The Value of Fun

There are a lot of strategies on how to be successful in business.  Common suggestions I’ve read over the years include:

• Have a clear business vision and plan in place
• Have extensive experience in your field, and keep up-to-date
• Present yourself/business in a professional manner
• Define your niche market and consumer demographic
• Be organized and productive.
• Build collaborative relationships (networking) with colleagues
• Reward client loyalty and offer incentives/promotions
• Do assessments overtime for self adjustment

There are many more as well, but you get the idea.  In short, it doesn’t matter whether your business is the traditional brick-and-mortar type, or the web-only, the same principles will apply.  The one strategy that is rarely noted though, yet absolutely crucial, is the need to have FUN.  I think we’ve all had one of those repetitive office jobs where each day drags on, … we stare blankly into our computer wishing we could be anywhere else, and we force our self to hack away at the work a head of us amidst the gradual onset of fatigue (praying for the weekend to come).  It is no wonder that statistics have shown that productivity decreases as the day progresses in most business setting industries. Routine is often mind-numbing!

The savvy business owner has come to realize that there needs to be fun for the optimizal work environment; moreover, each staff member needs to feel as if they are playing a crucial role in the business since this sense of accomplishment is needed on a fundamental emotional level.  In this regard, periodically you will hear about how a business will introduce “team building” exercises, encourage collaborative group projects, schedule staff retreats, have company picnics, extended lunch hours on holidays, and/or implement a casual dress policy. Each of these is an attempt to introduce fun, individuality, and/or engagement in some fashion.

Being a web old-timer, I remember when the Internet first became available and the popularity of “chat”.  Some where surprised by the number of users, just like some are surprised by the growing use of the many diverse social media options currently available, not to mention the importance of bloggers, YouTube videos, Skype, Review websites, etc.  The value ascribed to these diverse social options is inherently the same as noted above.  They are often entertaining, and they allow one to contribute, to be an individual, … to be heard.

Okay, so the point I am seeking to make here is that people respond to fun and engagement.  People want to be acknowledged and heard. It doesn’t matter whether its preschool children, the professional business staff, or your web audience.  To keep people interested you have to entertain.  You have to let them speak.  You need to respond.  If you’ve kept an eye of web trends you already know the value of what I say.

The question is, how do we entertain our web visitors?  To start, … I visited a page the other day since I had read that they had tried a novel approach to entertain.  I clicked on the link, and after a few seconds a Raptor (think Jurassic park dinosaur) moved across my screen roaring at me.  It was hilarious!  And while it had nothing to do with the page per se, it did catch my eye, and I must have refreshed that page 10 times to enjoy it over and over.  I’ve seen “fun” presented in a lot of ways … comics added to a page as a way to illustrate a point, simple games such as a crossword puzzle that related to the business, visitor quizzes and polls, videos, photo galleries, music, and of course contests (everyone loves getting something for free).  The blog, and social media options such as Facebook are always great places to entertain.  As for myself, I will add humor/jokes, etc to my Facebook page, and in the past I had polls on my website, and some time back I had a personal blog where I had included a chess game against a computer.  Lots of people appreciated this, and while it worked great there, it wouldn’t be great necessarily for my current site.  The reality is that there is no one solution for introducing fun in a website. The choice of what do add is really based upon what works best for your audience, and what will integrate well into your site.

In any case, studies have shown that people get bored easily (I know, hard to believe), and most people will respond to a page that catches their eye, and are more likely to visit the site over time if they see it as a entertaining or a resource in some way.    In this regard the design needs to be visually engaging, some form of animation is always a good idea (yet keep it clean and simple or you risk turning off the older demographic), and the content on the page needs to be easily digested so not too text heavy.  That being said, don’t forget the value of the page as a resource.  A good blog, or web page that provides useful information will also receive repeat traffic over time, and if I haven’t stressed it enough already, just trust me on this … the more visitors you get, and the longer they stay on your site, the better will be your site’s ranking.

As for myself, I spend approx 12 hours a day sitting in my office chair in front of my computer.  How do I stay sane you may ask?  Well, I take periodic breaks — I play a couple of games of chess every few hours, I tend my gardens/greenhouse in the early hours, shoot my longbow after lunch a few days a week, and get out to golf whenever my schedule allows.  In addition, I have two adorable parrots that live in my office that climb upon me, on my desk, squall as they take their baths, etc.  This is my world of self-defined fun, and since I get a great deal of satisfaction from what I do … it works.

The next step, find ways to entertain visitors to my websites as well.  As Sherlock Holmes would say, “The Game is Afoot!”