What Is the Biggest Difference Between Good UX and UI?

The post What’s the Difference Between Good UI and Good UX? first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

2 février 2022/par Service comm.

How to Get Started With UX Research

The importance of scientific research cannot be overstated. User research is crucial to the success of any UX design, and this article will explain all the reasons why.

But first, we will explore what UX research is and how it can give you valuable tools. Then we will analyze why user research is an ongoing, dynamic process.

By the end of this 5-minute read, you will know every efficient research method (qualitative and quantitative) and how to choose the right one(s) for a new or existing UX project.

What is UX Research?

In a few words, we could say that UX research is about observation techniques, feedback methods, and analysis of the whole user experience of a project. As in any scientific research, UX research analyzes how users think and what their motivations and needs are.

The research methods of UX can be divided into two main types: quantitative and qualitative.

Quantitative Research Methods

These methods are all about statistics and focus on numbers, percentages, and mathematical observations. UX designers later transform such numerical data into useful statistics that you can use in UX designs.

To be precise, there are numerous data collection platforms that UX designers use like Google Analytics, Google Data Studio, etc.

Qualitative Research Methods

Qualitative research aims to understand people’s needs and motivations through observation. This includes numerous methods: from interviews and usability testing to ethnographic and field studies.

In general, qualitative research is crucial for us UX designers because it is easier to analyze than quantitative and we can use it quickly in our projects.

Why is UX Research an Ongoing Process?

Suppose you are about to create a UX wireframe. The process is pretty simple. You start with research, proceed with sketching, then prototype and build. But how many times have you gone back to the previous step of the process?

A UX design is completely dynamic and rarely finished. For this reason, UX research should be viewed as an ongoing process. When I stopped worrying about going through this loop over and over again, I immediately became a better UX designer.

Why Should You Invest in UX Research?

There are many reasons why you should always conduct UX research before you start sketching and prototyping a wireframe:

Stay relevant: Via UX research, you will ensure that you understand what your users need and tailor your product accordingly.
Improve user experience: With comprehensive UX research, you’ll be one step closer to delivering a great user experience.
Clarify your projects: With UX research, you can quickly identify the features you need to prioritize.
Improve revenue, performance, and credibility: When you successfully use UX research, you can boost the ROI (Return on Investment).

9 Effective UX Research Methods

It becomes clear that UX research is very important to the success of any UX project. All successful approaches derive from three basic foundations: Observation, understanding, and analysis.

So let us take a look at the most popular and effective qualitative and quantitative research methods.

Interviews

UX designers can conduct one-on-one interviews to communicate with users and analyze the context of the project. This is a very effective UX research method. You just need to set your goals.

Difficulty: Medium/Low
Cost: Average
Phase: Predesign, During Design Phase

Surveys And Questionnaires

This is a very effective approach if you want to gather valuable information quickly. There are many tools like PandaDoc and Wufoo that allow you to create engaging questionnaires and surveys.

Difficulty: Low
Cost: Low
Phase: Predesign, Post Design Phase

Usability Tests

Usability testing is an essential method if you want to test your product in terms of user experience. It can be applied during or after the creation of an app, site, etc.

Difficulty: Medium
Cost: Average
Phase: During Design Phase

A/B Tests

A/B testing is by far the best way to overcome a dilemma. If you do not know which element to choose, all you have to do is organize an A/B test and show each version to a number of users. Based on their feedback, you can then decide which version is the best.

Difficulty: Low
Cost: Low
Phase: During Design Phase

Card Sorts

With card sorts, you can help your users by providing them with some product content categories (labeled card sets). This is a very cheap and easy way to understand what your users prefer and how they interact with the content you have just designed.

Difficulty: Medium
Cost: Average
Phase: During Design Phase

Competitive Analysis

Analyzing what your competitors are doing differently is critical to the initial stages of a UX design. This will help you identify their strengths and weaknesses and optimize your product.

Difficulty: Medium
Cost: Average
Phase: Predesign

Persona And Scenario Building

Creating a user persona and a specific scenario for your project is critical. First, you need to build a user persona by integrating the motives, needs, and goals of your target audience.

Then, you can create a scenario that leverages all of this valuable information to deliver a top-notch user experience.

Difficulty: Medium
Cost: Average
Phase: Predesign

Field Studies

Although a field study is a very effective UX research method, it is also expensive and difficult to conduct. However, there is nothing like field research when it comes to obtaining real-life data.

Difficulty: High
Cost: High
Phase: Predesign, During Design Phase

Tree Tests

Tree testing is a UX research method that you can apply to your designs during or after the construction phase. The process is fairly simple: you provide users with a text-only version of your product and ask them to complete certain tasks. This tactic is a great way to validate your product’s architecture.

Difficulty: High
Cost: High
Phase: During and Post Design Phase

How to Choose the Right UX Research Method?

Good planning is the most important thing for us UX designers. If you know exactly what the UX problem is, you can solve it quickly.

The methods analyzed above are just some of the research tactics used by UX designers. Choosing the right user research method for a project is not easy. To do so, you should first define your goals.

The post How to Get Started With UX Research first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

28 janvier 2022/par Service comm.

How to Get Started with the MVP Workflow

Few things are more important to a web designer or developer’s chances of success than having the proper workflow. The term “workflow” applies to the set of standardized steps you or your company uses to create, test, and deploy designs or products.

Over the years, as development processes have evolved, so too have the workflows experts use to bring their ideas to life. The MVP workflow, or “Minimum Viable Product” strategy, is one of the most popular options in 2022.

Here’s what you need to know about the MVP workflow and how it differs from some of the other standard workflows developers may be used to.

What is the Designer/Developer Workflow?

As mentioned above, the designer/developer workflow is a series of steps used by experts in the web design world to achieve a creative goal. The process includes the steps taken to start a project, evolve it, and finish it. Since software is never developed without tools, the technology you’ll access throughout the development process is also considered in most workflows.

An example of a standard development workflow might look like this:

Scaffolding: This is the stage wherein you start your new web project, creating a git repo, downloading libraries, preparing file structures, and completing other tasks to make sure your product is ready to roll out into the world.
Develop: This is where you’ll spend most of your time writing code for your application or website. The development process may include various specific tools and support from other staff members.
Test: In this stage, you examine the functionality of your code to determine if everything works as it should. If there are errors or issues, you can go back and develop fixes to the potential problems. Your code may go through the development/test process several times before you can move to the next stage.
Integrate: This is when you merge the code for your part of the development process with the rest of the team. You can also integrate your code into websites and existing apps at this point. If you’re working solo, you can skip this process.
Optimize: You prepare all your assets for use on a production server during the optimization stage. Files are generally optimized to ensure your visitors can view your site easily or access your applications with ease.
Deploy: In the deployment stage, developers push code and assets up into the server and allow for changes to be viewed by the public.

What is MVP? (Minimum Viable Product)

Now you know what a developer workflow looks like, you can begin to assess the concept of the “MVP” workflow. The term “MVP” stands for Minimum Viable Product.

The idea of “Minimum Viable Product” applies to a range of industries, from education to healthcare and government entities. This term comes from lean start-up practices and focuses heavily on the value of learning and changing during the development process.

When you adapt your workflow to focus on an MVP, you’re essentially adjusting your focus to a point where you can create a stripped-back version of something new – like an app or a website. The MVP is built just with the core features (the minimum), so you can bring the idea to market and test it as quickly as possible.

For instance, if your goal were to create an attractive new website for a client, an MVP would focus on implementing the crucial initial tools, and nothing else. While you may create checkout pages, product pages, and other aspects of the site, you wouldn’t populate it with content or start experimenting with bonus widgets and apps.

So, how does this offer a better alternative to the standard workflow?

Simply put, an MVP workflow is quick, agile, and easy. The idea is you can validate key concepts with speed, fail quickly, and learn just as fast. Rather than having to build an entire app and almost start over from scratch every time you find an error, you can race through the iteration and development process.

MVP workflows are also highly appealing to start-ups and entrepreneurs hoping to validate ideas without a massive amount of upfront investment.

Examples of MVP Workflows

Still confused? The easiest way to understand how an MVP workflow works is to look at an example.

Let’s start with a conceptual example. Say you were building a voice transcription service for businesses. The desired features of this product might include the ability to download transcription, translate them into different languages, and integrate them into AI analytics tools.

However, using the MVP approach, you wouldn’t try to accomplish all of your goals with your software at once. Instead, you’d focus on something simple first – like the ability to download the transcripts. Once you confirm you can do that, you can start a new workflow for the next most important feature for the app.

One excellent example of a company with an MVP approach is Airbnb. The entrepreneurs behind this unicorn company, Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky, didn’t have a lot of cash to build a business with at first. They had to use their own apartment to validate the idea of creating a website where people could share their available “space” in a home or apartment with the public.

To begin, Airbnb only created a very basic website, published photos of their property, and waited to see the results. After discovering people were genuinely interested in renting another person’s home, the company was able to begin experimenting with new ideas to make a site where people could list their properties for travelers.

The Pros and Cons of an MVP Workflow

There are a lot of benefits to the MVP workflow – particularly when it comes to gaining agility and developing new products quickly. However, there are downsides too.

Pros

With an MVP approach, you can maximize your learning opportunities and create a more innovative, successful product at speed. You get to test every step of the way.
You release iterations or versions of your product quickly, which means you discover problems faster, allowing you to quickly solve these issues.
You build on the benefits of customer fans, “evangelists” in the marketplace who are keen to help your product or service grow.
An MVP gives you more freedom to try out unique ideas and “risks” you might otherwise avoid with a traditional workflow.
Because you’re focusing on creating only the “minimum viable product,” you don’t have to spend a fortune on initially setting up your workflows.

Cons

Agile work with an MVP flow requires a lot of effort in collecting constant feedback from customers and releasing iterations.
You’ll need to dedicate yourself to releasing many small and frequent product releases on a tight schedule.
You might have to revise the functionality of your product or app a number of times.

Creating Your MVP Workflow

If you believe an MVP workflow might be effective for you, the first step is defining your “Minimum Viable Product.” The app, website, or product you design needs to align with your team’s strategic goals, so think about what your company is trying to achieve at this moment – before you get started. If you have limited resources, or specific purposes, like improving your reputation as a reliable company, now might not be the right time to develop a new MVP.

Ask what purpose your minimum viable product will serve and what kind of market you’re going to be targeting. You’ll need to know your target customer to help you test the quality and performance of each iteration of your MVP. Once you know what your ideal “product” is, ask yourself what the most important features will be.

You can base these decisions on things like:

User research
Competitive analysis
Feedback from your audience

For example, if you’re producing an AI chatbot that helps companies to sort through customer inquiries, the most important “initial feature” may be the ability to integrate that bot into existing websites and apps owned by the company.

MVP Approach Guidelines

Once you have your hierarchy of most valuable features for your minimum viable product, you can translate this into an action plan for development. Remember, although you’re focusing on the “minimum” in development, your product still needs to be “viable.” In other words, it still needs to allow your customer to achieve a specific goal.

Review your features: Reviewing your prioritized product requirements and the minimum level of functionality you can deliver with each of these “features.” You need to ensure you’re still providing value to your customer with anything you produce.
Build your solution: Build your minimum set of features for the product or service. Remember to build only what is required. You can use methodologies like the agile or waterfall method to help guide your team during this process.
Validate your solution: Release your offering into the market, and ensure you have tools in place to gather feedback from early adopters. Use beta programs, focus groups, and market interviews to understand how your solution works for your customers and where you can improve on your current offer.
Release new iterations: Based on what you learn from your target audience, release improvements to your product quickly. Use your validation strategies to collect information from your audience with each release.
Review again: Go back to your product requirements and desired features and start the process over again, this time focusing on the next most valuable functionality. Over time, the value of your minimum viable product will increase.

Using the MVP Workflow Approach

While the MVP workflow approach might not be the right solution for every development or design team, it can work very effectively in the right circumstances. The MVP approach doesn’t minimize the importance of understanding market problems and delivering value. Instead, the focus is on delivering quick value that gradually increases and evolves over time.

As many developers and designers know, the most useful form of product validation in most cases is real-world validation. When your customers have had an opportunity to use a product on a day-to-day basis, they can provide much more effective feedback.

Just keep in mind that committing to the MVP approach also means changing your workflow and committing to iterations – otherwise, other features may never be completed. You’ll need to be willing to work quickly and in small bursts without getting too heavily caught up in one feature or functionality.

Featured image via Pexels.

The post How to Get Started with the MVP Workflow first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

20 janvier 2022/par Service comm.

5 Brilliant Ways to Tackle Designer’s Block

If you are a designer and have never dealt with designer’s block, you are probably a superhero. For us mortals, designer’s block is a pretty common problem. There are occasions when we sit in front of our screen, and our creativity just evaporates.

I have spent many hours trying to get rid of this annoying wall. It took some time, but I have found some tactics that work best for me. So, do not panic! In this article, we will share five ways you can overcome designer’s block and get back on track.

From innovative sources of inspiration to the importance of collaboration and food, nothing will be left out. But first, let us analyze what designer’s block is and how common it is among creatives.

What is the Designer’s Block? Can You Force Creativity?

In a few words, designer’s block is nothing but a situation where you are stuck as a designer. In this unpleasant moment, you feel like you are losing your design skills and creativity.

Fortunately, this is not permanent. Of course, you are still a great designer. You should know and embrace that designer’s block happens to almost every creative out there. Even the most experienced of us. So the first thing you should do is to stay calm.

Remember that you can not force creativity. When designer’s block comes knocking on your door, you need some time to recover.

So instead of panicking, take to heart some practical tips that will help you regain your confidence and creativity.

How to Get Rid of Designer’s Block?

1. Take Care of Yourself

In some cases, designer’s block is your own body’s reaction. Think about it. How can you perform well when you are tense with pressure? There are many ways to take care of your mental and physical health. For example, you can take a break and have a snack.

Sleep is also critical when it comes to avoiding designer’s block. Recent research has shown that creative thinking is directly related to our periods of sleep. Lack of concentration, more mistakes, and erratic behavior are just some of the consequences of insufficient sleep.

For this reason, napping is a smart solution to designer’s block. So if you are feeling unproductive, first make sure you are not tired or hungry.

2. Change Your Location, Get Inspired

But what if you’re not hungry or tired? There are situations where we are stuck in front of a project. If that’s the case, you should decide to take an inspirational break.

The first thing you can do is to change your location. If you are working from home, you should get some fresh air. There are numerous sources of inspiration that can help you overcome designer’s block. Personally, I take a break and visit one of the following sources:

Parks: Nature will calm you and help you get inspired.
Art Galleries: A designer’s best friend. Visiting an art gallery can help you find the missing elements for your upcoming project.
Coffee shops: Quiet coffee shops are an intelligent way to get inspired. What’s better than a big mug of coffee and relaxing music?

Alternatively, watch a movie or a TV series. This may sound like an unorthodox way to get inspired, but it works perfectly when overcoming designer’s block.

3. Explore the Power of Collaboration

More than 90% of graphic designers in the world are freelancers. Although freelancing is an exciting job, it can be pretty lonely. The next time you are struggling with designer’s block, you might want to ask for some help.

Other UI or UX designers can help you see a project through different eyes and find the missing design elements. For this reason, collaborating with other designers is a great way to overcome designer’s block.

On the other hand, you can also ask your friends or family for ideas and feedback. Remember that inspiration can come from anyone.

4. Plan and Break the Project into Chunks

Most times, I get stuck as a designer, it is entirely my fault. To be precise, there are many cases when we do not plan the project efficiently. When the work is overwhelming, the lack of a well-organized plan can be why.

The best thing you can do is to take a step back. Take a look at the work that needs to be done. Then, you can start breaking your project down into small sections. If you reorganize everything, you can get rid of designer’s block in a matter of minutes.

Try not only to organize your tasks but also to manage the time you will spend on each chunk. This will probably help you understand that you have more time than you think.

5. Apply Some Pressure, Just Start

Unfortunately, few of us have infinite time to find inspiration. Most professional designers work with deadlines. That’s why putting pressure on yourself is not always a bad thing.

After following the above tips, all you have to do is start. Don’t forget that the designer’s block will remain until you start designing.

When I try to apply some pressure, my first drafts are usually bad. But after a while, everything comes back to normal.

Wrap Up

If none of the tactics analyzed above helped, you can always use one (or more) of the following quick tips:

Take a short break (5 minutes or so);
Start with the most challenging task;
Go for a walk or exercise;
Ask for more information about the project. Sometimes, the client can help you overcome designer’s block;
Think about what is distracting you and solve it.

Remember, every creative out there has faced designer’s block at least once. So there’s no need to panic at all. Of course, not all of us deal with it in the same way. That’s why you should first try out the tips above and find out what works best for you. This will help you overcome designer’s block and regain your skills as a designer.

Featured image via Pexels.

The post 5 Brilliant Ways to Tackle Designer’s Block first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

7 janvier 2022/par Service comm.

The Top 5 Form Types to Use in Your Web Design

There are a lot of factors that contribute to a better user experience on a website. Pages need to load quickly to give users peace of mind and efficiency. Navigation must be clear and straightforward, with direct pathways for visitors to follow when finding your contact pages, blog posts, and products. Your colors need to work seamlessly together while providing just enough contrast in the areas that need it most.

Excellent user experience needs to be considered for every part of your website that acts as a touchpoint with a potential customer or user.

One of the most significant touchpoints of all is your forms.

All websites need some form of interactive content to thrive. Users need to be able to do something with the site, whether it’s looking for information with a search bar, contacting a team for a quote, making a booking, or completing a purchase. Forms power the majority of the interactive activities available on websites.

If you know how to master great UX on a form, you can contribute to more meaningful interactions between your brands and their customers. But not all web forms are the same. Here are some of the top types of forms you need to master and how you can optimize them.

The “Opt-In” Form

The Opt-in Form is probably the best-known form in the digital landscape. It’s essentially a form that asks visitors to “opt-in” to a specific offer. Sometimes, this means signing up for a webinar; other times, it’ll be agreeing to an email newsletter or a regular series of blog updates.

Opt-in forms grab attention quickly and ask for something specific from the audience. For instance, this example from HuffPost encourages visitors to “Subscribe to the Morning Email.”

Opt-in forms are all about generating action.

Sometimes, they’re placed at the bottom of a landing page after a company has had a chance to explain precisely what they’re offering. Other times, you’ll find the opt-in form situated on a sidebar of a website, constantly enticing people to “sign up” if they like what they see on a blog post or article.

It’s also common for opt-in forms to appear as pop-ups and exit pop-ups on modern websites. For example, a brightly colored opt-in form that promises an immediate benefit to a customer could encourage them to hand over their details before they abandon your website.

How to Design a Great Opt-In Form

So what kind of best practices go into an excellent opt-in form?

Start with simplicity: If you’re asking your visitors to do something, don’t overwhelm them with too big of a request straight away. Keep the form short and simple, so it doesn’t seem like too much extra work for the visitor. Something like “Subscribe to our newsletter” should ask for nothing more than an email.
Highlight the benefits: Most customers won’t want to give you a place in their inbox or the opportunity to interact with them further unless you can offer something in return. Even if you’re asking for something small, like an email address, let the customer know what’s in it for them. In the HuffPost example above, the company highlights that you can wake up to the day’s “most important news.”
Give the visitor the power: Let your visitor know they’re in control here. They want to see that they’re getting exactly what they need from you in exchange for their contact details. This means reassuring them that their email address won’t be used for spam, like H&B Sensors does here:

The Contact Form

The Contact Form is another crucial part of building an effective UX for your website – but it’s also an element that web designers and business owners often overlook. When customers decide they want to learn more about a business, they need a quick and easy way to get in touch.

Contact forms need to be easy to find and use on any website. Usually, your user will expect to see a link to the contact form situated somewhere at the bottom of your webpage. It might be called “Contact Us” or “Customer Support.” Avoid anything that would go over the user’s head.

Aside from being easy to track down, your contact form also needs to reassure an audience that they’re making the right decision by getting in touch. Therefore, the content needs to be short, sweet, and authoritative—highlight why the user might contact your company and how they can do so.

Avoid any unnecessary information in the contact form. For example, you don’t need to know your client’s age and their job to answer a question about where their nearest physical branch is. Keep form fields to the point, or you’ll chase customers away.

How to Design a Great Contact Form

Design something personalized but straightforward to make the most of your contact form. Use features like smart content and conditional logic, if possible, to adapt the page to the user’s needs. Dynamic content is becoming increasingly valuable these days. Other best practices include:

Set the right expectations: Let your customers know how active you are and how quickly they can expect to hear back from you. Imagery and the right fonts can also set expectations about the kind of communication your audience can expect. For example, this contact page from the Marvel app is fun and playful, like the company itself:

Provide multiple options: If your customer doesn’t want to use your contact form, give them another way to get in touch. Ensure the contact page includes information like where to find you on social media and your professional phone number.
Simplify things on your end: To ensure that you can contact your audience as quickly as possible, allow your customers to choose a specific subject that their query is connected to. Allowing them to choose “Sales” or “Order issues” means you can automatically direct the message to the right team member on the back-end.

The Online Payment Form

Sometimes, when your customers have seen what you have to offer and they’ve checked out the competition, they decide to go ahead with their purchase. To facilitate this, you’re going to need an online payment form. Online forms ensure that your customers can safely enter their credit or debit card details to purchase whatever you have to offer.

Most payment processing companies like PayPal, Square, and Stripe come with payment forms included, so you can easily embed them into a website in minutes. However, there’s always the option to customize those payment forms.

For instance, ideally, you’ll need a payment form that keeps your customer on the same page, so they don’t have to log into another browser to make their purchase. The fewer transitions your client has to make, the safer they’ll feel.

How to Design a Great Payment Form

When designing any payment form, simplicity and security are the two most important factors. Your customer should be able to enter their information quickly and easily and get through the transaction process without worrying about their details.

Remember to:

Keep it simple: The fewer fields the visitor has to fill out, the better. Customers still feel uncomfortable sharing personal information and payment details online. Make the experience as painless as possible. If your client already has an account with your business, you might create a system that automatically fills some of the fields, such as their email address, name, and billing address.
Offer the right integrations: The proper payment forms will integrate with the payment services your customers prefer to use. Options include PayPal, Stripe, Square, Verified by Visa, and Mastercard. Get a developer to integrate the right APIs with your form to give your customers the broadest range of options.
Ensure security: Give customers peace of mind by providing as much security evidence as possible. An SSL certificate that places the padlock on the top of the browser next to the URL is a great way to make customers feel more secure. Integrating verification options so your customers can avoid fraud issues is another significant step. Sometimes just putting logos from the card types you accept on the page will make a customer feel more secure.

Support Forms

Some companies bundle the contact form and the support form together. Others have a separate support form to get their queries routed directly to the people most capable of helping them. If you want to take the second route, it might be a good idea to design a “help” section on your website where you can locate the support form.

The “Help” section on a site often appears alongside other links on the footer. For instance, it could appear alongside “About” links and “Contact” options. Here’s an example of Hubspot’s Customer Support options:

The best customer support pages come with various ways for clients to help themselves and find answers to their most pressing questions. For example, you might have a search bar where your audience can search for the answers to their queries or a knowledge base full of helpful blogs.

Hubspot allows users to choose between a blog, knowledge base, academy training center, community forum, developer discussion board, and assistance from a certified partner.

How to Design a Great Customer Support Form

Designing a good customer support form is about getting your audience the information they need as quickly as possible. Once again, you’ll need to stick to as few form fields as possible here to avoid angering an already frustrated customer. Also, remember to:

Ask for the right information: Find out what the query is about by giving the customer a drop-box menu full of possible topics to choose from. If you need a product reference number or something similar, ask for that at the top of the form, then allow the customer to provide extra information about their query underneath.
Set expectations: Let your customers know when they can expect to get a response to their concerns and provide them with advice on what to do next. For instance, you could invite them to check out your knowledge base while they wait for a response.
Keep it simple: Avoid using technical jargon on your support request forms. Be direct in your requests for summaries of the issue at hand, contact information, and other supplemental data.

Customer Feedback Forms

According to Microsoft, around 96% of customers say that customer service is crucial in determining their loyalty to a specific brand. Another 52% of global customers believe that companies need to respond to the feedback provided by customers.

To ensure your customer service strategies are on-par with what your customers expect, you need to get feedback from your audience. That’s where a feedback form comes in. Customer feedback forms often appear after a client has finished purchasing on the “thank you” screen. They may also occur after a customer has completed a service interaction online.

Here’s an example of an Apple feedback form:

How to Design a Great Customer Feedback Form

By leaving you feedback, your customer is doing you a massive favor. They’re giving you a chance to learn from your mistakes and improve the service you can give next time around. Feedback is one of the best tools for any business that wants to grow and thrive.

If you want your customers to use your feedback forms, you’ll need to make them as simple as possible. Your customers don’t have time to waste on a complex form.

Don’t make any fields mandatory: Don’t stop your customers from submitting a form unless they’ve completed every field. Allow them to enter the information they consider to be the most important, and that’s it. You can even fill some of the form out for your customer, if possible, by entering their name and email address if they’re already a member of your site.
Make it mobile responsive: Remember there are around 3.5 billion smartphone users worldwide. You can’t afford to lose feedback because your form isn’t responsive. Every form should look and feel incredible on any device.
Include a rating option: If your customers don’t have much to say about your service, or they’re not wordsmiths, they might prefer a rating option instead. A one-to-five rating system that allows your customer to judge your product or service on a scale of poor to wonderful is a great way to gain quick information. Check out the Uber Engineering example here:

Though you can pre-enter some information on a feedback form to make your customer’s life easier, don’t overstep your bounds. Adding your customer’s email address to the form is fine if they’re already a customer with you. Pre-selecting the “very satisfied” rating above would look presumptuous.

Top Tips to Improve Every Form Design

The online form is an essential part of any web design project, but it’s also frequently overlooked. Unfortunately, without a good set of forms, your customers will struggle to interact with your company in a meaningful way.

When creating any form, remember:

Reduce friction: Reduce the friction for your customers by asking as few questions as possible. The less your customer has to answer, the better. If you can pre-populate forms with information like your customer’s name and email address, this could help.
Keep it simple: Make sure that the form is clean and easy to use. Your customers shouldn’t be confused about where to click or how to submit their information. A single-column design is often better than a multi-column option.
Be clear in error messages: Don’t just tell your visitors that something has gone wrong. Let them know what they need to do to submit the form successfully. If possible, use inline validation with real-time feedback to let your audience know that you recognize the information they’ve submitted.
Keep data secure: Make sure your audience feels safe by letting them know how you will use this information and why you’re asking for it. If you’re asking for an email address, make the benefits of entering that information clear.
Make fields optional: Allow your audience to add more information to a form if they want to – but don’t demand it. Give some freedom to the visitor.

The better your forms are, the more effective your interactions with customers will be. Remember, it’s not just the face-to-face interactions that your customers judge when making decisions about your business and whether to trust you. Today’s digital world has prompted a new demand for more meaningful virtual experiences.

Your form could be the first interaction you have with a client, whether it’s a contact form, a booking form, or something else entirely. Get that right, and you can improve your chances of your customers coming back to interact with you again later.

Featured image via Pexels.

The post The Top 5 Form Types to Use in Your Web Design first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

5 janvier 2022/par Service comm.

How to Kickstart Your UX Career in 2022

Actualités

As a UX designer, you get to work on creative, rewarding, even life-changing projects. It’s an industry with flexible working and countless opportunities. All this, and you get paid well too.

It doesn’t matter if you’re not a creative prodigy, or a tech grandmaster; you can learn to become a UX designer with the right mindset, a few tools you pick up along the way, and some committed learning.

By the time you’ve finished reading this post, you’ll be well on your way to designing your new career.

You can do this, let’s get started…

What is a Career in UX like?

Every career is different, but generally speaking, a UX designer works on making a user’s interaction with a product or service (normally websites) as intuitive as possible.

Just as a golf architect designs the layout of a golf course to flow through greens, tees, and holes, with buggy paths for access, and the odd bunker to add a challenge; so a UX designer creates the optimum experience for a site. A golf architect doesn’t need to reinvent the game of golf, and neither does a UX designer need to reinvent websites.

A golf architect will not design a course with a 360-degree sand bunker surrounding a tee (well, they might, but they really really shouldn’t), or a hole too small for a golf ball. In the same way as a UX designer, you’re not going to design an ecommerce site with a cart in the bottom left, a non-existent search feature, or hidden pricing.

The best thing about being a UX designer is that you don’t need to spend years in formal education to get qualified. The flipside is that if you want to be a great UX designer, it’s not a walk in the park.

Every designer is different, but some of the main traits of successful UX designers are: an enjoyment of problem-solving; good listening skills; curiosity; open-mindedness; attention to detail; creativity; communication skills; process-driven; and adaptability.

Before committing to this career path, check out a few podcasts, and read a few blog posts, to dip your toe in the water.

Still interested? Excellent, the next step is…

Getting Certified as a UX Designer

UX design is a practical skill. It’s all well and good knowing the theory, but without practice putting the theory into action no one will give you a chance to prove what you can do. So how do you get practical experience? You get certified, and there are three popular options: online, in-person training, or self-taught.

A good UX syllabus will include portfolio-building projects, tool mastery, networking opportunities, and even 1-2-1 mentorship. As well as learning the fundamentals of UX, you’ll cover user research and strategy, analysis, UI design, and more.

Option A: Online Course

Online courses tend to be much easier on the bank balance, as well as being flexible, which means you can fit them around your current job. You can work at your own pace, and in many cases choose modules that interest you, once you’ve completed the basic introduction.

There are many online course providers, including Coursera, Udemy, Skillshare, and Career Foundry.

Whatever option you choose, it is a good idea to get as broad a perspective as possible, so consider following more than one course — perhaps mix and match a paid course with a free one.

Option B: In-Person Training

This could be a university course, or a local boot camp where you physically sit in with an instructor and classmates.

This is more expensive, but it provides benefits that nothing else does. Firstly, you’ll have classmates you can bounce ideas off, collaborate with, keep motivated, inspired, and accountable. You can also get real-time, intensive coaching and advice from someone who’s been there, done that, bought the T-shirt (and redesigned it so it fits better).

Seach local boot camps and workshops, check out workshops at local conferences, and ask your local college what courses they offer.

Option C: Self-Taught

Being self-taught is the cheapest of all options. Work at your own pace, where, and when you want to. Watch YouTube videos, read blogs, garner information anywhere you can find it.

This option involves a lot of stumbling around in the dark. The biggest challenge is that you don’t know what it is that you don’t know. For this reason, it can pay to follow the syllabus of a local college course, even if you’re not enrolled and don’t attend lectures.

In reality, all education is self-taught to an extent, even the most prescribed courses need self-motivation.

Some of the most in-demand UX designers in the world are self-taught, so why not? Start exploring UX blogs like Nielsen Norman Group articles, Google Design, UX Planet, and UX Matters.

Mastering UX Tools

Recruiters and hiring managers will seek your technical ability and your experience using popular tools from user research, to wireframing, to prototyping. When you get your first job in UX, the tools you use will be determined by your project manager, so it’s a good idea to have a passing familiarity with the most popular. These will include Maze, Userzoom, Sketch, XD, Figma, Marvel, and Hotjar.

If you’re following a guided course you should get an introduction to at least a couple of important tools. Once you understand one, you can probably pick the others up quite quickly… because, after all… they should be intuitive.

You do not need to know how to code, but understanding the roles, and restrictions of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is very beneficial. When you get your first UX job, you’ll need to be able to talk about how technologies fit into the plan.

Building a UX Portfolio

Your portfolio is your résumé. The golden ticket. The silver bullet. Amassing a content-rich portfolio is paramount. You don’t need a real-world job to build your portfolio, and you should already have content to add from your course.

You need to demonstrate knowledge of UX tools and processes (what future employers will look for). Case studies that incorporate research, problem-solving, strategy, imagination, and (if possible) results are the best way to do this.

There are a variety of ways of building a portfolio, but the best is taking a real website, and redesigning it. Don’t worry if your first few projects aren’t the best; as long as you demonstrate improvement and growth, that counts for something.

You can showcase your portfolio on sites such as Behance, Dribbble, or preferably create your website.

Landing Your First Job in UX

Start combing the job boards to see which companies are looking for UX designers. There’s a global shortage of qualified UX designers, so if you can’t find anything you’re looking in the wrong place! Make sure your whole network, from your Mom’s hairdresser to the barista at your favorite coffee place know that you’re looking; you never know where a good lead will come from.

Some companies are looking for UX skills as part of other roles. Others are looking for full-time UXers.

Don’t be disheartened if “Junior UX Designer” positions require 2 years of experience; HR just throws this in as a pre-filter. If you think you can do the job, apply anyway, if your portfolio’s good you might get an interview regardless, and if you get an interview they think you’re worth taking the time to meet.

If you don’t get the job, don’t be downhearted. Remember: every time someone else gets a job, that’s one less person you’re competing with for the next job.

Quick Prep on Some Common UX Interview Questions:

What’s your interpretation of a UX Designer?
What has inspired you to become a UX Designer?
How do you take constructive feedback and non-constructive feedback?
Who, or what companies, do you look up to in this industry, and why?
What’s your process with a new project?

Good Luck!

So, now you know what it takes to get into the field, it’s time to start applying yourself to this newfound and richly rewarding career. As the great writer Anton Chekov said, “Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.” So get out there and practice, practice, practice. Add and add and add to your portfolio.

To become a UX Designer, enroll in a great course, build your portfolio, network, apply for roles, and always be learning. Always be open to new ideas and suggestions. There’s a lot of leg work, but the juice will be worth the squeeze.

Featured image via Unsplash.

The post How to Kickstart Your UX Career in 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

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Another excellent guide to help people to prepare for job interviews to give them the best possible chances of success and not make some common mistakes can be find here : https://www.ireviews.com/interview-resources/

1 décembre 2021/par Service comm.

Creative Problem Solving for UX Designers

It’s normal to pull up sharp in front of a problem; after all, if there was a known solution, it wouldn’t be a problem. But knowing that it’s normal, doesn’t make encountering problems any less frustrating. So how do we avoid sitting in front of a UX problem for hours, achieving nothing?

That’s what creative problem solving is all about.

In this post, we’ll explore creative problem solving, and how it can help you as a UX designer. Then we’ll analyze how you can solve UX problems in a few, easy-to-remember steps. By the end of this article, you’ll have all the tips you need for UX problem-solving.

What is Creative Problem Solving?

Creative problem solving is a term developed by Alex Osborn, the founder of the Creative Education Foundation. In a nutshell, this term is about overcoming challenges in our work lives through innovative solutions. But, of course, such solutions vary by profession.

For UX designers, creative problem solving is about solving UX problems with efficient tactics, that work. And that’s precisely why UX problem solving is so essential because following a specific method can help us avoid getting stuck.

Whether you are a newbie or an experienced designer, you are probably focused on projects that require you to solve problems. If you have never had a problem before, you must be a superhero; for us mere mortals, here are the steps we need to follow to solve a UX problem:

UX Problem Solving in 5 Easy Steps

Delivering a great UX solution is influenced by two key parameters: user research and creative problem-solving. Suppose you have done your user research and are currently looking for an original solution to a problem. In this case, the methodology below will be handy:

1. Identify the UX Problem

I know this may sound obvious, but think about it. How many times have we lost days because we didn’t identify the real problem? If you are solving the wrong problem, it does not matter if your solution is original and innovative.

That’s why the first thing you need to do is think about the problem. Ask yourself what the real problem is, and then get to work solving it. Identifying the problem may take some time, but it will prove beneficial to your project in the long run.

2. Clarify the UX Problem

Now that you have identified the UX problem, it’s time to demystify it. In this step, you could create a user journey plan. It does not have to be perfect; some low-fidelity sketches are more than enough.

Set a timer and start visualizing your solution on paper. Remember, sketching is not about perfection or fine details. Once you have created a customer journey you are happy with, it’s time to move on to the next step.

3. Use Analytics

UX design isn’t about design per se. It’s also about numbers and data. This is why analytics are critical to UX problem-solving. Once you have gathered some data from users and competitors, it’s time to create patterns. This will help you better understand the problem and change your drafts accordingly.

Numbers and data alone can help you a lot if you combine them with an original idea. However, facts alone are not enough, and your original story will not be compelling without them. So what’s better than combining them?

4. Use Your Feedback

So you have come up with an innovative solution to the UX problem. You have successfully combined this idea with essential data. Unfortunately, your work is not yet done.

The next step is equally important. Once you have polished your ideas, you should share them with colleagues and/or customers.

It’s not easy to get feedback for your UX mapping, but it’s very constructive and will ultimately make you a better designer.

5. Solve the Problem

The last step is also the most fun. Once you have listened to people’s feedback, you can redesign your original solution. Then you are just one step away from solving the UX problem. Now it’s time to digitally redesign your idea.

This is the step where fine details matter. Creating a high-fidelity wireframe is not easy, but most UX designers have the knowledge and tools to get it done.

UX Problem Solving: Useful Tips and Tricks

Be Methodical

In my opinion, this is the most useful tip when it comes to UX problem-solving. You do not always have to be in a hurry. In the early stages of a project, try not to get distracted by other problems. Focus on finding the real problem.

Once you are sure you have found it, you can move on to finding the best solution. Then move on to the next step and so on. It becomes clear that being methodical is a brilliant tactic.

UX Problem Solving is All about the Ecosystem

UX problem solving is not about fine details. So try to care less about the design and more about the ecosystem you want to create. That will help you gather all the data you need, from user opinions to analytics.

Low-Fidelity vs. High-Fidelity Wireframes

Starting with sketches and low-fidelity wireframes is a brilliant thing to do. Whenever I have tried to start a project directly with high-fidelity wireframes, I have gotten bogged down in details.

For this reason, pen and paper should be your best friends in UX problem-solving. Sketches help you explore different approaches and get the feedback you need.

Explore Different Tools/Approaches

When it comes to solving a UX problem, there is usually one efficient solution. But that is not always the case. In most cases, we have to consider different alternatives and identify more than one critical interaction.

For this reason, feedback is also crucial for UX problem-solving. Your colleagues and customers will help you find the best method. Try to accept criticism and be open when listening to feedback. This way, you will ensure that you will find the best possible solution.

Wrap Up

Solving a UX problem is not easy. However, if you identify the real problem and illustrate different approaches, you will be on the right track. Also, do not neglect to use the data and feedback you collect. The more tools you have in hand, the better UX designer you will be.

Featured image via Unsplash.

The post Creative Problem Solving for UX Designers first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

19 novembre 2021/par Service comm.

5 Simple Steps To Effective Wireframing

Wireframes are a powerful tool, especially for UX designers; whether you are developing a new app, a website, or anything else, the initial steps of any project can be tackled with this robust approach.

There are many occasions when we get stuck or overwhelmed for hours in front of a new project. This is where creating wireframes can be beneficial. A wireframe is nothing more than a diagram of your ideas for the flow of a project.

This post will analyze what wireframes are, and why they are so crucial for user mapping. Then, we will reveal the steps you need to follow to create an efficient wireframe. Let’s dive in…

What Is A Wireframe?

In a few words, a wireframe is a drawing created in the early stages of a UX project. Wireframes are a brilliant and effortless way to create a blueprint for the structure of a page.

In such a drawing, you can include valuable information about the UI and UX of the page you want to design.

You can think of wireframing as a process of visualizing the initial ideas you have about a project. It does not matter if you are comfortable with drawing; you can design wireframes on paper or digitally.

In either case, drawing a wireframe is not about your artistic skills. Instead, wireframes are about structuring your project and identifying the fundamental interactions you want to build out.

Why Is Wireframing Important For UX Designers?

If you are an experienced UX designer, you have already come across concepts like user mapping and user journeys. Mapping the entire user experience is crucial. And that’s the main reason why wireframing is a must for a UX project.

Since you need to provide a top-notch user experience, wireframing is a great way to ensure this from the earliest stages of your design. But what is the process you need to follow when designing wireframes?

And how can you ensure that your wireframes are efficient? Let’s find out…

Creating An Effective Wireframe In 5 Simple Steps

Creating a good wireframe will allow you to construct your project. You will think it through, prioritize some fundamental interactions and consider alternatives.

1. Research

Although this is not a wireframing step per se, it is critical to the efficiency of your wireframes. How can you start drafting without doing user research? Well, you can not. That’s why the first thing you need to do is analyze your project.

All you have to do is seek similar products/services and check them out. Look at what your competitors are doing right and what they are doing wrong. This way, you will be ready for the next step.

2. Create Personas

You have already selected the best practices and ruled out other guidelines you believe will not be effective on this project. Now it’s time to think about user flow: How many screens will you put on a page? Where are users coming from, and where do you want them to go after reading this page?

By mapping your user flow, you can create a user persona. Then all you have to do is figure out what information to include.

Mapping the information correctly is crucial because it will help you ensure that users do not get frustrated or overwhelmed when they visit your final page.

Once you do that, you are good to go.

3. Start Sketching

It’s time to reach for your fine pen, pencil, eraser, and paper. Visualizing your ideas needs to be quick and efficient. Try to avoid fine details because this step is not about creating a high-fidelity wireframe on paper.

All you need to do here is sketch out basic features and formats.

Since most of us designers are perfectionists, you can use a timer. Set the timer to 4-5 minutes and force yourself to finish the wireframe by that time. Repeat this step until you have created a few wireframes with which you are happy.

Finally, expand and polish your favorite mockups for a few minutes and prepare for the hard part.

4. Ask for Feedback

There is nothing more important than feedback when it comes to wireframing. Discuss your project with your colleagues. Just let them know how each mockup helps you with the project and what idea it visualizes.

Try to sincerely listen to what they have to say about your designs. Once you have gathered all the information and advice, start modifying the wireframe accordingly.

5. Add Details and Create Prototypes

It’s been a long road, but you are now at the point where you feel most comfortable as a UX designer: prototyping. Plenty of software (Adobe XD, Framer, Proto.io, etc.) can help you with this step.

Start by turning your low-fidelity sketch into a high-quality prototype. Once you are happy with the result, test your prototype’s screens and see if the result serves the user flow. Platforms like UsabilityHub and Prott can help you with this.

Valuable Tips to Keep in Mind While Creating a Wireframe

Keep your Wireframes Simple: Creating a wireframe is not about fine details; try to manage the time you spend on it well. All you need is a clear and simple visualization of your page. You will have all the time you need for prototyping.

Don’t Worry About Your Artistic Skills: Anyone can draw. It’s as simple as that. You do not have to be an artist to create a clear wireframe to help you visualize your ideas. Be confident and make sure you include all the information you need.

Always Think of the User Personas You Created: Creating a wireframe is a smart way to ensure that the page you create meets the user’s needs. Therefore, you should always keep in mind what users will do when they open this page and whether it meets their needs and goals.

The Bottom Line

Creating a wireframe is not as difficult as you might think. All you need to do is research, find out what users need from this page, and create a map. By following these simple steps, you’ll ensure that the wireframes you design deliver a top-notch user experience.

Featured image via Pexels.

The post 5 Simple Steps To Effective Wireframing first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

12 novembre 2021/par Service comm.

7 Simple Ways to Boost Your Website’s CX

Many markets are saturated with competition; it’s no surprise that customers are expecting top-of-the-line experiences. Businesses must keep up with these ever-changing demands to remain competitive and drive forward.

One way to ensure customers have positive experiences is to take a look at your website. Your website is like your digital headquarters, where customers can browse through products or services, have frequently asked questions answered, and be able to reach you if they need direct support.

Making a site user-friendly and customer-centric will assist businesses while they work to build a loyal customer base. Customer happiness is more important now than ever and has the potential to make or break your business. We all know that happier customers spend more, and delighted customers will always come back for more.

Let’s explore some ways you can level up the customer experience on your website to foster customer loyalty and retention, as well as garner brand advocates for your business.

How Important Is CX?

As a site manager, your goal should be to meet customers’ needs. Creating a website is no simple task but can transform CX (customer experience).

Suppose a customer visits your site only to see a buffering symbol or a lag on their desktop or mobile device. This wouldn’t make for a positive experience, would it?

When customers have to spend extra time navigating your website to find what they’re looking for, it can directly lead to site abandonment, where customers leave the site before browsing. It’s vital to consistently monitor your website metrics to see if abandonment rates impact your overall traffic.

Customers who have enjoyable experiences browsing through your site are more likely to appreciate your brand and strongly consider purchasing whatever offerings you have.

Additionally, positive customer reviews can help your business gain new customers — word-of-mouth marketing is still relevant in 2021’s digital marketing landscape. Earning those 5-star reviews can help other potential customers see that they too could have a positive experience with your brand.

As you can see, CX is just as important as the products or services you offer, so keep that in mind as you set out on the journey to improve your website to advocate for your customer base.

Below, we’ll cover some of the most important elements and features of a strong business site so you can implement them.

Valuable Features to Include on Your Website

The features of your website are the foundation of your business. One of the best parts of building a killer website is that you can get as creative as you’d like with all of the features at your disposal.

Whether you use WordPress or another platform to host your website, you can always explore other paid services or offerings online to bring your site to the next level.

For example, the WooCommerce WordPress extension allows e-commerce sites to improve the overall appearance of their site, add customizations and, generally speaking, create a high-quality e-commerce store.

Below are some examples of elements you should consider incorporating into your web design. Offering these features will surely keep your site visible, relevant, and attractive to all types of customers.

1. Add Personalization

Every type of customer can benefit from a personalized experience, and it helps you turn them into loyal customers.

Personalization is becoming more prevalent in web design, whether it’s including past products they’ve viewed on your landing page or making it simple for them to log in to their account.

Maybe you allow your customers to create a wishlist, just as Amazon does. You could also make personalized deals or recommendations for your customers based on their past purchases or search history. When customers see this level of personalization, it may influence their purchasing decisions and make it simpler for them to order products.

2. Include Compelling and Unique Content

Every professional in the digital marketing space knows that content is king. The companies that include the most compelling content garner the most attention and increase the number of customers who make up their customer base. Here are some examples of what your content should look like:

Comprehensive
Useful
Accurate
Visually appealing
Helpful
A direct answer to a search engine query

By following these descriptions, your content will improve. Whether it’s a blog post or a photo or video, quality content is a driving factor in your user engagement. It helps to support your SEO strategy and will undoubtedly keep customers coming back.

3. Prioritize Speed and Usability

Because technology is an integral part of most people’s lives, customers expect to visit a fast, reliable website. No longer will customers wait patiently for a site to load. The dreaded buffering symbol is a clear indicator that your business is not taking customer experience into account.

It’s critical to create a website that loads quickly and is easy to use. Avoid organizing any tabs in a confusing way. Ensure that your website is visually attractive without overwhelming color schemes or photos that take up too much space.

Go for a more modern, contemporary look that’s easy on the eyes. Customers will appreciate this and will likely spend more time browsing your various website pages.

4. Focus on Navigation

Users should be able to access any page on your website with ease. They shouldn’t have to search for the right drop-down menu or type into the search bar unless they’re searching for a specific product or service.

The majority of users on a site, 70% to be exact, spend most of their time navigating freely without using the search bar. This should tell you how vital good navigation is to your business website. Placing menus on the top of your site is common practice — if you would rather place your drop-down menu somewhere else, make sure you’re putting it in a section where it’s easy to find.

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. See what types of designs you can incorporate into your site to elevate UX and make browsing simple.

5. Make Sharing Simple

One of the best ways to grow your customer advocates is by leveraging your existing customers. Your customers should be able to easily send your product or service descriptions to their friends and family.

Rather than copying a link, include a share feature. If something on your site is worth sharing with other potential customers, make it easy for them to send it.

Social sharing plays a significant role in digital marketing — it helps to garner organic traffic to your website. You can reach a larger number of people than originally intended, which is the most important benefit to reap by making it easy to share links from your site.

6. Incorporate Chatbots

Offering customer support by using chatbots is something major companies are incorporating into their website designs.

Suppose your customer is trying to complete a purchase but runs into a problem with a coupon they’d like to use. Rather than wait on hold on the phone or for an email in their inbox a few days later, an automated chatbot can step in and assist them.

Chatbots are on the rise, and it’ll be critical for your business to include them on your site. Proactive web actions can increase your site’s conversion rates and improve the overall customer experience.

7. Allow Customer Feedback

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that allowing your customers to share their experience with your brand can help you better understand them and the solutions they’re looking for from you.

Did you know that brands with superior customer service can generate 5.7 times more revenue than their competitors? When you’re in touch with your audience, you’re better able to include features they want and need to have a positive experience. By taking advantage of customer feedback, you can make necessary changes to your site to better serve your customers.

Advocate for Your Customer Base

All of the examples listed above can help elevate your site and improve the overall experience for existing and potential customers. Isn’t that the goal of any business, regardless of industry?

To serve your customers effectively means they’ll feel valued and come back for more. Whether that’s ordering more products or requesting more services, you’ll see the benefits of including the elements we’ve covered in this post.

As a recap, here are some steps you can take to advocate for your loyal customers:

Add personalization
Include unique content
Make your site fast and usable
Provide easy navigation
Allow for easy sharing
Leverage chatbots
Be open to feedback

Overall, customer experience will become more important in the future as customer expectations change. Standing out from your competitors is no longer an option but a necessity. So many markets are struggling to do just that — so if you’re able to offer unique features on your site, it could potentially draw more customers in and drive them to purchase.

Featured image via Unsplash.

The post 7 Simple Ways to Boost Your Website’s CX first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

15 octobre 2021/par Service comm.

6 Tips for Collecting Customer Feedback (The Right Way)

Feedback is one of the most valuable resources for any business. Informative messages from your customers can tell you a lot about your company. They’re a way to check that your service strategies are paying off and a chance to learn which parts of your product need an upgrade.

Reviews and testimonials can also help you better understand your audience and the kind of solutions they’re looking for with your brand.

Solid feedback is also how you improve your chances of gaining more customers in the long term. Brands with superior customer service generate about 5.7 times more revenue than their competitors.

Of course, before you can begin tackling challenges like pulling trends from feedback or using your reviews to upgrade your business, you have one essential task to consider: How are you going to collect the valuable information your customers have to share?

There are a lot of options to choose from. You can reach out to clients individually with email messages or set up a feedback form on your website. You could even consider working with a review site to give your audience more options.

Today, we will look at the steps you can take to collect customer feedback the right way.

Unlocking the Benefits of Customer Feedback

Customer feedback is the information and input shared by your community. It provides a behind-the-scenes view of people’s interactions with your team and shows you where you need to focus on beginning driving new opportunities.

Customer feedback becomes a guiding compass for your organization when used correctly. It shows you what you’re getting right and wrong from your customer’s perspective. Positive feedback can even become part of your marketing campaigns. User-generated content in the form of reviews and testimonials makes for excellent tools to encourage new people to purchase your products.

Case studies and in-depth reviews from your clients can also help generate trust among potential customers, so you’re more likely to earn crucial sales.

Only around 3% of customers say that they find marketers and salespeople “trustworthy.” This means that no matter how good your marketing messages might be, you’re only going to be able to accomplish so much with the claims you make about your brand. Ultimately, your clients will turn to other customers like them to determine who they should buy from.

On average, buyers read around seven reviews before they’ll even consider trusting a business.

The good news is that around two-thirds of customers will share their personal information with a brand. Clients are happy to provide feedback in the right circumstances. It’s your job to ensure that the process is as easy as possible for your customers.

So, how do you get customer reviews?

1. Design an Effective Feedback Survey

The most obvious way to encourage feedback from your customers is to ask for it. Unfortunately, designing a good customer survey isn’t always as simple as it seems.

On the one hand, you’re keen to gather as much information as possible from your customer, which could mean that you want to ask many questions. On the other hand, asking too many questions could easily scare your audience away.

To improve your audience’s chances of actually sharing information, keep the feedback requests as simple as possible.

One or two questions at a time should be enough to give you some helpful information about customer preferences and expectations. When choosing what to include in your survey, remember:

Only ask essential questions: If the answer to a question isn’t going to help you achieve your goals, don’t ask it. You don’t need to know someone’s age if you want to know if they had a good experience with your service reps. Keep it relevant.
Make the questions thoughtful: Yes or no questions are great for collecting quick information. However, if you want more valuable feedback, leave your queries open-ended, and give customers room to explain themselves.
Use rating scales: If your customer doesn’t have time to respond to a question in your survey with a complete answer, a rating scale can give you some helpful insights with minimal effort from the client.

Ensure none of the questions on your survey are leading or loaded. Customers don’t want to feel like you’re answering questions for them. It might also be worth showing your audience how much you value their data with a quick response. Hilton Hotels always responds to any adverse reactions to surveys within days of receiving the information.

Customers can even see how their reviews contribute to the overall rating of the business.

2. Master Your Emails and Customer Contact Forms

Email is one of the easiest and most effective ways to gather customer feedback. Because this is a standard support channel for most businesses, there are plenty of opportunities to generate feedback.

The first step in using emails for feedback is to send a message thanking your customer for their recent interaction with you. If someone purchased a product from your company, immediately follow up to let them know you appreciate their custom. A couple of days after, when your customer has had a chance to use your product or service, that’s when you follow up with your feedback request.

Ideally, your email request should be as short and straightforward as possible, with a clear call to action that tells your customer what to do next. This example from Papier keeps things as detailed as possible.

If you want to boost your chances of engagement, you can add elements to your email that might encourage a positive response, for instance:

Remind them of what they bought: Remind your customer of the item they purchased with a picture and a bit of information. Highlight the key features and benefits of that product, so they have some inspiration on what to write about in their review.
Offer them a reward: If you want to boost your chances of your customers doing something for you, you need to offer something in return. This could be a discount on their next order, a chance of winning something, or even just free shipping on their next purchase.
Personalize the message: Make your customer feel special by personalizing the message. Use their name and reference their previous interactions with your company. If they’ve been with your business for a while, mention that in the email.

Remember, many of your customers are likely to check their emails on the go. That means that giving feedback should be as simple as possible, regardless of the tech your customer is using. For instance, in this Zomato example, users can choose to drop an email to the company or send feedback straight from the app.

3. Create App Usability Tests

If you want some in-depth insights into your company, and your business processes, then a usability test could be the best way to generate valuable feedback. If you have your app, ask your customer to submit some information right there and then, after they’ve finished using the service. The great thing about this kind of input is it’s fresh.

Unlike other customer reviews that might come a day or two after your customer has used a product, usability tests allow you to get feedback at the moment. There’s a much better chance that you’re going to get some relevant and detailed responses here.

For instance, in this Skype lab feedback request, customers can tick boxes for any video or audio issues they had and leave a starred review.

If there’s extra information to share, the customer can tap on the comment box to elaborate. However, they don’t need to do this part unless they want to.

With usability tests, it’s a good idea to focus on a few key things that you want to learn about. For instance, Skype’s example above demonstrates that the company wants to check at least five user experience issues for both video and audio.

Giving your customers options that they can choose from reduces the amount of work they need to put into leaving a review. It also means that you can get actionable information on which parts of your app or site need the most improvement.

You can get the same kind of instant feedback on your website, too, mainly if you’re using a live chat app for customer service.

Live chat is quickly becoming an essential part of the customer experience environment because it’s fast, easy to use, and efficient. It’s also highly affordable for most companies, thanks to evolving technology. Set up your Live Chat app to immediately request a review from your customer when the interaction is over.

For instance, SiteGround asks customers to rate their service provider with a picture of the employee they spoke to. The image lets the customer see that they were talking to a real person, which improves the relationship with the company. The statement about feedback improving the customer service and support that SiteGround can offer shows the customer how valuable their reviews are.

4. Conduct Customer Interviews

Conducting a customer interview is a lot like sending out a survey. The main difference is that you ask the client to engage in a much more in-depth conversation. Usually, these interviews will be the initial research required for a published case study on a B2B website.

Reaching out to valuable and loyal customers can give you a fantastic source of in-depth information to learn from. You’ll need to make sure that you have a good relationship with the customer in question before you attempt this, however. Most one-time clients won’t want to get involved with a time-consuming interview.

Look at your CRM technology and find out who your most impressive VIP customers are. Reach out to them with a request for feedback, and make sure you offer something in return. For instance, tell them that you’d like to interview for a case study that you can display on your website. If they’re happy for you to do this, you can reward them with a discount on their next purchase or some gifts.

You could also follow up with a customer who recently contacted your team for an interview, like Ticket Arena does here. With this message, they promise the customer that their insights will make the customer experience better for future clients:

When requesting long-form qualitative feedback, remember to think through your questions carefully. In-depth stories from customers bring nuance and color to your quantitative data. They could even guide your business to making some crucial future decisions.

When talking to your customers:

Start with an open-ended dialogue: Remember that open-ended questions are crucial to get as much detail as possible from your customers. These queries give your customers more flexibility to cover the details of their experiences.
Get more specific as you go: Start with simple questions, then build on them as your conversation evolves. Use the things you learn from your customers to dive into topics that are relevant to them. For instance, if a customer mentions your live chat app, go into a deeper discussion about the channels they prefer to use.
Practice active listening: Make sure that you’re open and receptive to the information you’re given. Actively listen to customers, even if you’re not in the same room, by acknowledging what they say and providing valuable responses.

5. Use Social Media

Sometimes, people are reluctant to give feedback for your business on your website because they’re not in the frame of mind. When customers come to your site, there’s a good chance they’re looking for information from you or want to check out a new product.

They’re probably not in the right mood to start sharing their opinions.

However, if you capture your customers on social media, there’s a good chance they’ll be feeling a lot more talkative. After all, social media platforms are where most customers discuss their issues with companies, talk about purchases with friends, and make their voices heard.

Simply paying attention to when people talk about your company on social media can give you a lot of helpful feedback. Social listening tools allow you to collect post information every time someone mentions your business name or product.

Alternatively, you can actively use the tools on social media to gather data from customers. For instance, Instagram has its own “poll” feature on Stories that allows companies to collect opinions.

If you’re collecting feedback on social media, remember that you shouldn’t be asking any questions that are too complicated. Although people are more willing to share their opinions on social, they’re still looking for a relatively laid-back and casual experience.

Polls, where people can vote for their preferences with a single click, are more likely to garner engagement than a post asking people to tell you about the best purchasing experience they ever had with your brand.

If you do want to encourage more in-depth feedback, the best option is to promise a reward in return for your follower’s effort.

Make the experience fun by transforming it into a competition.

For instance, ask your customers to share their favorite story involving your brand for a chance to win an impressive prize. You can ask each customer to tag their response with a branded hashtag so that relevant answers are easier to find. You could even add users to tag their friends in their posts too, to increase brand reach while you collect feedback:

With gifts and rewards to incentivize them, people will be much more likely to interact with your brand and put effort into the reviews they leave. You could even gather some user-generated content to put into your subsequent ad campaigns.

6. Create a Dedicated Website Page

Finally, if you want to make it as simple as possible for people to leave feedback on your website and for you to collect all of that information into one space, then create a review page on your website. This can double up as social proof for people who need additional evidence to buy from your brand.

A review page could be as simple as a page on your website listing the latest comments that your customers have left. You can include a form at the bottom of the page where people can add their thoughts. Just make sure that you carefully review these posts before they’re submitted to your website if you want to prevent spam from getting through.

You could also create a case study or portfolio page that showcases the work you’ve done with other companies like Fabrik Brands does here:

At the bottom of each case study, give your customers a unique email address they can reach out to if they want to be featured as your following case study. Or include a contact form where people can get in touch to discuss their own experiences.

Having a dedicated review, case study, or testimonial page on your website could be enough to inspire more feedback from your customers. It’s also a fantastic way to demonstrate how credible your company is to potential buyers.

Still, Struggling? Take the Customer Out of the Equation

If, even with all the suggestions above, you still can’t seem to convince your audience to give you some decent feedback, then take them out of the equation. You can learn things about your audience without asking them for information. Google Analytics and other tools will give you valuable insights into which of your blog pages get the most engagement and how many people click on individual buttons throughout your site.

These fundamental insights might not be as good as valuable, contextual feedback from your audience, but they’re an excellent way to start figuring out how to invest in your future growth.

Remember, feedback of any kind – even if it’s just statistics and numbers – gives your business the ability to grow and make informed decisions.

Gather as much feedback as you can, and make sure you use it!

Featured image via Pexels.

The post 6 Tips for Collecting Customer Feedback (The Right Way) first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.