Articles

As a utility-first CSS framework, Tailwind has rapidly become popular among developers. With its fast styling process and the freedom it offers when designing a website, it’s really no wonder why.

But how can you make sure this is the right CSS framework for your upcoming development projects? In this blog post, you’ll learn what Tailwind is, and how it differs from other frameworks like Bootstrap, or Foundation.

In addition, we will highlight the main advantages and disadvantages of the framework. By the end, you will be able to make an honest and objective assessment as to whether Tailwind is the right framework for you. So without further ado, let us dive deeper into it. 

What is Tailwind CSS?

First released in May 2019, Tailwind CSS is a front-end CSS framework. It is currently at version 2.2. Since its release, Tailwind has created quite a following. More than 260k developers have used it to enhance their design systems.

Stats like these make Tailwind one of the most popular CSS frameworks on the market, and all in less than two years. There are many reasons for this. Primarily, because its features make it the ideal choice for a wide variety of projects. Tellingly, most developers prefer it to create React projects.

The main difference between Tailwind and its competitors is that it gives developers complete control over the styling of a web application. So, is it the right CSS framework for you? To answer this question, let us take a look at Tailwind’s advantages and disadvantages.

Tailwind CSS: Pros and Cons

Tailwind CSS: Advantages

1. Control Over Styling

Tailwind is a unique CSS framework when it comes to styling web applications, meaning that Tailwind does not have a default theme that you have to use like other CSS frameworks.

For example, you can give each project a different look even if you use the same elements (color palette, size, etc.). Therefore, it’s one of the few CSS frameworks that is not opinionated on how you should style your project. 

2. Faster CSS Styling Process

There is no faster framework than Tailwind when it comes to styling HTML. As a result, you can easily create good-looking layouts by styling elements directly. This is possible because Tailwind offers thousands of built-in classes that do not require you to create designs from scratch.

Therefore, you do not have to write CSS rules yourself. These CSS classes are the main reason why building and styling with Tailwind is so fast. 

3. Responsiveness and Security 

With Tailwind’s pre-built classes, you can design the layout directly in an HTML file. This makes it a very responsive, mobile-friendly CSS framework. Apart from that, Tailwind has proven to be a stable framework since its initial release.

The framework was developed by top-notch engineers, which is why bugs and breaks are rare. 

4. Additional Features 

Tailwind CSS works in the front end of a website. For this reason, it is reasonable for developers to demand ultimate responsiveness. Well, Tailwind provides the ability to create responsive themes for your web applications and remove all unused CSS classes. With PurgeCSS, Tailwind helps you keep your final CSS as small as possible.

Tailwind CSS: Disadvantages

1. Styling and HTML are Mixed

Because you do not have to write CSS rules yourself, Tailwind works differently than most CSS frameworks. While this is great for those unfamiliar with CSS, it also means that Tailwind mixes style rules in with your HTML files.

This goes against the principle of the “separation of concerns.” Many developers prefer to separate page structure and style, claiming that classes make the Tailwind markup process verbose. 

2. It Takes Time to Learn 

Because of the built-in classes, Tailwind CSS is quite learning-intensive. Even for experienced developers, it can be a challenge to learn how to use and fully utilize the pre-built classes. But, of course, as with any other development task, practice makes perfect.

However, if you are confident and quick when it comes to writing CSS classes, Tailwind may not be the best choice for you. Even if that’s true, Tailwind generally makes CSS styling faster in the long run.  

3.  Lack of Important Components

Unlike Bulma and Bootstrap, Tailwind does not have many significant styling components. Unfortunately, this means you have to manually add features like headers, buttons, and navigation bars for web apps.

This is not a significant drawback, as experienced developers can implement these features quickly. However, you will need to spend some time doing so. 

4. Documentation 

Although Tailwind CSS has made great strides when it comes to adding guides and video tutorials, it still lags behind competitors like Bootstrap. Of course, you can always contact the developers if you have a problem.

However, keep in mind that this may take some time. For this reason, you may need to customize the framework to your needs manually.

Is Tailwind Worth Trying?

In a few words, working with Tailwind is quite different from other CSS frameworks. We have identified its main advantages and disadvantages. Based on these features, we can easily say that Tailwind is:

  • An excellent solution for developers familiar with CSS who want to speed up the creation and design process in the long run.
  • Not such a good idea if you are not familiar with CSS or do not want to spend time learning a new CSS framework. 

It becomes clear that it all depends on your personal needs and preferences. However, if saving time on CSS styling is a priority for you, you should definitely give Tailwind a try.

Regardless of whether you choose to use Tailwind or not, it’s evident that many developers use it for good reasons. Since it offers a faster styling process and is a responsive and stable framework, it’s here to stay.

Tailwind can help you save time and change the way you design websites, and so taking the time to test it out is worthwhile.

Source

The post The Pros and Cons of Tailwind CSS first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.


Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

Technical leaders and senior developers often ask me about any specific books in software architecture and websites they should read to start working as software architects. I think that the developer is mature enough to develop a technical solution and he or she needs only some additional soft skills.

So, I hope that this list of books will be useful for any technology stack and domain. These books and websites give general information about architecture patterns, technical documentation, techniques to get non-functional requirements and develop soft skills.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

Content is the king of the digital world. This is an undisputed fact among marketers and business owners alike.

However, not all content is created equal. Interactive content is a more immersive form of marketing specifically intended for the digital age. Great for companies that need to develop deeper relationships with their audience. 

There are various kinds of interactive content for brands to explore these days. For example, you can create a poll where your customers vote for certain answers to questions. In addition, some companies hire developers to build immersive gaming experiences with prizes and rewards. 

Even standard content like blogs and articles can become more interactive with things like animations, buttons, and elements that ask visitors to do something. 

One of the most valuable forms of interactive content is the quiz. So, how can companies use quizzes to engage their audience effectively? Let’s find out…

The Benefits of Quizzes in Interactive Content

According to studies, 93% of marketers believe interactive content is extremely effective for educating and entertaining customers. Interactive content is meaningful because it’s engaging, and many marketers state that creating engaging content is one of their toughest challenges. 

In an environment where the average attention span is constantly dwindling, interactive content reduces the risk that your customer will end up being distracted by something else before they have a chance to convert on your website. 

Quizzes are an excellent form of interactive content, but many marketers don’t take full advantage of them yet. Quizzes, like some other forms of interactive content, can come in different styles. For example, you could have a personality quiz that tells your customer what kind of vegetable they would be. That might sound odd, but it helps to give your customer a sense of belonging, gives them a feeling of being understood, and offers entertainment. 

Some quizzes can answer questions for your customer. 

For instance, a quiz on “what to buy your dad for father’s day” is an excellent way to solve a customer’s problem while guiding them towards potential products that you sell. 

Z Gallerie, a retail company, launched a quiz called “What is your Z Gallerie Style personality?” The quiz offers a personalized recommendation experience on what to purchase for every current and potential customer. 

The personality quiz became a great way of bringing product recommendations to leads without being pushy. Z Gallerie could, therefore, consistently provide a unique experience to each customer based on their results. 

So, how do you make a quiz that’s really effective for your content marketing plan?

Step 1: Creating the Quiz

Quizzes are a kind of interactive content that can almost feel like a conversation with a brand. They’re an opportunity for you to show your audience how well you understand them. 

According to TryInteract, people take quizzes because they want to know themselves better or want to confirm what they think they already know about themselves. These content solutions solve problems, even if they’re handling a person’s curiosity about what kind of celebrity they’re most like. 

Before you start making your quiz, you need to know your goal and what you’re trying to do for your audience. If your goal is to get more people to feel more attuned to your company, you might need to create something that demonstrates how well you know your visitors.

The goal for the company is to demonstrate a deep knowledge of the industry and target market. If the quiz is helpful and informative, it adds to the brand’s credibility and makes it more likely that customers will want to continue purchasing.

Before you build your quiz, ask yourself:

  • What do you want to get out of your audience taking this quiz? (More conversions, better brand loyalty, improved engagement?)
  • Why would your audience want to take the quiz? (Is it relevant to their interests, will it give them some vital information?)

Knowing exactly what you and your audience should accomplish with the quiz will give you a good platform to begin building on. 

Step 2: Choose the Title and Quiz Type

Titles are important in any content marketing. 80% of readers decide whether to check out an article based on its title. The same process is common for people who want to decide whether they should take a quiz or not. 

There are a lot of great ways to pique your visitor’s attention with a quiz title. For instance, you could challenge your audience to prove their knowledge with the word “actually.” For instance, “How much do you actually know about Kale?” That kind of title immediately appeals to the competitive nature of the human being. 

Another great example of a challenging title is to tell your audience that they can’t do something. Buzzfeed did that with its millennial quiz. The great thing about this quiz title is that it speaks to the competitive nature of the reader but also gives that reader a chance to show that they belong to a specific community. 

Another option could be to ask a question and hope that curiosity will do the rest of the work for you. For instance, “Which celebrity chef are you most like?” The key to success here is understanding your audience and knowing exactly what they most want to know. 

Once you’ve figured out the title, choosing the kind of quiz you want to create is the next step. For instance, you can try:

  • Personality quizzes: People like hearing good things about themselves because of a psychological phenomenon called self-serving bias. A personality quiz that recognizes the features your customers like about themselves will make them feel happier and more connected to your brand.
  • The knowledge test: Commonly found on social media, these quizzes challenge a person’s knowledge on a specific subject. The benefit here is that your audience can learn something and share their knowledge with their friends for social points. This quiz from Unicef is an excellent example of the “knowledge” style quiz.

Step 3: Crafting Quiz Questions

Once you have a good idea of the kind of quiz you want to create and the title you’re going to put alongside it, you’ll need to begin bringing your interactive content to life. That means designing the right questions. 

Writing questions for a quiz is just like creating any excellent content. First, you need to keep your target audience in mind. Next, think about the kind of personality you’re trying to appeal to. Breathing some life into your quiz by injecting your unique sense of personality into it will be an excellent way to strengthen your bond with your customers. 

Other tips for making the most of your quiz questions include:

  • Use visuals in your questions: Having text-only questions is fine in some cases, but it’s worth looking into images too. Using pictures helps to keep things relevant and interesting and makes your quiz feel a lot more immersive. 
  • Don’t make questions too long: In-depth and complicated questions will only scare your audience away. Remember that they’re looking for something fun and lighthearted to do. This means that your questions should be as short as possible. 
  • Make it interesting: Don’t just ask basic questions like “what’s your favorite color” try to go beyond what your customers usually see on quizzes and make it relevant to the quiz topic. Again, this is your chance to show your audience how much you know.

Step 4: Creating Results That People Want to Share

If you want to design a quiz that really blows your audience away, then the results are one of the most important things to focus on. The results you offer your customers dictate whether they enjoy your quiz so much that they want to share it with other people. Creating share-worthy results is how you boost your chances of finding new customers and even going viral. 

So, how do you design results that people want to share? Start by helping your customers to feel positive about themselves. The results should make them feel like a better person or confirm the good things they already believe about themselves. Research tells us that positive emotions are more likely to promote sharing

For instance, this quiz from the PBS company makes people feel good by demonstrating that they know their books. This confirms a customer’s idea that they are well-read.

Using share-worthy images is another way to improve your chances of designing results that people want to share. You’ll need to use interesting pictures here that speak to your audience. Bright and entertaining pictures will make results more eye-catching on a social media feed. 

Don’t forget to include a call-to-action on your results page too. It’s always helpful to give your audience a nudge in the direction you want them to move in. Providing a call-to-action that asks your customers to share their results increases your chances of positive sharing behavior. 

Step 5: Know How to Distribute Your Quiz

Once you’ve put all of the essential components of your quiz together, the next step is ensuring you can distribute that quiz and share it with as many people as possible. For instance, you can promote your quiz on social media to reach more possible customers. Twitter and Facebook are always great places to get started but don’t be afraid to experiment elsewhere. 

Sharing snippets of the quiz experience in an Instagram Story could be a great way to generate engagement or posting a picture on your Instagram feed. 

When promoting your interactive content on social media, use an attractive image to highlight the experience and ensure you make that captivating headline stand out. Share both the caption and image with a shortened link to measure results. Shorter links are more likely to attract audience attention and encourage sharing later. If your links are too long, they can end up looking spammy or unprofessional. That’s not the image you want to build with your quiz content. 

If you need an extra boost for your quiz, promoting through Facebook advertising could be the ideal solution. Paid ads are a great way to get extra attention, but you need to choose your target audience carefully. Select your audience according to demographics, behaviors, connections, and locations. 

Remember that Facebook gives you plenty of opportunities to track down the kind of customers you want to speak to. Creating a custom audience could be a handy step too. This is always useful if you have a lot of information from an email list or a collection of contacts you’ve generated over time.

Step 6: Following Up on Your Quiz

Once you’ve successfully attracted people to your quiz experience, the next step is to follow up on the leads you’ve hopefully collected. When designing a quiz, it’s always a good idea to ask your customer for their email addresses before you give their results. This ensures that you can collect plenty of leads in the long term for nurturing purposes. 

Marketing company, The Foundation, designed a quiz that asked customers whether they had an entrepreneurial mindset. The quiz was based on an existing eBook offered by the company. The quiz, combined with a Facebook ad campaign, helped the business collect new leads to advertise their ebook. The Foundation managed to reduce its cost per lead from $6 to $3.80 using this method. 

When following up on your quiz experience, make sure that you get the tone right. The first thing you need to do is thank your audience for taking the quiz in the first place. After someone opts in and offers their email address, send a quick email that shares their results and says “thanks.” 

After a couple of days, you can follow up on your thank you email by asking your audience to retake the quiz or take a new one. Encourage these repeat customers to share their testimonials and gradually introduce more interesting content you have that’s connected to your quiz. For instance, if you create a quiz to determine whether someone has an entrepreneurial mind, you could advertise articles that cover similar topics. 

Finally, after regular engagement from your audience, you can begin to implement strategies that might convince your audience to purchase your products. This could mean showing off your entrepreneurial eBook, asking someone to sign up for a webinar, or something else entirely.

Don’t forget to track the performance of every quiz too. Examining metrics like click-through rates for your quiz advertisements and conversion rates will help you see which quizzes generate the most attention and action from your intended audience. 

Time to Add Quizzes to Your Interactive Content Strategy?

A content marketing strategy is one of the best ways to engage with your audience and strengthen your position in any industry. The right content demonstrates your knowledge, develops trust, and helps you to attract new customers. With interactive content, you can take the relationship you build with your audience to the next level. It’s your chance to engage with your customers and create an emotional relationship. 

Quizzes are one of the most effective forms of interactive content, and they’re also one of the easiest to implement into your existing strategy. It doesn’t take a lot of time or money to create a good quiz, and you can usually find tools online to help you with things like structure and formatting. You could even hire a professional to design a quiz for you. 

Once you’ve got the kind of quiz that’s really going to interest your target audience, the next step is distributing it in a way that generates as much attention as possible. Remember, you can advertise on social media and various other channels. However, it’s also helpful to pay attention to your options for helping do your promotion for you. For example, many customers will be more than happy to share quiz results that confirm the identity they’re trying to build online.

 

Featured image via Unsplash.

Source

The post How to Use Quizzes More Effectively in Interactive Content first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.


Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

The WordPress themes and plugins you choose for your clients’ sites don’t just impact how the interface looks or how well it works. They also impact your ability to build them.

The point in using WordPress themes and plugins is to make your life easier, not to create more work for yourself or limit what you’re able to do. If you’ve struggled to find WordPress tools you can rely on from job to job, BeTheme might just be the total package you’ve been looking for.

BeTheme has it all:

  • A backend builder
  • A frontend builder
  • A WooCommerce builder
  • 600+ pre-built websites

There’s nothing extra to pay with BeTheme. One fee gets you all the tools you need to easily build professional-grade websites for your clients.

Get to Know BeTheme’s All-In-One WordPress Solution

Want to see how the BeTheme powerhouse works? Check it out:

1. Build and Manage the Backend With Muffin Builder 3

Let’s be honest, WordPress page builder plugins leave something to be desired. While they all have their strengths, it’s hard to find one that offers different tools for how you want to work.

Many of them offer a visual drag-and-drop builder, leaving designers with little flexibility in how they build websites. With BeTheme, you don’t have to compromise.

Muffin Builder 3 is the intuitive backend editor that gives you full control. And if you want to code it all by hand? You can. If you’d prefer to tap into BeTheme’s wide array of templates, pre-built sections, and predefined settings? You can do that as well.

What’s more, the backend builder makes it easy to add sliders to your website, optimize your pages for search, and more.

2. Design and Perfect Your Site on the Frontend with Muffin Live Builder

One of the reasons why drag-and-drop website builders have become so popular in recent years is because they empower everyone — from the DIY business owner to the professional web designer — to build websites visually. There’s just one problem:

While it’s great that developers both inside and outside of the WordPress ecosystem are creating these intuitive builders, they sometimes come at a cost.

One thing that tends to get sacrificed is speed. Because they take the editing out of the WordPress dashboard and onto the frontend of the website, many of them can take a while to load. (Some of them are known for stalling out on occasion, too.)

Another thing that gets sacrificed is how much you’re allowed to customize. You either have to design your website with the features and settings available from your page builder plugin or you have to do all the work inside of WordPress.

Muffin Live Builder doesn’t suffer from these issues.

For starters, the visual builder is lightweight, so it won’t keep you waiting around for pages to load or changes to reflect on the frontend.

Also, you don’t have to choose which builder you want to use. If you want to primarily build sites with the backend editor and then perfect the designs on the frontend, you can. With BeTheme, you don’t have to pick-and-choose which editor you want to use.

3. Create Great Looking Monetized Sites with the Muffin Woo Builder

Many page builders are built for one purpose: To help WordPress users visually design websites so they can see their work reflected on the site in real-time.

That said, many page builder plugins haven’t accounted for the ecommerce piece.

Users can design and customize the regular pages on their websites with the visual builder, like the Home, About, and Contact pages. However, their ecommerce pages — Shop, Products, Cart, Checkout, and more — have to be managed through WooCommerce’s interface.

WooCommerce is a great ecommerce plugin. However, it’s not ideal having to design different parts of your site with different tools.

Be now has a solution for this: Muffin Woo Builder.

The Muffin Woo Builder allows designers to build their own single product and shop templates instead of just customizing the default ones provided by WooCommerce or the theme.

It also gives you design editing capabilities that no other page builder plugin can. For example:

  • Create design rules for your ecommerce pages
  • Choose from 11 product gallery styles
  • Switch between Shop and Catalogue mode
  • Set custom variation swatches
  • Show or hide the cart button
  • Add a sidebar
  • Configure settings for how product images render
  • Enable a Wishlist
  • Pick and choose which icons appear in the header

If you want this level of control over the layout and look of your ecommerce pages, you have to install other plugins or custom-code those changes into the backend. So, this is definitely a unique feature amongst page builders.

4. Instantly Design an Attractive Website With One of 600+ Pre-Built Sites

BeTheme isn’t just the fastest WordPress builder because it’s lightweight or because there are various builder options that allow you to work the way that’s best for you.

BeTheme also comes jam-packed with 600+ pre-built websites, with new ones released every week.

When you install a pre-built site, BeTheme is going to do a number of things for you:

  • Install all the specific plugins you need for the site
  • Load a fully designed and fully functioning website into your WordPress installation
  • Add placeholder content and imagery throughout so you can easily swap in your own

That’s going to save you a lot of time. Think about the cost savings, too. You get access to more than 600 pre-built websites without having to pay anything extra for them.

Is BeTheme the total design package? You bet it is!

It can’t be overstated what a game-changer BeTheme is for WordPress designers. Two page builders, one WooCommerce builder, and 600+ pre-built sites all rolled into one?

Everything you need to design high-quality websites is baked in.

That’s something you rarely see in any product or service, let alone in WordPress.

If you’re ready to say “Goodbye!” to page builder plugins and transform the way you work, get the BeTheme powerhouse now.

Source

The post Design Faster & Smarter with BeTheme’s 3 Builders & 600+ Pre-Built Sites first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.


Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

I’ve just been appointed the CTO of a small company with less than 10 employees. Companies of this size typically don’t have the luxury of hiring a professional Project Manager, hence the role almost automatically goes to the CEO of the company, since he is the product owner – Which creates a problem for me, summarised in the ingress of this article. But as the CTO, I’m also responsible for all IT choices, including infrastructure choices, so let me go through all of my choices below – Since these have consequences for the process we must follow.

Cloudless first

Cloud systems such as Azure or AWS are amazing products, with a feature list covering everything you can imagine. However, they’re also ridiculously expensive, typically at least 10x as expensive as a simple VPS providing the same value from an application deployment point of view. At my last company we paid €5,000 per month for Azure, and probably something similar for our AWS account (Sigh, yes, we used both! Not my decision though!) – Let’s say €8,000 per month to make sure we’re within the boundaries and that I am not exaggerating. I told my developers back at that company that I could have ran the whole company on a handful of VPS servers from DigitalOcean paying no more than €200 per month in total. Nobody believed me until our CTO confirmed my numbers more or less by saying; « At my former company we ran a 300,000 EUROs daily profit FinTech company for some 200 EUROs worth of droplets from DigitalOcean. »

Source de l’article sur DZONE


Introduction

James Gosling, often referred to as « Dr. Java », is a Canadian computer scientist, best known as the father of the Java programming language. He did the original design of Java and implemented its original compiler and virtual machine. Our DevRel, Grigory Petrov, had the opportunity to interview James, and we have included the entire transcript below. Hope you enjoy it!

The Interview

Grigory: As software developers and software consultants, we’re trying to organize a community in Russia: Python, Ruby, Java, and Go communities. And we want to help our fellow developers by conducting interviews that highlight essential questions for our industry. I think that your experience and your work on Java can help developers to become better. So let’s try to help them!

Source de l’article sur DZONE

As cloud computing continues exponential growth and adoption, numerous deployment strategies and models have emerged to meet the increasing demand and diverse needs of cloud users. PaaS (platform as a service) is a cloud computing model that allows you to develop, run, deploy, and launch applications and services over the internet without the constraints, complexity, and cost of building and managing the underlying cloud infrastructure—including storage, operating systems, servers, networks, and more.

PaaS provides the fundamental benefits of cloud computing—from turnkey provisioning and disaster recovery to on-demand scalability and transparent pricing—all consistently managed. And, PaaS vendors provide developers with the tools and infrastructure to run needed programming languages and technology stacks.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

The application development landscape has fundamentally changed in recent years. In a recent interview with Ambassador Labs, Mario Loria from CartaX said he believes this is still uncharted territory, particularly for developers in the cloud-native space. As he sees it, site reliability engineers (SREs) play a key role in guiding developers through the learning curve toward comprehensive self-service of the supporting platforms and ecosystem, and ultimately to service ownership. This requires a major shift in company and management culture, and developer (and SRE) mindset and tooling as well as insight to make the journey to full lifecycle ownership not just smoother and more transparent but also technically feasible.

Two Worlds Colliding: The Monolith and Service-Oriented Architecture

The traditional monolith continues to exist in parallel with cloud-native application development. The operations side of the equation, according to Mario, understands that this has caused a big shift in deploying, releasing, and operating applications, and now the role of SREs is to help developers understand and own this shift. Developers know how to code, but building in the necessary understanding (and ownership) of the “ship” and “run” aspects of the lifecycle introduces a steep learning curve. For developers, this means taking on new responsibilities with the support of SREs.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

In the information age, time is a valuable commodity and something people don’t want to spend too much of. As a result, the average visitor only reads about 20% of the content of a page

For web designers and developers, that means a few things: first, you need to ensure that the web pages you create are as engaging as possible; secondly, you need to find a way of making the critical information on any page stand out; thirdly, every modern designer needs to create assets that are easy for today’s fast-paced customers to use. 

Making websites more scannable is how you do your part as a designer to ensure that the customers who come to a page get the quick and convenient experiences they need. 

So, how do designers embrace scannability?

Designing for Scannability: An Introduction

At first glance, the concept of creating a website for scannability is strange. 

Most designers start their projects with the aim of making customers stay on a page for as long as possible. So it’s odd to think that you would want to make it simple for end-users to skip from one page to another on a website in a matter of seconds. 

However, scannability isn’t just about delivering information and getting users off a page. When sites are scannable, they make it quicker and easier for customers to slide down the purchasing funnel. A quicker and more convenient customer journey leads to a stronger user experience and more conversions. 

Look at Netflix, for instance. It doesn’t give interested users a ton of information on its homepage. Instead, the key USPs of the product are laid out bright and bold in the middle of the screen, along with one simple call to action: Get Started.

Designing for scannability means making it easy for users on a page to glance at a screen and instantly access all the information they need to take the next step in their buyer journey. 

There’s no needless scrolling or wondering what to do next. 

According to analyst Jacob Nielsen, scannability is essential because people look for specific things on every page they visit. 

Customers don’t read through web pages word by word. Instead, they scan through the content, plucking information out that serves their requirements. 

Questions to Ask When Designing for Scannability

So, how do you know if your web pages are scannable?

Start by asking the following questions:

  • What’s the intent of the people who arrive on this page?
  • What kind of information needs to be conveyed instantly?
  • Can the visitor see the next step in their journey immediately?

For instance, when someone arrives on the Evernote homepage, you can assume that they want to:

  • Find out about Evernote
  • Learn how to sign up
  • Jump to other pages to find out about features, and contact details

That’s why the designer behind the Evernote website placed an immediate piece of useful information at the top of the page: “Tame your work, organize your life” tells customers exactly what the entire product is all about. The brief paragraph of information underneath can provide a few more details if customers need it, then there’s an immediate call to action: Sign up for free. 

Not only does the call to action tell users what to do next, but it tells them the most important information they need straight away: it’s free. 

Scannable pages like this are useful because:

  • They help users complete their tasks quicker: Whether you want to sign up or learn more about the product, everything you need is available instantly, with no scrolling required. 
  • The bounce rate is reduced. Customers don’t get confused and hit the back button. That’s good for your client’s SEO and their bottom line. 
  • The website looks and feels more credible: Because customers get all the answers to their questions immediately, they’re more likely to trust the website. 

So, what are some of the best things you can do to make your sites as scannable as possible?

Use Visual Hierarchy

Visual hierarchy is a way of organizing the content on your website in a way that adheres to how people use the website. For instance, if you land on a blog page, you expect to see the headline first, maybe some information about the writer, and any other essential information, followed by the body content. 

Although it’s tempting for designers to try and surprise users with new visual strategies, the best way to make your content more scannable is to give end-users precisely what they expect. 

If you’re not sure what a page should look like, try checking out the competition. 

One of the most obvious visual hierarchy rules is that the main navigation should always go at the top of the page. 

Customers will expect to look at the top of the page to find navigation. They don’t want to have to scroll through your website, searching for a way to get to another page. If you want to make it as easy as possible for end-users to jump from one page to another, you can pin the navigation bar to the page so that it stays with users as they scroll. 

Maintain Negative Space

White space, negative space, or whatever you call it – is the part of your design that’s left empty. 

White space is crucial because it gives all of the objects on your page some much-needed breathing room. Without enough negative space on your pages, it’s impossible to embrace scannability because there’s too much information for a customer to take in at once. 

For instance, notice how there are big gaps of space between every element on a Forbes website post. A proper amount of negative space on your site ensures that users can quickly take in chunks of information and use that information to decide what to do next. 

To ensure there’s enough negative space on your website pages, ask yourself what the key elements visitors will notice when they come to a website. The essential items should be:

  • A title or header to confirm that the user is in the right place
  • A CTA that shows your user what to do next
  • A navigation header or menu
  • Critical information includes an introduction to what a page is about or an excerpt from the blog post they’re about to read. 
  • A visual component: A picture or image that gives context to the page. 

Anything else can usually be removed. So, for instance, if Forbes wanted to make the page above more scannable, they could easily remove the ads and social media sharing buttons.

Make the Next Step Obvious

Every page on a website exists in a hierarchy within the customer journey. 

A homepage leads customers to product pages, which leads to a checkout page, which connects to a thank-you page that sends the visitor back to another product page, and so on. 

When designing for scannability, it’s crucial to make the next step in the journey as obvious as possible. Usually, this means placing the call to action “above the fold,” where the customer can see it immediately.

Ideally, scannable pages should have just one CTA. This will stop your audience members from being confused or overwhelmed by choice. 

However, if you’ve got multiple CTAs, think about the average customer’s journey and what they’ll want access to first.

If those buttons don’t appeal to the customer, they can scroll a little further and see other “next step” options, like shopping for “self-isolation essentials” or browsing other popular product categories:

Test Every Page

Testing for scannability means examining every page and making sure that it’s as easy as possible for customers to move through the buying process as fast as they want to. 

Visit each page you design in a buyer journey and ask how quickly it would take end-users to get from point A to point B and beyond. Here are some of the common issues that might slow the customer’s journey and harm scannability:

  • Readability: Is the font legible? Is it large enough to read on all screens, including mobile devices? Legibility in the design world measures how quickly and intuitively your users can distinguish what’s going on any page. Remember that the color of the background, the amount of negative space around copy blocks, and even font pairing can impact the readability of the content. Show your pages to multiple people and time how long it takes for them to grasp the message that you’re trying to convey. 
  • Fluff: Fluff and extra features can make your pages more intriguing, but they can also slow users down. For instance, one picture at the top of a blog page can add context to the article. A slideshow of pictures stops the customer from progressing and keeps them stuck at the top of the page for longer. 
  • Words instead of numbers: According to Nielsen, eye-tracking studies show that numerals often stop the wandering eye. Numbers are compact and more regularly associated with statistics and facts, so they’re more likely to grab attention. If you want to get important points across to end users fast, use numbers, not words. 

Creating Scannable Pages

Scannability is becoming an increasingly important concept in today’s busy landscape. 

Now that more customers are browsing websites from their smartphones or checking out products on the move, designers need to think more carefully about adjusting to this agile environment. 

Scannable pages that move visitors along the buying cycle and into the next stage of the funnel will deliver better results for your clients, and therefore better outcomes for you. 

Source

The post Quick Ways to Make a Webpage More Scannable first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.


Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

The world of web design is incredibly dynamic. Every year, new trends and opportunities emerge, primarily driven by the arrival of modern technology. 

In recent years, we’ve seen various updates to the web design landscape, such as the arrival of AR and VR solutions for making mixed media. Video content has increased in quality, while the demand for inclusivity and usability has transformed the way that we build everything from websites to apps. 

Yet, for the most part, web design trends have continued to focus on the visual. 

When we hear the word “interface,” we often think of the graphical user interface – the ultimate way to connect users with sites. However, now we have a new, more natural way for customers to interact with their digital tools… The era of voice is here. 

Designing for the Age of Voice

The technology sector has made incredible progress in the development of things like Automated Speech Recognition and Natural Language Understanding. 

Thanks to updates in the way that machines process and understand human language, voice recognition accuracy is now at 90% and above. More than ever before, users can speak to a smart assistant, speaker, or phone-based application, and get the results that they’re looking for without error. 

The simplicity of communicating with technology via voice means that users have adopted this technology at an incredible pace. Half of all searches will be made with voice by the end of this year.

We’re standing on the edge of a fundamental shift in the way that we interact with computers and critical tools. As designers and developers, we need to be ready to embrace this new medium. 

With that in mind, here’s what designers need to think about when designing for voice UI. 

1. Decide How to Experiment with Voice

There are various steps involved in making a website more “conversational.” One of the first steps for any designer or developer is to think about the kind of voice-based interactions they’re going to enable for an app or website. 

For instance, rather than embedding voice technology into a website, you might decide to create a separate Amazon Alexa “Skill” for devices like the Echo. Companies like Capital One have already invested in this technology so that users can ask their smart speaker about their balance, rather than opening a laptop and logging into the site. 

To determine what kind of voice experiences you should be creating for your client, work with them on a customer journey map. Using this map of interactions that the customer has with your client on a regular basis, you can highlight areas where voice interactions might fit into the user flow. 

For instance, if customers are constantly asking questions about a brand or its service, an FAQ page that’s equipped with a bot that can respond to voice queries could be an excellent choice. 

UI design should always solve problems. Examining the frictions and frustrations that your client’s end-users encounter during their journey will help you to decide which direction to take with your voice UI experience. 

2. Examine the Anatomy of Voice Commands

Before designers can create a dialog flow for their voice UI, they need to understand how voice commands work. The key to success in a successful design for voice is understanding the objective of the interaction. A voice consists of three crucial factors for designers to consider:

  • Intent: Intent represents the subject and context of the voice command. A high utility interaction involves a request for a specific task. For instance, your users might request that your app gives them a list of five-star hotels in a specific area. Designing for these requests is often straightforward because what the voice algorithm needs to do is clear. However, low-utility requests can be harder to decipher, such as “hotels near me,” because there’s less specificity for the bot to work with. 
  • Utterance: Utterance refers to how a user phrases a command. For instance, in the case of looking for five-star hotels in Amsterdam, the customer might say “show me hotels,” or they might ask for “places to stay”. Designers must consider every variation of an utterance for their voice command UI. 
  • Optional variables: This refers to the extra filters that your voice UI needs to be aware of. In the case of five-star hotels in Amsterdam, the descriptor “five stars” is optional. The optional input needs to overwrite default values and bring more detail to the search. 

SideChef, for instance, is a voice-activated recipe app that offers narrated guidance to users and allows customers to search for recipes based on their specific needs. The app comes with a wide range of variables built-in, allowing users to customize their searches according to descriptors like “vegetarian” or “quick” meals. 

3. Learn How to Prototype with Dialog Flows

Learning how to leverage a complex UI strategy like VUI takes time and practice. Prototyping designers will often have to think like scriptwriters, designing various dialog flows to suit the different needs of customers, and the numerous interactions they might face. 

Dialog flows will outline:

  • Keywords that lead to the interaction
  • Branches that represent where the conversation might lead
  • Example dialogs for the user and the voice assistant. 

Practicing your dialog flows with scripts that illustrate the back-and-forth between the voice assistant and user will help designers and developers to understand the various nuances that can appear in a customer to robot interaction. 

Remember, while a crucial part of good voice UI design is keeping the communication conversational and straightforward, you will need to ensure that there is a dialog flow in place for every discussion that may occur between end-users and their apps, website, or digital tools. Users don’t want to feel overloaded and overwhelmed, but they need to ensure that they can complete their tasks too.

Consider the voice-based game RuneScape: One Piercing Note, for instance. 

The developers behind this app allowed players to speak with other in-game characters and use commands like “pull the lever” or “open the chest.” In designing the playable components of the game, the designers needed to think about every possible interaction that a player might have with different parts of the story while ensuring that users didn’t stray off track. 

A Few Tips for Voice UI Design 

Voice UI design can be very complex, mainly if you’ve never created something using voice as your only input before. However, once you get used to creating dialog flows, the whole process starts to feel a lot easier. 

As you’re designing, remember to:

  • Always confirm when a task is complete: When designing a checkout flow for an eCommerce page, one of the most crucial screens for a designer is the confirmation page. It shows the customer that the transaction has successfully been completed and stops them from worrying whether they’ve done the right thing. The same concept applies to Voice UI design. If your client’s end-user asks a voice-activated app to book an appointment with their therapist, for instance, they want to know that the appointment has been successfully booked and added to their calendar. Determine how you’re going to deliver the peace of mind your customers need. 
  • Create a strong strategy for errors: Designers and developers are still in the very early stages of experimentation with voice UI. This means that there’s a good chance that something could go wrong with your applications and tools from time to time. Having a strong error strategy in place is crucial. Always design a dialog flow scenario that allows the assistant to respond if they don’t understand a request, or don’t hear anything at all. You can also implement analytics into these situations to identify misinterpretations and improve usability in the future.  
  • Add extra layers of security: Various Voice UI solutions like Google Assistant and Alexa can now recognize individual voices. This is a kind of biometric security that’s similar to face or touch ID. As voice recognition continues to improve, it’s essential to ensure that you’re adhering to the latest guidelines in security. Additional authentication may be required for some companies. For instance, passwords, face recognition, or fingerprints might be needed for things that require payments and transactions. For instance, the Duer voice assistant uses face recognition to both approve payments, and make meal recommendations based on previous purchases. 

Are You Ready for the Voice UI Revolution?

Voice-based user interfaces are here to stay.

In the years to come, the chances are that developers and designers will need to learn how to use voice more consistently as part of their interface strategies. 

The good news is that although voice takes some getting used to as a design tool, it’s easy enough to make sure that your projects are moving in the right direction. Just like any other kind of design, implementing voice means thinking about whether the interactions and experiences that you’re delivering to end-users are seamless, effective, and valuable. 

Succeeding in voice UI isn’t just about adding the capacity for voice into your designs. It’s a matter of learning how to make user’s lives easier with the power of voice.

 

Featured image via Unsplash.

Source

The post Designing UI for the Voice Era first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.


Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot