Interactive Design Services: Guided Experiences That Help Visitors Decide

Interactive Design Helps Manage Information

Does your website work like a grocery store where all the cereal, milk, bread, coffee, and mini-cupcakes you are looking for are there but packed together on a single aisle? Yes, you can find what you are looking for . . . eventually. But who wants such frustration, confusion, and increased hunger pangs?

Most businesses and organizations are not lacking information for their visitors. There are FAQs and white papers and resource libraries and product pages. That’s all great. But what is too often missing is a bit of directed guidance.

Too often we assume that our visitors are simply looking for answers when what they really want are answers dripping with certainty. They want to know which product fits their exact needs, where to find help, a price, the next steps to take. Your website may have the answers, but does it provide the confidence that an assembled group of answers provides? 

Interactive design solves this problem. Instead of getting a bundle of information and asking them to sort it out, a website armed with interactive design gently guides your visitor toward the answers with guided workflows, quizzes, interactive maps, and calculators to glean what their real goal is and provide it wrapped nicely with a bow. Interactive design can help transform your website into a decision-making tool rather than a massive digital filing cabinet.

A visitor whose itch is scratched promptly through a pleasant experience is going to return more often, convert, and be loyal.

Calculators Turn Complexity into Clarity

Consider the humble calculator. Your visitors think in terms of outcomes. What does it cost? How much are they going to save? Does this investment make sense?

Tuition?

Comparing different price options.

What is the impact of my contribution at level A or at level B+?

Static content is fine, but a calculator turns general information into a personalized answer. Instead of searching for information or making them do the mental math, a calculator provides instant clarity and builds confidence, which in turn drives their actions forward.

Guided Workflows Remove Guesswork

Rather than expecting your visitors to understand your organization (especially first-timers!), you can adapt to them, their needs, preferences, and goals. 

Your audiences have different needs. For instance, a healthcare provider will offer many different services. An association will have different membership categories. Your local government agency will have programs with different eligibility requirements. A manufacturer could offer hundreds of very different products.

And visitors often don’t know exactly where to begin. And confusion or frustration are not the friends of a smooth, satisfying process that leads them to a desired outcome.

Maude isn’t looking for pediatrics; she wants geriatrics. Bobby is a newly minted engineer, and so his membership needs are different from Stan, the senior guy. The Smiths have needs from the government agency but aren’t sure if they are eligible. Katie is looking for one very specific replacement product for her dishwasher and doesn’t want to wander through an online catalog looking for it.

A guided workflow can break up the logjam of links and content and help reduce decision-making into fewer and more manageable steps.

You can stop asking your visitors to understand you and help adapt your website to their needs.

The result is a better experience and a much shorter path to a conversion.

Quizzes Create Personalized Experiences

The idea of a quiz is that it helps visitors identify their needs, helps them compare options, and even offers tailored recommendations.

A dating site obviously has a lot of factors to try to match up. But the same matching game can be used for other businesses.

A good quiz provides immediate value as visitors aren’t just consuming information but applying curated information to their specific situation. And the organization gains valuable insights into common needs, interests, and priorities, thus helping to create better quizzes and more directed answers.

Your visitor gets valuable guidance, and you get a more qualified lead.

A good quiz will pose the questions your visitors are asking themselves:

Which of these product choices is right for my situation?

What level of service do I need?

Do I qualify now, or what steps do I need to qualify?

Interactive Maps Help Users Find Answers Faster

When your visitor is ready to “map” you, an interactive map can replace multiple steps at a moment of potential conversion.

Where is the nearest dentist, shoe store, insurance agency?

They don’t want an address that they have to compare to their own. They don’t want a list or a directory. They want a map of the 10 restaurants near them, for example, with a glowing taco representing the closest ones.

This convenience at a moment of decision-making can make all the difference between a loyal customer and someone you’ll never hear from again. 

Progressive Disclosure Reduces Overwhelm

One of the most missed truths related to the digital experience is that people can only process so much information at once. While you may want to answer every question that can come up, the reality is that this often creates a wall of content that few will choose to climb.

The idea of progressive disclosure is that information is offered gradually as visitors unveil their specific interests. Like in a conversation, there is a flow of back and forth rather than a downloading of all possible details in the first run-on sentence.

An effective website will work in the same way, and by presenting information at the appropriate moment, you reduce the mental load on your user and help them focus on one decision at a time.

Other Great Tools

Configurators allow visitors to customize products or services.

• Build your computer
• Customize your vehicle
• Select software modules that fit the project

Comparison Tools help visitors evaluate alternatives side-by-side.

• Compare membership levels
• Compare pricing plans
• Compare product features

Interactive Infographics provide information that changes based on user interaction.

• Hover-over statistics
• Clickable timelines
• Interactive process diagrams

Better Guidance Creates Better Outcomes

Professionally designed interactive experiences save time, increase understanding, improve visitor confidence, minimize friction, and help guide your visitors toward a decision.

And this is why your website exists, right?

Where the goal is a purchase, a donation, a registration, an application, or an appointment, every ultimate conversion requires a decision.

And the easier you make the process, the more likely a decision will be made and much more quickly.

Organizations that are persuaded by this are moving away from content-heavy experiences and toward guidance-directed ones.

They know that visitors do not need more information; they need help in understanding what information matters to them!

The Future of Web Design Is Guided Decision-Making through Interactive Design Services

The days of just publishing more content are over. Content is needed, but more is not the answer. Your visitors want their problems solved, their questions answered, and to have a pleasant and straightforward path while doing so.

Successful websites do not just hold the answers; they provide guided direction to those answers.

Behind the results of a happy visitor is the hard work of mapping user journeys, understanding your conversion goals, and determining what decisions your visitors need to make.

The New Target interactive design team uses journey mapping and user testing to create interactive experiences that guide your users, reduce their frustrations, and encourage desired actions.

The tools we use are all designed with a purpose: to help your visitors move quickly and confidently from exploration to conversion. Contact us.