Create the WOW Factor with Drupal - Part 3 of 5

In the first two installments of this series we looked at a general introduction to creating WOW with Drupal and adding some "Technical Wow". Today's let's tackle ...

Creating Wow - Aesthetic

In order to make your users go wow, you need to make your Drupal website beautiful. Sounds simple, doesn't it? But it means much more than mocking up fanciful artwork in Photoshop. For a start, that design needs to be implementable, or else it's just fancy for fancy's sake. More importantly, it's not just the look of the thing that needs to be considered, it's as much about the interactions a user will be asked (or forced) to make because of that design. How do they feel whilst using your site? Look at trello.com for an example of an amazing user interface that just makes me smile whilst I am using it. The design is simple and nice, but it's the way that everything is malleable that makes it really sing.

The aesthetic wow doesn't have to be hard, either. There are plenty of quick wins a themer can make whilst building a site. For example, you can create a nice subtle fade transition mixin in your SASS for hover effects on links and action buttons. Create it once and use it whenever you need a nice link at no extra effort. Or you could take a leaf from the Drupal Commerce cookbook. Have you ever noticed that when progressing through checkout a little ajax activity indicator pops up when you hit continue? On the installations I've looked at that little spinner does nothing (if Commerce Guys are reading this, I stand to be corrected!). It is representing no actual ajax process. But it makes the user happy that the site is working as it should whilst the server works through Commerce's complex processes.

No talk on aesthetics would be complete without mentioning responsive design. Whether you favour an adaptive approach, mobile-first or something else, your attention to detail absolutely has to span across multiple devices. You can't foresee what device a user will have when interacting with your site, so you need to make sure that it works nicely on as many platforms as possible. As we've covered before, responsive design is a standard nowadays and you can't forget to consider it in terms of your whole package of wow.

The next installment looks at creating wow within your service offerings.

If you want to discuss Annertech helping you build an award-winning website, please feel free to contact us by phone on 01 524 0312, by email at hello@annertech.com, or using our contact form.