"The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, and familiar things new." - William Makepeace Thackeray
Inventions, in general, are objects that already exist in humanity, but are combined to make something completely new. Every invention began as an idea that grew to multiple ideas mixed like a formula. To know which ideas work well, the inventor must experiment and put all the correct puzzle pieces together and let go of the ones that do not work. One such invention is the internet.
Websites are an informative translation of how people engage with our world. What you see, listen to and do is an idea that is transformed to a website’s user interface. These ideas are simplified to make the website intuitive enough for anyone to use.
For example, the idea behind Facebook is to allow multiple friends to communicate with one another and meet new ones who are related to your friend. It uses the concept of Six Degrees of Separation where a friend is related to a friend of another friend. In fact, this concept is used by all of social media like Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter. Instead of needing to travel to far off places physically, social media allows us to meet new people virtually yet we still get to know a lot about the person by knowing just their thoughts, likes and dislikes. Why? Communication creates relationships and allows the exchange of experiences through the mind.
How exactly do we engage the mind of your business’s target audience? To answer this question, first you must know yourself. I am sure most people want to be happy and have a lot of fun. To create a happy atmosphere, make your audience feel exhilarated and energized by the things you can offer them. But you must also know that happiness is different for everyone. Some people’s happiness makes other people sad, and someone’s sadness makes other people happy because everyone has different experiences.
To simulate people’s experience in the real world, the Internet and websites were invented. Why? Because all forms of media and communication tools exist within the realm of the World Wide Web. The most popular form of an engaging environment that can be added to your website is social media like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter and Youtube. However, there are lesser known forms of user interface tools that can be added too.
From taking a Learning Dynamics Workshop, listed are examples of other ways to make an engaging interface for your website.
Animations
Instead of making another boring powerpoint slideshow to present your ideas, why not create moving images?
Digital Storytelling
Who does not love reading stories? When you were a kid, did you not like reading picture books? Here are some examples of ways you can easily create and save a copy to include in your website.
Infographics
Easily create infographics to add to Pinterest to share with everyone or as part of your blog.
With these in mind, what can you invent from using these tools? Every website is created to present information that allows others to learn. Engaging means teaching your audience who you are, what you are about and why you are doing what you are doing.
