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Adding Eye Candy: 4 Visual Best Practices to Boost Engagement on Your Idea Generation Platform

The great Israeli artist Yaacov Agam once said “while the verbal can separate, the visual is understood by everyone.” The same principle holds true when it comes to boosting user engagement on your idea generation platform. Implementing sleek, eye-catching visuals wherever possible will help attract user attention and encourage more participation.

By leveraging profile pictures, idea images, gamification badges, and other visuals that align with your company’s branding and culture, you can effectively convey to users that the platform is set up for their benefit. Using a variety of striking visuals will also let users know that they can showcase their ideas in bold and detailed ways, thus adding further incentives for participation.

The following are just a few of the types of images you can use on your platform to enhance the visual appeal of your initiatives.

1. Campaign & Idea Images: Help Your Users See the Big Picture

Studies show that only 10% of audiences remember a message they have heard three days later, whereas 65% remember a message when it is paired with visuals. That’s why social media platforms place particular emphasis on using large and bold images within feeds.

Because of this, it is highly recommended that all campaigns and ideas submitted on your system are complemented with relevant and striking images and even gifs. An appealing default image should also be set in cases where a relevant image is not yet available.

campaign image

The campaigns and ideas on your platform should be complemented with attention-grabbing visuals that convey what the projects are all about.

Just before launching your innovation platform, you may want to create some example campaigns with supporting ideas so that users can see exactly how images can be deployed to great effect. It should be noted that the Qmarkets platform can be configured so that an image must be assigned to an idea before it is launched. This is useful for campaigns where images are particularly relevant – such as proposals for new logos, office layout designs, etc. In order to make it as simple as possible for your users to submit ideas, we recommend minimizing the use of mandatory fields.

We should also mention that if you have the same campaign present across multiple language instances of your system, it is possible to assign different campaign images per language. This is particularly useful if your campaign image features wording that you need variations of in other languages.

2. User Pictures: Make Your Idea Generation Platform More Personable  

It’s far easier to forget a name than a face. As such, it’s recommended that all users on the platform upload a profile picture. This approach will, in turn, lead to greater employee recognition and give a much more personal tone to the initiative as a whole.

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By ensuring your users have profile pictures uploaded, you can give your idea generation platform a greater sense of personality.

If your users already have profile pictures set up on an existing active directory or platform, migrating them over to your new system is highly recommended. It’s a great way to save yourself the time and effort that would otherwise be expended getting your employees to upload new profile images.

3. Homepage Layout: The Nerve Centre of your Innovation Initiative

The homepage is the first thing your end-users will see. As such, it should contain engaging and helpful content that is displayed in a way that will maximize appeal. A great way to achieve this is to implement a welcome strip at the top of the homepage that contains short text explaining the main applications of the platform, as well as an introductory video. Should you have a multi-tenancy Qmarkets system in place, you can have a dedicated welcome strip for each tenant – i.e one for each of your individual audiences or use-cases –  in order to personalize their experience.

Over time – as more activity takes place on your platform – it’s highly recommended that you adjust the order of elements on your homepage so that users always have easy access to the most important information. For example, when you first launch your platform and you only have a limited number of active campaigns, you may wish to display them in a carousel or a single strip. However, when the number increases, you may place the campaigns in a matrix display so that users can survey and access them with greater ease. Your homepage layout should always give campaigns the maximum possible exposure.

You can also configure your homepage to prioritise the display of important news items, as well as highlight top contributors or competition winners. As your platform plays an increasingly greater role in your company’s innovation process, you can also display important KPIs (ROI achieved in the last 12 months, number of users engaged, etc). These can be updated and adjusted at any time.

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You can customize your homepage to showcase KPIs, top contributors, important updates, and much more.

4. Platform Skin Settings: Brand Your Platform to Perfection

Two important factors should be kept in mind when adjusting the appearance  of your innovation management platform. On the one hand, it should contain elements from your organization’s branding (colors, logo banner, font, etc) so that it establishes a familiar look and feel that aligns with other systems your company may use. On the other, it’s just as important to include elements that differentiate your platform and reflect the unique and innovative nature of your project. This could involve creating a whole new brand  for your initiative, complete with a bespoke logo, theme, terminology, and associated materials. For example, if you wanted to create a space theme for your platform, you could exchange the name for ‘Campaign’ for ‘Moonshot’, and ‘Homepage’ for ‘Mission Control’, etc.

skin menu

Using Qmarkets software, you can easily configure the ‘skin’ of your platform to meet your branding requirements.

While some idea management software options permit only basic branding configuration – or none at all –  Qmarkets’ software gives clients almost total control over customizing the look of their platform. Options are available for adding several colors, different logo sizes, email skins, and more. The Qmarkets team will implement your choice of branding for you before the launch of your platform, and you have the option to change it at any stage through self admin. Unique branding styles can also be set for different tenants or subsystems.

Achieving Picture-Perfect Innovation

Studies have shown that people absorb visual information approximately 60,000 times faster than text, as well as retain 80% of what they observe compared to only 20% of what they read. As such, it’s extremely important to ensure that the visuals of your platform are implemented for maximum appeal, regardless of what industry you are in. Each graphic element you employ – from campaign images, to the homepage welcoming strip, to icons for KPIs achieved – should convey to users that the platform is an easy-to-use canvas upon which they can enrich and share their ideas.  This approach will help prime your innovation endeavors for long-term success.

You can find out more about how Qmarkets can help bring your idea generation platform to life, and complement it with striking visuals, on our dedicated Customer Success page.

Joel Ben Nescher Author
Joel Ben Nescher

Joel is Product Expert at Qmarkets.

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