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Try These 5 Web Design Principles To improve Your Conversion Rate

Web Design Principles

Every business wants to grow and increase its sales. Companies put a lot of time, effort and money into devising marketing strategies to boost their revenues. A website is one way to market their offerings to the people using the internet (which, by the way, is huge in number). A lot of marketers boast the importance of SEO, social media, creating lead magnets that convert, etc. Yet, creating a brilliant website is the first and most important step. 

Stanford University’s research stated that 46.1% of people say a website’s design is the top criteria for deciding a company’s credibility. Therefore, it’s highly critical that your design looks professional. This article will share five web design principles that will boost your conversion rate, thereby creating more revenue for our business.

1. The 8-Second Rule

Studies have suggested that you only have 8 seconds, on average, to get a visitor’s attention. The human attention span on the internet is too short. There’s a very tiny window of opportunity for you to engage a user once they land on your website; every second count. Here’s what you can do:

  • Use a crisp, benefit-driven, pin-pointed headline in large font
  • Include multimedia such as audio, video or other interactive content.
  • Use eye-catching, attention-drawing imagery to convey the prime purpose of your page
  • Use the imagery as a guide to the call-to-action button
  • Make signup buttons large, simple and straightforward.
  • Write powerful copy to entice and engage users.
  • Use hover effects on your buttons 
  • Use animated exit popups to re-engage visitors who are on the verge of bouncing off

2. The Rule of Thirds

One of the key web design principles is to follow the famous photography principle – The Rule of Thirds. To apply this rule, you’re supposed to visually divide an image (in this case, your website page) into thirds, both vertically and horizontally, giving you nine equal squares. The rule says, the four middle intersections are key, strategic places of interest. It creates the most impressive image or design when objects are placed at these points.

Remember that you don’t need to design your entire website strictly by the rule of thirds. Only use it as a tool to help you perfectly place crucial elements. Take a screenshot of your website, only above the fold part or just your header section; divide it into nine equal squares. Analyze it according to the principle and take a call if you want to make any changes or not.

3. The Hick’s Law

Hick’s Law is a famous theory cited by many individuals for various purposes; it is also frequently referenced in web designing. The law is named after a British psychologist, William Edmund Hick. The law states that the time it takes for an individual to decide is directly proportionate to the possible choices they have. In other words, by decreasing the number of choices, the decision time is also decreased and vice-versa.

Using this principle in web design, you can boost conversions by restricting the number of choices users have. And, where do you offer the most number of choices on your website? In the navigation bar. Don’t offer too many links to the users; it makes it challenging for them to choose. The user will lose interest in them altogether. 

4.The KISS Rule

This one is a common rule, being applied in several fields. It means Keep It Short And Simple and applies to web designing too. Simplicity is super essential when it comes to improving conversions. pThe moment you create a page, ask yourself whether you can make it more simple or the simplest. The results are more aesthetically pleasing, and conversions are increased.

It is similar to the earlier discussed Hick’s Law. However, simplicity is more than just limiting the options. The aim is to create a clean overall design that is uncluttered and minimizes distractions. Like Hick’s Law, people can only handle a limited amount of information at one time. Visually stuffing the website will overwhelm and bother users. Creating a great user experience on your website requires you to eliminate everything that unnecessary to the design.

Apple is one of the most significant examples of simplicity in web design. Countless other brands have followed their style for its effectiveness.

5. Negative Space

Whitespace is often referred to as negative space in web design. Positive space includes all the elements on your site, while negative space is the empty space in between. Don’t go by the name. Negative space is actually a good thing in web design; without negative space your website would be unusable and unreadable.

Negative space doesn’t just refer to the space between your page’s larger elements, such as the space between your header and your content or space between your sidebar and your content. It also refers to the space between all the more minor elements on your page – the space between lines of text, the space between paragraphs, and even the space between letters. Pay attention to the negative space on your site, in all forms, to keep everything legible, scannable and easy on the eyes. All of this leads to increased conversions.

Conclusion

Now that you understand these five web design principles, put them to good use by taking a hard look at your existing design. A thorough evaluation of your website will let you know the strengths, shortcomings, and areas of improvement. Need an expert opinion? Talk to our team.

READ MORE: Here are 5 pro tips that will come in handy while designing a visually stunning and user-friendly website

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Brand & Identity Technology UI Design Web Design

All You Need To Know About Visual Perception and Website Design

Visual Perception

Visual Perception: “90 percent of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000x faster in the brain than text.”

“65 percent of people are visual learners, and one of the best ways to drive messages home is through visual content”

Humans are visually oriented.Hugely! The above data helps explain why visual marketing has exploded recently, and visual-centric content such as infographics are have become so popular. Our eyes are one of our primary senses by which we consume information and comprehend the world. Therefore, it only makes sense that website designing is done with visual perception in mind. It not only influences your bounce rate, conversion rates, and average session duration, but it heavily impacts your brand equity too.

“46.1 percent of people say a website’s design is the number one criterion for discerning the credibility of a company.”

Creating an effective website design from a visual standpoint is crucial. And, plenty of effort must go into understanding the visual perception and underlying psychology behind “what makes a website look good?” Here are some ways that visual perception applies to web design and some specific principles you can apply for an optimal UX.

Create Strong Visual Perception Hierarchies That Offer Clear Guidance

As soon as someone lands on your website, your goal is to guide them through a journey that ultimately turns  into a conversion. To accomplish this from a design perspective, it’s essential to create a visual hierarchy. The aim of a web designer is to rank the various elements of a site in terms of importance as it relates to meeting your business objective.

For instance, the focal point of a homepage might be a large image to instantly capture a visitor’s attention. This might be followed by a headline stating what’s being offered and then a well placed CTA for visitors to click on. The key here is to rank the elements of your site according to their importance and arrange them in a way that walks your visitors through in a frictionless way.

Remember The F-shape Pattern

Multiple eye tracking studies using heatmaps found a common trend in the way that people view website content. By and large, eye movement follows a distinct F-shaped pattern.

One of the more notable studies done on this subject came from Nielsen Norman Group back in 2006.

Visual Perception Studies

The first page on the left is the “about us” section of a website. The middle page is a product page of an Ecommerce site. The third page on the right is a SERP. As you can see, there’s a discernible pattern that arises between all three types of page. While the F-shaped pattern is most prominent on the product page of an Ecommerce site or SERP, it’s clear that other types of content are digested in a similar manner.

Optimal desktop user experience can often be achieved by structuring your page layout following this principle in order to direct a visitor’s attention.

Humans Spot Contrast

Human eyes are naturally drawn towards contrast. The most effective ways to get eyeballs to your intended focal point is to create contrast. It’s one of the principles of Gestalt Theory, which “attempts to describe how people tend to organize visual elements into groups or unified wholes when certain principles are applied.” The other principles include proximity, similarity, multi-stability, continuity, and closure. Spotting contrast is what we do as humans. So when it comes to getting visitors to take notice of key elements on your website, it’s obviously beneficial to create contrast.

White Space Is Crucial For Visual Perception

White space or “negative space” is the area between objects. It’s the empty space that separates graphics, text, headers, columns, etc. While it may seem insignificant, white space actually plays an integral role and greatly impacts the overall aesthetics of a site. If you really think about it, it’s the white space that enables objects to exist in the first place.

A cardinal sin that’s committed quite frequently is overloading a website with excessive objects to the point that it looks clunky and saturated. You can think of it as digital maximalism. While loading a site up with more “stuff” may seem like an effective way to grab the user’s attention, this is generally regarded as an ineffective practice. That’s because this tends to be distracting and can overwhelm the visitor to the point of cognitive overload occurring.

Golden Ratio Can Optimize Aesthetics

The concept of the golden ratio goes back well over 2,000 years and has been studied by everyone from Plato and Euclid to modern day mathematicians such as Roger Penrose. To put it very simply, the golden ratio is 1.618. Also known as divine proportions, it’s a ratio where elements are proportioned in a way that they’re aesthetically pleasing to human eyes. It’s a phenomenon seen all throughout the natural world. And interestingly enough, it can also be applied to web design. 

Golden Ratio For Visual Perception

Conclusion

Visual perception as it relates to website design is incredibly complex and multifaceted. What’s amazing is that the principles covered here are only a part of what goes into the process. Understanding how people visually perceive content and the underlying psychological processes that take place put you in a position to optimize your site and create the best possible UX. This has its obvious benefits and allows you to maximize conversions and ultimately increase sales. Contact Us to Know More

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Design UI Design UX Design Web Design

Designing To Create An Ethical Engagement

Ethical Engagement

Engagement is a wonderful thing; imagine an unengaging world would be a very dull and lifeless place. While an engaged customer is great for a business, is it always so great for that customer? Instead of focusing on engagement, shouldn’t we be focusing more on making a positive impact on people’s lives? In today’s world, it is more important to think about what is best for users, and even for society as a whole, rather than on what is best for business? That said, we shouldn’t stop designing for enhancing engaging experiences, but aim for ethical engagement.

What is Ethical Engagement?

As per the literal definition, ethical engagement means following the rules or standards for right conduct or practice, especially the profession’s standards.

In other words, the UX industry must be striving to strike the right kind of engagement. We should encourage designers to design experiences that are engaging in a good way, but not in a potentially harmful and addictive way. The problem is, there’s a very fine line. How do you design ethically engaging experiences, and not intrusive and potentially addictive experiences? How do you ensure your interface isn’t intruding in someone’s space? Here are some things that you can do.

Outcomes Over Engagement

Instead of chasing engagement KPIs, like the number of page views, frequency of visit and session duration, you should be focusing on outcomes, like orders, upgrades and subscriptions. Bottomline – you should be aiming for outcomes and not engagement. Engagement may help in driving the desired outcomes, but if it’s the wrong sort of engagement, you’ll not be able to do so.

Even if you’re just trying to get more attention on adverts, it’s still the positive outcomes of advertising, be it increased sales, brand recognition, or increased customers that you should be aiming for.

Ethical Engagement: Never Abuse Persuasion Techniques

We’ve all clicked on a link claiming 10 times the cameraman caught more than expected, or 20 celebrities that you wouldn’t recognise today. One of the commonly used persuasion technique is Clickbait. Tempting users with a teasing glimpse of what one little innocent click might bring them.

Persuasion techniques can be overpowering stuff, so don’t abuse them. Whenever you employ a persuasion technique to keep users on your site or increase engagement, think if you’re crossing that fine line? Use your persuasion superpowers for good.

Ethical Engagement: Notify Only When Required

We all get tons of notifications every day; 100, 200, or maybe more than that. That’s a huge number, and the majority of these notifications aren’t essential; they’re just noise – information that’s not important. Like the fact that someone changed their Facebook profile pic, or that out of 1000 people you follow on Twitter, someone just liked a tweet. In case you’re considering using a notification for an app, or sending an email update, you need to be careful. If you think that the user really need to know this, then only set-up a notification or send an email. If the answer is ‘not necessarily, then don’t send – simple.

Ethical Engagement: Allow Users To Change Notification Settings Easily

If you were to total up all the time you spent trying to find and then change notification settings within apps and websites, it would be a mind-boggling figure. A large number of apps and websites make it difficult for users to change their notification settings.

Users must be offered a very easy, straightforward process to change their notification settings. Also, make the default settings very clear. For instance, please provide a clear link from emails sent out to change their notification settings quickly, or unsubscribe. Do some user research to find out what default notification settings are acceptable for users. Even do some user testing to make sure users can easily understand the settings and change them when required.

Keep The Interface To a Bare Minimum

Which is the best interface? A touchscreen, or a voice driven interface? It’s a trick question, since the best interface is as little interface as one can get away with.

People don’t want to use interfaces; they want to get their job done. It would be best if you kept the interface to a minimum to take up as little of their time as possible, unless you’re designing a video game.

Reduce Friction

Have you ever been to a large Ikea furniture store? Trying to steer through an Ikea store is like shopping within a giant garden maze, and that isn’t good. You enter to buy an office desk or new bedroom furniture and spend 45 mins zig-zagging through the store in a waste attempt to find what you’re looking for. It can be very frustrating because Ikea has introduced a lot of friction.

When it comes to user experience, friction, whether by design, or not, gets in the way of the user getting their job done. Friction might be the unnecessary extra steps that users are taken through; the unnecessary information that users must type in; or the advert that users must watch at least 5 seconds of before proceeding. Try to reduce friction as much as possible so that users can get in, do what they need to do, and then get on with their life.

Don’t Be Evil

As a designer, you hold great power. The power to influence people’s behaviour and even their lives through the design of their environment and the products and services they interact with. Design can be a powerful driver of social change, and like a superhero, you must choose whether you want to use your powers for good or evil. 

Don’t be evil. In the long term, you will be better served by doing good things for the world, even if you abandon some short-term gains by doing so.

Conclusion

Addiction to technology, whether in the form of a smartphone, a laptop, a tablet, or a smart TV, is a problem that we cannot ignore. It’s a problem that designers have in-part caused and should help fix. Therefore, we must seek to design more ethical engagement experiences. While designing, we must value not just what is best for business, but what is best for users and society. Contact Us to Know more

Read More about basic principles of Ethical Design here

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Design Technology UI Design Web Design

The Future Is AI-driven Web Designing

AI Driven UI

Experts say, AI will grow into a $118.6 billion industry by 2025.

Online businesses will save almost $8 billion worth in business costs owing to AI-powered chatbots, by 2022.

Among the top industries benefiting from chatbots is Real Estate with a record usage of 28%, followed by Travel at 16% and Education at 14%.

These statistics clearly indicate that Artificial Intelligence is a technology of the future. Today’s modern industry verticals are crucially reliant on faster, accurate and more affordable online business modes. With its unlimited potential, designers and developers can immensely leverage AI applications in web development to streamline their daily website management tasks and achieve a higher response value from their target user. AI applications and tools not only make your website operations intuitively clear but turn its online experience more rich and personalised.

Growth of AI

The growing field of artificial design intelligence (ADI) systems has influenced a significant shift in the way websites are designed today. In a traditional environment, the user interface design process is often overwhelming since you require a great deal of creativity to keep it unique. It may begin with you and your team of designers sharing their ideas, jotting them down on a whiteboard, and exploring several possibilities and outcomes. Before any A/B testing can begin, the wireframe is set out and translated into HTML so the development process can begin. As we all know, the process demands a sheer amount of effort and errors are just something you cannot avoid.

Artificial Intelligence has quickly mainstreamed into the online landscape, allowing designers to combine its applications into websites and create better functionality and user experience. Innovators such as Adobe, Firedrop, Bookmark, Squarespace, Wix, Tailor Brands are the leading tech companies to use AI in design for online environments. AI can now transform handwritten user interface design right from something as simple as a picture to a valid HTML markup code that maintains itself. Here, the AI can routinely control your web design’s overall content, from visual elements and typography to animations and other graphical information.

AI aiding UX improvements

Artificial Intelligence now commands several critical aspects of web design and holds a deciding role in UX. With latest web design interventions, designers can transform their online front into a more meaningful and rich experience for the customer. AI has enabled designers to create far more engaging, responsive, and ultimately more human interfaces. Among many of achievements we see today, its most prominent role is in various AI tools. AI has effectively changed the face of modern web design and quickly established many standard parts of human-machine interaction.

AI aiding UI enhancements

User Interfaces (UIs) are optimized through deep learning and adaptive AI, which are capable of taking design decisions entirely on their own. It works by training the program to understand design principles and observing existing pages of your website. By combining the two processes, the AI can mimic independent thoughts and produce functional and attractive web designs exclusive of human expertise. Web development platforms such as Wix actively use ADI to manage the design of its UI.

Recommendation and Optimization Tools

Numerous AI-based product recommendation solutions use social proof to influence purchase decisions. These tools provide recommendations as soon as customers interact with the website and provide valuable insight based on their searches. Extensions and plugins can track customer store history and generate recommendations based on related searches. Netflix, the leading online media-services provider, also uses Artificial Intelligence to manage its recommendations by showing results based on the user’s preferences and selections made by similar profiled customers. 80% of Netflix streaming is done as a result of AI recommendations.

Companies such as Adobe have already begun to take AI into their product architecture. In 2016 Adobe launched Sensei, an AI-based framework built to improve the platform’s designing abilities using intelligent features to help designers work their tasks more efficiently. Sensei also uses machine learning to enhance the project’s overall design and delivery, dramatically improving the final product. Using AI and machine learning, Adobe Sensei can help you uncover the hidden opportunities in design, enhance tedious processes, and deliver relevant experiences for each user.

AI as a Web Design Diagnostic Tool

Although AI is generally deployed for improving the functionality and user experience of web design, it also works as a precision diagnostic tool. With the new era of modern web design, rapidly changing trends, and stricter standards of search engines such as Google, your web design’s quality has become a key determinant in the ultimate success of your digital footprint. But while you may achieve a high quality of design, you must also ensure it remains maintained by periodically running tests. However, due to these tests’ constant repetition, the source code gets modified, which adds further load into the process. These tests are not only time consuming but often take a heavy toll on your website performance.

AI-powered analytics tools can enable you to assess your designs’ quality, observe how they perform in real-time, and gain real insights on how to refine them. With AI-based diagnostic tools, you can now effectively eliminate the need for A/B testing and get better site design results. Since design software has become increasingly complex, the final product often comes with its fair share of challenges. Here, these tools and applications can be used to develop and test different types of information, validate their authenticity, and examine the scope of their potential without any human input. If you train the AI right, it can eliminate tons of procedures you otherwise would have to get involved in when creating, diagnosing or editing a design. AI-based Testers such as Applitools can be used to test the website’s visual code, track the web page behavior, and enhance the aesthetics of the page.

Final thoughts

With current statistics and the latest technological breakthroughs, AI’s imperative role in web design and development is virtually inevitable. Growing automation needs, advanced computing resources, and an increasing number of these specialities have set off an exponential increase in the amount of AI we can implement.

While technology may still be infancy, the immeasurable potential of AI to understand creative rules and use them independently in a multitude of design dynamics will soon eclipse traditional web design methods. In the future, AI will soon offer websites that use adaptive intelligence to provide a personalized user experience instead of a one-size-fits-all methodology. Talk to our experts to discuss your web designing requirements.

Read More about AI driven UX

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Design UI Design Web Design

The Basic Principles Of An Ethical Design

Ethical Design

The ethical design seems like a straightforward concept. But what does that mean exactly? It’s important for designers to understand the impact they have and the steps they can take to make products that are good for your users, good for business and good for society. In this article, we’ll describe the real meaning of ethical design and its main principles.

What is an Ethical Design?

Ethical design is designing great products alongside your morals and beliefs and the principles of your business. What you create, whether a website, a marketing campaign or a product, has an effect on real people and those effects can create ripples.

Ideally, as a designer, you would want to take responsibility for your ethical efforts, but that responsibility often gets passed off to others. Culture, society and politics are shifting the status quo of what is “ethical” and what has become normalized. As the status quo shifts in an ever-changing world, how can designers keep ethical designs in mind? That’s where the principles of ethical design come in.

The Principles of Ethical Design

Many of the principles for ethical design revolve around respect for human rights, effort and experience, and are even inspired by the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. The “Ethical Hierarchy of Needs” pyramid created by Aral Balkan and Laura Kalbag illustrates the core of ethical design and how each layer of the pyramid rests and depends on the layer beneath it to ensure that the design is ethical.

Let’s go over some basic principles that fulfil these needs.

Usability

These days usability should be a basic requirement. An unusable product is considered a design failure. More specifically the design should help the user accomplish what they want, meet their needs, and be easy and pleasant to use. Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group defined five core components of usability:

Learnability—How easy is it for first-time users?

Efficiency—How quickly can users perform tasks?

Memorability—What is the experience for returning users?

Errors—How many errors do users make and how severe are these errors?

Satisfaction—How pleasant is it to use the design?

Designers also have a moral obligation to create products that are intuitive and safe. An explosive example of where usability fails: remember when Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 would spontaneously catch fire? 

Accessibility

Accessibility should be incorporated in the development process of any product or service being built, not as an afterthought at the end. Products are always designed for the “targeted customer” but think of who is (un)intentionally left out. Often these are folks with disabilities. As an example, website design is not always optimised for those with vision impairment despite the fact that, according to the World Health Organisation, at least 1 billion people are blind or visually impaired.

There is assistive technology for those with vision impairment to use the internet, however, there are often web design flaws that prevent accessibility. Some of the more frequent problems found by blind users include areas not accessible via the screen reader, images without alternative text and links or buttons without accessible description. Accessible design benefits everyone.

Privacy

Privacy issues are always a hot topic with digital design, with Alexa listening to our conversations, Google monitoring our clicks and Facebook reading our private messages. The best ethical design practice would be to develop designs that only collect personal information that is in the best interest of the users.

For example, Signal is a secure phone and messenger app specifically designed to protect its user’s privacy. When you sign up, it doesn’t ask for anything but your phone number because that’s all that’s necessary to start using the app. With increasing awareness and concern about privacy as a result of targeted advertising and data-driven businesses, there has been a backlash and more customers are seeking out brands that respect our right to privacy.

Transparency and Persuasion

The best practice for ethical design is to provide transparency so that users can make informed choices, which includes providing clear ways for users to opt-out of memberships easily. For example, on Amazon, you can get free shipping if you do a trial of Amazon Prime. However, after your free trial is up, Amazon will automatically charge you for the full cost of the annual membership unless you manually cancel and there isn’t any warning or notification before they charge you.

Additionally, to what extent should designers influence the behavior and thoughts of users. Often it is too easy to submit to social pressures, or even subtle suggestions. As an anecdotal example, my mother did research at Kaiser Permanente and mentioned writing consent forms for the client case studies where they could not use caps lock/UPPERCASE type because it is deemed too coercive. As designers, you should be aware that even the fonts and colors you use can sway your audience.

User Involvement

Ultimately, the designer is designing for the user. Doesn’t it make sense to include users in design decisions, from users’ needs and ideas. Your design will become a part of their life, and ideally, that becomes a positive experience.

Human-Centered Design (HCD), a philosophy developed by Don Norman, supports “the active involvement of users and a clear understanding of user and task requirements.” HCD calls for the involvement of the target customer early and continuously throughout the process to understand the problems they have and how your product can help solve those problems, which ultimately helps with usability.

The most effective ways of studying user involvement are holding small groups of user testing which will show you where the flaws lie, then you can revise the design and test again. And again. And again! The process of Human-Centered Design, sometimes referred to as design thinking, is concerned with how design will improve the user’s experience.

Focus

Designers should understand that whatever tool or service they are creating is just a small part of any user’s world and that your user also needs a break sometimes. These products should be there when the user needs them and stay out of their way whenever they don’t.

Netflix and Youtube make it too easy to binge-watch with their auto-play function. And there’s also Facebook which is designed to suck you in. Even Sean Parker, former President of Facebook, has described how Facebook has intentionally designed the platform to exploit human behaviour using a “social-validation feedback loop” to make us crave that hit of dopamine from likes or comments, encouraging the user to post again or to keep checking for new notifications.

Sustainability

Climate change is a global issue and it’s time that we as designers consider the impact of our work on the world’s environment, resources and climate. An excellent example of an ethical design trend embracing sustainability is a circular design that uses a closed-loop design strategy where resources are continuously repurposed.

Rather than creating products and services that have a linear lifecycle with a beginning, a middle and an end, the purpose is to design products that are continuously cycled in various forms, following reuse and recycle loop resulting in less waste. Many companies are embracing circular design, like 57st. design who make modular furniture, AMP Robotics who program more effective recycling robots, and PlasticRoad which recycles plastic into modular road-building blocks.

Out of responsibility to the environment, humankind and yourself, keep in mind these ethical design principles when moving forward with your future projects. You can even make a pledge to make this part of your code of conduct as a designer.

Here are some tips to design a user friendly login page. READ MORE

Reach out to our team of design experts today for more insight

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Blog Brand & Identity Mobile Apps Technology

7 Advantages Of Adding Live Chat Feature To Your Website

Live Chat

We live in a busy world. Speed is the most important thing in today’s world. Be it the same-day delivery of our favourite items or instant access to the most popular TV shows or movies. People expect quick turnaround for the things that they want. When we talk about online customer service or live chat, this isn’t always the case. According to studies, the average customer service wait-time is approximately 12 hours online; that is a insanely long wait and can seriously hurt business sales. It is very simple – customers do not like to wait.

So what should you do to enhance your online customer service? The most basic solution is to add a live chat feature to your website. The live chat option allows customers to have a realtime conversation with you about their needs. It may seem to be a small move, but surely is very beneficial. Not only is it quick and convenient, customers love it. Following are the most important benefits of adding the live chat feature to your website:

Higher Sales and Conversions

The best benefit of adding a live chat feature to your website is its ability to boost your sales and conversions. Most businesses see a 20% jump in their conversions only by providing realtime conversations o their customers. It may sound too good to be true, however, there’s a solid reason behind it. When potential customers browse through your website, they develop questions about the products and services you offer. And, with the live chat feature they can contact you instantly. They can get answers to their questions instantly, without ever leaving your website. 

Direct communication allows business owners to influence their customers’ purchasing decisions, making it the perfect sales tool. A survey conducted last year revealed that more than 40% of people who use live chat end up making a purchase.

Lesser Customer Service Costs

Every business owner knows how crucial is customer service. At times, it can be timely and expensive, trying to balance calls and email requests. A major benefit of adding a live chat feature to your website is that it reduces these customer service costs. Live chat provides business owners with the ability to manage multiple conversations at the same time. This reduces the number of employees required to handle customer service requests, thus reducing overhead costs.

In case of a physical store, you have the ability to build a rapport with your customers. This interaction develops trust while closing a sale in the process. However, this doesn’t happen in case of online stores. Online consumers are naturally skeptical of a business they don’t know. Trust is an extremely important part of the sales process. If a customer doesn’t trust you, they won’t provide you with critical information. 

Live chat helps customers contact to you directly, tehereby building trust; it empowers you of influencing their purchase decisions. Without this way of direct communication, you need to double your efforts to build trust with your website visitors.

Competitive Advantage

As of today, not all websites are using the live chat feature. We believe that using live chat can surely be a competitive advantage. It lets your customers know that you are always there to answer any questions or concerns they may have. Plus, it makes them feel better about their overall online experience with your business.

Enhanced Sales Value

Live chat doesn’t just boost sales and conversions, it increases the value of your sales too. Through live chat, you can connect with potential customers and understand their needs; you can recommend additional products and services based on this conversation.

Let’s take an example – if a potential customer is looking to buy a new TV on your website, you can respond via live chat and recommend one based on their specific needs. You can also increase potential sales by recommending additional accessories like a music system, or a soundbar to enhance the experience. In fact, you can see a potential 15% increase in average sale value if you use a live chat feature on your website. 

Customer Satisfaction

Live chat is a great tool to ensure customer satisfaction. Nearly 75% of people would use live chat in comparison to filling out a form, writing an email, or calling to contact you. It is all about speed and efficiency. You may continue to offer the traditional ways of contacting, but also provide them a more user-friendly, direct communication channel. This way, you can retain more customers in the long run.

Collect Potential Leads

Not everyone who visits your website is a potential customer or will make a purchase. You can simply hope they return in the future, but with live chat you could collect information from them and turn them into future leads. This helps you identify potential customers and also provides a more personalized experience to customers going forward. While a user may not be a current customer, you will now have valuable information about them. So instead of contacting random visitors, you can pitch to engaged prospects instead. 

Improved Website Experience 

With the live chat feature, online customers won’t have to pick up the phone or fill out a form if they have a question. Instead, they can have their questions answered immediately by you. This is especially important when it comes to their purchasing decision. Nearly 60% of buyers abandon their purchase if they can’t get the information they want about a product or service.

Not only does live chat improve customer experience, it has a huge impact on your bottom line. While you can place it just about anywhere on your site, areas to focus on include your “home” and “product/service” pages. You may also want to place it in other areas like your “about” and “contact” pages as they navigate your site.

Don’t miss out on all the wonderful benefits that live chat has to offer. It is an essential feature for today’s website and real boost to your business. If you need more info about website design and development, talk to our team now.

The offerings of any business by and large depends on its audience and their needs. Read More about these UX needs here.

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UI Design Web Design

5 Biggest Mistakes You Must Avoid While Designing A Responsive Website

Responsive

Almost half of the total web traffic worldwide originates from mobile devices. Which means, if you don’t design your websites to be mobile-friendly or Responsive, you’ll most likely lose out on a large piece of your target audience. Moreover, if you want to improve your SEO, you simply can’t ignore smartphones in today’s time. Not to forget, Google now gives priority to mobiles with mobile-first indexing.

All of the above factors demand a responsive web design, under which your website’s elements can automatically adjust according to the screen resolutions. To err is human; it is common to make mistakes while creating your responsive design. In this article, we would help you to avoid mistakes. We’ve collated a list of some possible responsive design mistakes and their solutions.

Concentrating Just On Device Sizes For Breakpoints

According to a study, there were 24,000+ different Android devices in 2015; this number has substantially increased in the past five years. The speed growth speed of mobile devices is projected to keep multiplying in the coming years. Since there are so many types of devices, the screen dimensions differ too much. You need to get your breakpoints right for your website to offer a seamless browsing experience across all devices.  

Your website may not appear right on newer devices if you concentrate on just device size breakpoints in your responsive design. You must not restrict yourself to the dimensions of current devices, in term of breakpoints. Rather, go for truly responsive designs that can adjust well on any screen size. 

One of the better ways is to take up the mobile-first approach, in which you create your website for the smallest screens and then scale it to larger screen sizes gradually. If wearable devices are pivotal for your website, you should start your designing with those instead. 

As you scale up, your website design may start feeling strained. In this situation, you can add media queries to it to make necessary changes. This step will ensure that your design is comfortable at each step; continue this process till you reach the most enormous screen sizes. 

It would be up to 2800 pixels in an ideal scenario since most users have resolutions lower than 2800 pixels. This method ensures that your breakpoints are introduced only when required and not based on the device size. This will help you offer a seamless browsing experience to all your visitors, irrespective of the device size. There are tools like LambdaTest or BrowserStack to check if your website renders well on new devices.

Not Optimizing Images And Videos

It is a fact that visual elements make your website more attractive to users. But, you must be careful while adding them to your website. The size of visual elements is typically larger than text files; they can slow down your page loading speed. You can use Google PageSpeed Insights to check your current page loading speed and find possible solutions; For mobiles, use the Mobile Site Speed Tool from Google.

With an increase in your page loading time, your bounce rates also increase. According to a study, the bounce rates increased by 6% when a page takes 1.5 seconds more to load. Therefore, it is essential to optimize your images and videos to reduce their sizes. Tools like TinyPNG or Compress JPEG can help you with this. For WordPress, you can install the Smush plugin to compress your videos and images. 

Lessening your JavaScript, CSS, and HTML files can also help; also consider browser caching, which can increase page loading speed for repeat visitors. You should also remove all unnecessary third-party tools and JavaScript dependencies. 

Not Using Adaptive Image Management

The dimensions of an image are as important as the file size. Using images of various dimensions in a conventional website design may not be an issue. But, when it comes to responsive design, image mismanagement can be destructive for your user experience. After all, you don’t want your visitors looking at big images on a small screen.

To avoid this mistake, you should use adaptive image management techniques. Some of the methods to achieve this are as follows:

  • Resolution-based selection – different resolutions for the same image.
  • Device-pixel-ratio-based selection – reduce visible artifacts based on screen sizes to make the images appear crisp. 
  • Viewport-based selection – vary images based on devices used and their orientation.
  • Display-based cropping – change or crop the image based on the display to improve its viewing experience.

Hiding Content

The biggest mistake you can make while creating a responsive design of your website is hiding content. You may hide content to fit your website on a smaller screen, or maybe to increase the page loading speed; but, this must be avoided at all costs. People don’t expect a small sample of your website on mobiles; they want the exact same browsing experience as they get on desktops.

You should aim to offer them this omnichannel experience. The reason being, many of them might be accessing your website from multiple devices in a single day. So you must ensure to maintain consistency of content in your responsive design. You can prioritise the content differently across devices through progressive enhancement.

Consistent Navigation

Providing a consistent browsing experience to your visitors across all devices is pivotal. But, absolute consistency isn’t good either. It would be a big mistake if you try to keep consistent navigation across all screen sizes; because, when your screen size is reduced, a consistent navigation bar may end up covering half the screen. This will spoil the browsing experience of your visitors. You should consider shrinking the navigation according to the screen size; even changing to a hamburger menu. In addition to navigation, your button sizes and visual layouts should also not remain consistent. However, links, typefaces, and color treatments should be consistent. 

Wrap Up

If you wish to cater your entire target audience, you need to opt a responsive design. That said, you must be careful while implementing it and refer to the tips mentioned above to avoid all the possible pitfalls. Offer a consistent browsing experience across to your visitors across all devices. To know more, speak to our experts.

Read More about 4 important tips that developers should keep in mind while creating a responsive design. HERE

Categories
Brand & Identity UX UX Design

How Can A UX Writer Create Amazing, User-Friendly Copy?

UX Writer

The field of User Experience (UX) has seen exponential growth over the last few years. Many new paths have opened up within the UX industry. Whether you’re an aspiring UX designer or an experienced one, there are a number of career paths to choose from within the UX industry, and UX writer is one of the most exciting directions. 

UX writers create the corresponding copy that goes along with design, cultivating meaningful conversations between the user and the product or service. The copy, or text that a user interacts with when using a product or service, can be anything from an error message or call-to-action button (microcopy) to comprehensive instructions-for-use.

Here are 5 things a UX writer can and should do to craft amazing, user-friendly copy as part of a collaborative design team:

Conduct User and Market Research

Conducting research is all about understanding your target audience: how they speak, what they’re interested in, who they are, what their pain points are, how they use a product, and more. Essentially, you want to foster empathy with your target user and research helps guide you toward crafting an empathetic approach.

As a UX writer, you will conduct some research on your own and may also collaborate with a UX researcher on certain projects. The research process for UX writers may include such methods as:

User interviews: Asking individual users about a specific topic, application, product, or service.

Contextual inquiry: Observations and interviews that assess users as they interact with a product in their environment.

Analyze Copy and Brand Voice

If you’re working with a product or service that already exists, you can analyze existing copy to find opportunities for improvement. This may include looking at metrics like daily sessions, goal completion rates, time-on-page, click-through-rates (CTR), and more.

You will also ensure that copy aligns with the brand’s voice, style, and tone at every step in the user journey, from the smallest bits of microcopy to more robust copy.

If you are working with a team to develop a new product or service, and there is no existing copy, you have the opportunity to conduct competitor research and market analysis. Armed with the user research about your target audience, you can pinpoint competitors who are also targeting those specific users. Look for commonalities amongst your competitors, particularly in their copy, like the specific words, phrases, and tone they use, to inform both the overall design and copy.

Competitor research will also help you identify gaps in information and copy so that you can create a UX writing strategy that fills those gaps, offering more value to your target audience.

Additionally, you may conduct market analysis to see how similar products or services are being used and discussed. This can help you create UX copy that reaches your target audience based on their unique needs and problems, focusing on empathy to engage users, while aligning with the broader market your product or service is in.

Define UX Writing Strategy

Ultimately, the copy you write is intended to easily guide the user through their journey while remaining on-brand. To do this effectively, you need a solid UX writing strategy. When developing a UX writing strategy, it’s important to focus on the specific goals of the project you’re working on. UX writing goals are only relevant in the context of a particular project as each client will have different needs, which requires a unique perspective. 

For example, if the goal of your project is to minimize user dropout during an onboarding process, you’ll want to write copy that keeps users engaged, is easy to follow, and is in line with the overall design. Is the copy making it easier or more difficult for the user?

You also need to consider the type of product you’re writing for (website, app, chatbot, etc.) to determine how much copy is needed, how it will be formatted, and the style. Use wireframe tools to design layouts and understand how your copy fits into them.

Write UX Copy

Using the strategy created, you can begin writing. Based on the interface and goals, you may write micro-copy, which are the shorter, meaningful snippets of copy that help a user complete a task, like a CTA or signup button; or macro copy, which focuses more on the overall tone and voice and is woven throughout the content. For both, you need to have a complete understanding of the brand, the user, and the product to write effective copy, in addition to working closely with the design team to assess how the copy will function with the design.

Validate UX Copy

Validating UX copy involves good usability testing, which is determined by the scope of a specific project. The defined testing methods will help a UX writer understand how the copy works for users, giving insight on revisions for optimal usability. Before validating UX copy with usability tests, make sure you have a strong understanding of the target audience, ample resources to conduct tests, and clearly define research objectives. With this information, you can choose the best testing methods and ask the most relevant questions.

The following are examples of usability testing a UX writer and their team may conduct:

Moderated usability testing: Conducted with a moderator or facilitator on-site (in a lab) or remotely.

Unmoderated, remote usability testing: Conducted by a user in their own environment, which lets the user interact with the product more naturally. Use session recording to capture a user’s actions when using a product.

Wrap Up

Writing useful, impactful text, no matter how short or long, is an art, one that is mastered by a UX writer. UX writing is a challenging, yet rewarding career path in UX design, with plenty of potential for growth, especially as you learn the ins and outs of what UX writer does and how to effectively collaborate with your team. Connect with us to know more.

UX writers are full-fledged members of the UX team. As a member of the UX team, they are expected to actively conduct or participate in the audience and user-related research. Read More About UX Writer here.

Categories
UX UX Design

Top 5 UX KPIs That You Need To Track

UX KPIs

A UX Designer’s core objective is to improve the quality of user interactions and increase overall user satisfaction with a product or service. The interaction elements are primarily qualitative in nature, and it is a part of your role profile to enhance them continually. But, managing and measuring just the qualitative aspects of user experience is not enough. In UX design practice, we need to quantify those outcomes in some way to measure and improve them. It is nearly impossible to manage something which is not measured. Therefore, a right set of UX KPIs needs to be defined to understand exactly how users are using your product, what they are doing, and how they feel while using your product.

What are UX KPIs?

KPIs depict the success factors of your project or company into numbers; they highlight successes and failures. The performance indicators generally vary from project to project and must always be determined individually. UX KPIs are different from other KPIs in that they have the difficult task of translating human behaviour, opinions and feelings into numbers. They are broadly classified into two categories – Behavioural UX KPIs (what they do) and Attitudinal UX KPIs (what they say).

Before we deep dive into the most important UX KPIs to measure, let us understand the reasons for measuring these KPIs.

UX KPIs: Stakeholder Management

KPIs assist you in communicating your UX issues and the related strategic goals more successfully to your company’s relevant decision-makers. Instead of vague and qualitative arguments, you can base your arguments on hard-hitting facts and figures. Reliable data makes it much easier to put forward arguments when it comes to establishing the annual UX budget.

UX KPIs: UX Benchmarking

UX KPIs act as a robust business navigation tool that can protect you from taking any wrong turns and wasting your precious time and money. Moreover, UX data also allows you to benchmark your project compared to internal or external reference data sources, like competitors, and find out where you still have some gaps to fill.

UX KPIs: Alarm System

UX KPIs substantially reduce the complexity of large sets of data and provide fast and accurate information about your product’s actual status. UX KPIs act as essential parameters that could quickly determine whether something is wrong and requires intervention.

Different projects with different goals need specific UX KPIs that need to be measured. However, the following 5 UX KPIs are the most common and important ones. These KPIs can reflect user behaviour and indicate potential usability and user experience issues.

1. Task Completion Rate

Also known as task success rate, this metric denotes the percentage of users who successfully complete a task. It’s a useful metric because it shows how effectively users can complete a particular task. The task depends on your product, and it can be as simple as users filling up a form. As long as the task created is realistic, with a well-defined goal, you’ll be able to measure the success rate.

Not all users would complete the task successfully. Task success won’t give you details about why users failed. However, for sure, if they can’t finish the task, it means there’s serious friction in the user flow, which demands your immediate attention. If you’re using a usability testing tool to perform usability tests, you can see where users got stuck by looking at the heat-maps.

2. Time On Task

One of the key KPIs to measure is the time taken by users to complete the tasks? There are different ways to measure the time taken; UX designers most commonly look at and report the Average Time on Task. It is the total amount of time users are spending on a specific task. All tasks, except the ones that are meant to keep users engaged, a long task time highlights issues while interacting with the product’s interface.

As a rule of thumb, the lesser time people spend on a task, the better is their experience. The time on task data can be used to reduce the number of steps a user needs to take to complete the task successfully. If you can show that your design changes reduce the time taken by users to complete a task, the development and business teams will quickly see the impact and the ROI of user experience design.

3. User Error Rate

The number of times users make a wrong entry is represented by the User Error Rate (UER). It gives you an idea of how user-friendly and clear your website is; higher the UER score, higher the number of usability problems. Again, it is critical to define in advance which actions represent an error. Error rates can give you valuable insight into where your weak points are; the design can be then optimised accordingly to reduce the number and frequency of errors.

4. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) in UX KPIs

The CSAT is an attitudinal UX KPI that expresses customer satisfaction in a useful metric. Users are asked: How satisfied you are with the product, service, website, etc.? The result is shown as a percentage from 0 to 100, where 100 denotes maximum customer satisfaction, and 0 denotes utter dissatisfaction. The scale generally includes five rating options, ranging from very satisfied to very dissatisfied. 

Since the CSAT score can be determined easily and quickly, it is also possible to measure it at several customer interaction points. This method allows you to decide the point in the funnel at which the customer might be stuck. 

CSAT: Number of satisfied customers / Number of respondents x 100 = % of satisfied customers

The results can then be classified into 5 categories:

  • Very Satisfied
  • Satisfied
  • Neutral
  • Dissatisfied
  • Very dissatisfied

*To calculate the CSAT score, only satisfied and very satisfied responses are counted.

5. Net Promoter Score (NPS) in UX KPIs

NPS illustrates customer satisfaction and loyalty in a straightforward metric. Studies have confirmed that the NPS is statistically relevant and co-relates with a company’s growth. The user answers only one key question through which the NPS is calculated – how likely is it that you will recommend our (product, brand, service, website, etc.) to a colleague or a friend? The user answers this question on a scale of 10 (very likely) and one (very unlikely). The answers are then clubbed into 3 main categories (NOte: the ‘passives’ are not taken into account in the calculation)

  • Promoters: 9 to 10
  • Passives: 7 to 8
  • Detractors: 0 to 6

NPS: (Number of promoters – number of detractors) ÷ (number of respondents) x 100 

Wrap Up

The right UX KPIs enable you to quantify your progress through design towards delivering meaningful user experiences. You will also be able to understand the impact and the ROI of design changes. Need more info? Talk to our experts now!

For further reading, click here to dive deep into UX Sketching.

Categories
Design Technology UX UX Design

Top 5 Reasons For Implementing UX Sketching

UX Sketching

When you do some creative work, you often face an ugly situation known as the ‘creative block’. Designers also go through this phase; however, like any complicated problem with no clear solution, a smart process can make all the differences. This is where UX sketching comes into the picture. Although it’s a very crucial aspect of user experience design, UX sketching is often overlooked. Sketching is an efficient way of communicating design while allowing designers to try out many ideas and iterate them before settling on one.

While designing, designers consider their options, and then proceed to work out the details, thus making UX design a two-step process:

  1. Idea generation – At first, multiple ideas are generated, not all of which can be fully shaped. The key thing is to consider different approaches and select the most efficient one with respect to your task’s context and various project constraints.
  2. Adding detail and refinement – Over some time, you zero-down on a few promising options and proceed to work out the specifics, thus eliminating unsuitable ideas. By sketching ideas out first and circulating them, you’re showing your process in addition to the iterative development of the product. By drawing the whole arc of the project’s development, you take yourself, your team, and your clients on a journey from day one. 

Here are the top 5 reasons for sketching in UX that allows you to eliminate unwanted ideas, outline documents more engagingly, and provide visual stimuli that help everyone be on the same page throughout the project.

To Draw Inputs From Discussions

These are the perfect places to commence sketching. Even if you aren’t ready to put your rough sketches in front of all, capturing talks, meetings, training, and conferences is a good start. You already take notes during these conversations, so might as well add some visual elements such as titles, small images, dividers, and containers to showcase key points, speech bubbles to capture quotes, and arrows to connect information. These useful tricks elevate your content to be more engaging and enjoyable to read.

You can build up a personal visual vocabulary of items that you can swiftly and confidently draw upon. And, when it comes to applying these skills to your projects, you’d be confident in what you’re showing to your team members and other stakeholders.

Once you feel confident and comfortable sharing, draw up the meeting, click a picture, and send it to all the attendees. This allows all to be on the same page. One important thing – do tell people before the meeting starts that you’ll be sketchnoting; they would then know that you’re not just scribbling and wasting time, but are paying attention to doing something constructive.

To Solve Problems

A problem visualized is a problem half solved. Simply take a sheet of paper or a whiteboard. Write down the issue you’re trying to fix so that it is visible to everyone. Now start collecting ideas from everyone in the room; get each individual to draw or write every issue they can think of that’s associated with the core problem. It not only promotes an inclusive working environment but helps group them into common themes. Once the ideas are collected and organized you can make connections between the problems. 

Drawing things helps people visualize how the entire problem is constructed; it helps identify how the problem can be broken down into chunks, which can then be tackled in a more manageable and logical way. While this method is useful to exercise the brain, you can’t merely leave ideas on paper and think your problem is solved. Make sure you take time to collect, organize, and finalize your ideas into something more concrete and useful. Someone should take ownership and responsibility to move to the next steps. 

To Communicate Ideas

Once the key problems have been identified, UX sketching is perfect for generating solution ideas for the identified problem. It’s quick, easy, and more importantly visual; everyone can quickly identify, discuss, and distinguish the right ideas. Whether it’s a service design, a screen, or even simple diagrams; these will help you get your message across clearly and quickly. 

One way to reach a great idea is to split the group into smaller teams and get every individual to draw 4–5 quick problem-solving ideas; they present the idea to all and everyone else provide their feedback.

The other approach is to extract the best parts from everyone’s first ideas and emphasize your solutions; incorporate the favorite elements that your colleagues came up with, and get rid of stuff that wasn’t too popular. Try to form a group agreement on elements that should be combined to create the best possible solution.

Even when working alone, UX sketching multiple ideas helps combine and consolidate your thoughts. Also, being able to doodle your thoughts quickly helps overcome language barriers when working with international clients.

To Develop Quick Concepts

One of the useful applications of UX sketching is drawing out the overall vision and concept of a project on a single page. This is very helpful when preparing pitches, or initial engagements with clients since it summarises your early ideas, slides, and overall experience in one simple image.

Visually capturing a selection of your ideas in one single image during the early stages can help get clients on board with you and your team; additionally, the ideas are easily shareable. Most importantly, it adds value to your client’s experience. Including a raw/unfinished sketch might seem unusual at the start. But, it could help your early conversations or pitch stand out from the crowd.

Presenting raw sketches to clients is a wonderful idea; however, it may not work for all clients. Some clients may expect a polished idea with neat, glossy pictures to visualize the look and feel of the idea in real life. Therefore, gauge and understand your clients before presenting the ideas as sketches.

For Prototyping Screens And Information Architecture

Finally, remember to sketch your core designs. Once you’ve followed the entire process of sketching your ideas, it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty of designs. One of the advantages of generating multiple sketches is that you can get to early user testing. It will allow you to change quickly, based on feedback, and then refine the best ideas into high fidelity design elements. All of the others come together at this stage.

It is like drawing out jigsaw pieces of the elements you know will be required to make up the final designs. You can then freely move these design features around. Get it right, refine it into true wireframes, and then pass it all to your visual designers. They can then really bring the composite elements to life.

Wrap Up

The single biggest benefit of UX sketching is showcasing your thinking, and spanning the entire arc of a project. It displays that you’ve gone through a process to solve the problem, the evolution of ideas, and explains how you have arrived at a solution. In simple terms, the ability to take people on a journey via sketchnoting can have enormous benefits for everyone involved. Want to know more? Speak to our UX experts now!

Read more about 10 useful UX rules here