Interactive web design can dramatically ramp up the ecommerce customer experience. A recent study by Mediafly found that dynamic websites with interactive features saw 52.6% more user interaction than static content. Static content is viewed for an average of 8.5 minutes, compared to 13 minutes for interactive content. When you create websites with interactive experiences like personalized product recommendations, virtual try-ons, and quizzes, customers stay onsite longer, which helps your bottom line.
Learn how interactive elements might benefit your online business, and ways to implement interactive content into your site.
Why are interactive ecommerce websites important?
When an ecommerce site has interactive elements, the user gets a value-added browsing experience: The website is fun to use, making them more likely to stick around, browse, and buy, which ultimately benefits the merchant. For example, quizzes are popular and encourage sharing, making them a fun add-on for site visitors and a referral tool for businesses.
Creatinginteractive features—like virtual try-on tools, quizzes, live chat, and personalized recommendations—can lead to more customer engagement, lower bounce rates, and increased conversion rates. The more interesting and engaging the interactive content is, the more likely users are to share the website element on social media.
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Ways to make ecommerce websites interactive
Interactive website design is all about creating opportunities for visitors to engage with your brand. Not every element or page will require interaction to succeed, but adding interactive elements here and there will make an otherwise static site more dynamic. Consider implementing a few of these different types of interactive content in your strategy:
Animation
Animations are fun to watch and naturally draw attention, which can make otherwise idle time spent on the website feel more valuable to the user. Take loading times, for instance. When a web page is loading, users get impatient. To keep them from bouncing, you can add a loading animation to the page or an animated pointer. The animation might show the loading progress in real time, which can reduce the perceived loading time.
Hover animations that change when a user hovers on a button or other element can also be useful. The interactive element grows, shrinks, or changes color. It’s a subtle form of animation, but it captures just enough attention to reassure the customer that the site is actively responding to their gestures.
Video
Videos are even more captivating elements than animations. However, they also take longer to load, so make sure videos are optimized. A video loop in the background of the hero section at the top of your company’s web page can not only establish brand personality but also showcase products in action and represent happy customers in your target demographic. You can add other videos to demonstrate how to use products, adding value to the browsing experience.
Dynamic scrolling
Scrolling a web page can move along two axes: horizontal or vertical. Everyone is familiar with simple vertical scrolling, but these other dynamic scrolling patterns offer intrigue for visitors:
- Horizontal scrolling. Space savers, horizontal scrolling patterns reveal content beyond the window border. Users are enticed to browse left or right to see what they may be missing, which is especially important on mobile devices where space is at a premium. Kwok Yin Mak’s designer portfolio website is a great example of horizontal scrolling and eye-popping animation effects.
- Infinite scrolling. Infinite scroll invites users to keep scrolling vertically as if there’s no page bottom. The visitor knows there’s more, and they want to see what will come up.
- Parallax scrolling. Parallax scrolling is a technique borrowed from video games, where the webpage achieves the illusion of depth. As the user scrolls, other interactive elements move at a different speed, which tricks the eye into perceiving a three-dimensional effect. Parallax makes the website feel more alive and responsive, which nudges further engagement with the site content.
Carousels
Want to boost engagement and make navigation easier? Add user-friendly carousels to showcase multiple products or promotions in a single region. Visitors cycle through different product images or product categories. They are great for featured products, new arrivals, seasonal offers, and even testimonials. Carousels are mobile-friendly, too. They adapt well to different screen sizes and devices.
Chat
Add a live chat or conversational AI feature to let users interact with your business in real time, answer questions, and personalize customer support. By offering immediate assistance, you can gain loyalty with your customers. Consider implementing a live chat app like Tidio or Gorgias to integrate this feature into your store.
Quizzes and surveys
Quizzes and surveys are popular because the user learns something about their own preferences. For example, at Champo, a hair care company, visitors are invited to engage in a hair personality quiz to learn which Champo care regime is right for them. At the conclusion of the quiz, the customer’s hair personality is shared, with options to learn more about the profile and browse the associated product category.
Infographics
Infographics, which are visual representations of data, take information that would be stale in textual or numeric form and give it a makeover. The visual display of colorful diagrams and charts adds punch and sizzle to the message. Use them to explain complex product features, compare product options, and feature customer testimonials. You can make the infographics more interactive by adding clickable regions inside the graphic or sliders to show product comparisons conveniently.
Social media integrations
Connecting an ecommerce store with popular social media platforms nurtures community engagement and user-generated content (UGC), bringing more traffic and referrals back to the website. It’s nice to have a sign-in process where customers can log in with social media credentials. You can add sharing buttons to products and other areas, and show social media reviews and shoutouts, which affirm brand credibility. A blog post, for example, would present a perfect opportunity for social sharing buttons.
Examples of engaging interactive sites
These website examples highlight how interactivity is useful for building engagement on ecommerce websites:
Meow Meow Tweet
Meow Meow Tweet sells ethical and natural personal care products with a personalized, quirky touch. Browse the homepage and note the hover effects such as animated line art over menu selections, and menus that fade in as they pop out. A horizontal text crawl promotes active sales and specials. Below the fold is a video loop that shows happy customers using Meow Meow Tweet products. These moving parts make the site feel much less static.
Source: Meow Meow Tweet
Cheekbone Beauty
Cheekbone demonstrates how interactivity doesn’t have to be super flashy to be effective. Subtle motion graphic effects like fade-ins and animated hot spots on product images keep visitors focused on the content. A carousel lets users browse featured products. At the bottom of the home page is another carousel with social media testimonials, and the multi-pencil shade match quiz invites users to engage and enter the sales funnel.
Source: Cheekbone Beauty
WP Standard
WP Standard’s website immediately pulls customers in with an evocative video loop of old-fashioned film stock. A “Shop New Arrivals” call-to-action button is superimposed on the video, making good use of screen real estate and inviting a point of entry into the catalog. Scroll down the page to find more subtle interactive design features like product carousels and zoom effects on images.
Source: WP Standard
Camille Brinch
Camille Brinch, a jewelry merchant, adds interactivity using video content and clever hover effects. Hover over a necklace product card, and the image flips to a model wearing the necklace, so you can see how it looks. Vertical scrolling keeps users on the edge of their seats, as the product-focused layout grid is mixed with striking videos like glossy magazine ads come to life.
Source: Camille Brinch
Manitobah Mukluks
Manitobah Mukluks uses video on half of the screen, so it doesn’t dominate the hero region. The left side is reserved for featured products and call-to-action buttons—a best of both worlds, if you will. Notice how well-matched the video content is to the brand.
Source: Manitobah Mukluks
How to make an interactive website FAQ
How do you build an interactive website?
Web design of an interactive site combines coding knowledge and creative design, using web development frameworks like React or Angular to create dynamic user interfaces. Building blocks like JavaScript and HTML5 can be used for interactive elements such as animations, sliders, and forms, or you can go with a no-code website builder that also allows editing of HTML.
What makes some web pages interactive?
Interactive web pages have dynamic elements for users, such as clickable buttons, forms, sliders, animation effects, videos, quizzes, personalization features, and other forms of enticing content. By responding to user engagement, interactive websites give customers reasons to stick around.
What is the difference between a website and an interactive website?
The difference depends on the website’s purpose. A traditional website is a group of static web pages whose mission is to provide information or services. An interactive website goes further, encouraging users to get more involved with accessible features like links, forms, quizzes, and live chat.
