Homepages: Part 4

HI HI HI, okay, new week, same me. Let's do it.

Last time I talked about ~ THE FOLD ~: what is it, why you care, and some controversy. Before the fold, I tried to convince you, my nameless audience (please say Hi if you actually read these, the internet is so lonely). Anyway - off to a new topic! Let's talk about movement. Specifically, movement on your homepage.

WHAT IS MOVEMENT

Are you old and did you use PowerPoint in high school / college like I did? Did you meticulously put in various transitions in order to entertain your classmates (think fade, dissolve, etc.)? Perhaps you remember Prezi being a new amazing presentation option. Ok if not perhaps you are young and I should just say GIF is to movement as Polaroid is to stillness. Movement (or motion) in websites refers to items / elements moving, rotating, scrolling, flashing, blinking, spinning, bouncing, and whatever other animation describing words you can think of.

DO I NEED TO ADD MOVEMENT

This is a question I cannot answer for you in a short blog so here are just a few considerations to guide you on your journey.

• Who is your audience? Would they appreciate movement, would it make the website more engaging to them?

• Accessibility should be considered in everything we do, especially websites. Check out W3C for updated accessibility standards / best practices. At a minimum: do not auto play sound or have videos that cannot be turned off easily.

• What is the purpose of movement? Am I adding movement just because I think I need it? Does the movement highlight something particular about my work / page elements?

MY PERSONAL PREFERENCE

I don't like unnecessary movement. Its annoying and distracting to me. Extra dislike if I cannot turn off the movement easily and quickly. I do like movement that adds value to the element. What is an example of a website with unnecessary movement? Warning, loud website but here it is (https://www.lingscars.com/) [*side note: at this point Ling's Cars website is famously bad, so I like hate-like it]. What is an example of movement that adds value? Check out oddfellows homepage (https://oddfellows.tv/). oddfellows is a creative agency specializing in motion design and their website uses movement elegantly and fantastically. See my preferences on movement expressed in gifs below.

In Short - Make sure movement MAKES SENSE. Do not add movement for movement's sake. Good luck and remember the internet is a vast resource and you can spend hundreds of hours on this topic alone. You probably don't have time for that so remember tip #1 - Keep It Simple.

Example 1 - Beautiful, simple, movement in a gif

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Example 2 - Annoying movement in a gif