NYX Ditech

Lets Talk!

Tag: web design goals

Categories
Brand & Identity Design UI Design Web Design

Web Designing For Accessibility: Tips And Guidelines To Follow

Web Designing

The world is evolving faster than ever, and humans are becoming more and more dependent on technology. The Internet has changed the world, and today all of us depend on the internet for almost everything. Be it searching for a job, ordering a pizza, booking a dentist appointment, learning, and whatnot? The internet may be an ever-present resource for most people, but connectivity to the resource is a challenge for people living with disabilities. Although there are programs and devices, like screen readers, that make it possible for people with disabilities to access websites, web designing for accessibility is still a practice less followed.

According to data from 2012, almost one in five Americans live with a disability of some kind. Close to one billion people in the world, or 15 percent of the world’s population, lives with a disability. Out of all kinds of disabilities, conditions like visual impairment, autism, difficulty grasping objects, and deafness, just to name a few, can severely limit an individual’s ability to use a computer or smartphone without assistance and support.

There’s a myth that web designing for accessibility is difficult and expensive; it’s not true. Making your website more accessible doesn’t mean adding extra features or content; therefore there shouldn’t be an additional cost and effort.

Here are a few tips that will help you in web designing for accessibility in accordance with the AA level of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0), and will allow your website to work on the most commonly used assistive technologies — including screen readers, screen magnifiers, and speech recognition tools.

Maintain a Proper Contrast Ratio

Color contrast is an important aspect of web designing. But, it is often neglected as a web accessibility problem. People with low vision could find it difficult to read text from a background color if it has low contrast, whether on a plain background or text embedded within an image. A movie with subtitles is a good example. The text often appears without anticipating the background. It happens when white text appears in a brightly lit scene. It is unreadable, and the audience is left not knowing the dialogue.

It is critical to consider the sufficient contrast between text and background. According to the W3C, the contrast ratio between text and its background should be at least 4.5 to 1 (conformance level AA.) The ratios become more forgiving with larger and heavier fonts since they’re easier to read at lower contrast. If your type is at least 18 pt or 14 pt bold, the minimum contrast ratio drops to 3 to 1. You can use tools like Contrast Checker to see how your planned font and background colors work together.

Don’t Just Rely On Colors 

When you’re communicating something important, showing an action, or prompting a response, don’t use color as the only visual cue. People with low visual acuity or color blindness will have a hard time understanding your content. Try to use an indicator other than colors such as text labels or patterns.

Elements with more complex information like charts and graphs can be especially hard to read when you only use color to distinguish the data. Use other visual aspects to communicate information like shape, labels, and size. A good trick is to print your graph in black and white and see if you can still understand everything in it.

Keep Your Navigation Predictable

The navigation system your website uses should be consistent across its pages. This includes the icons you use and the way visitors get to different pages within the site. if your homepage has a top header bar with drop-down menus, each of your other pages should have this arrangement, too. Similarly, the icons you use across your website need to be consistent.

You should also stay away from any kind of automatic navigation and auto-playing music and videos. not only are they annoying, but it’s also difficult for a user with a screen reader to determine how to pause them. And when a slideshow or carousel scrolls through content at a rapid rate, users can become confused and frustrated.

Support Keyboard-Only Navigation

Web designing for accessibility is not restricted to the elements on the screen. Keyboard accessibility is one of the most critical aspects of web accessibility. Especially for the ones who are blind and rely on screen readers. Also, for people who don’t have precise muscle control; they can’t grasp a mouse or keep their hand steady on a laptop’s touchpad. These users rely on their keyboards to navigate websites. 

These users typically use the Tab key on the keyboard to navigate through interactive elements on a web page – links, buttons, or input fields. The order of the interactive elements is essential, and the navigation must be logical and intuitive. The tab order should follow the visual flow of the page – left to right, top to bottom.

Add Appropriate Alt-Tags To Images

Alt tags are brief descriptions of the images you use that get buried in the site’s HTML. Most users never see these descriptions, but site visitors using screen readers rely on them since they “hear” the content. These tools convert text to speech so that the person can hear the words on a site. Alternative text, or alt tags, can be presented in two ways –  within the <alt> attribute of the image element, or within the context or surroundings of the image itself. 

Alt tags aren’t just useful for your visually impaired audience; they’re for your benefit too. Well-crafted alt tags improve your site’s SEO, drawing more relevant site traffic and improving conversions.

Use Labels Or Instructions With Form Fields And Inputs 

Using placeholder text as labels are one of the biggest mistakes when designing a form. Placeholder text is usually gray and has low contrast, so it’s hard to read. People who use screen readers usually navigate through a form using the Tab key to jump through the form controls. The <label> elements are read for each form control. Any non-label text, as placeholder text, is usually skipped over.

Always help people understand what they should do and write in a form. It’s best if labels don’t go away, even when the person is filling an input. When designers hide descriptions or directions in their forms, they’re sacrificing usability to attain simplicity. That said, we don’t want you to clutter your design with unnecessary information, just make sure to provide essential cues.

Web designing for accessibility is a new and growing trend. While these tips will certainly help you in creating websites that are much more accessible for people with disabilities, there is still a lot of scope in terms of improving the user experience for this set of audience. As designers, we all need to grow and master the art of accessibility since technology is usable for all – regardless of their abilities. Looking to improve your web design? Talk to our experts.

Looking for 2020 Design Trends? Click Here to Know More

Categories
Blog Brand & Identity Design SEO Web Design

Top 10 Hacks To Create Effective Exit Popups

Exit Popups

Most people don’t like popups. They feel popups are spammy and deplete the user experience. However, times have changed and exit popups are no longer the annoying spammy ads. Today, if you move the cursor to the top right or left corner of your screen, with an intent to leave the page, the website senses that you are moving away from the page and displays a last-minute popup using Javascript. These popup ads are called exit-intent popups.

These might belong to the not-so-popular popup ad family but are the most powerful and effective digital marketing tool in today’s time. And, we are not glorifying exit popups for no reason. Studies show that you can recover more than 50 percent of your abandoning visitors by implementing an exit-intent popup. It helps in reducing cart abandonment, increasing downloads, getting email signups, and a lot more.

Considering the importance and effectiveness of exit popups, here’s a list of exit popup hacks to boost engagement, sales, and subscribers.

1. Offer A Discount

Who doesn’t like discounts? The moment you offer a discount to your visitors, the majority of them will stop and at least consider your offer. The discount can be offered in many ways. A lot of websites offer a discount coupon in return of email id, signing up for newsletters, or subscribing to their email campaigns. Others may choose to simply offer a discount code that users can use upon purchasing from the website. The bottom line is that users love discounts, and thus it’s a great way to retain them

2. Personalize Your Message

Personalization creates a powerful impact. Be it email campaigns, or generic messages. It always works. Capture the name of your visitors even before you attempt to make a sale and when they are about to abandon your web page, grab their attention by exit popups with their name on it. Personal messaging will create a positive impact and users will feel more connected to your website.

3. Offer Content Upgrade

Another great way of reducing abandoning customers is by offering them an upgraded version of the content that they were reading. A more in-depth version of a particular blog post. So for instance, if your blog post is a ‘how-to’ tutorial, your visitors may want to read it in full but may leave as the content is too long to be read in one go. As they go to close the browser, present them with a free download of a PDF version of the post. Most likely they will download it for later use and will subscribe to your newsletters as well.

4. Provide Them Options

The real problem with unsuccessful popups is that they don’t really offer what the users want. This happens because the business a lot of businesses have many different buyer personas and each one of them will respond differently to a particular offering. The solution to this problem is to offer them multiple choices and allowing them to choose the one that they want. Once they select an option, an opt-in form can be used to capture the lead.

5. Add Pictures To The Offer

Images create a greater impact and make a big difference to any online campaign. A good quality offer image along with other essential information will entice the users and will increase the chances of acceptance. 

6. Optimize The Exit Popups

The user is ready to leave the page and a delay of even one second in displaying the exit popups can be the game-changer. Therefore, it’s essential to optimize the popup message and design, so that it pops up instantly. Remove heavy images and graphics, don’t use special effects, and cut down on the content.

7. Overcome Objections

One of the major roadblocks to a purchase is also one of the best exit popup hacks, especially for eCommerce products and checkout pages. A lot of times the customer is on the verge of purchasing your product but is stopped by one small objection. 

One of the biggest objections that shoppers have is the Buyer’s Remorse. Do they get doubts in their mind like what if this is not the right product for me? What if I have to return it back? Offer money-back offers, 30-day free trials, and easy returns to the customers, in exit popups, so that they can purchase with confidence.

8. Provide A Simple Reminder

Sometimes just a reminder can make a difference. When customers are abandoning your website, they must be reminded of the products left in their carts. The reminder creates a strong and irresistible desire to close the purchase. Use solid copy to create more impact. Wait! are you sure you don’t want to buy. Wait, you still have some items in your cart. Don’t leave without your items. These are some examples that you can use.

9. Offer Free Shipping

It is a fun fact that shipping cost is one of the primary reasons for customers abandoning their shopping carts. Therefore, using free shipping exit popups is a great way to retain customers. Discount coupons or direct discounts on shipping along with the link to the product they wanted to buy. 

10. Create A Sense Of Urgency

The scarcity of something makes it more desirable. If customers are informed that there are only a few units of their favorite products are left, they won’t want to miss it. Hurry up!! Only two left in stock, or Hurry up! you get it at this price only today, is something that you can use in your exit popups copy.

Few tips to Reduce the Bounce Rate of your site. Read Here

The above-mentioned hacks will surely help you in retaining your customers and increasing conversions. If you want to know more about how to create exit popup campaigns, you can talk to our team now.

Categories
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.