UI design pattern tips: pay to promote

Although many people are designing mobile products that are social in nature, few understand what that really means, how it works, or why it's important.

In this series for Creative Bloq, Chris Bank of UXPin, the UX design app, discusses the importance of social design patterns and details examples from some of the hottest websites and web apps today.

You can see previous posts from UXPin here. Meanwhile, for more examples of web design patterns, download UXPin's free e-book, Web UI Design Patterns 2014 and their free Web UI kit.

The problem

The user wants to highlight certain content above the regular content feed.

The solution

Let users pay to to promote their content. On sites like Quora and Facebook, users can give their posts a boost by paying a certain amount that gives them greater visibility in the content feed above the regular non-paid content.

Dating site OKCupid allows users to give their profile a boost in views and LinkedIn does the same albeit as part of the paid membership plan rather than by individual content like in Facebook.

This form of native advertising can be a great way of allowing users to gain traction and greater visibility while maintaining the user’s experience in the platform.

Words: Chris Bank

Chris Bank is the growth lead at UXPin, a UX design app that creates responsive interactive wireframes and prototypes.