Social media today is what the television set was almost seventy years ago and what the radio was even before. Social networking is probably the most revolutionary development in the Internet ever since Google, with a growth of three times the overall growth rate of the entire Internet. Indeed, people spend more time visiting social networking sites than they do checking their email!
With such massive popularity, effective social networking website design is a must if you’re in this field. Like designing any website, designing a social networking site can have varied approaches, but the goal remains the same: enhancing user experience. Here are a few tips to follow so that you can achieve this effectively:
Engage your visitors
Picture this. You visit a website. On reaching the site, you find it bombarded with unorganized content. You open up another tab showing another website that you found off your Google search. You find yourself greeted with a well-structured layout showing you exactly where’s what. The odds are that you’re going to pick the second website over the first one. And that’s why you need an impressive layout. Look up SocialEngine theme development to understand how to create and customise themes. But there’s another important lesson here: people don’t like to be kept waiting, which brings us to our next point.
Make your site interactive
When you design a social networking website, make it interesting right from the home page. A common practice at this point is to invite your visitors to sign up. But since has become the norm already, maybe you can try adding something new. Why exactly should your visitors sign up to your website? What makes your website different from others? This is where you get to show them this. In the user’s home page, social networking sites show you what your friends are up to with the help of a newsfeed. This is one of the things that make them so addictive! It’s also a useful to make it easy to find friends online, such as suggesting friends you might know.
Encourage self-expression among users
The ability to express oneself was taken to a whole new dimension with the advent of social media. Some websites allow full control over individual profiles, by allowing users to select a template of their choice. Others offer limited control. For example, Facebook allows you to post content, but it doesn’t allow you to change the look of your profile. Another feature to encourage self-expression among users can be to allow them to post comments using your website. For example, a lot of blog sites and news sites allow users to comment on stories using Facebook.
Make communication easy
When designing a social media site, it’s vital that every decision you make should be aimed at making communication easier. Provide multiple communication channels such as wall posts, comments and live chats. Also make it easier to include multiple people in conversations.
