Think about it. When you find yourself really invested in a conversation, it’s usually a retelling of memorable significance – an event that you participated in, a place you went, or something you saw. We all want something special to happen to us or someone we know. Why would this expectation or desire be any different from a client or a user for a website?

I have been teaching at University of Massachusetts at Lowell in the Art Department for several years. My first assignment for my students every semester is to provide three websites that they visit often or admire and the reason why they like it. It never ceases to amaze me the diversity and ironically the consistency of their choices. Not surprising, websites like Google, Facebook, and digg are repeated consistently. From there it ranges from purely inspirational from a design perspective (deviantart.com) to needing a “Break” or a laugh (toothpastefordinner.com) or to just wanting to catch up on their team’s score (nfl.com). Nine years of teaching, two semesters each year, and on average ten students per class has produced well over 500 links! The common bond behind all of these links is that someone found them memorable enough to share with someone else – in this case their classmates and professor.

A "laugh" from toothpastefordinner.com.

The same can be true from my professional experience. For example, if on average I partake in 15 significant website redesign projects in a given year, and my clients refer me to 5 benchmark websites per engagement, well you can do the math. The sentiment from clients eager to have a new website is – how can we differ from our competitors and what will make our users truly satisfied. Unique functionality, must have features, a nice design, engaging conversation, and easy to navigate are all fine characteristics. But what is that one element that stands out that a user would be willing to tell someone else about the site? It’s not always the same and sometimes it’s not necessarily tied to one element. To make an impact on a user it has to speak to them and do so in a memorable way that they would be willing to tell others about.

Recently, I have started asking clients in preliminary creative discussions, what would make their website memorable? It’s not always easy, but through a Mood Board activity and user research, we try to determine what that memorable element is.

[Definition: The mood board presentation is an exercise displaying various sets of images conveying different visual perspectives of a concept or word.]

Choicelinx, a client of ours, really responded well to searching out an answer to make their employer offered benefits application for employees a one of a kind experience. An experience that normally was quite cumbersome and often confusing would be easy for employees to manage their benefits for themselves and for their family members. And ultimately, these employees would retain this memorable user experience and be willing to share it in future job opportunities by recommending it to HR personnel. It became imperative to evaluate other successful sites (not necessarily tied to employer benefits administration) that had complex functionality but with very engaging consumer-like user experience. Two that stood out that were consumer friendly and helped guide the user through in an engaging manner were Netflix and DietTV. Clearly both were not tied to employer benefits, but they offered a compelling look at how to engage a user through a multi-step process.

All websites will require different elements to arrive at this memorable moment where a user will feel compelled to tell someone about their experience. The process at arriving at a memorable element will always be different; however, by looking at the landscape (competitor or not) in combination of what the users are looking to do is absolutely achievable. Having a user walk away and thinking the website was a memorable experience is a success metric that we all should strive for.