This is Mikel with TinyFrog Technologies. I’d like to talk a little bit about what we refer to as visual bullying. Many websites out there, especially in the past – not so much nowadays if a website is being built well – have a lot of moving animation and things happening on the website. In most cases, those animations and movements tend to be a distraction.
They can, if they’re done well, tastefully, and in the right way, can lend credibility to the website and can help someone develop an emotional connection with the website, but in most cases they’re not necessary. We refer to this as visual bullying, when there’s unnecessary movement on the website.
We definitely like to have some micro-animations in the website. We like to have some movement, if it’s appropriate. When our clients are asking for a lot of dynamic activity on the website, we ask, “Does it serve a purpose? Does it tie into the message or does it really kind of highlight that particular area on the website that you’re trying to feature? Or, does it conflict with the messaging? Is there multiple movements in one area of the website?” Those things can really be a distraction. So what we try to do is we try to keep websites as static, simple, and clean as possible without making them flat and boring, so to speak. Oftentimes we use micro- animations, hover overs, and in some cases we will use videos. They’re more background videos, but you have to be very careful that they don’t distract the messaging.
The main thing is to be very careful with movement or dynamic animation on a website. Most
of the time it’s better to err in the way of not using it. We’ve really helped evaluate that with our clients and make those decisions as to whether they’re appropriate or not. Be careful for using visual bullying when you’re building your website. If you have any questions on this topic or any thing related to web design and development, feel free to let us know. Thank you.
