Interactive builds
What is an interactive web experience?
Short answer
An interactive web experience is a site people use rather than read, a playable instrument, a world you move through, a tool that responds to input. The test is whether the visitor produces something: a sound, a score, a recording. If they only scrolled, it is a website with animation.
by sean garschi · founder of growthr · ny · la · sf
updated 2026-08-19
The distinction that matters
Scroll-triggered animation is presentation. The content is fixed and the visitor is a passenger. That can be beautiful and it is not interactive in any meaningful sense.
A genuine interactive experience gives the visitor agency and produces an output that differs per person. That output is what makes it shareable, because people post things they made far more readily than things they saw.
What they are used for
Album and single drops, product launches, brand moments tied to an event, and campaigns where the goal is participation rather than reach. They work when there is a concentrated moment of attention to convert, and they are wasteful when there is not.
Related questions
How long does an interactive web experience take to build?+
Two to four weeks for a focused single-mechanic build, six to ten weeks for a multi-scene experience. Asset and approval cycles are usually the constraint rather than engineering.
Do interactive experiences work on mobile?+
They have to. Most traffic and virtually all sharing happens on phones, so a build that only works on desktop has missed its audience entirely.
What technology are they built with?+
Web Audio for sound, WebGL or Canvas for visuals, and plain DOM where that is sufficient. The choice follows the mechanic rather than the other way round.
More answers on the answers index, or see what I do.
got something to build?
Interactive builds, growth systems, or getting found by both Google and ChatGPT. Tell me what the moment is and when it lands.