Direct manipulation
Many of us struggle with the issue of displaying and interacting with large amount of data. The traditional static html page can't really help with this problem, but there are ways to augment it. At Google Finance for instance, they have nicely integrated very powerful and intuitive charts built using Flash technology with the rest of the page, some of which (like the news section) are driven by AJAX.

The ability to easily compare and overlay other stock market indexes with a click of a button without refreshing the page makes it feel like a natural application and not a traditional web page anymore. Even the time scale is very intuitive and so easy to use that it becomes very addictive.

Do you have large sets of data on your site that you want your users to interact with? Building charts and graphs using Flash technology will deliver a more immersive and natural experience.

Differentiating experiences
Features such as product configurators can push the richness of online applications to the extreme and create an immersive brand experience well beyond a traditional HTML interface. One of the best executed and well known is the Mini USA site. Users can create their own version of the Mini and see the results as they are making changes without having to wait for the page to refresh. Every action can be easily undone or replaced by another action with just a click or two. The end experience is very immersive and users feel compelled to finish the process to see what they are creating.

Another example is the Nike iD website, where users can customize their shoes, shirt or bag with different combination of colors, images and text. Users can express their creativity in many different ways.

Where on your site do you want to immerse users in your brand experience? Do you offer products that can be customized? Or are you thinking about them? This is a natural place where rich technology can be used to create a unique experience.

Implications
Richness is becoming more and more pervasive. As we have seen, there are different ways that you can add richness to your website, from simple widgets on a page to complex product configurators. Offering this type of richness to your users increases the overall experience and reflects positively on your brand.

If you are ready to add more richness to your website, keep these three things in mind:

• Every website is becoming and behaving more like an application and less like a traditional site.
• The experience is more about performing actions than going from page to page.
• Users are expecting more power and complexity, without a hit to the design's simplicity.

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Riccardo La Rosa is director of emerging interactions at Molecular. Read full bio.