THE POWER OF WEBSITE STORYTELLING
Storytelling has been part of human culture for as long as we have existed. The stories of our ancestors were passed down from generation to generation for millennia and in more recent times the advances in technology and the development of printing, cinema, and the internet have enabled us to take storytelling to another level. Storytelling is an integral part of any brand’s outreach. If it is incorporated successfully into a website it can help you form a deeper connection with your customers by telling your brand’s story.
How Can Storytelling Enhance Your Website?
Some company owners are yet to realize the benefits storytelling can bring. They assume that as long as their website has a simple-to-navigate and smooth design that should suffice, and they do not see the reason to incorporate storytelling into their development strategy. We work with Atlanta business owners to boost their website design and development.
The main benefit of storytelling is that it turns your website into an ambassador for your brand. The website is no longer merely a place to manage sales transactions; it helps your customers understand how your company can enhance their lives and how you and they together can contribute to the betterment of the world. Storytelling provides an impactful immersive experience that fosters brand loyalty. It encourages your audience to spend more time on your website and ultimately to make a purchase as a way of showing support for your brand.
However, sharing stories through your website has its own idiosyncrasies, so here is what you need to know to do it effectively.
Visual Storytelling.
Visual storytelling utilizes various visual elements to create a coherent narrative that reinforces the image you want to project. It is crucial because visual elements are the most eye-catching parts of your web design and they create the first impression. This is why every good web designer makes sure to choose an appealing color palette and use images that complement the message of the brand. RankTrust offers beautiful web design services in Atlanta, to discuss your options contact us today!
Overall, the visual components you need to be aware of are photos, infographics, illustrations, and background colors.
Website visitors will react to each of these elements in a different way, so it is a web designer’s responsibility to use each of them in an appropriate way to maximize the impact.
Content Storytelling.
Content storytelling involves the use of on-site copy on all of your web pages and marketing materials. Clear and precise web copy is the basis for effective web design and it is crucial for effectively delivering your message to your audience.
Storytelling can really unfurl through text; this is where you tell your audience about your vision, your company’s values, and the brand’s mission. Additional information about your brand’s history, overcoming obstacles, and how you arrived at where you stand now can help you bond with your audience even further.
When it comes to the text on the landing page the “less is more” approach is recommended since the website might be viewed on different devices of various sizes. But you still need to provide concise information about your company in a way that will encourage the reader to investigate further.
Most of the time people search for websites because they have a problem that needs solving, and if they visit your website do not miss your chance to tell them why your company is the perfect solution they’ve been looking for. Since a person chose to click on your website they’ve already had a hunch that your company might be what they were looking for; it is now your job to confirm this assumption by presenting them with various blogs, case studies, white papers, etc. At RankTrust we take website design and development in Atlanta to the next level, so your customers feel comfortable choosing you.
Video Storytelling.
Video storytelling is another powerful way to influence your audience with the use of various types of video content. Viewers are naturally drawn to video content and it can make an impression that is much stronger than what you can achieve through simple images.
While creating videos is a bit more time-consuming the return on investment is greater. Videos help keep visitors on your website for longer and they also break down complex topics making them easier to understand.
Let’s take for example Nike’s “Until we all win” campaign that features multiple short videos of customers sharing their journeys. These stories share with the viewers the company’s commitment to social change and their determination to provide high-quality products to empower people to achieve their goals.
And do not be intimidated by Nike’s name, you do not need to have this giant’s production budget to create impactful videos. Nowadays, with the advances in technology, it is easier than ever to create and upload videos that can spread your brand’s message.
Design Storytelling.
This type of storytelling provides visitors with implicit information about your company by using triggers, layout, animations, etc. “Show, don’t tell” is the underlying principle of design storytelling which engages users on a subliminal level and encourages them to explore your brand’s story.
The layout of your website is particularly noteworthy when it comes to design storytelling. A simple layout featuring compelling images accompanied by strategically placed blocks of text can be very effective. A good layout involves presenting various aspects of your company in an easy-to-consume pattern so that the visitor can navigate through them with ease and focus on the offerings that interest them the most. The website design team here in Atlanta can make it so your website is user friendly and easy to use.
Websites can even invite visitors to become a part of the brand’s story. You can place a call to action on your landing page encouraging visitors to enhance your services and improve the user experience by providing feedback.
All of this increases your chances of engaging your audience and converting them from mere visitors into paying customers.
Embedding Storytelling into Webpages to Improve Engagement.
The ultimate goal of website storytelling is to create a cohesive and coherent narrative that the visitors of your website can identify with. To accomplish this you need to masterfully combine multiple web design elements so that none of them seems out of place.
Since the landing page is the first thing the website visitors see when they click on the link this is where storytelling has to begin. Before you start designing the landing page ask yourself several important questions such as “what is the story I want to share with the world”, “which elements of storytelling can best convey my message”, “do all parts of my story fir harmoniously with one another”. And remember, the more time you put into the storytelling the better the engagement will be so it is definitely worth your time.
The Ultimate Glossary of Web Design Terms
Alignment – Alignment denotes how you position the elements such as photos, text, etc. in your web design. The elements are aligned in relation to the page itself and in relation to one another (for instance the paragraph is aligned to the margins)
Analogous Colors – A color wheel is a circular chart of various colors and how they interact with one another, and the analogous colors are the pairs of colors that are placed adjacent to each other on this wheel.
Ascender – Lowercase letters have ascenders; this is the part of the letter that extends upwards beyond the middle point of a font.
Baseline – A baseline is an imaginary (i.e. invisible) line on which all the letters of the text are placed.
Cap Height – This is the height of the capital letter (from the baseline to the top of it).
CMYK Color Model – CMYK stands for names of specific colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, and the key color – black). These colors are used during the printing process.
Color Wheel – The aforementioned color wheel is a circular color chart that shows the interactions between primary (as well as secondary and tertiary) hues.
Color Schemes – When you choose several colors from the color wheel and combine them in your design you create a color scheme (also known as a color harmony).
Complementary Colors – These are the colors that are situated directly opposite one another on the color wheel.
Compression – You compress the file when you remove excess data from it thus reducing its size. Compression is particularly useful for those who want to store (or send via email) very big image files.
Contrast – The difference between colors, spacing, shapes, or some other elements creates contrast. The bigger the difference the more stark the contrast.
Crop – When you crop an image you remove the outer parts of it (thus reframing the objects shown in the image). Cropping can also change the aspect ratio and the size of an image.
CSS – Cascading Style Sheets is a specific piece of code that is used to create the format of a web page. CSS determines how the web page looks and feels.
Descender – Descender is the part of a letter that extends below the baseline.
Dots per Inch (DPI) – DPI concerns the resolution of printed digital images. A dot is the smallest unit of measurement in printing (similar to a pixel on the web). The more dots there are in every given printed inch the better the resolution of an image.
Drop Shadow – Drop Shadow is a visual effect that creates the illusion of a shadow behind a graphic.
EPS – Encapsulated PostScript is a file format that is most commonly used for vector graphics that need to be printed out and hence have a relatively high resolution.
Extender – An extender is either an ascender or descender; i.e. the part of the letter that is located either above or below the midline.
Feathering – Feathering is a computer design technique that is used to make the edges of any feature appear smoother.
Font – A font is a typeface (design of lettering). All letters of a font are characterized by a specific style, shape, and size (e.g. Times New Roman, Calibri, Helvetica, etc.)
GIF – GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format. It is an image that is animated for a few seconds and doesn’t have any sound.
Gradient – When you create a gradient design colors (or parts of an image) seem to be fading into each other, it’s hard to tell where one color starts and the other one begins.
Grid – This is an imaginary map consisting of multiple horizontal and vertical lines. The grid helps align the text and photos within the document.
HEX Code – HEX codes are used in CSS and HTML. Each HEX code denotes a specific color. There is an entire chart of HEX codes web designers need to consult, and the code is usually written after the (#) sign.
HTML – The HyperText Markup Language is the language of the documents (such as images, links, texts, etc.) that are created to be displayed in the web browser.
HUE – Hue is the synonym of color; more precisely it is a pure pigment, unaffected by tint or shade.
JPEG – This is a file format that allows us to send or store image files more easily. It uses either lossless or lossy compression which doesn’t result in lower quality.
Kerning – Kerning is the process of adjusting the space between individual letters to get a more visually appealing result.
Leading – Also called line spacing, leading denotes how much space there is between the baselines of all the lines in a text.
Lossy – During lossy data compression, some details are removed during the compression process. It is one of the ways to compress JPEG files.
Lossless – Unlike lossy compression, lossless compression doesn’t require the deletion of minor details (also used when compressing JPEG files).
Midline – Midline, also referred to as “median” is the invisible line that runs atop most lower case letters. E.g. it is the imaginary line above “x”, “s” and the belly of “b”.
Negative Space – A.k.a. white space is the empty space that surrounds a particular design (e.g. an empty space around an image or around the text).
Open Type Fonts – Open Type is the latest word in font formatting. Open type contains the printer as well as screen versions in one file and can be accessed through both Mac and Windows.
Orphan – The term “orphan” denotes several things. It is either an opening line of a paragraph or a short line (or even a single word) that stands alone at the bottom of the page.
Pantone – Pantone is a company that developed an eponymous color-matching system. Pantone system is used during the design process to match printed colors to those that we see on the screen.
PDF – Portable Document Format is used to save files that are not meant to be edited, they just need to be easily shared and printed out.
Pixel – Any image that appears on a computer screen consists of pixels; it is the smallest illuminated area of the screen.
Pixels per Inch (PPI) – The more pixels there are in one inch of the display surface the higher the resolution.
PNG – The PNG image format is most suitable for photos that contain a transparent background or big uniformly colored areas.
Rectangular Colors – Also called a tetradic color scheme, this is a group of four colors (two groups of complementary colors from the color wheel).
Resolution – The higher the resolution of an image the sharper and more detailed it is. High-resolution images typically include more pixels, so subsequently, the file size is bigger.
RGB Color Model – RGB stands for red, green, and blue. Computer monitors use these colors to transmit light so they are used in web design.
Saturation – Highly saturated colors are bright and intense; logically, lower saturation means loss of color intensity.
Serif – Small horizontal lines attached to vertical strokes that make letters (e.g. small horizontal lines at the bottom of upper case A).
Shade – The amount of the color black mixed in with any other hue.
Split-Complementary Colors – A group of colors on the color wheel (a base color plus two colors on either side of its complementary color).
Square Colors – Square colors are the four colors on the wheel that are spaced evenly from one another (if you draw an imaginary line between them you’ll get a square shape).
Stem – The main vertical stroke of any letter (e.g. the vertical line in letters “B” or “D”).
Strokes – Various lines that make up any letter.
Tail – A descending (and often decorative) component of a letter; for instance the downward-facing tail of the letter “Q.”
Terminal – The end of any stroke that does not have a serif.
Tint – Tint denotes the amount of white color mixed in with any other hue.
Triadic Colors – On the color wheel triadic colors are situated at 120 degrees of one another; drawing an imaginary line between them creates an equilateral triangle.
Typeface – The typeface is a collection of various elements (e.g. numbers, letters, punctuation signs, etc.)
Vector Image – A vector image is an artwork that is made from lines, points, and curves. Vector images don’t rely on pixels that is why such images are still clear and sharp even after they’ve been enlarged.
Visual Hierarchy – Visual Hierarchy is the principle of arranging various elements of design in order of importance (with the most important elements being, of course, the most prominent).
Watermark – A visible marker that is placed over the web images. Watermarks show who owns the distribution rights to that image.
Weight – Weight denotes how thick and wide a stroke is (e.g. light, demi-bold, and bold).
White Space – The synonym of “blank space” or the aforementioned “negative space”.
Widow – A small portion of the text that spills over to the next page (or the next column).
X-height – The x-height is the space between the baseline and the midline.
ZIP File – ZIP file format compresses and combines a few files into one folder. You can restore the files very easily by “unzipping” the ZIP file, the compression process doesn’t eliminate any data.
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