The Art of Attraction

Much to my enjoyment, my six year old daughter has grown to love animals of all kinds. While so far, I’ve been successful in avoiding another addition to our busy household, we’ve settled on evenings of National Geographic together.

Our last television encounter tracked a white wolf on its quest for survival in Northern Canada. This cage match featured, the big bad wolf against a lowly mother duck and her four ducklings. While I was fully expecting to see roasted duck, mother had a clever and somewhat manipulative strategy. By pretending to have a broken wing, she misled her attacker into thinking he could upsize his meal. In an Oscar winning performance of which Denzel would be proud, she furiously flapped her wings allowing her predator to swim just close enough. In the meantime, her ducklings hid in the water side weeds up river. Frustrations grew, the wolf realized this was a lost cause, he gave up and forgot all about the ducklings. One little frown turned upside down in our living room.

The point is -  she directed him where she wanted him to go.

When designing websites, we can often post all of our company history, services and bios with no real direction pointing the user where we want them to click. Every bit of content we include is there for a reason and likely important. Homepages are filled with photos, videos and information all yelling, “Click Me.” We need to separate what is secondary and what is truly important. Focus on those key items, highlight them and encourage your user to click. Online stores should focus on things like Buy Now. Blog entries should have social media share buttons readily available. When education of a product is misunderstood, highlight your more information button. Discover what advantage you have over your competition and design headers to subtly inform customers why you are superior. Break up long sections of content with line breaks, photos, pull quotes and most importantly a button at the bottom to direct them forward with your service.

The secondary items can still be available on your site, but not in a manner where they distract the user from doing what you want them to do.

DO

• Include many calls to action throughout your site to initiate a response
• Use highlight colours or size of objects to catch the user’s eye and help them move to the next step
• Add share buttons to your blogs encouraging users to post what they’ve read and increasing your exposure exponentially.
• Simplify it. Your response forms should contain as little information as possible. The more information you require, the less likely they are to continue.
• Post monthly blogs. Give your users a reason to come back. Your social media feeds something to talk about and as a bonus boosting your Google rankings in the process.
• On Mobile sites and apps, make it easy for your users to contact you while on the move. Put a large call button on the top of each page.
• A use my location button can be an advantage to give users relevant info to their present location.

DON’T

• Don’t try and highlight everything. By adding flashing lights to all items on the page, we end up highlighting nothing. If every item is bold, then we’ve defeated the purpose.
• Don't buy a template that was designed without your best interests in mind.
• Don't try to set the mood with your personal mp3 playlist. Many users don't want sound and may leave promptly.

The internet is a playground of on demand information that never closes. Statistics teach us that we have less than 3 seconds to establish who we are and what we can offer. It’s a new playground and we’re all learning how best to communicate efficiently. If a duck can come up with an against all odds and on the spot plan to get what she wanted, I think we can too.