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Online competition is fierce, so website aesthetics and user experience have a huge impact on a business' online success. While recent design focuses were on flat design, there is now a resurgence of tactile details in modern design due to their obvious benefit to the user. Tactile details, from textured graphics to haptic feedback, help to captivate the audience, assist with navigation, and provide a good overall user experience. These details can also help businesses achieve metric goals by improving website retention and conversion. Below we explore the return of tactile details in web design and three ways that tactile details improve UX.

1. Textures create interest and help to establish emotional connections. Tactile details, such as textured backgrounds, typography, and graphics, grab attention. They make a web page stand out by providing visual interest, implied value, and even emotional connections. Tactile graphics can seem very real, making them easily relatable to the subject they are representing. They provide easy and impressive visual cues. For example, consider going onto a website that sells paint. Flat color squares may show what colors are available, but it's a fairly typical and unexciting representation. Take those same paint colors and present them as brushstrokes or poured paint and the rich details make the paint seem more desirable, memorable, and provides a perceived level of higher quality to the site. Tactile details modernize the visuals and grab attention.

2. Haptic feedback is a navigational assistant. Tactile details are about texture and touch, communicating to users through senses other than just visuals. Tactile details, such as haptic feedback, leverage the sense of touch to navigate users to the desired end-point for both the user and the purpose of the site. Interactions like mobile phone vibrations when completing a task or when leaving a page communicate with the user beyond what they can see to provide a better UX. A vibration can indicate to the user that they can click to get more information on what they are currently viewing, direct users towards CTAs, improve bounce-time by alerting users when leaving a page accidentally, and much more.

3. Tactile details make hero messages pop. Textured backgrounds, realistic artwork in design, and textured typography, make hero messages stand out. Consider how details such as CTA borders help to attract user attention. If a border around a CTA can greatly improve its visibility, imagine what texture-rich and three-dimensional graphics can do. They not only make a website more effective by conveying meaning quickly through visual association, but also present a high-quality aesthetic that speaks volumes to the effort a brand puts into their work, and most importantly, calls attention to important information.

Avatar New York is an innovating, award-winning web design New York firm dedicated to providing clients with responsive websites that help grow brands and convert visitors to customers. With an expertise in web development, branding, cloud hosting, mobile app development, and CMS and e-commerce solutions, Avatar New York's top tier designers have the ability to create intelligent websites for any type of business.