How Animation Can Boost Your Sales On Both B2B And B2C

Animation Can Boost Your Sales On Both B2B And B2C
The purpose of a website is to get as much audience as possible. The more visitors that come, the more sale will happen, and that is what a business needs. While there are a lot of ways to attract audiences, there is one particular web feature that gets overlooked most of the time.

This is where we will tell you how animation can boost sales on websites and increase revenue significantly. This information will make you look at animation in a very different light.


How To Use Animation To Boost Sales On Websites:

1. Animation As A Visual Representation

If a picture can speak a thousand words, then what about a moving one? Animation, by definition, is a technique of playing successive images to create an illusion of movement. That simply means more than a thousand words ready to tell stories.

Unlike traditional videos, animation or video animation is not limited to the boundaries of realities and physical object. It can simply be whatever the cartoonist has in mind and draw it to present an idea or a story. It fills the gap in which a photo or a video can never portray. You may refer to how an explainer video production works, here's more explanation made by Animation Explainers.

With animation, explaining something into words get simpler. It can do the seemingly impossible thing that a traditional video cannot. It converts planning and imagination into something comprehensible and easy to absorb idea.

Not a lot of people have the patience of reading long articles, especially when there are a lot of jargons involved. Too many new words or too much detail can put a brain to sleep, and that is not a good thing.

Giving the audience something to imagine and then visually showing it to them gets their neurons more active. That might not sound much, but it gives the article the leeway to explain further and transform that reader to a buyer.

2. Animation As A Distraction

Written content can only do so much to hook a reader’s attention. Most people online skim and scan context as they scroll through pages. To make them stop and pause is to either give them an interesting title or give them an engaging visual context.

Now, online studies show that the average attention span of a reader is just eight seconds. That is not much time for Google to consider that the website or content in a website is worth recommending to all its online users. And we all know that Google’s first-page search result is everything in this industry.

In order to keep a reader reading, a distraction would be the best remedy. This is where an animation that adds value to the content is very much a vital point of the article. It will stand as a short entertainment without throwing off the attention of the reader from the article in front of him.

Also, while quality content can relay messages that a website is trying to tell to its audiences, an animation can tickle the reader’s brain to keep it from dozing off. So for the boring details of the article, the animation is a distraction and can simplify the long version of the written content.

Another way to use animation as a distraction is when a user visits the page of a website. There are still many countries that suffer from slow internet speed. And in an online business perspective, the world is your customer. So potential customers should be valued no matter where they are.

FACT:

The Internet has never been so fast-paced and yet so high-trafficked in this era. If anyone of you is up-to-date with how the internet-of-things work, it is the fact that faster loading speed gets more visitors to stay longer. That is a proven fact quoting Google itself.

But what if the user is subscribed to a slow internet speed service? Let’s face it, some countries, especially in the Asian territory, has not yet caught up to the “real” 4G and 5G technology. Internet service providers in these countries use the fancy branding but not the fully-functioning actual technology.

According to CEO World, there are at least 20 countries that drag around 1 Mbps and even way lower than that. Yemen, having the number one spot, has average speed of 0.31 Mbps. That is around Dial-up and early 3G speed, and it is already 2019.
Animation Can Boost Your Sales On Both B2B And B2C
In this case scenario, speed may not be much of a factor when it comes to keeping visitors happy. So where animation does comes in?

So where does animation comes into play here? Remember that faster loading page gets the bigger slice of the cake? Well, that only applies if the page is highly optimized for loading contents or it only has texts as content.

Videos and images load slower because they require more data. If the website has a lot of rich content, that becomes a hindrance for a page to load faster. The user on a slow internet speed then becomes stuck on the loading page. You only have a few crucial seconds to either lose or make them stay.

As silly as it sounds, a simple distraction as animation can take their mind off leaving the page even if it is just a few seconds. It gives off the illusion that they have entered the site now and it is only a matter of a few moments until the page fully loads. That should count for something in the long run.

There are a few choices for animation formats:
  • GIF
  • Javascript
  • HTML/CSS
  • Flash
  • SMIL
  • APGN

It is up to you to choose which one works best for you. Before you do decide, ask your web designer about the pros and cons of each of one. None of them is perfect, so expect some limitations from one over the other.

A simple GIF, SMIL, or Javascript with an interesting look will do the job, but that will depend on your market and the disadvantages that come with it. What is left now is choosing the right animation to keep them distracted, so choose wisely and make it interesting.

3. Animation Messages Last Longer

Typical users can only absorb so much, especially if the page is giving them more than a thousand words. That much word count or more must have a lot of things to say. And if you are lucky, 50% of the things you mention is interesting enough for the readers.

Since animation is focused mainly on entertainment, incorporating it in the information that the website is trying to convey makes a lot more sense. The human brain can retain better memory if it is positively enforced like when happy or glad.

This applies to a website by simply maximizing animation and putting it at the right spots of the page. Note that timing is also a factor here. You do not just place the animation whenever space is convenient. It has to work with the rest of the content from the texts, pictures, and other videos.

Overall, this will result in longer page views and better impression on the readers. Ultimately, the website and its pages can generate improved sales and engagement plus better Google score.

Let us not forget that SEO and Google must always take part in every decision-making whenever you make changes to a page or the website overall. In this case, the animation contributes significantly to how the readers and visitors interact with the content on the website. The more people remember the page content, the more repeat customers and word of mouth recommendations will follow.

4. Animation Improves Retention Rate

Speaking of repeat customers, if a good number of visitors spend more time consuming a page’s content, it most likely means you are doing it right. A good recipe is only as good as its ingredients. Animation on every page of a website is a necessary ingredient, and that is a fact.

Also, great overall content gains shares across social media platforms. With animation at play on almost every corner of the internet, Facebook, Twitter, and the likes are definitely just some of the most platforms that take advantage of this media format.

Social media users have the tendency to scroll endlessly, and the only way to make them stop and pause is to give them something to fix their eyes on. An image is useful for one-liner pickups. But with animations, you can relay a full paragraph or even a full short story. And you want that for your content. Every business wants that few seconds of interaction with their possible customers.
Animation Can Boost Your Sales On Both B2B And B2C
And if chances are scarce, make sure that that one chance conveys the right message no matter what time of the day. It has to be memorable even if it happens once. With business, every engagement, no matter how brief, has to be effective. That is the possibility that animation can provide and so it must be taken seriously.

Since animation improves retention rate, it is wise to maximize such a feature and make it one of the attracting factors of a website. With millions of posts being published every second in social media, you could only have one chance to relay the most important message of your website. So make it count.

5. Animation As A Reason To Stay

Reading is slow, and watching a few seconds of animation is faster. By comparison, an animation can tell a quick story and immediately jump to call-of-action, whereas reading a full article takes more time before the conclusion. That is assuming that all the visitors can read properly with comprehension.

A well-animated presentation improves interest level, which equates to more engagement and better recall of the details of the message. A grow of interest leads to a craving for more information and finally create a sale.

An article of Buffer states that 55% of visitors of a page spend only 15 seconds or less reading articles. As sad as it sounds, people prefer shiny things than reading useful content. But that could be changed by simply combining texts and visual candies in one full article.

Animation works for almost everyone that has a working pair of eyes. All they need to do is watch, and the message is relayed. It does not always have to have audio. It just needs to be expressive and has meaning.

The problem with the written article is that engaging written content is only as good as the readers’ capacity and fondness to read. With animation, it becomes entertainment. The website’s goal and marketing become an engaging visual entertainment, and that will lead to more audiences staying longer and even clicking for more page views.

If you need a great example, just look at how YouTube made it from a simple video sharing platform into a multi-billion dollar entity. Most people prefer visual stimulation. It takes less effort with more gain.

So when creating a full content on a website, make sure to incorporate not just texts, images, and videos but also animation, especially when it can add value to the content.

6. Animation As An Advertisement

Not all content for a website has to be on a website. It can also be on another platform and points to the website through a click. This is where maximizing the use of animation gets even more dramatic by using it as a form of an advertisement.

If a business has an appropriate budget for advertisement on TV and social media platforms, by all means, make it happen. If not, here are some ideas that can probably be helpful.

Here is an idea of what to do:
  1. Produce a short animation that can be used for advertising and promoting a website or a page on a website. Make it count, and as much as possible make it comprehensive enough. This might be a case of trial and error, but when done right, it could lead to an epic income for your website and company.
  2. Start by sharing to social media. Create a page solely for this purpose, like putting up a Facebook page version of the website.
  3. Manage the page, post regularly, and keep it up-to-date.
  4. Invite people to like the page. Grow your audience.
  5. Join groups that offer relevant topic to the website.
  6. Share the animated file that you intend to use as an advertisement. Share it on groups’ pages, mention in trending group discussions.
  7. Make sure every share and every mention must be engaging. Do not just copy and paste. It must encourage an exchange of views and opinions to promote curiosity.

This strategy is not just for social media platforms. A similar strategy is useful on other websites, especially on forums like Reddit and some enthusiast-based groups. Just do a little research and be creative.

Another way to use animation for advertisement is to place it on the main page. As mentioned earlier, the visual aspect of marketing like video animation can deliver message quicker than a full article.

Use animation as a banner. The more space an animation occupies in a single page, the more it grabs more attention. This is more applicable if the website is not big on words but willing to invest in animation. One look and any visitors will get it.

7. Animation Is Flexible

In a business perspective, the animation is a weapon when used properly. It is not a single tool but actually more like a Swiss Knife.

When we say animation is flexible, we mean that using this feature in a website does not constitute to a few purposes. Yes, it can be a distraction, an entertainment, or a media file for sharing across social media platforms. For those people that use websites as an online store or as an online selling outlet, an animation can be the face of the product too.

Using animation to present all the available products and services is a good way to maximize output and minimize expenditures. This is a perfect way to introduce the business and the products in a creative fashion. Know that it is now easier to find services that offer high-quality animations at a reasonable price.

So who can say now that animation is not an integral part of a website? It is practical, and it serves a lot of purposes when executed properly. All that is left is to find a good animator or cartoonist, and then you can start changing the game.

If shiny things attract more people, why not give it to them? The animation is the perfect combination of visual stimulant and a message conveying medium that can be taken seriously. So if you have not yet used animation in its full potential, you have been missing out on a great deal. As soon as you are done with this article, it would be best to start thinking of how animation can be applied properly on your website’s advantage.

Give them the best animation that your abilities or budget can offer and expect returns soon. After all, you are running a business, and as long as the products and services are of the highest standards, all you will have to think about is the ROI and the endless incoming of cash.
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