A good example of efficiency in a page is expandable sections for people to read. Many modern websites use such functions (including Firebox and Dixons). These enable you to have the information ready for an interested user to view but hidden from a user who is not bothered. They could be customer reviews, related accessories, external links or related pages on your site.

Navigation should also be optimised for efficiency. Take a look at Amazon and Play’s sites. They have a massive amount of products and category pages yet they manage to successfully classify it into sectors and sub categories all of which look the same so users will know where to look immediately.

Feedback

It’s important for someone’s flow that they are encouraged, reassured and informed of their situation and success at reaching goals.

If you neglect to provide a user with feedback at some point they will begin to loose interest as the goal no longer seems relevant. The best way to give feedback to a user is to keep them up-to-date on their progress. A great example of this is percentage completion counters on video games. Very often when saving or loading a game you will be informed of how many % you have currently completed, very effective as a focus individual will always aim for 100%. You can do the same thing with forms on your site.

Discovery

Once a user has achieved the goals you have set them via maximum efficiency then they are going to want new goals and information or again their concentration and flow will be broken. This has become a well targeting area in web 2.0 and many sites have product or information boxes contain "related products" or "latest news about this tag".

You must have new content for users to find and interact with or you will see negative effects on returning visitors and your site will eventually dry out.

Conclusion

There is a lot of work involved in designing for flow but it’s a compulsory step in your design process. The best test you can do is to see how fast someone who has not been involved with a site build how easy it is to navigate or what the goals of each specific page are. If they give you positive feedback it’s likely your site is accessible in a flow type way.

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