Table Of Contents
Should I Use an Animated Video on My Website?
What Are the Benefits of Web Animation?
What Is the Importance of Animated Videos?
Should I Use an Animated Video on My Website?
One of the main aims of web design is to keep people who visit a website engaged until they perform desired actions. Sure, you need to provide content that visitors find informative and valuable, but visual appeal plays an important role too. For example, a visitor might find a page full of text to be boring, no matter how useful the information, and a graphic can provide the required visual break.
Animation holds the potential to add another dimension to your website, especially because you can use it in the form of interactive elements like buttons that highlight when users hover over them, transitions in texts, motion graphics, and even explainer videos. What helps is that modern-day web animation helps give web users control where scrollable or clickable actions can trigger specific interactions.
So, should you use animations on a website? The answer is in the affirmative, without a doubt, but it’s also important that you don’t go overboard. In addition, it might be in your best interest to hire a web design company that specializes in animation instead of using a stock animation video website, all the more so if you want your website to deliver optimum results.
How Much Animation Should You Put in a Website?
A popular saying suggests that too much of anything can be dangerous. This applies to animation too. Make sure you don’t overload your website with animated content, and ensure that it does not affect the user experience adversely. When there is too much animation, it might not put the intended message across effectively. Just make sure your website gets the right amount of animation in the right places.
What Are the Benefits of Web Animation?
Just about every marketing strategy in today’s world addresses the digital landscape, and one of the most effective digital marketing tools comes in the form of web animation. When used right, animation can be rather effective in increasing traffic to your website and delivering a good user experience. There are other benefits as well.
Animation Is an Attention Grabber
The internet, in all likelihood, is home to scores of websites that belong to your competitors. Since competition in the online world is stiff, having a unique feature can have a positive effect on making your website more engaging. Given the wide-ranging applications that animation can serve, you may use it to distract users when pages take longer than usual to load, especially when it comes to portfolios, minimalism, and flat designs. You may also use animation in your website’s menu, with moving icons and hidden elements that users may reveal by clicking or hovering over a button.
Slide shows and galleries are other popular places where you may find the use of animation on websites. This is a simple yet effective way to display content in a unique way, ensuring that it attracts and retains the attention of users. However, the type of animation you use notwithstanding, it should serve its purpose without distracting visitors from what’s important.
It Makes Your Website Stand Out
A significant number of websites still have static content, and adding animation to yours can make it stand out from the crowd. While there are different ways in which you may use animation to give your website a unique look, if you want your website to deliver desired results, you also need excellent web design skills and innovative content.
If you add animation, remember that the mobile-first approach has become the industry standard in the world of web design and development. According to Statista, more than half of all global website traffic already comes from mobile devices, and you need to pay due to attention mobile-friendliness when you add animated content and features to your website.
It Makes Your Message Easier to Convey
It’s common for consumers to look for different types of information before making a purchase. However, the process of researching your company and its products/services can be time-consuming for new customers who know little to nothing about your business.
Animation gives you an easy way to convey your message in a short span of time, while giving you the freedom to include plenty of information. While your animated video can attract the attention of prospective customers, it can also help convince them to perform the desired action, be it making a purchase or subscribing to a service.
It Can Achieve the Impossible
In most cases, the reason why most people use animation on their websites is to achieve something that is impossible to do using real photos or videos. If there is something you might find impossible to express clearly using text or photos, animation can do a great job of filling this gap.
People Remember Animated Messages Longer
Any message you convey through visual and audio presentation will last longer in the minds of your audience. A short animated video introducing your brand or its products/services can have a significant impact on the traffic visiting your website. Various studies have indicated that people are more likely to remember information they got through audio-visual formats than through reading alone, and this is plain to see in the learning pyramid. From the web design perspective, this means animation can help you communicate better and sell more products and services through your website.
It Provides Great Flexibility
Animation is flexible and can give you the advantage of introducing a number of products or presenting a lot of information in a short and simple video. Some visitors do not have the time to browse through entire websites looking for specific products, services, or information. Using an animated video can help you introduce all the services at once.
It Is Good for SEO
Animation can have a positive effect on search engine optimization (SEO) by improving user experience and increasing engagement time. For instance, the longer users spend on your website, the better it is for its search engine ranking. In addition, animation can help decrease bounce rates, make way for better backlink opportunities, increase social engagement, and provide an enhanced experience for mobile users.
Common Uses of Web Animation
One of the key advantages of animation in websites is that it can serve different purposes rather well. The most common uses of animation in web design include:
- Revealing information. You may use animation to reveal information when visitors hover over a specific area or click a particular button. What helps is you get different ways to present the information in question.
- Transitioning. Using animation during transitions can help make the process appear less jarring. This is by keeping visitors oriented in cases of state changes or object manipulations.
- Notifying. The top web designers routinely use animation as a notification tool, informing website users about promotions, special offers, events, and even changes in terms and conditions.
- Emphasizing. Given that the onset of motion helps capture attention, it is possible to use animation to draw visitors’ attention to a specific section of a page or to information you don’t want them to miss.
- Hinting and motivating. It’s common for web designers to use animation to give visitors subtle hints and motivate them to perform desired actions.
- Delighting. You may see the use of animation when you come across pages that are slow to load or missing pages. This is when animation plays a role in engaging audiences who might otherwise be tempted to leave.
What Is the Importance of Animated Videos?
While animation comes in different forms, the use of animation in videos has increased significantly over recent years. This comes as no surprise because if you look at the advantages of animated video marketing, it’s natural that you might think about treading this path as well.
High Levels of Customization
One of the biggest advantages of animation is that you get complete creative freedom in conveying your message and you may customize your video in practically any way you deem fit. While it’s easy to create an animated video that caters to your target audience, it’s also possible to develop buyer personas and then create animated content specifically for them without the need to shoot multiple times. Besides, since you get to steer clear of lengthy production schedules that accompany conventional video shoots, you may create as many customized animated videos as you like by making suitable tweaks to the original.
Better Impact
Professionals who create animated videos make sure they use high-quality graphics and represent their clients’ visions as accurately as possible. Well-made animated videos can work rather well in attracting and retaining the attention of an audience. Besides, since animated videos are self-explanatory, they tend to have a better impact than conventional videos.
Convey Complex Messages Easily
Effective stories are ones that connect with audiences. If your audience does not connect with your brand, it might not understand what you stand for or how your products/services work. As a result, it might think twice before engaging with you.
Thanks to animation, you get to convey even the most complex messages in ways that your target audience can understand. This is because animation gives you the ability to break down or highlight elements that might not be possible with conventional videos. Besides, with the right script, you can use animation to simplify your message so your audience may relate to it quickly.
Branding Integration
When you include animated videos in your digital marketing strategy, you get to enjoy the enhanced promotion of your brand because it’s easy to incorporate different elements of your branding like logo, color scheme, and fonts into the video. In addition, your animated video can use other resources of your company like presentations, brochures, white papers, and applications to give your audience better insight into what you do.
The Process of Making Animated Videos
If you partner with a digital agency that specializes in creating custom animation videos, you may expect it to follow a streamlined process that starts by learning about your business, its target audience, and its goals. The steps that follow include:
- Scripting. The script describes what you may expect from the animation, and it includes voiceovers and dialogues.
- Designing. During this stage, you get to review different animation styles based on your specific requirements.
- Storyboard. Once you finalize the design, you get to see how the visuals and the script come together through the storyboard.
- Voiceover. You get to choose from different voiceover artists who record the finalized script.
- Production. With the storyboard, voiceover, and style concept in place, experts get the production of the animation video underway by using appropriate software, creating every element from scratch, and bringing them together seamlessly.
- Sound production. Once the company you select completes the animation, it augments the story by adding suitable sound effects and music, which it should ideally compose and produce for every project, ensuring absolute uniqueness.
- Review. This is when you get to review the animation video and provide inputs, after which the company makes the required revisions.
- Delivery. Upon completion, you receive a high-definition video file in the format of your choice. You may also seek post-production support if you need assistance in using or marketing your new animated video.
CONCLUSION
While there are numerous advantages of animation in web design, it’s important to use it in the right manner and ensure that it does not distract your website’s visitors. From using animated elements to encourage action to using animated videos to improve brand awareness, there is virtually no limit to what you can do with this medium. However, you need to ensure that your website and content represent your brand in the best possible light, which is why partnering with a reputed web design company might be the ideal way to go.
Originally posted in: https://www.topnotchdezigns.com/advantages-of-animation-in-web-design-its-uses-and-more/
