Seductive Interaction Design: Creating Playful, Fun, and Effective User Experiences (Voices That Matter) by Stephen P. Anderson

Author:Stephen P. Anderson [Anderson, Stephen P.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Pearson Education
Published: 2011-06-12T14:00:00+00:00

Contrast and characters

While it’s easy to think about contrast in terms of shape, color, size, and other graphic elements, we tend to forget that letters and numbers themselves can create contrast and get people’s attention. For proof, scan the page at the top right from Craigslist.

Do any particular lines stand out? Users have hacked the available characters to catch people’s attention. This also happens in much more subtle ways.

Notice how people use different characters to draw attention to their listings on Craigslist.

While researching subtle user interface changes, I came across an interesting article from Ryan Jenkins, an expert in paid search. Jenkins shares some tips for writing effective display URLs for Google AdWords.*

*The Optimizer’s Guide to Google AdWords: Display URL Strategy,” a guest post at blog.performable.com.

Beginning with a rather straightforward URL, http://www.bennetcarsales.com, Jenkins walks through several iterations that would be more likely to have a higher clickthrough rate. I’ve summarized tips from that article in the sidebar on the following page.

While Jenkins never specifically mentions contrast, that is precisely reason the these recommendations are effective. By introducing mixed cases, and chopping off meaningless text like http or www, you made the information more scannable, and more likely to be recognized by the conscious brain. You’re playing with contrast and shaping what captures attention, even if on a small scale.

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