Article Contributed by Maria Estrada
People have predicted that cards would become a staple in mobile, and eventually, web marketing as online content is being broken down into separate components and reassembled in the form of cards.
We are welcoming the era of personalized experiences at the palm of our hands. In the real world, cards are an integral part of our everyday lives. We have health cards, school IDs, credit cards, cheap business cards, etc. And with the internet’s incessant need for customization, it’s quite easy to see why cards are gaining more and more popularity.
What are Cards?
Cards are rectangles and squares with different images and text that serve as a bite-sized information medium.
We see cards all around us. We have grocery coupons, birthday cards, debit cards, cards games, and a whole lot more. From the print business card stock we hold to the online recipe cards we see, they are all of the same purposes: convey quick bursts of info.
Thus, designers conveniently incorporated a piece of our everyday life into our online experience, making it more intuitive.
How Do Cards Work?
Cards aggregate information from your browsing patterns into one immersive user experience. Some of this information include:
- Personal preferences. Take Google Now for example. It takes note of your interests and shows you cards related to them. These might come from your Google searches, emails, and other mobile apps.
- Geographical context. You may receive alerts based on your location. Some of the most common are weather updates and traffic flow.
- Social circles. Your browsing experience can also be affected by your friends’ online behavior and preferences. You can also receive recommendations based on what they like.
The Card UI Advantage
- Bite-sized Content
Cards make it easier for the reader to digest information since you can see the media in distinct sections. You won’t be seeing chunks of text, which are too stuffy and intimidating. You can even integrate gifs and audio files to break up your paragraphs without any issue.
Scannability is another important trait that cards have. According to research, internet users rarely read stuff online. Instead, they skim through articles and look for highlighted words, catchy headlines, and short lines of text.
- Pleasing Aesthetics
Card-based interfaces are more attractive for consumers due to their clean visuals. And since cards rely heavily on images, it successfully captures the viewer’s attention and draws the audience’s eyes to the design.
According to Kissmetrics, images not only add more life to your website, but they also increase conversion rates. People want to visualize the experience, and you can attribute this fact to the principle of showing, not telling.
- Tweakable Interfaces
Think of digital cards the same way you think of physical cards. They can be folded, turned over for more information, organized, sorted, and spread out. In the same way, we can make use of animations and visual effects to make the user experience more intuitive. Think of it as an affordable business cards alternative.
With visual cues, you can tell the user to ‘flip’ the card over to reveal more information or to swipe the card to continue reading. When done correctly, you can provide a perfect user experience for your customers.
- Scalability
According to Adobe, 38 percent of people will stop interacting with your page if the layout is unresponsive and wonky. This fact highlights the necessity for a crisp and responsive user interface, and the good news is that we now have cards to give us a solution.
Card UI’s are made to be scalable on different platforms. In fact, they are the best choice for responsiveness since they serve as containers that you can easily scale up or down, allowing us to recreate the same visuals across different platforms and devices.
Takeaway
The Card Interface craze is giving the online world an architectural evolution. Or should I say, revolution? You can even see card-based UI’s on different apps, like Tinder and even Microsoft!
They are the next big thing in media marketing and the latest playground for the creative minds behind digital content marketing. It is undeniable that cards are skyrocketing the digital marketing game, and there is just no stopping it.
Author Bio
Maria Estrada is the business executive of PrintMeister AU, a print ads company. She likes to tinker with different photo manipulation software like Adobe Photoshop. In her free time, she blogs about her knowledge in various digital marketing and graphic design strategies.