The video game industry is a fast-growing industry. According to venturebeat, the game industry is growing faster than expected and is even expected to grow faster in succeeding years.
But what makes video games so attractive? How are video game producers attracting so many people and keeping them engaged with their product or services?
One of the biggest factors is design.
From the ease of gameplay to how easy it is to follow the game’s story and lore, this all fall under game design. Below, we explore some tips we can learn from video games on how to design websites to attract and retain customers.
1. Mood And Atmosphere Is Important
Many business-owners lightly dismiss the idea that logo design and brand colours have an effect on a customer’s behaviour and decision, but psychology has proven otherwise. Just like in video games (where mood, music, and environment is important to keep players engaged), a website’s mood and atmosphere must be consistent with the brand’s personality.
When thinking of your website’s design, think about what you want your customers to feel when they enter your website and interact with your brand: do you want them to feel alert because your brand is about security? Then using red could give this kind of atmosphere. Do you want them to feel hungry because your brand is all about food? Maybe using green will help induce a feeling of hunger.
Knowing how you want your brand to affect your customers will help you decide how to design your website so you can induce that feeling towards them.
2. Design With The Customer In Mind
Before a game could be developed, game developers brainstorm about who they want to play their game. If their target players are kids, they design the game to be child-friendly and easy to follow, and if they have teens or young adults as their market, they develop games that are more at par with their market’s ability and tastes.
This should be the same mindset you have when you design your website: always have our customer in mind. If you consider your customer’s browsing habits, you can easily design your website according to what they want to see and what they need to make their browsing experience easier and more comfortable.
3. Consider Device Limitations
Just like how gamers are annoyed with framerate drops and in-game bugs, people who browse your website get annoyed when your content takes too long to load. And because the internet is no longer limited to desktops and laptops, you’ll also have to consider how mobile-friendly your website is.
When you design your website, you should also plan how the design will look if viewed on mobile. Since the PC or Desktop version of your website is not limited in screen size like mobile devices, you will need to take into consideration how you will “shrink” your website’s interface to fit on mobile devices. Know what elements you will retain or take out when being viewed on mobile and what content will make load-time faster for smaller devices.
4. Simplify Navigation
Video games are more fun to play when it’s easy to understand the controls and other essential elements needed to enjoy a game to its fullest. When gamers have to find and figure these things out on their own, it can become frustrating and could just urge players to stop playing.
Navigation on a website works exactly the same way: if customers can’t figure out how to navigate your website to get where they want to, they might just opt to move out of your site and save them the trouble of figuring things out.
Designing your website with a simplified navigation system will help customers go through your website with ease and avoiding the hassle and also help your load speed from dropping.
When it comes to building a website, it’s not enough to just know how to do SEO, it’s also important to know how to properly design your website so that viewers will want to stay longer and may even revisit to check out for new things on your site.
If you’re not sure how you can improve your website’s design, asking help from a local SEO firm could give you the edge you need. With proper research and strategic planning from an expert team of SEO and design specialist, you can create a web design that will attract the users, improve your site’s traffic, and increase your conversion rates, all at the same time.
