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Web Design

5 Tips to Infuse International Flavors In Your Website

website

Globalisation and internationalism have been boosted with the advent and growth of the Internet. The reach of traditional marketing mediums is often restricted to a particular geography. However, websites, on the other hand, have an extended reach and cater to a much broader audience across different geographies. Therefore, it becomes pivotal to design and develop a website which works well across the globe.

Going Global is the ‘Need of the Hour’

Growing globalism has pushed businesses to constantly look for new markets around the world. What could be a better and effective way to globally market a business than the Internet. It’s the best medium for a business to advertise and promote its products or services. This fact has become obvious for most of the businesses. They understand that a website designed with an international flavour will only boost their global brand presence. However, still there are a lot of companies which are hesitant to embrace this change. Well, web designers can help these businesses extend their reach beyond a localized clientele.

In order to tap global markets, it’s important for your website to be internationally understood. Apart from in-depth research of target markets, there are a bunch of other things which play a crucial role in helping a website reach its full potential. Most important ones amongst them are a proper navigation strategy, website design, the right tools, suitable images and localised web content. Here are a few tips to infuse internationalism in your web designs.

1. A Globalized Visual Style

The visual design of your website plays an important role in determining its success. It’s really necessary to give deep thought to the visual style of your designs and the impact that they make on international audiences. In order to make your website internationally acceptable, thoroughly review the entire website design. People from different geographies, nationalities and cultural backgrounds will have different ways of perceiving visual information, and the same goes for a website’s design.

One of the ways to handle this is to develop one single corporate theme and adapt it to different countries/regions. Keep the branding uniform in the design, but slightly tweak the layout, language, and content from one site to another. This is a time-saving method because you just have to design one encompassing “brand” for the site. But, be careful of not going out too loud. You should try to keep the colors and design of the website subtle and basic. A basic and less complicated design is easier to be consumed by almost everyone around the world.

The second way is to design completely different websites for different regions or cultures. This is quite a time-consuming process. Although, it will enable you to put your message across to different people of the world in a much more targeted way. If you go ahead with this approach, you will need to divide the world into different segments – cultural division, country-wise division, regional division or continental division. Irrespective of the kind of division you choose, there should be a fair bit of research behind it.

2. A Global Design, But With Local Content

Regardless of whether you opt for a common design for all the regions of the world or make a different design for specific area’s target audience, the written text or the content of the website should always be localized for better comprehension. The tone and style of marketing material change considerably between cultures. Even if a design stays the same from one country to the next, the content will ideally shift in terms of language and tone.

Writing effective website content for a particular demographic requires in-depth knowledge of different cultures of the target audience. Therefore, if you want to create a localised version of your website, it’s best that you hire a local professional copywriter and translator to develop effective content.

3. Strategic Navigation

Navigation is another important element that influences the effectiveness and overall user experience of your website. Navigation will play a critical role in ensuring that your website is understood properly across geographies. Give special attention to reading preferences of different cultures. Ensure that your site is navigable for languages that read both left-to-right and right-to-left. Requesting users to specify their language at the very first interaction, via a simple navigation system, is a good start. You can install a horizontal navigation bar, rather than a vertical one, to eliminate the need of moving your navigation bar from one side to the other. Also, you can go with symmetrical web design, so that if the script on your page is flipped, it won’t knock down everything else. Better navigation means a better understanding of your website.

4. Relevant Images

Images and other visual elements play a vital role in attracting the viewer to your website. It is important to make sure that the images on your website are relevant to your target audience. While bringing internationalism in your business website, keep a few things under consideration when choosing images for it. Avoid images that are considered offensive by conservative cultures. Also, when using images with the human element in it, make sure that the people displayed should belong to the same race, country or region you are targeting at. Jewish people posing on a Chinese website makes no sense at all. Localization practices are followed by several multi-national companies in the world. If you want to go for a universally accessible website, it is advisable to use general images, not specific to any culture. But don’t blatantly bombard visitors with stock photos; it will kill the connect and authenticity.

5. Country Specific Keywords

No matter how hard you try and how good you implement these tips, it will all go down the drain if your website does not rank well in search results. Keywords are the most important words on the Internet. They not only enable users to find exactly what they want, but they also allow website managers to provide the users exactly what they have to offer. When adapting your website for a foreign country or region, give special attention to the keywords.

In order to manage keywords for different demographics of the world, create a list of the keywords you use on your English language website. Get them translated by a professional linguist belonging to the target country. They can even suggest alternative keywords or variations of keywords that are more likely to work in that particular region. Make sure that you compare your keywords with what Internet traffic stats say by using a tool like Google Analytics.

Spread your business across the globe by implementing these tips on your website. There are many other techniques which can help you in the process. Talk to our experts and know more about it.

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Web Design

The Importance Of Web Design In Marketing Campaigns

marketing

A company’s website is its primary introduction to the world of web, and it needs to be as effective as possible to create a stunning first impression. Even the best marketing campaigns could miserably fail if they go along with a poorly designed website. The marketing strategy of your company may be convincing enough to grab the attention of prospective clients, but it is your website that will lead them to make the final purchase thus providing you with some real ROI. In this article, we will help you understand the importance of high-quality web design and will educate you about how it can accentuate the success of your marketing efforts.

Direct Impact on SEO

What’s the point of marketing yourself, if users can’t find you. A lot of businesses opt for website redesign these days because their current designs simply do not help their Google rankings. The first step is usually eliminating duplicate content occurrences which is the easy part. Additionally, it is important that your website design contains options for inputting meta descriptions, Alt tags etc., considering that these are some of the simple, yet important, elements of SEO.

Main Source of Conversions

The foremost aim of any business is to increase its business, which is generally done by increasing conversions. The goal of marketing efforts and even the website is to generate new and recurring business. The conversion rate is calculated by the number of website visitors who complete the desired action – purchase, register, subscribe etc. Designers can design website that boosts conversion ratio by improving the layout, text, and online forms. It is important for a business to accurately convey its goals to the people designing its website, so that they can act accordingly. These web development experts can provide you with not only a great looking website, but also one that is effective, in terms of improving your overall conversions.

Improves the User Experience

User experience, or UX, is a very important factor that needs to be taken into consideration when we talk about website design and its effect on a marketing campaign. For example, you can create high-quality content and place it on your site, and then use different channels to advertise it. However, if your website is not user-friendly, the efforts will be pointless because all the people you have attracted using marketing tools won’t stick to your website long enough to check out your content and your product.

Other important UX features include website speed, navigation and visual elements. It’s not good if your website takes too long to load. A new user is almost guaranteed to leave before even giving your website a chance. According to a survey, nearly half of web users expect a site to load in two seconds or less. They tend to abandon a site that isn’t loaded within three seconds. So there is very little room for error.

The next feature that has a great impact on UX is navigation. Make sure you simplify it. Easy navigation ensures longer stay on the website and there is a bigger likelihood of conversion. The visual elements that make up your website also play a vital role in elevating the UX of your website. They need to be designed in such a way so as to provoke emotions in your users.

Helps to Reinforce Your Company’s Message

Your website design is important for elevating your brand awareness and conveying your company’s goals. Besides successfully conveying your company’s message, it also helps in evoking emotions in your users. Some carefully chosen images in combination with the right colour choices in the background can have a huge impact.

Website design can play a lot of different roles in a marketing campaign. The design can be there as a support system for reinforcing the desired message. Even be the epicentre around which the whole campaign is built. It is a powerful tool that can both educate new users and drive them to make a purchase.

A well-designed website leads to a successful marketing campaign. Efforts and funds you invest in a marketing strategy can be a waste if you don’t have the right design. Discuss your website requirements with our team of experts.

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Blog

Top-Notch Tips for Creating a Time-Saving Design

design

Users over the Internet have a very short attention span. They don’t really read everything and stick on every page, but scan through quickly. This makes it important to use design techniques that help users scan and get most of the information from your website in the shortest time possible.

It is critical to understand what users need to learn from the design at a glance and help them get that information so that they’ll stick around and explore your website. Here are a few tips to do so.

Minimal Thinking

A design without a lot of choices can be quick and easy for the user. While at first, “think minimally” might make you think about a minimal design style, it’s more about streamlining elements and effects. Overall, the goal is to limit information overload and the number of decisions a user has to make to meet the goal of the design. Keep simple navigation with a handful of choices, using simple typefaces that are easy to read at a glance.
Amp up the contrast between elements so that calls to action are easy to find. For every page, or scroll, in the design, stick to a single thought or action.

Use Visual Content to Encourage Actions

Strong visuals, including photography and videos, are an easy way to grab user attention and when paired with an actionable element, it can help generate an immediate click. It should be quick to move from one point to another within the design. Think about it in terms of e-commerce. A user sees a bag on social media, clicks to get to the website, where they must be able to see the item to keep interacting with the website.

A time-saving design would show the bag with a ‘Buy Now’ button. The user should easily understand how to get it or what is the next action, without having to fumble through multiple pages or clicks. Also, it’s a good practice to use the same image for off-site and on-site promotions. A different picture might not register as quickly with the user as the same image. This works because most people can process an image more quickly than reading words.

Divide Complicated Elements into Parts

Create a story so that you can break a complicated design into smaller, more digestible pieces. Smaller blocks and pieces of content are easier to understand quickly, thereby facilitating a users’ movement from one element to element. Try user interface elements such as “read more” links, card-style blocks and parallax scrolling animation to create engagement and break down complicated designs.

Cut Down Forms

One of the easiest ways to make the design quicker for users is to cut down on asking for not so important information. Forms must be simple and should only collect the essential information such as name and email address, and follow up later for forms designed to generate leads.

Use forms that validate data so users know if they’ve entered something wrong, so corrections are quick and easy. Minimize typing and use buttons or checkboxes in forms where applicable.

Use Bold and prominent CTAs

Make the design quick to use and easy to finish with a bold call to action design that users can’t miss. Bright colored, oversized elements can help users immediately see what they are supposed to do. Further, provide content within buttons that tells users exactly what to do and what will happen when they “click here.”

In order to be seen, a CTA should have plenty of contrast so that it doesn’t blend in with surrounding elements and draws attention to itself. (And don’t forget to make sure the CTA is easy to find on mobile screens as well.)

Review and Edit Multiple Times

Nothing saves users’ time, more than duly checking each and every element, multiple times before publication. Edit everything in the website design and then review it again. A time-Saving website design has written copy that’s easy to read and understand. This means that there are no spelling errors or typos, sentences use proper syntax, grammar, and sentence structure, with everything being organized in a logical manner.

Sometimes a good edit means bringing in a third party to read everything and ensure it makes sense to someone else. An extra set of fresh eyes can help you identify the hidden errors, or to analyse if the content is too complex, with too many jargons.

Consistency Is The Key

A consistent design includes repeated elements, actions, and interactions that work in the exact same way throughout the design. It simply means that a button should always look like a button, have the same color and font, same hover state and work in the exact same way no matter where the button leads the user. Repeat this idea for any element in the design that gets used multiple times, such as icons, the cart, forms, links and social media buttons. Be consistent with other elements also. Headlines, body text and images used should also follow a consistent style.

Conclusion

Whether you agree or don’t, users are looking to do things in a hurry on your website. They want to quickly finish tasks or meet their goals and move on to something else. The more your design saves users’ time, the more user-friendly your website will become. Talk to our experts to discuss how you can add to the UX of your website.

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Web Design

Designing A Single Page Website? Here Are Some Tips

single-page-website

Some websites don’t need multiple pages but just work better with single page designs. Single page website are typically portfolio pages, product sites, landing pages, and sometimes company pages too. You always want a site with little content but strong branding and clean navigation. But that’s not it. There are other trends which go into a strong single page layout. Adding to the user experience is one of the critical elements and a lot of thought should go into how can you design a single page that’ll offer the best user experience? There is no absolute “best” way to craft a single page site, however, here are a few tips and good practices which really work.

Auto-Scrolling Nav Links

A very common feature you’ll find on single page designs is the automatic scrolling navbar. This is where you click a link and it’ll automatically scroll to that section of the page. It works just like a regular navigation menu except for the custom animation scroll effect which offers a really fancy user experience. But sometimes this animation might feel far too slow to some people and that’s one risk that you face when forcing a custom animation into the navigation. To combat that, you can use something that auto-loads different pages and scrolls down into new sections on the same page. The load times are faster with a much smoother transition. Designing a sleek, auto-scrolling nav effect ensures that page sections load into view very quickly and the navigation is also easy to read.

Side Navigation Labels

If you don’t want the navigation fixed to the top of the page you can always design vertical navigation. The links on either side follow the user along the page. They act similar to the typical nav bars, except they’re a bit out of the way and more accessible in that space. Side navigation is not the best fit if you have a lot of text or need to support smaller screens with the same vertical menu. Instead, you can try switching to a more mobile-friendly, accessible menu with responsive techniques. Many websites also use dot navigation links. These aren’t great because they don’t tell you which section of the page you’re currently viewing, but they do save a lot of space and look pretty sleek. Many companies use auto-animate through different sections which works well when you’re adding flashy graphics into custom-styled layouts. Vertical navs work well if you can fit them into your layout.

Portfolio Layout Ideas

If you’re designing a portfolio site then you need to consider a lot of things. Well, a portfolio site is mostly all about showcasing your work, but a great portfolio also reflects ‘you’ into the content. This can all be easier to consume if it’s on one page. It’s not necessary that every portfolio is always just a single page. However, a portfolio website design works well in a minimalist design sense. It’s important to keep the page design clean and simple, yet very fun to look at.

Add CTAs For Sales Pages

If you’re selling a product or digital course then it’s always smart to include a CTA somewhere on your page. This is especially true if you’re designing a landing page where it’s the only page someone might see. Like in single page designs. Try to keep the text as clean as possible, with simple icons and a really smooth design. You really don’t want to distract users, rather you want them to take the desired action. If you’re meeting your goals, then you know you’re on the right track. With great CTAs you’ll notice that font choice, size, position, and color all play a huge role. Those are bound to get people to click at first glance.

On-Scroll Page Animations

Based on the title of “on-scroll animations” you might think this is the same as nav animations. But it’s really its own category and it’s definitely a nice effect. You can easily add page elements that animate themselves throughout the page while scrolling. notice the different page elements animate into view. They’re pretty easy to watch so they don’t move too fast or too slow, but there is clear movement. The idea is to grab people’s attention. It works best with graphics and different page sections, specifically alternating page sections. This effect does not radically alter the page’s behavior or intent. This is mostly an aesthetic trend that just makes everything easier to look at.

Our design team will be more than happy to discuss more on single page designs. Have a quick word with them.

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Technology

Blockchain: All You Need To Know

blockchain

There’s a lot of hype around blockchain. Everyone has heard about Blockchains and distributed ledger systems, everyone has an opinion about them, and that’s the biggest problem. Some consider it as the most important technological innovation since the internet and some consider it a solution without a problem.

What is Blockchain?

According to Don and Alex Tapscott, the authors of ‘Blockchain Revolution 2016’, “The blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions but virtually everything of value.”

Blockchain is an undeniably ingenious invention, the brainchild of a person or group of people known by the pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto. Everyone knows Bitcoin, at least by now, and the first original Blockchain is the decentralized ledger behind the digital currency, Bitcoin. The ledger consists of linked batches of transactions known as blocks, and that’s why the term blockchain. An identical copy is stored on each of the roughly two million computers that make up the bitcoin network. Each change to the ledger is cryptographically signed to prove that the person transferring virtual coins is the actual owner of those coins. Once a transaction is recorded in the ledger, every node in the network will know about it, thereby eliminating possibilities of someone using their coins twice. The idea is to both keep track of how each unit of the virtual currency is spent and prevent unauthorized changes to the ledger. This is the USP of Bitcoin, that no one can cheat the system.

Other digital currencies have imitated this basic idea, often trying to solve perceived problems with Bitcoin by building new cryptocurrencies on new Blockchains. But advocates have seized on the idea of a decentralized, cryptographically secure database for uses beyond currency. Its biggest boosters believe Blockchains can not only replace central banks but guide in a new era of online services outside the control of internet giants like Facebook and Google.

History

Bitcoin surfaced in January 2009. It was an open source software, meaning anyone could examine the code and reuse it. At first, Blockchain enthusiasts simply examined and improved on Bitcoin. One of the examples – Litecoin, a virtual currency based on the Bitcoin software which seeks to offer faster transactions. One of the first projects to repurpose the Bitcoin code to use it for more than just a currency was Namecoin – the traditional domain name management system that helps your computer find our website when you type nyxditech.com. Essentially an address book for the internet. A lot of people have argued that this traditional approach makes censorship too easy because governments can seize a domain name by forcing the company responsible for registering it to change the central database. The US government has done this several times to shut sites accused of violating gambling or intellectual-property laws.

Namecoin tries to solve this problem by storing .bit domain registrations in a Blockchain, which theoretically makes it impossible for anyone without the encryption key to change the registration information. To seize a .bit domain name, any government would have to find the person responsible for the site and force them to hand over the key, which is highly unlikely. Since then, there have been a lot of advances in the Blockchain technology. The primary categories of Blockchain use-cases are lightweight financial systems, provenance tracking, inter-organizational record keeping and multiparty aggregation. Sectors like banking, insurance, government, identity management etc. are the ones which have tried and used Blockchain.

The industry is already experimenting with using Blockchains to make security trades more efficient. Nasdaq OMX, the company behind the Nasdaq stock exchange, began allowing private companies to use blockchains to manage shares in 2015, starting with a company called Chain.

Durable, Robust, Transparent and Incorruptible

Blockchain technology is like the internet in that it has a built-in robustness. Blockchain stores blocks of information that are identical across its network, and therefore it can neither be controlled by any single entity nor has a single point of failure. Since its inception in 2009, Bitcoin Blockchain has operated without major disruptions other than instances of hacking or mismanagement which are not conceptual flaws but are human errors or wrong intentions.

The blockchain network lives in a state of general agreement, one that automatically checks in with itself every few minutes. It has a virtual self-auditing ecosystem of a digital value under which a network reconciles every transaction that happens in ten-minute intervals. Each group of these transactions is referred to as a “Block”. This results in a state of absolute data transparency within the entire system. It can neither be corrupted by altering any unit of information on the Blockchain.

Conclusion

Although Blockchain has been around for a decade now, it’s still premature to call out its future and determine its potential. Blockchains can minimise fraud and maximise efficiency, security & transparency in supply chains, global money systems, healthcare, financial technologies, democratic elections, auction of public assets, energy trading, electronic record authentication, delivery of Government services, IoT and much more. The potential is huge, we just need to calmly let the technology grow and give it a fair chance.

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Technology

Tips To Design An Amazing Ecommerce Product Page

ecom-product

The most important element of any ecommerce website is its usability. The user journey, from product display to check out, is a long process and there are so many elements involved in it. Therefore, it becomes crucial to address the usability of every web page of your website. Product pages are very tricky to design. More often than not, designers lose out at the usability front while ensuring that the products are displayed as best as they can be. Here are a few tips to design a successful and appealing product page for your Ecommerce website.

1. Add an Alluring, Strong CTA Button

This is probably the most important part of any ecommerce product page. A page’s call-to-action button is the crucial element that draws interest and entices a user to take an action. On a product page, this should be your “add to cart” button. It’s the one thing that’ll get people moving through your funnel to actually convert, which is the primary goal of any ecommerce website.

Take a look at the product page of Cross Rope. They feature a pretty simple design and the clear CTA button is colored bright green which immediately grabs attention and stands out against the background. That’s exactly the job of a “add to cart” button. For all CTAs, you ideally want to select a color that grabs attention and differentiates itself from everything else on that page. That said, its essential to blend the colour into your layout and make it feel natural.

crossrope

2. Price Must Be Easily Visible

One of the biggest roadblocks to entry for most customers is the price of a product. No matter how much they like what you’re selling, but if it’s too pricey then it’s just not an option. Some designers think it makes sense to hide the price so users won’t notice. Well, that’s an awful idea. It is very obvious that at some point in time you will need to show the price to the customer and chances are more that he will not buy it. On the contrary, you want your price to be clearly visible and accessible at a glance. Give visitors the info right away so that they waste time looking at a product they can’t afford or just wouldn’t buy.

Take a look at the below image. You really don’t need big red text for your product pricing but it should be clearly visible at a glance. The best color and positioning for your site will depend on how your layout is structured.

3. KISS – Keep Information Short & Skimmable

We often come across so many ecommerce websites with heavily detailed product pages because of which it becomes very stressful for users to read through the information. As a web designer, you should know that people don’t really read the entire content but they actually skim content and quickly look for what they need. Therefore it’s best to provide them with required information upfront, in the style they prefer. Crucial information on a webpage must be organized into page sections. It should be easily visible, easy to read, with clear language and very few obstructive page elements. Check out the Haier’s design. It has a list of features in bold text for the key points. These work like mini-headlines where the content is dark, bold and super easy to read. A great design choice that places attention on the consumer’s needs.

haier

4. User Reviews & Ratings

A product is easy to sell if it comes with a social approval stamp. Product reviews are incredibly valuable and most ecommerce platforms use this feature. You should highly encourage user reviews and push these towards the front of the product page whenever you can. Most ecommerce sites rely on a star-based rating system which works well. This gives a visual indicator of what most buyer’s think of the product. Visitors can quickly go through the star ratings and then see how many people have left used and reviewed a particular product. If you only see 2 or 3 reviews then you know the star rating isn’t really reliable. However, 30+ reviews mean that this is a good basis to gauge the product’s value. We can find this on plenty of ecommerce sites including Amazon, the king of modern Internet retail.

5. Clear Breadcrumb Trail

Another popular feature that many Ecommerce product pages have is breadcrumbs. You can add breadcrumbs to any page with ease and they don’t require a lot of space. In fact, they often take up empty space you never use. The benefit of a breadcrumb is the increased user engagement with relevant links to top-level parent categories for each product. Your goal should be to design similar breadcrumb-style navigation bars. But again, usability is key to everything and therefore your links should be easy to read and the breadcrumb categories should make sense.

wayfair

 

 

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Web Design

Designing Websites Applying User Behaviors

User Behaviors

Every website is developed with an objective. The objective can be anything; connecting, selling, informing, transacting etc. Every website is designed and developed to complete these goals. Whether the goal is connecting with friends or searching something on the internet, it remains the core of developing a website. As a designer, it is very important to understand this concept of user behaviors to create better user experiences. The basic idea is to keep the usability first and everything else like visual elements second. Here are a few web design tips which are based on understanding user behavior and will help you to design profoundly usable websites.

1. Design Must Be Determined by User Goals

If you don’t know the question, how are you going to answer it? It’s as simple as that. Before even thinking about the design of a website it is important to know what is actually required. If you don’t know what the users want, you will never be able to prepare a useful design. Analyse the KPIs because these will define your goals. Do you want people to instantly take actions and transact on your website, or you want to increase direct sales, or you just want them to spend more time on your website? You can design sites intuitively based on assumed goals, however, the best way to design is merging your goals with the user’s goals into one cohesive final product.

2. Test It and Track It

Analyse and assess your ideas based on KPIs and implement your understandings. You should always be testing new ideas to see if you can optimize any parts of your website. One of the best methods to do so is through A/B testing. Think about what you want should happen and how will you be able to make it happen. Take an example of a content heavy website, say an e-newspaper. A lot of these kinds of websites face high bounce rate problems and the main reason for users bouncing off is not being able to navigate themselves to more content. A simple addition of infinite scroll is the answer to this problem which radically improves the user experience and helps people who are stuck around to read content.

When working to improve certain metrics, think about the user experience, because this is really how design should be done. Imagine what the user would think and feel while using your website and how can you improve their experience. Some factors can be very simple and direct. Like the color of links on your site. Just changing colors can have a surprising effect on CTR, signups, or actions taken by a user.

3. Be Open to Changes

The willingness to adjust and change at different time intervals is essential while designing. A few quick halftime adjustments come in very handy, as a lot of times you face design roadblocks and changing a few components is the only way around. If you’re testing something that clearly isn’t working then don’t waste more time on it. The same goes with any new feature as well, which the users are complaining about and clearly needs to be replaced or worked upon. You should know when to call quits and start on something new.

At the end of the day, it’s your users who really matter and if something is not working for them, it has to go down the drain, irrespective of how dear it may be to you as a designer. Your personal feelings should not interfere while taking a decision on what works and what doesn’t. Be open to changes, new strategies and ideas based on new evidence and analysis.

4. Take a Holistic Approach

Every design that you create must comprise of smaller usable pieces which together contribute to a larger composition. This is the best holistic approach to any and every design. You know what they always say, “look at the bigger picture” and focus on understanding how every visitor will perceive it. Question yourself -is your homepage user-friendly, will the user easily understand ‘what to do’ when he lands on the homepage, will he be able to easily navigate through the website? Both the composition and overall design quality play a big role in how people perceive a website.

People need to rely on authoritative designs that work well and serve a purpose. Unfortunately, many designers do look at the big picture, but still, fail to use it and implement the ideology. This leads to a visually pleasing design, which is a useless interface. Design is not just about aesthetics and appearance. It’s about ease of use, practicality of the design, user experience, responsiveness of the website, page load time and a lot more. A holistic approach to design considers more than what you can see. It’s also about what you experience by using the website.

5. Provide Visual Feedback to Users

It’s very important to inform users when are they correctly interacting with your interface and also when they are not doing so. Visual cues and messaging show users whether their interaction is producing the desired results. One of the simplest examples of this can be changing the visual styling of a button when the user hovers over it or even when they click on it. This will give them a sense of confidence that they are heading in the right direction, and on the other hand, will give them a sense of caution if they feel they are not going in the correct direction. Visual cues may not be a direct way of giving feedback, but it certainly is a very effective medium of doing so.

If you consider the user experience at every stage of the design process, designing a user-friendly design will not be an uphill task. All it needs is to put yourself in users’ shoes and analyse every action that they can take and normally do. However, it’s very easy to lose focus and get into a self-centered mode and design something completely to satisfy your own needs and preferences.

Talk to our design experts and discuss your design needs.

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Design

Infuse Innovation In Design Patterns: Why and How?

design-pattern

A lot of researches have proved that human behavior happens in patterns and humans largely use the default, familiar patterns to interact with technology, without seeking a new way to do so. Having identified the substantial influence of patterns over human behavior, it is a wise step to use established design patterns in your work. That said, repetition can also kill innovation. It’s nearly impossible to design something new for your audience if you only concentrate on what’s been already done.

In this article, you will learn how you can use innovative ideas with established design patterns to meet the need of your end-users.

What are Design Patterns?

Design patterns are established solutions to recurring problems. Established design patterns are extremely useful for interface designers. One of the best examples of UI design trends can be positioning the login call to action at the upper right-hand corner of the navigation. People are familiar with this type of positioning because they’ve used the same behavior to log in or check their profile for years. They expect the login button to be there.

Tax Zar
Image source:Taxjar

People enjoy the familiar and are reluctant to anything that they don’t know, or is unexpected. When an interface matches the user’s expectations, it reduces cognitive load, saves users’ time, and makes the software more intuitive.

While we are discussing how to bring out originality and infuse innovation in design works, patterns do have a number of advantages for your design process.

Utilizing a pattern saves time as you don’t have to design an interface from scratch, everytime you start a project. You would be building on a solution that has been successful and has worked well in the past. However, relying heavily on design patterns can easily drive you towards an under-researched design.

Before you start customizing patterns, make sure you select the right pattern for the job. Yes, design patterns are usually reliable solutions to recurring problems, but if you don’t choose the right one, your design could actually reduce clarity for your audience. There are various repositories that offer examples of important design patterns. You can choose the most suitable one for you from there. Once you have your patterns in place, it’s time to get into the innovation mode. Here, innovation means specific changes in a few parts of the interface, not spinning the entire thing on its head. The fundamental design still fits a pattern, but new ideas are added to better help your users understand the interface, satisfy their needs, and accomplish their goals.

Cresent Heights
Image source: crescent heights

Ways to Innovate

There are two most commonly used, tried and tested techniques which can be used to infuse innovation in existing design patterns.

Mental Models

A mental model refers to an established belief someone has about how a system should look or function. This principle states that people find something challenging to use if the interface doesn’t function as they have already decided it should. How designers perceive a product or website and how users perceive the same is often poles apart. This discrepancy is the biggest pathway to poor design.

A couple of research methods like Usability testing and card sorting can be used to uncover what’s on your users’ minds. In Usability testing, people verbalize what they’re thinking as they interact with your site, while in card sorting, users group types of data based on categories, which can help you understand where in the interface people expect to find content.

Empathy Maps

An empathy map is a qualitative research method that visualizes specific needs and actions of your users. Using data collected from user interviews, surveys, and field studies, empathy maps typically categorize user needs in four sections: Says, Thinks, Does, and Feels. This kind of research helps in identifying what users feel versus what they do. These conflicts will help you identify what elements to highlight or hide in your UI design.

Innovation has always led to great things, however, it’s not really wise to only depend on innovation and everytime crafting something completely new, without the essence of tried and tested solutions. It should always be a combination of new ideas and established design patterns. Know more about the same by speaking to our design experts.

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UX

Usability Mistakes That You Should Avoid

Usability Mistakes That You Should Avoid

Importance of usability is very well known to designers. Usable websites offer great user experiences, and great user experiences lead to happy customers. Designers must implement smart design decisions and aim at satisfying and delighting the visitors, rather than frustrate and annoy them. Here are a few usability problems and challenges that are very common across websites and some recommendations on how to cope with them.

1. Small Clickable Areas

Hyperlinks are designed to be clicked, so to make them usable, it makes sense to ensure that they’re easy to click. A lot of designers fail to make the hyperlinks clickable and thus reduce the usability. We need to make the clickable areas bigger because our hand movement with the mouse isn’t very precise. A large clickable area makes it easier to hover the mouse cursor over the link. To ensure we get a large clickable area, we could either make the whole link bigger or increase the padding around the link using the CSS.

2. Incorrect Use of Pagination

Pagination refers to splitting up content onto several pages. This is often found on websites that have long lists of items; for example, products in a store or pictures in a gallery. Using pagination for this purpose makes sense because displaying too many items on one page would make the page slower to upload and process. Alternatively, in particular cases of content pages, like blog articles, the content is sometimes split into several pages. It’s unlikely that the article is so long that it requires pagination, however, this is done to increase page views as a lot of blogs and magazines get their revenue through advertising.

3. Duplicate Page Titles

The title of each Web page is very important. Page titles are the pieces of text we write between the <title> tags in the <head> section of our HTML code. Sometimes people create a generic title while working on their website’s template, which is usually their website’s name. This is a mistake and must be avoided because it robs each page of a couple of key benefits.

The first benefit is that a good title communicates to your visitors a lot of information about what the page is about. People can quickly figure out if they’re in the right place or not. Remember that this title doesn’t just show at the top of the browser window; it’s also shown on the search engine results pages.

The second reason has to do with SEO. Search engines need different information to rank the results of a particular query. A page title is one of the more important pieces of information they use to gauge how relevant your page is to a particular search term. This doesn’t mean you should load as many keywords as possible into the title, but you should ensure that each title describes the content of the page, including a couple of words you think people will search for.

4. Missing Contact Channels

User engagement is important if you want to build a successful community, and communities are important if you want to build successful websites and social web apps. User engagement is also important if you want to build loyal customers. Quickly answering people’s questions and fixing their problems doesn’t just mean that you have good customer service – it means you care, and your customers and visitors will appreciate it.

Your visitors must be provided with an easy channel for getting in touch with you, like an email address or contact form. You could also use contact forms to bypass the problem of showing your email address on a page.

5. Too Much Functionality That Needs Registration

Your website may have some content or features that require visitors to register before using; which is fair enough, but be careful how much content is put behind this registration shield. Very interactive web applications, such as emails, document editing and project management, restrict 100% of their functionality to registered users. Other websites, such as social news websites, do not. One can browse all the stories and enjoy the functionality without identifying themselves.

When you implement a log-in barrier, be careful that you don’t lock away features that don’t really need user identification. Some blogs require people to register before posting, which is a way to deal with spams, but it will also significantly decrease the number of comments you see.

User participation on your website is affected by how many barriers there are. Removing barriers such as registration will almost certainly increase user participation. Indeed, once users start using your website, they will more likely sign up, because they’re already involved.

Usability is of utmost importance and therefore must not be compromised at all. Speak to our design experts on how you can achieve a successful web design without actually compromising on the usability front.

Categories
Web Design

Pro Tips For Web Designing With Type On An Image

pro-web-design

Designers across the globe have unanimously accepted the fact that pictures speak way louder than words. Today, images play a vital role in every web design and when paired with the right text, they create a magical effect. Text on and around images is a growing trend, however, it’s not the easiest of the concepts to pull off. You need the perfect image, hard-hitting message and a complimenting typography. Moreover, you must be clear about your intentions and what you really want to achieve with that type on the image. Here are a few tips that will help you to master the art of designing with type on an image.

Insert Text Into The Image

One of the best ways to perfectly play while designing type on pictures is to make the text a part of the image itself. This doesn’t necessarily works all the time but is very fruitful in some cases. You can either use a simple image and introduce the text into it or use an image with text already in it. But, make sure that the message conveyed is exactly the one that you wish to.

Mclarensource:Mclaren

Use Contrast

No matter how powerful your message or text is, it needs to be readable to be successful. Make sure that the text varies in color, just enough to be seen in combination with the photo. If you have a photo with a dark background, opt for white or light colored text or vice-versa. Contrast can also refer to the size of the text in relation to what is happening in the image. Lettering should work with (not against) the image.

Telegraphsource:Telegraph

Follow The Visual Flow

Working with the visual flow of an image is one of the most important tips when it comes to working with text and photos. The words must fit into logical parts of an image and there shouldn’t be any text over important parts of an image, such as the main action, faces or the showcased product. In terms of visual flow, look for spaces where the subjects of the image would look. The text placed in the visual line of image is likely to be more impactful.

Blurred Background Image

One of the simplest tools that you can use is the ability to blur a part of an image or the entire image at times. Adding a little blur to the background of an image with a software can help your text stand out and create a stunning visual impact. Blur can also add focus to your overall concept and can bring the actual product and text into sharper focus for website visitors.

Wallmobsource:Wallmob

Text In A Shape

When the images that you choose to use has lots of color or differences between light and dark sections, putting text inside a shape can really make it stand out. Select a color for the box which provides enough contrast for the lettering to show. You can also use a frame with some transparency to give it a softer feel, a show through kind of image.


Source: fall

Text In Background

Another handy and impactful trick out there is to put the text in the background of the image rather than the foreground. Typically, backgrounds are less busy and easier to work with when placing text. Most of the backgrounds are single colored, making the text stand out easily and increases its readability. The end result is a natural-looking placement that does not require a lot of tricks or alterations to the main image. Subtle shading effects can also be used to get the desired output.

squaresource: square

Use Huge Fonts

When you’re really confused with what to do, place the safest bet by using large size fonts. This applies to both the image or the type itself. The size element instantly grabs users’ attention and with one element being large, it’s easier to create scale with the text and image. Using big images can help with shading and contrast differences while using big text can add enough weight to lettering where it will appear readable against almost any image.

Cider
Source: Cider

In addition to these tips, always remember to use simple typography and a straightforward image for the best results. Discuss more on your web designing needs. Talk to our experts right away.