requires a micro-interaction. If you use them all the time, they can be annoying and disrupt the user experience.  

That’s why it’s important to know when and where to use them so you can elevate the overall experience you provide users.  

Here are some tips on how to use them effectively on your site or app:

  1. Standby Mode

Micro-interactions can help you communicate to users that your system is on standby and needs further input to accomplish the task they want to do. This enables you to prompt users to continue interacting with your site or app. Standby mode is especially important for new users, who may not understand when they’ve provided enough input.

  1. Inform Progress

Modern users don’t have the patience to wait around unless you effectively communicate that the system is making progress on a task. By showing users a liner or circular progress indicators, you’re keeping users from abandoning your product while they’re waiting for something to occur.  

  1. Undo Actions

It’s common for people to click things by accident. Because of this, you need to provide a way for people to undo errors and continue doing the task they want to do. You can use micro-interactions to communicate that they made an error and that they have the option to undo it.  

  1. Avoid Rework

Nobody wants to go back to square one after making a small error. To avoid rework, use micro-interactions to let users know their errors and what they can do to correct them. For example, in the account creation process, it's important that you indicate what the password should be composed of to meet all field requirements. If you don't tell users this, they'll never know and will end up getting frustrated.

  1. Embody your Brand

Your micro-interactions should mirror your brand. If your brand is professional and reliable, then you wouldn’t want to use comical figures in your micro-interactions. Something more sophisticated and serious would be suitable.  

Micro-Interaction Best Practices to Follow

To successfully incorporate micro-interactions into your web design in West Palm Beach and use it to strengthen the user experience, there are a couple of best practices you should follow:

Don’t Overdo It

Micro-interactions are supposed to make the user journey delightful. But, if you use them too often, they can distract users and might even annoy them in the process. Use them thoughtfully to elevate the user experience.  

Consider Whether the Micro-Interaction Is Necessary

Some micro-interactions are common and expected. For instance, you won’t have to think too hard about adding a scrollbar. However, if you’re adding less typical micro-interactions, it’s worth considering both:

  • Whether it’s necessary for improving user experience.
  • Where the micro-interaction can be placed to provide the biggest benefit.

Put Micro-Interactions for Controls

A good user experience allows users to control various elements, including:

  • Volume
  • Brightness
  • Whether or not a background video is playing

If you have these on your site, make sure to add micro-interactions, like animations or audio, to make these small moments more meaningful.  

This volume control micro-interaction by Nick Buturishvili is a great example.

Volume control micro-interaction.

Provide an Area for Feedback

Your website should have an area where users have some form of access to you. This can be the comment section on your blog posts or a form they can fill out to message and reach out to you.  

Make sure you add micro-interactions to make these engagements more memorable.  

Examples of these are:

  • animated emojis
  • balloons flying on screen every time you send "happy birthday”
  • a zoom sound every time a user successfully sends a message

Confirm a Process

Every process needs some form of confirmation to urge users to proceed to the next step or to let them know that they've done their task.  

If they can’t tell whether they were able to add a product to their cart or share a blog post on social media, they might get confused.

Use Loader Animation for Loading Screens

If your website takes more than two seconds to load, consider implementing a loader animation to make the waiting process more engaging. This also helps reduce your bounce rate because it informs users that your page is loading.    

Animate Your Notifications

Do you have special promos or announcements? Get them to click on your notification by animating it!  

Check out this example from dribble.  

dribble animated notification.

Use Burger Menus

Since mobile devices offer limited space compared to desktops, it's best to use a hamburger menu to tuck a ton of options away from a user's screen. Keeping their screens clean allows them to focus on what's important. Plus, a hamburger menu allows your visitors to move back and forth between pages without getting lost on your site.  

Provide Automatic Search Animation

Searching for products on your site doesn't have to be boring. Surprise users by using animation that predicts possible searches.

Visualize User Input

Inform users if the information they typed in is wrong and be specific about the error. This is very crucial, especially if they're trying to log in to their account.  

It’s also important that they can view the data they input onto your site, especially when they’re filling out their contact information or credit card info. This helps build trust and creates a feeling that your site is reliable.  

Animate Your Call-to-Action

Create a fun and engaging conversion experience by animating your call-to-action button.  

These small visual cues or animations help draw the attention of users and encourage them to take action.  

Take Your User Experience to The Next Level with Micro-Interactions!

At Digital Resource, our web design team in West Palm Beach will work with you to create a functional and aesthetically pleasing website that helps you achieve both marketing and business goals.  

Contact us today to spice up your site and take your business to greater heights!

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