Flow,Web,Design,The,important, DIY Flow in Web Design

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;mso-style-noshow:yes;mso-style-parent:"";mso-padding-alt:0in When starting a new work at home business it is very easy to become consumed by it. We spend so much time trying to get the business up and running that we may end up becoming burned out and lose our motivation. There is so much to learn and

The important thing to understandabout flow as a mental concept is that the way it works is universal butdifferent individuals feel and perceive it in different ways and situations.Some types of flow can be experienced by almost anyone (the plot pacing in amovie or the design in your website) but flow can also be a more personalexperience such as writing a good passage of text in quick succession for acopywriter or hitting every note perfect while playing piano.  The concept of flow was firstintroduced (academically) by a psychologist named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Hesaid there is a state of concentration that can be achieved when attention,motivation and situation are all optimised which come together to result in alarge amount of productive effort. The concept of flow is very similar tomodern sayings such as “in the zone” or “on a roll”.  Getting people into this mentalstate on a website you are designing is important as it will allow the user tolook at your entire site and pick up whatever information you are offering andlead to a more likely conversion whether that be a sale, enquiry or justlasting visit. Putting flow inside web design isall about making things as easy as possible for a visitor or potential customerand this can be looked at in several ways, goals, efficiency, feedback anddiscovery. Goals The first concept of goals iscritically important for all websites and especially for retail. The flow ofyour site should take your user through relevant information and to your goalso deciding what that is should be your first step. After you have decided thisyou need to set up smaller goals for the user on each page. This could besomething as simple as choosing whether to tick a box or as complicated asentering their payment details as long as the goal is clear the flow will bemaintained. Be sure to choose the correctcopy for instructions, it should be clear what the person has to do but itseasy to come off as sarcastic or condescending when giving orders so make it asfriendly as possible. Also I recommend you keep a steady style throughout yourcopy instead of dotting in and out of formality. Efficiency Efficiency is also very importantin a sites design. Incorporating basic navigation and optimising your sitesperformance will keep users from becoming bored with menial tasks such as clickthrough and looking for the right page. As you may already know it’s wise tominimise the pages a user has to go through to complete the goal, modern webusers get bored and click away very quickly if they have to go through 10 pagesof terms before they even start a task. A good example of efficiency in apage is expandable sections for people to read. Many modern websites use suchfunctions (including Firebox and Dixons). These enable you to have theinformation ready for an interested user to view but hidden from a user who isnot bothered. They could be customer reviews, related accessories, externallinks or related pages on your site.  Navigation should also beoptimised for efficiency. Tajke a look at Amazon and Play’s sites. They have amassive amount of products and category pages yet they manage to successfullyclassify it into sectors and sub categories all of which look the same so userswill know where to look immediately.  Feedback It’s important for someone’s flowthat they are encouraged, reassured and informed of their situation and successat reaching goals.  If you neglect to provide a userwith feedback at some point they will begin to loose interest as the goal nolonger seems relevant. The best way to give feedback to a user is to keep themup-to-date on their progress. A great example of this is percentage completioncounters on video games. Very often when saving or loading a game you will beinformed of how many % you have currently completed, very effective as a focusindividual will always aim for 100%. You can do the same thing with forms onyour site. Discovery Once a user has achieved the goalsyou have set them via maximum efficiency then they are going to want new goalsand information or again their concentration and flow will be broken. This hasbecome a well targeting area in web 2.0 and many sites have product orinformation boxes contain “related products” or “latest news about this tag”. You must have new content forusers to find and interact with or you will see negative effects on returningvisitors and your site will eventually dry out. Conclusion There is a lot of work involvedin designing for flow but it’s a compulsory step in your design process. Thebest test you can do is to see how fast someone who has not been involved witha site build how easy it is to navigate or what the goals of each specific pageare. If they give you positive feedback it’s likely your site is accessible ina flow type way.