Your website is often the first place customers go for your business or service. In fact, an estimated 97 percent of consumers say that a business’s website influences their buying decision. Conversely, a bad website can hurt your business, as 38 percent of people will stop using your website due to bad design. That’s why your website needs to be user-friendly, fully accessible, and equally important, it must tell a great story.
Storytelling plays a vital role in your website design. Storytelling helps you create engaging user experiences and helps facilitate an emotional connection with your site visitors. Here are a few examples of how storytelling can enhance your website design and help keep your guests engaged.
Can I Have Your Attention, Please?
Everyone loves a great story, and a well-designed story can grab the attention of your visitors. Storytelling includes narratives, images, and interactive components, encouraging visitors to delve deeper into your site.
Emotional Connections
Fostering an emotional connection to your website’s content allows your guests to relate deeply to your product or service. This can increase your brand loyalty and engagement, boosting your conversion rates!
ELMNT client, Tourism Authority of Thailand, is not only informative, but it creates an emotional connection to its content by featuring striking photography and detailed descriptions of the many incredible destinations within Thailand. This content helps travelers form an emotional connection to Thailand, increasing their likelihood of visiting.
Communication is Key
Your brand likely already has a mission and values, but how you convey that message makes all the difference. By telling your story fun and inventively, you will capture your audience’s attention and keep them engaged with your brand.
Enhanced User Experience
The user experience of your website is another essential element to consider. By storytelling, you guide your user through the website in a much more logical and coherent manner.
Using a narrative format makes it easier for your website designer to make your site navigation easier for the user and make the experience of visiting your site more enjoyable.
Brand Personality
Your brand personality is essential to use across all communication platforms, including your website, emails, and social media. Storytelling can showcase your brand’s personality by sharing your business’s mission and values with your users, keeping their connection to your brand.
Twix’s clever “Left TWIX” vs. “Right TWIX” campaign showcases the brand’s cheeky personality while still sharing the brand’s story, as well as offering a seamless user experience including CTAs, a clutter-free page, and easy-to-navigate features.
Improved Information Retention
When it comes to information retention, it’s a numbers game. People are more likely to remember a good story than they are to remember facts or figures. Case in point, you can remember the story of Cinderella a lot easier than you can remember the data above about what percentage of consumers prefer visiting a website before making a purchasing decision.
Calls-To-Action (CTAs)
Your storytelling should have a goal in mind, and for most websites, that story should be a call to action, such as buying our product, using our service, or donating to our cause. Rather than just coming out and sharing your CTA, you can also help show customers why they should choose your business and call them to action with your storytelling.
Stand Out
Telling a compelling story helps your brand stand out in a competitive market. When you use a unique story, you show how your brand differs from your competition.
For example, if you were buying a set of dishes, would you be more likely to remember a random wholesaler’s website or a website like the campy Calamityware website that shares a well-crafted story about the artisans or the manufacturer’s story?
Continued Engagement
Storytelling can help create repeat consumers by keeping them loyal to your brand. When users engage with your site, they want to return for more content, information, and user experiences.
The End
Using storytelling in your website design requires a strong brand story that aligns with the goals of your brand and target audience. It’s up to you and your website design team to determine how to tell that story throughout your website in visuals, content, layout, and interactive portions. This will create an engaging experience for your users.
To learn more about how ELMNTL can help you design a website that puts your story front and center, don’t hesitate to contact the web design team at ELMNTL today.
