Tell me a story.
From our earliest
childhood, through our entire lives, humans love stories. It may be
as important a part of us as our very affinity for language. In his Ted talk, writer Jonathan
Gottschall suggests that we not only desire the stimulation of a good
story, but we can’t help create narratives about things we see
around us. And the act of story telling involves a voluntary
interaction between story teller and listener.
Story telling is so
important and engaging that it is unsurprising that we find it in all
forms of media that people have invented. From books, to radio, film,
TV, and games. One medium where storytelling is underused is the
internet, but it is a growing trend to include storytelling techniques in web
design.
So how do we
incorporate storytelling into web design?
Medium.com had this
to say:
For most businesses, the about page is one of their website’s most visited pages — second only to their home page. The most common reason for this is that people want to learn about your company; they want to read your story.
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| newfoundlandchocolatecompany.com |
Telling visitors the
story behind a website is a good place to start, but we can do more
with this technique.
According to Drew
Coffin of PracticalEcommerce, the three most basic aspects of
storytelling are character, setting, and action. If we can include
these three story components we can heighten our visitors’
experience and strengthen our website’s effectiveness.
 |
| theyearofgreta.com |
Characters in a
website could take the form of people in pictures or illustrations,
it could be a mascot, it could be the character of the website’s
business or employees, or it could even be the visitors themselves.
The setting can be
established with background images, or descriptive text.
Action can be shown
through images, animation, video, interactivity, even through
creative use of scrolling.
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| babeltheking.com |
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