Here’s 11 small changes, from buttons and links, to carousels and lists.
Every week we prove how small design details have increased engagement at Anghami, the leading music streaming service in the Middle East. Below are a handful of very simple and actionable examples that we’ve found very useful. Engagement over the same UI can vary across markets, app categories, and as time moves on. However, I believe these examples are flexible enough to apply on most segments. Also, the approach to tweaking the UI for increasing engagement is the same. Let’s go:
Making users tap an essential item
Regardless of which music app you use, the mini player is the single most important element while playing music. It offers basic control over your music, and tapping it is the only way to open the full player where you can download the playing song, change the queue, or simply enjoy the large cover art. Considering the importance of opening the full player, it was bizarre that few people were opening it. We were using the same design as any other music app, where the mini player is attached to the lower tab bar. By detaching the mini player from the tab bar and making curved corners, the mini player suddenly looked like a button. A significantly higher percentage of people opened the full player since then.
The biggest difference between carousels and lists
Users love accessing top songs directly from the homepage, so we had a carousel of top songs right there. But on any other platform, including Billboard, charts are displayed as a list. So we changed top songs from a carousel to a list, but users started complaining how much harder it is to access top songs! We thought they didn’t recognize the new list format, but that wasn’t the case. Apparently, users were happy to swipe around top songs in the carousel, but by showing a list of 3 songs, users had to tap “More” to see the rest. Next time you’re thinking whether to use a carousel or a list, remember that swiping a carousel left and right is way…
