Multimedia websites. They're everywhere. With the advent of streaming entertainment, you can't walk three steps without being informed of some new, "life-changing", online entertainment service hungry for a monthly subscription payment. But when I say multimedia, what am I talking about? Well, the combination of different visual and aural elements to inform, entertain and encourage you as a user. Here I'm going to go over three different multimedia websites, and the things-what-they-do in this respect.
BBC News
Starting off with the most basic example of the three: the BBC News website.
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| The BBC News homepage, showing thumbnails for articles |
BBC News uses text to inform its users about current events, along with video articles that include sound. They use thumbnails and photos to augment the text presentation of their articles. The result is a platform that feels far less dry and becomes much easier to absorb new information than a traditional newspaper or TV channel.
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| A news article with embedded video |
Netflix
Secondly, we have Netflix, which; due to its incredible success, should need no introduction whatsoever. But just in case you've been living under a rock, Netflix is probably the most successful entertainment website of all time. It acts as a service that allows users to stream a terrifyingly large selection of movies and TV shows.
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| The Netflix homepage, showing a variety of content available to stream |
Netflix uses a number of ways to attract users to different pieces of content. First off, it has large images and thumbnails to point users towards its many offerings. Of course, as a video streaming site, it uses video and audio to entertain users.
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| A video playing on Netflix |
Google Stadia
The final site I want to talk about is Google Stadia. Weighing in on the opposite side of the success scale to Netflix, Stadia is Google's attempt to revolutionise video games. Stadia is a cloud gaming site, that uses powerful hardware to stream gameplay to users. The idea behind this being that anyone can theoretically play whatever games they want, without having to invest in expensive hardware themselves. This does come with the caveat that they need to have an extremely fast and reliable internet connection to make the most out of the service.
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| My Stadia homepage. As we can see, the most recently played game is given focus, to demonstrate how quick and easy it is to jump straight back into gameplay. Yes, I like JRPGs |
Stadia doesn't have a monthly fee, so games have to be individually bought by the user. To this end, Stadia has a storefront from which players can buy new games and add-on content. To attract their attention, every game's store page uses splash images, screenshots, and text to get users excited about each specific product.
In Summary
So, as I hope I've made clear, using multimedia in web design is extremely effective at boosting a website's interactivity, making it more entertaining to use, increasing the likelihood of repeat visits. Any aspiring web designer should keep a lookout for multimedia when they're browsing the web, and use what they find to inform their design choices. Lest we return to the dark ages of the 90s hyperlink-filled, overly colourful hellscapes.
Of course, to deliver its content, Stadia uses audio and video to give gameplay feedback to its users. It even has nifty little animations that both draw attention when logging in and make the transition from the homepage to gameplay really smooth.
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