Flying Papers
It’s hard to imagine a more fun and playful website than flyingpapers.com .
(After confirming you’re of legal age) Fly the undeniably cool animated cloud enthusiastically walks you their the site, taking you on a winding journey through their world and painting the picture for what yours could look like with them in it.
The home page showcases their offerings in a way that establishes their point of view and creates opportunities to pull off when you find what you’re looking for. This kind of narrative style flow is downright compelling, creating an almost irresistible need to keep scrolling and see what comes next. Sidebar—We have an alternate home page that in a similar-ish function that kind of pulls you through the page like a lazy river, and it interestingly has a substantial impact on a visitor’s time on page and bounce rate (% of visitors who enter a site then leave without clicking into any other pages). There’s no way to know if this is something Flying Papers have experienced too, but utilizing a narrative-driven flow vs. a more traditional info-driven kind of flow is a growing trend in high ticket websites* and something that hopefully continues to proliferate because it feels so personal and inviting. This website specifically is an incredible example of the value of knowing your customer and the importance of speaking to her rather than at her.
Diving deeper into their site, the about page takes you on a walk through their eras, scrolling through a timeline of their story year by year with genuine descriptions of what was going on at the time. The visualization of their journey is such a cool way to share a glimpse into what it was like building their company, establish credibility, and spark interest for what’s to come. Even deeper into their site, the immersion into their world remains relentless. From the cookies page to the menu and genuinely the most immersive product pages any of us have seen yet—it’s a real everything you need, nothing you don’t, sprinkle in some fun kind of a thing and I can’t get enough.
I could go on and on about the balance of design and usability, the world building, and the beauty of using interaction design to support your design & copy rather than using it as a crutch, but don’t want to give away too much— just check it out for yourself.
*Build in Amsterdam, the game changing interdisciplinary studio that designed and built this site, works with budgets of $30,000-$50,000, according to their awwwards.com profile. They are an award winning international studio with a clear point of view and excellent execution. Props to them for creating this cool website and props to flying papers for building this cool company!
