
Interactive Content: The Key to Engagement in a Distracted World
Key Takeaways
- Interactive content has higher conversion rates than other marketing efforts and is more likely to be shared on social media.
- Businesses can create a wide range of interactive content such as maps, infographics, videos, polls, calculators, and more.
- Interactive content can be resource-intensive and slow loading, making technical checks crucial.
Our distracted world
In today’s hyper-connected digital era, consumers across the globe are inundated with online content. The relentless bombardment of ads, social media posts, emails, and other digital content fills people’s lives, grabbing their attention at every turn.
As a result, individuals are finding it increasingly difficult to focus on and engage with any single stream of information for prolonged periods. In other words, attention has become a scarce commodity.
This saturation of the digital world poses a significant challenge for businesses: the fight for consumer attention. As traditional advertising methods become less effective in this crowded space, companies must come up with new ways to capture and maintain the interest of their target customers.
Rather than striving for exposure, businesses are turning towards strategies that prioritise engagement and relationship-building. One such strategy is creating interactive content because it offers exciting engagement opportunities for users.
This article will explore the benefits and types of interactive content, as well as give you practical tips for creating your new strategy. Read on to learn how you can attract new leads and keep pre-existing customers engaged with interactive content.
Can interactive content help?
The key to capturing a consumer’s attention lies in a business’s ability to entertain, educate, and engage its audience. Interactive content is one marketing tool that does all three of these.
The neurotransmitter, dopamine, plays a fundamental role in the efficacy of interactive content. If interactive content connects with our reward pathways, it can keep us engaged for
longer. By its very nature, interactive content is more engaging than static content; so, users are more likely to spend time with it, share it, and return to it.
Interactive content can make learning more enjoyable, cater to different learning styles (visual, auditory, etc.), and offer memorable experiences. Information is also better retained when learning requires active participation, so interactive content is an ideal option for educational purposes.
Interactive content also offers valuable opportunities for data collection, insights, and personalisation. This means businesses can gain information for future strategies, content creation, and the creation of personalised user experiences.
Not only is interactive content more likely to be shared on social media, but it can also reduce bounce rates and increase time spent on a page – things that are great for SEO. Since it can be more persuasive and memorable than traditional marketing material, interactive content often has higher conversion rates.
By offering unique experiences with interactive content, you can differentiate your brand from competitors. Plus, you can save money as interactive content typically has a longer shelf life than other types of content.
The many benefits of interactive content show how it can be highly effective for enhancing user experiences and the overall performance of a business’s marketing strategy. Keep reading to learn how you can begin to create it.
Types of interactive content
There are countless ways you can get creative with interactive content. Here are a few of the main types to inspire your new strategy:
Quizzes and surveys
If you want to engage customers, one great way is by inviting them to answer questions for quizzes or surveys. They could be playful trivia quizzes that users can share with their friends afterwards, or more serious educational quizzes.
Surveys can also be made more engaging through colour, moving parts, and responsive elements (e.g., bursting fireworks when users click through the survey form). You can get really creative with this!
Surveys are a great source of qualitative data, but they’re often too boring for customers to fill out. To gather more customer feedback and benefit future strategies, you might try making your surveys more fun or enjoyable to use.
Interactive infographics
Infographics are great for presenting information in an understandable way. Plus, they’re often saved, shared, or linked to by users which can be great for SEO and performance in general.
Unlike traditional infographics, interactive ones allow users to click on certain elements for more information or manipulate how the information is presented. These features can make the infographics much more enjoyable to use and improve information retention.
As a result, when infographics are made interactive, website owners see greater engagement and improved user experiences.
Polls and voting
Votes and polls might be used to gauge customer opinions or preferences for research purposes, or they can be a fun way of engaging followers on social media. Since polls take just a second to engage with, they can receive a high volume of interaction.
Some influencers will use polls to ask followers what kind of content they want to see next, but you could take silly opinion polls as marketing stunts. For example, a food brand may ask its followers to choose between two flavours of crisps ahead of a new release.
Easily integrated into social media posts, polls are great for real-time engagement, raising awareness, expressing personality, and gathering useful feedback.
Calculators
Online calculators can come in handy for internet users. At some point in their lives, everyone needs to calculate one of the following:
- Tax
- Pro rata wages
- Savings goals
- ROI
- Health and fitness metrics
- Currency conversions
These interactive tools provide users with accurate answers to highly specific queries, creating a great sense of usefulness and satisfaction.
Example: If a brand selling skincare products provided a calculator for how often customers will need to repurchase their favourite products, it may encourage more purchases and offer an enjoyable personalised experience.
In some cases, calculators are simply a fun tool – we found an online calculator for working out your dog’s age!
Maps
Maps are another useful resource for internet users. Allowing them to zoom in, scroll, and click on specific points for more information, interactive maps can be a great way to present information and engage the reader.
They’re ideal for real estate websites, tourist attractions, or any business with a physical location. In addition, a brand like Airbnb uses interactive maps to display different holiday rentals around the world.
Whatever purpose they’re used for, interactive maps can enhance the user’s experience on your site – one that is informative and unique.
Chatbots
Chatbots are a very common example of interactive content, requiring the user to engage with it to fulfil its purpose. Chatbots that simulate human conversation for the purposes of customer service vary in quality but always aim to give users instant answers.
The smarter your chatbot is, the better experience customers are likely to have – so you may want to invest in making it high-quality.
Immersive experiences
Immersive content includes 360-degree videos and experiences made with augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). 360-degree videos offer a spherical view that users can control, making them great for virtual tours.
In contrast, AR experiences overlay digital information onto the real world, making them ideal for virtual try-ons or tutorials. Taking things further, VR experiences are totally immersive and allow users to interact with a 3D environment. This is great for product demos, virtual tours, or educational content.
Evidently, these kinds of immersive experiences are a level above other types of interactive content. When executed correctly, they can be immensely useful, informative, and fun.
Gamified content
Gamification “involves applying game design elements in non-gaming contexts,” such as employee training, customer reward programs, fitness challenges, and feedback forms.
Integrating game mechanics into non-game environments can improve people’s experiences because they’re made more fun. As a result, participation can increase, and interactions can be more memorable.
It may be that you create challenges, award points, or simply add game-like UX elements to your web design.
Branching scenarios
Branching scenarios are mainly used in e‑learning, such as employee training. However, businesses may also use branching scenarios as part of recruitment processes.
When using these products, learners can take different routes (or ‘branches’) to lead them along the learning path. The content will likely have multiple choice questions leading to different story outcomes that demonstrate right and wrong answers.
As a result, branching scenarios can be highly effective educational tools that leave learners with memorable experiences.
8 top tips for creating interactive content
If you decide to embark on the game-changer that is an interactive content strategy, there are a few best practices you need to know.
Consider the following before getting started:
1. Design for interactivity from the start
One common mistake in interactive content strategies is when marketers or business owners retrofit interactivity into pre-existing content.
Instead, you should begin with an interactive element in mind and go from there. This way, the final result will feel much more natural and integrating the interactive element will be much more seamless.
2. Simplify user decisions
User decisions are central to the function and use of interactive content – so they should be considered during the creation stage.
Ideally, the decisions posed by the content should be simple and obvious. This will prevent decision fatigue and make using your content super straightforward. As a result, engagement rates will be higher.
3. Incorporate visual cues for interactivity
As well as being simple, opportunities for interactivity should be obvious.
You should invite interactivity with clear design elements such as buttons that change when hovered over. When tabs, buttons, and other elements signify they’re there to be interacted with, users will have a more pleasant and easy experience with your content.
4. Use responsive design techniques
When you design your content, you need to make sure that all its interactive elements are functioning correctly. This means testing their function across all platforms and devices.
Not only does this mean your reach increases (with users experiencing your content from desktop to mobile) but it will reduce bounce rate. Users can become frustrated when content isn’t responsive, so it’s crucial you mitigate against this.
5. Gamify wisely
Gamification can go wrong when it’s used excessively or unnecessarily. So, make sure you integrate game mechanics in a way that aligns with your brand. Whether it’s scoring, challenges, or rewards, gamified elements should resonate with your audience’s motivations and needs.
When the interactive elements are relevant to your brand and audience, the content will be more engaging and sustainable. They should add real value and not be there as gimmicks.
6. Encourage social sharing
Asking users to share your content can sometimes feel a bit forced. As a result, marketers can sometimes shy away from encouraging social sharing for fear of being too pushy. However, this can really increase the reach of your content.
There are ways to encourage social sharing in slick and gentle ways. Plus, internet users are used to it by now! If you make it really easy for users to share your interactive content on social media, it will go a lot further in terms of reach and engagement.
7. Avoid overloading with information
There’s a temptation with interactive infographics, maps, and timelines to add as much value as possible. However, this can often take the form of a flood of information.
Successful interactive content is typically simple and straightforward. These infographics, maps, and timelines are there to give the main takeaways. Plus, saying less can encourage users to visit your website for more information.
While it’s great to provide value, users may feel overwhelmed by lots of information. So, keep the content concise and focused for optimum performance.
8. Optimise load times and other technical elements
One pitfall of interactive content is that it can be resource-intensive. As a result, it may suffer from slow loading times and a higher bounce rate.
To mitigate against this, you need to prioritise loading speed when designing your content. Before you publish it, make sure it’s functioning optimally.
In addition, you’ll want to test all the interactive elements thoroughly before launching. This means testing for bug issues, as well as its function on different device types, screen sizes, and platforms.
Final thoughts
Interactive content has a wide range of fun and creative possibilities, as well as offering a serious set of benefits for your business. By following these recommendations, your strategy will engage customers, share valuable information, and enhance your marketing efforts as a whole.