Website Interaction and State of Flow

Let's add a little psychology to the proceedings and talk about the relationship between good website design and the psychological state of flow.

What is ‘flow’?

A guy called Mihály Csíkszentmihályi is the brains behind the concept of flow. Perhaps also known as “being in the zone”, he described this phenomenon as being in a state of completely focused motivation and immersion. During flow, people will completely concentrate on the task at hand, be unaware of anything else going on, and feel happy while they are doing it.

The state of flow can occur during many activities such as playing sports or video games or carrying out other tasks which require a high level of skill and concentration, such as rock climbing or even surgery.

Why do we want people to be in a state of flow on our website?

When users are on your website, we don't want them to be half-heartedly flicking between pages; we want them to be completely and utterly absorbed in the website so that they carry out whatever task they came onto the site to do. We want them to be absorbed enough to complete their goals of making a purchase or contacting your company, or whatever the purpose of your website may be.

Maybe you have felt in a state of flow yourself recently when you have been online. Things like researching and eventually booking a holiday or a hotel, or buying something important or that there is a lot of choice for such as a dress, a laptop or a gift for someone else, can all feel very immersive and enjoyable. And this is exactly what we want because surely a happy customer is one who is more likely to make a purchase and keep coming back.

How can we make this state of flow happen?

A well-designed website can induce a state of flow in users. To find out how we can make this happen, let’s take a look at the eight dimensions of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993).

1. Clear goals and immediate feedback

When a user is trying to complete a task on your website, they need to know that they are actually getting somewhere. Give them some feedback by telling them where they are, and give them regular goals by telling them what they need to do next.

For example, your checkout process could consist of three pages – viewing the basket, entering address details for delivery, and making the final payment. If you tell the customer on the basket page that they only have two steps left to complete, they know what to expect and this could reduce your cart abandonment rate compared to if you had a longer, more cumbersome process with no map laid out in front of the user.

2. Equilibrium between the level of challenge and personal skill

Your website shouldn’t be too difficult for the customer to use, otherwise, it won’t be worth it for them to put a large amount of effort into completing a transaction. Therefore navigation should be straightforward and the features of the site should be intuitive to use. However, the site should still require a certain amount of learning from the user – the trick is to make even a complex site straightforward to use.

There should be a balance between feeling challenged and having the skills to complete the task. This is what makes the task self-rewarding (see point 8).

3. Merging of action and awareness

This point means that the activity a person is doing becomes sort of automatic and spontaneous – another reason why your website needs to be intuitive and easy to navigate. If a user has to stop to think about what to do next because they can’t find something, the flow can be broken.

4. Focused concentration

When a user is in a state of flow, they are concentrating on the task at hand. It’s therefore important for their concentration not to be interrupted by nuisances such as not knowing where to navigate next to find what they are looking for, or the site being slow to load. Make it easy, and make it speedy, otherwise, your users may flow off to a different website.

5. Sense of potential control

Users should feel like they are in control when using your website. This goes back to your website being intuitive – it should do what users expect it to do so that they feel in control instead of being confused. A confused visitor is not a happy visitor.

6. Loss of self-consciousness

Losing our self-consciousness when we are in a state of flow means that we are not distracted by our own problems, and it feels like we even forget about ourselves and who we are for a while. This can make people more open to new experiences – like making a new purchase.

7. Time distortion

When people are in a state of flow, they don’t notice the passage of time because they are so absorbed in what they are doing. To achieve this, make your website interesting! Fill it with rich content and make people want to spend more time engaging with your site. If a user is in a state of flow, they won’t realise how long they are spending on your website. And the more time users spend on your site, the more likely it is that they will feel engaged with your company and make a purchase or contact you.

8. Autotelic or self-rewarding experience

If an activity is autotelic, it is rewarding within itself – that is, a person feels rewarded just by taking part in the activity before they even complete their final goal.

So the bottom line is your website needs to make people happy. It should be a joy to use - so much so, that the experience of using the website is just as rewarding as acquiring the new purchase or information at the end of the transaction.