What is interactive content?
Content on the web can be divided into passive and interactive according to the degree of interaction with the audience.
Passive content is static content that is almost impossible to interact with. This is all that the audience reads, listens to or watches: blogs, podcasts, pictures with cats or video lectures. You can like, repost, or comment on them. This is where the interaction ends.
Interactive content encourages the audience to actively participate and interact with it: click, scroll, collect, calculate, enter information, and so on.
A few years ago, high-quality passive content made it possible to stand out from competitors and easily attract a new audience. Now there is so much of this content that the quality is not enough to win the war for the user’s attention.
Now, in order for the content to attract attention, it needs to be made a bit more “live”. The user ceases to be a passive observer and becomes an active participant in the product, creating their own experience of interacting with it. This helps to engage the audience in the product and keep them on the landing page much longer.
Why does the site need interactive content?
Well-designed interactive content has a double benefit. It helps the audience and the brand. In turn, if it is useless for users, then it will only bring losses to the company. Below we will get acquainted with examples of the benefits of live content.
Helps site visitors
It’s nice when a website takes care of its visitors and helps them pick up goods or calculate the cost of delivery. For example, various calculators and configurators cope well with this.
Such tools attract the user like a computer game. Even if the product is not particularly needed, it is still interesting to sit and poke buttons, pull sliders. The audience is a game, and for the product it is a good advertisement.
Live content is something that people want to share
Interactive content is still perceived as a novelty. When you find something interesting, you want to share it with your friends. It is doubly pleasant when it helps to solve pressing problems.
It affects the promotion in search engines
Interactive content keeps the user on the landing page and increases the depth of viewing.
The user:
- Stays on the site and spends more time on it.
- Burrows into the content and visits many pages.
- Search engines consider the site content to be important and of high quality.
- The site is growing in search results.
Profit!
Segments the audience
Tests, quizzes or questionnaires allow you to divide the audience by interests and preferences. The questionnaire will select the desired product, and then offer the interested user to buy it or leave contact details.
Increases conversion rate
The answers to the questionnaire questions will make the letters in the mailing list “warmer” and more useful. The user fills out the questionnaire and leaves his email. Now you can not only offer a relevant product, but also increase the conversion of your mailing list. I want to read such letters, and not throw them into spam.
Let’s summarize the pros of interactive content and talk a little about the cons
Advantages of live content
- Attracts attention and helps to stand out from other brands.
- Promotes the product. And not only in search engines. Real people like to share live content.
- Helps the audience. This increases the likelihood that the consumer will be satisfied and will return.
- Segments the audience by interests.
- Collects contact information and improves the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.
Disadvantages of live content
- Complexity in development. Making such content is often more difficult than static. Sometimes you can’t do without the program code. Be realistic about your capabilities.
- Failed implementation. It’s great when the content is useful and helps the user. It’s good when the content is interesting and entertaining. It’s terrible when content is chasing conversion: windows pop up everywhere, demand and interfere with something.
- The cost of error is high because such content is more expensive to produce. If you miss the format, it will not only harm the company, but also incur losses. The B2B audience may not appreciate the jokes that will “come in” well to the customers of the online store.
10 examples of interactive content to increase engagement
Here we will look at the main formats of interactive content that are worth trying. Let’s also look at examples of their implementation.
Tests & quizzes
Users answer questions, and then get the result, which can be shared on social networks. Quizzes tell about the product in a fascinating way and help the company get to know its consumer better.
Quizzes can be divided into three groups: entertainment, educational and marketing.
Educational help to refresh knowledge or consolidate new information. They are well suited at the end of the training material or for online courses.
Entertainment is used to conduct audience research, increase loyalty, or simply increase traffic. These include surveys and contests.
Marketing quizzes are perfect for working with a “warm”, still undecided audience. Such surveys help the buyer to quickly find the right product instead of searching for it in the catalog on the website.
Making such interactive content is a separate skill of an Internet marketer. Here it is important to understand the structure and not to miss the format for your audience. You can get inspired and see examples of quizzes in the “Gallery of quizzes” on the Marquiz website.
Interactive image
An interactive image is a way to visualize information based on a single image. The illustration contains dots, each of which opens access to additional information. This can be a text explanation, a close-up, audio/video or other information.
With the help of an interactive image, the user can get acquainted with the product or product in a convenient order and open only those elements that interest him.
This is a simple and visual way to convey information to the audience and explain non-obvious points: tell about the details of the event, show the equipment or the lookbook of the clothing store.
Calculators
Calculators on websites help to calculate the cost of a service or product. This unloads support, helps the user and increases pricing transparency.
You can add a call to action to the calculator or show how much the client will save. And the calculator also helps to analyze the behavior of the audience: what people think and at what point they leave.
There are entire websites on the web with catalogs of online calculators for solving school, legal and even construction tasks. To use the calculator on your website, you can find ready-made code or use the calculator constructor, for example uCalc.
Configurators
Good configurators combine a lot of useful properties of interactive content. They engage and immerse the audience, it is interesting to interact with them. They are best acquainted with the product, give it a virtual touch and take a closer look. After that, the client can place an order in the configurator window.
Users actively share a useful configurator, which increases brand awareness and allows you to attract an even larger audience.
Configurators have a wide range of applications: from paint sales to the automotive market.
Interactive infographics
Infographics visualize large amounts of information and help the user manage the displayed data. This tool will help you wrap up a product or service in an interesting way and introduce it to the audience.
Infographics break through the protection of consumers from information noise, and interactivity enhances the effectiveness of such content.
Good infographics can be studied for hours. The user interacts with additional elements and receives new information. This is much more exciting than reading static material. No article will come close to the user experience that infographics create. Cool example: infographics of the evolution of Internet technologies.
Interactive maps
Interactive maps allow you to describe the route, tell about interesting objects and convey other useful information using the map. One of the brightest representatives of user maps is the Wikimapia service.
In Google there are constructors that allow users to create interactive maps. You can work with these services without programming knowledge, and use ready-made maps on your website or in the application.
Voting and polls
Surveys help you study your audience and get to know your customers. Surveys encourage people to share their opinions and get involved in discussions. Thoughtful voting can become the main method of target audience research for a content manager, replacing expensive commercial research. Surveys are a good tool to identify marketing mistakes and even force a review of the company’s policy.
Surveys can be conducted anywhere: on the website, in social networks, in messengers and even mailings. The survey tools are also not poor. You can create them using the tools built into social networks, use the classics called Google Forms or look at the designers on the Internet. Here’s another example of a constructor, I’m not sorry.
Tik Tok & Instagram Masks
Masks are visual effects that are applied to the face or background when the camera is pointed. They are used for stories, photos, videos or live broadcasts.
The application has a standard set of masks, but you can add your own. They can be made in the Spark AR studio program, buy ready-made or order a solution for your project.
Masks are used not just as a new and interesting format. They open up a lot of opportunities for advertising and interactivity. For example, the Sephora brand used masks as a configurator so that customers could “try on” the color of lipstick; Infiniti went the furthest and created a limited collection of clothes in Instagram masks.
Then – now
This format allows you to compare two images: before and after. You can use it to see how much cities have changed. And such a format will best show the company’s expertise in a particular area. Users trust cases that clearly show the result of work in the “then – now” format.
Webinars and live broadcasts
Webinars and live broadcasts are gaining popularity not only in the entertainment segment in the format of streams, but also in the field of education and online courses. The key advantages of webinars are the speed of feedback and the relative ease of conducting.
The possibility of instant feedback saves time for the audience. You can ask a question and get an answer in real time and even start a dialogue with the brand.
Feedback engages users in the process and thereby allows them to influence the content. This creates a strong contact with the audience, increases its loyalty.
Webinars allow you to hold a lecture or conference from home. Neither speakers nor listeners need to go anywhere. Everyone saves time and money. And it’s even more comfortable.