A UNESCO digital exhibit featuring various cultural artifacts on pedestals around a central framed painting.

Interactive content offers new ways of experiencing information that's impossible on paper.

Interactions reveal details like uncovering hidden messages, drawing us in through the act of discovery.

6 reasons interactive content outperforms static pages

1. Active versus passive consumption increases time spent on page

When visitors pause to click, scroll, or interact in other ways, they're given space to think about what they're seeing. Each point of interactive content is part of a bigger positive feedback loop, where something happens on screen, new details are revealed, and people feel more invested in what they're reading.

2. Interactive content leads to better information retention

Static content moves like scenery on a long drive, with words blurring together like miles. When we're taking in web content on autopilot, it can be hard to recall specific points in our user journeys.

Research shows that interactive content leads to improved information recall compared to presenting the same information in static form. This same study also indicates that interactive content can lessen the impact of nearby non-interactive content, so be careful what information you prioritize.

When visitors click, hover, or scroll to uncover new content, they’re more likely to remember information associated with these actions. This phenomenon is known as kinaesthetic memory. Like playing a song on the piano and being able to feel where the right notes go, or how filling in a crossword puzzle makes it more likely that you’ll know the answers if you see the same clues again, kinaesthetic memory encodes information through the act of doing.

In this Vev built website, interactive content like scroll-triggered text animation, and glimmering images of its interiors evokes the frosty beauty of Hunderfossen’s ice cathedral and hotel.

3. Interactive content heightens perceptual bandwidth

Interactive content opens up multiple pathways for imprinting information. A simple infographic offers a singular experience. Add clickable hotspots, multi-step animations, and other interactions, and we're no longer just observers, but thinking over our choices, analyzing new details, and physically engaging with our digital devices. By engaging multiple cognitive processes we’re more likely to recall the information we’re interacting with.

4. Interactive content leads to stronger emotional engagement

Dopamine is that feel-good neurotransmitter that we get in anticipation as well as completing activities that our brains consider worthwhile. When we complete actions, even small ones, our brains give us a dopamine boost.

Interactive content breaks up web content into tasks. Design elements like clickable icons that unveil more details, micro-interactions, and animated transitions from one section to the next, also signal moments of completion. Each click, hover, or scroll that shows something new triggers a burst of dopamine, keeping us motivated to continue exploring.

5. Improved mobile experiences

The limitations of static web design are even more obvious on smaller screens. While you can get away with filling a desktop layout with text and images, it can be way too much content when shrunk down on mobile.

Interactive content on mobile accomplishes a few important things for visitors. First, it breaks up content into more manageable chunks eliminating gigantic blocks of text. It also encourages visitors to be more than passive viewers, but to tap, swipe, and scroll.

In a Pfizer case study, they recount a time they partnered with Marvel in putting out a comic book promoting COVID vaccinations. This comic book took the form of a PDF for certain markets. Once they took it and turned it into an interactive website they saw a 50x increase in engagement. This further illuminates the importance of making content interactive on mobile devices.

A masked girl reacts to breaking news on a TV screen showing Thor fighting Ultron and Captain Marvel.

6. More meaningful user signals

Whenever someone engages with a website, whether it’s clicking, scrolling, or engaging with other types of interactive features, these are all user signals. A user signal is a measurable action telling you precisely how people are engaging.

Let’s consider a web page that’s mainly text and a few images. You might get metrics from Google Analytics like the average engagement time and scroll depth. Knowing that people are taking the time to go through what you’ve built is helpful, but it doesn’t give you any deeper insights into what they’re doing and why they’re there.

Interactive content functions as tiny beacons, transmitting visitors’ actions and showing what most interests them.

Examples of interactive content in the wild

MindMarket

MindMarket helps companies understand how to better serve customers across the globe through qualitative research. Just as they provide clarity to their clients, their website takes a straightforward approach in communicating what they do.

It’s a lively and upbeat design, filled with bright colors and bouncy scroll-triggered animations. There’s a thoughtful pace, with each page having a short explanation about an aspect of MindMarket’s work, followed by a button to get more details. Interactive content creates a smooth flow of ideas, and clickable elements give visitors the option to choose what they want to learn more about.

Your Ageing Gut

Most of us can’t get away with eating the way we did when we were younger. While there was a time we wouldn’t give a second thought to indulging in late-night pizza, now we wake up with stomach aches questioning our life choices.

Your Ageing Gut covers how our digestive systems change as we get older, presenting in an easy-to-follow way why issues like heartburn, food allergies, and lactose intolerance can become problems later in life.

Text and graphics blink into place, along with a crawl of parallax effects, which gives this space a sense of calm when talking about the unpleasantness of stomach problems. At the end of each section is the header “What’s the solution?” with clickable illustrations that display these important answers. Instead of telling us what we need to do, it uses interactive content to make us feel like we’re finding these answers on our own.

Unesco Stolen Objects Museum

Stolen artifacts aren’t only removed from physical spaces, but from their cultural context. They become mere objects, disconnected from the people and history that they were a part of.

UNESCO Virtual Museum of Stolen Cultural Objects takes us on a virtual journey through these lost relics. There’s a nice balance of interactive content, with scroll-triggered animations scaling up text windows, and photo carousels that invite visitors to flip through. We learn the stories and significance of these artifacts, making us realize just what’s been lost.

Interactive content works well for educational websites. Instead of skimming, we’re guided in taking in information, and encouraged to explore further.

When Interactive Content Is Not the Right Choice

If there’s an immediate message

People don’t want to mess around, if the information they’re trying to get to is urgent. Content like customer service info, contact information, and other information should not require extra steps to get to.

When the message is simple

If you're making a single point or expressing a basic idea, interactive content can overcomplicate things for those reading through.

Accessibility

Not all interactive elements work well with screen readers or through keyboard navigation. Keep in mind how interactive content may impact those with limitations.

What this means for modern content teams

There was a time when writers and designers didn't come together until later in the design process. Content people would hand off their work to designers who would then put it into a layout. Interactions were simple and often added in later on.

Interactive content requires collaboration right from the start. Writers and designers need to work together in figuring out how information will be revealed. The forms interactive content takes dictate what text will be required, as well as how it will be organized.

Instead of a traditional handoff, design and content teams need to prototype and make changes together throughout the course of a project.

Vev helps you turn static information into exciting user experiences

How do you want to tell your story? Whether you want to do it with animated data visualizations, 3D elements, or through the power of scrollytelling, Vev offers a multitude of possibilities for working with interactive content.

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Why Interactive Content Performs Better Than Static Pages (According to Industry Trends)