Users are exposed to hundreds of microinteractions every time they view your site. From small design elements, like buttons with active states, to more noticeable features, like drop-down menus, nailing these microinteractions is crucial in your efforts to wider user experience (UX) efforts.
However, mastering microinteractions can be tricky if you’re constantly worried about load times and data privacy. As such, you’ll need to ensure that you’ve created an effective, user-friendly site before filling it with loading bars, embedded animations, and pull-to-refresh features.
Testing the efficacy of your microinteractions properly is equally crucial if you want your changes to work. As any change implementer knows, even simple fixes — like embedding linked images — can throw off your design elements and crash your site.
The Value of Microinteractions
Most web developers and change implementers know the value of microinteractions. Subtle changes to your site, like embedding buttons and toggle switches, give your site a refined, polished finish and aid your efforts to keep users on the site for longer. Additional benefits of implementing micro interactions include:
- Creating a positive emotional effect and strengthening brand identity due to smoother UI interactions;
- Increasing data availability and feedback;
- Enhanced ability to guide users toward sales funnels;
- Reduced risk of user error.
Leveraging microinteractions gives you greater control over the user experience, too. You don’t have to fret about viewers leaving the page when they reach the bottom if you include a “Back to Top” function and may reduce your bounce rate by embedding a “Loading” animation on pages with lots of slow-loading content. These quick implementations can meaningfully enhance the efficacy of your current web pages and help you make the most of your existing content.
Examples of Microinteractions
Almost every modern website utilizes microinteractions. However, unless you’re involved in website development, you may find them easy to miss. The small features that most people take for granted are often overlooked by users but meaningfully improve UX efforts nonetheless. Examples of microinteractions you should consider implementing include:
- Typing indicators on messaging apps and portals;
- Error notifications when users input data incorrectly (e.g. invalid email addresses that shake mobile users’ screens);
- Toggle switches and buttons with active states to help users see the impact of their digital interactions;
- Contextual tips when users hover over design elements like entry forms or buttons;
- Visual loading bars when users scroll to the bottom of the displayed content;
- Countdown timers for time-sensitive actions (i.e. shopping carts that empty after a given period).
These design changes are subtle but meaningfully improve the user experience. Many of these design changes are easy to implement, as most enterprise web hosting platforms have inbuilt features that can be dragged and dropped or easily copied into existing code elements.
Embedding microinteractions is particularly useful if you collect data via an Electronic Document Management System (EDMS). The benefits of EDMS are clear — they can easily retrieve digital documentation, improve regulatory compliance, and enhance your document security — however, users regularly input incorrect data into EDMS. Microinteractions, like screens that shake when formatting errors occur, alert users to their mistakes and reduce the risk of
However, as with any changes to a site, these straightforward fixes usually come with a host of mishaps. Proactively attending to these issues before they go live is crucial if you want to roll out a user-friendly, bug-free website.
Mitigating Common Issues
Interactive elements, buttons with active states, and toggle switches greatly enhance the user experience. However, these additions can bog down your site and impact your loading speeds. This slowdown can make bounce rates skyrocket if you fail to account for the needs of users.
While a new set of buttons and digital content may work on your company’s high-speed internet, that doesn’t mean it will work on user’s devices. Failing to account for unreliable internet activity can result in revenue loss, as slow loading speeds undermine the effectiveness of your widgets and may impede revenue-generating user interactions. Poor loading speeds due to slow internet will increase the amount of support tickets that get raised and may dull your competitive edge.
You may also find that installing widgets, buttons, and active-state toggles has unintended consequences for the design of your site. For example, when adding a hover element to your linked photo gallery, you may find that the links unexpectedly become “no-follow” or no longer link to their intended destination. This can be a serious issue if you use images to drive users around your site and can’t afford to miss out on traffic to certain web pages.
Prototyping Your Changes
Before pressing “publish”, be sure to properly prototype all your proposed changes. Product prototyping is easier today than ever before, as you can lean on well-established testing procedures — like clickthrough, high-precision, and logic/code-based prototypes — to spot errors and make tactful changes before users get to see your new website.
As your new series of microinteractions moves closer to going live, consider leveraging the power of user testing when making design changes. User testing innately boosts your website UX, too, as users who are given early access are bound to find errors and poorly designed elements that you’d overlooked.
If you do use user testing, be sure to use a blend of moderated and unmoderated testing. Offering a blend of experiences is key, as you’ll need to retain greater control over testing in the early stages of an update to your website. As the site nears completion, delve into more unmoderated user sessions to see if users can highlight errors and microinteraction mistakes that have escaped your attention.
Conclusion
Mastering microinteractions can meaningfully bolster your UX while enhancing key metrics like bounce rate, time-on-page, and click-through rate. This can be a real boon if you want to direct traffic to certain pages as part of your sales funnel. However, before you publish toggle buttons and images with hover states, be sure to thoroughly test your changes. This will reduce the risk of publishing slow-loading pages with high bounce rates and will protect your site’s brand reputation.
- Mastering Microinteractions: Understanding Their Importance and How to Test Them - October 22, 2024
- Designing with Security in Mind: How Network Protection Enhances User Experience - October 8, 2024
- Customer Loyalty Starts with UX: Key Strategies for Success - August 27, 2024
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