Errol Schwartz’s RIT Blog

A popular type of interactive marketing today forces users to navigate some environment and storyline. For some reason marketers and designers think that creating a stupid world will somehow engage people. The problem with these sites is that they are usually terrible at conveying information and often they are just boring. Any person visiting the site for information is going to leave before the site even has time to load. So anyone who is actually interested in the product has already left the site pissed off that it made them wait.

Now the main point of these sites is not to give information. If people really just want information they will go to c-net or places like that. Interactive viral sites should focus completely on peeking interest of users. Many sites try to create too much of a storyline and start off by making users watch an informative video that simply gives an explanation of the site. Unless a visitor is really bored or very patient, they are not going to want to sit through even 15 seconds of scrolling text with a narrating voice. Well done environmental sites can be very valuable for viral marketing if they are good enough to actually have users finish the experience and tell their friends about it.

Many sites now use some kind of host that guides users through various parts of the site. This can be great if done in an amusing way or if it just makes sense with whatever the site is about. Many times the hosts talk for so long that people lose interest. Long videos also mean long load times. So if people are patient enough to actually sit through the 40 second load, they are even more angry when all they get is some lady talking about quitting smoking(www.quitdoingit.com).

Many environmental sites are unimpressive simply because the visuals are bland. It doesn’t matter how in depth a story it has or how great the internal games are if people leave because the first screen they see looks like crap. After looking kind of bland, the next thing that many sites lack is an element of curiosity. If users don’t care what happens when they click a button then something is wrong.

I think that in the future sites will begin to use more and more metaphorical imagery in order to draw users in. The site www.littledeviant.com does this successfully. They created a whole city of sheep people and monsters who kill them in order to advertise Scion. This is a far better solution than showing 3d views and fly-throughs of a car, highlighting all its great features.

Check this neat thing out!

You can upload and image and have it crudely displayed, it’s plain amazing.

The Final Link:
Try out my personality test visualizer!

The final welcome screen:

The final test screen:

Visualization info box:

Visualization line generation:

The welcome screen:

The test screen:

The visualization:

Detail of sort buttons:

Detail of the info box:

This the the first screen of the site:

Here is the test users will take:

And here is something like how the data will be shown: