Are you looking for something amusing, short, interesting, or funny on the web? My answer to you would be GIFs. An example of a site that incorporates GIFs would be Buzzfeed. Generally, here’s an idea of Buzzfeed’s guideline for writing:
Gather Ideas for Top 10 List.
Write One Sentence for Each Point.
Deploy GIFs as Examples.
Repeat.
The Trending of GIFs
The popularity of GIFs have inspired websites like Buzzfeed and mobile apps like Vine, which enables users to create and post seven second video clips. As the trend continues to grow, companies are using GIFs for their email marketing. Since 15-20 seconds of a user’s time is spent going through each email, GIFs bring more life into the message to keep a user’s engaged. E-retailer BlueFly, found that using GIFs in their marketing emails pulled in 12 percent more revenue than the company’s non-animated emails. The solution that GIFs bring are their ability to be fast, engaging, and lightweight compared to embedding a video.
Tips and Tricks
If you’re interested in using GIFs for email marketing here are some tips:
“Keep your animation simple. If you can say the same thing in four frames that you can in eight, opt for the shorter sequence.”
“Watch your file size. We recommend keeping your entire email’s size to under 40K so it’s easily managed by servers and inboxes. Plan your animated GIF accordingly, and opt for simpler colors and graphics in your frames to keep the file size in check.”
“Consider combining animated GIFs with Flash. If you’ve got a compelling Flash presentation on your website, put together a simpler version as an animated GIF. Include the GIF in your email, but link it to the page with the fancy Flash version.”
For more advice click here.
How Fast is Fast Enough?
Web pages come in different sizes. This means load time and page weight will vary. How do we come to a conclusion and say “It’s fast enough?”
Compare
One way to help answer that question is comparing the site you’re visiting with it’s competitor. In his book, “Designing and Engineering Time”, Steven Seow talks about the 20% rule. To give an example, “If site loads in 5 seconds. 20% of 5 seconds is 1 second. So to be perceived as faster than them, you need to have your pages taking no longer than 4 seconds (5 seconds load time – 20% difference).”
Measure the right thing
Speed Index looks how quickly the majority of the page gets painted to the browser. It’s one of many useful metrics for measuring how page loading is perceived by users. When measuring the metrics be sure to ask some questions considering the user:
- At what point is the form functional for the user?
- When can the tab interface be used?
- For key tasks on your site how long does it take you users to complete them?
What about the visual appeal?
Making the decision to improve aesthetics is beneficial for user experience, but there is always a trade off between aesthetics and speed. By adding more weight, plugins, and other resources, speed will often be sacrificed. No worries though, there are actions that can be taken to prevent an imbalance.
To learn more visit the link here.