Python is a robust object-oriented programming (OOP) language that finds a lot of use in the field of artificial intelligence. It is so useful that mega tech companies like Google have made libraries such as Tensorflow to help people to leverage powerful machine learning algorithms and models for various purposes.
People have made ‘sign language’ interpreters, Motorcyclist helmet detectors, and item identifiers using Python and its free libraries.
IT modernization and innovative new technologies change the healthcare industry significantly. This blog series explores how data streaming with Apache Kafka enables real-time data processing and business process automation. Real-world examples show how traditional enterprises and startups increase efficiency, reduce cost, and improve the human experience across the healthcare value chain, including pharma, insurance, providers, retail, and manufacturing. This is part five: Open API and Omnichannel. Examples include Care.com and Invitae.
Many healthcare companies leverage Kafka today. Use cases exist in every domain across the healthcare value chain. Most companies deploy data streaming in different business domains. Use cases often overlap. I tried to categorize a few real-world deployments into different technical scenarios and added a few real-world examples:
IT modernization and innovative new technologies change the healthcare industry significantly. This blog series explores how data streaming with Apache Kafka enables real-time data processing and business process automation. Real-world examples show how traditional enterprises and startups increase efficiency, reduce cost, and improve the human experience across the healthcare value chain, including pharma, insurance, providers, retail, and manufacturing. This is part five: Machine Learning and Data Science. Examples include Recursion and Humana.
Many healthcare companies leverage Kafka today. Use cases exist in every domain across the healthcare value chain. Most companies deploy data streaming in different business domains. Use cases often overlap. I tried to categorize a few real-world deployments into different technical scenarios and added a few real-world examples:
Personalized marketing is when you attune your marketing efforts based on customer data. This data can be anything from the first and last name to purchase intent, concerns, and history.
Personalized marketing has revolutionized the way businesses market their product and service to their audience. It brings value to people’s lives, spiking the sales graph for brands and businesses. So it’s a win-win situation for both the company and the consumer.
Even big companies do this for their campaigns. They do so because it gives them great results and ROI for their marketing initiatives. If these multinational businesses do this, it’s a good idea to incorporate this strategy and learn from a top resource on digital marketing.
This article aims to explain every nook and cranny of personalized marketing. By the end of this 5-minute read, you will know the impact of personalized marketing on our lives. And how you can integrate this into your marketing strategy to benefit your business.
Have you ever encountered a business that knows what you’re going through? Or did you see an ad online that you closely relate to? Chances are, you were one of the target markets of those marketing materials. And if you could associate yourself with the ad, their marketing strategy worked.
That is what personalized marketing does to your audience, market, or particular demographic. This style of advertising leverages personalization in your marketing materials. The details of your marketing content are tailored to a specific audience and address the issues or real-time problems of a particular segment in your market.
Personalized marketing has become popular because more people demand it from businesses. Once the people have experienced what it felt like, they want to feel more of it.
To objectively see the demand for personalization, here are some statistics to back it up.
Accenture reported that 91% of consumers are likelier to shop with businesses that offer them relevant content. This shows that the right product recommendations can increase the chances of shopping with you.
Salesforce mentioned that 66% of consumers expect companies to understand their individual needs. This statement proves that a generalized way of marketing isn’t as effective as before. The consumer mindset has already developed, and they demand more personalization from businesses.
A striking piece of data from Statista showed that 90% of consumers in the US find the idea of personalization appealing. If that figure is accurate, almost all businesses should start incorporating this into their strategies. There’s no reason for them not to try this out.
Given the high positive demand for personalized marketing, it’s no secret why more and more businesses are doing this. However, not every company out there is doing this right. A wrong way of doing this can bring a loss of clients and a negative ROI.
To help you go on the right track of using personalization in your marketing, read up on the next section of this article.
You’d agree that knowing your customer’s first and last name is essential. But with the dynamically changing strategies, personalized marketing is going beyond that. It’s actually about understanding what your targeted consumers need, merging with a way to convey the message that your business is the solution.
To help you achieve this, take note of the things below:
The foundation of personalized marketing is laid on customer data. The best marketing professionals and strategists emphasize gathering relevant data if you want to scale. Excellent digital marketing courses will teach you that customer data will help you build a solid foundation for your content and campaigns.
Consumer behavior has always been the most important detail for target marketing. With every click, it has become easier to gather data about individual customers, their interests, hobbies, purchase history, buying behavior, and more.
You’ll be able to get this information if you’ve practiced data management and collecting customer data throughout the years of your operation. However, it’s not too late to begin if you haven’t started with this yet. There is a lot of marketing automation software that aids marketing teams in doing this. For example, many businesses use lead scoring software to gain insight into their clients’ needs and categorize them appropriately.
For your personalization efforts, you can use questionnaires, surveys, and feedback forms to capture personal data on the internet. A customer will happily fill out a survey form if a reward in return entices him. This reward can be in any form– a voucher, a first buy discount, free shipping, or more.
This initiative will help you get more data in a shorter time frame.
Hoarding data will be a complete waste of marketing efforts, capital, and efficiency if you do not extract consumer behavior from it. When you have access to a rich set of data, you have the privilege to understand your customers’ trending needs deeply. After gaining insights from the data, create a marketing strategy based on those findings to target your audience.
Doing this doesn’t just apply to B2C; it also works for B2B companies, which is why the demand for custom software development, tailored services, personalized packages, and B2B data providers have been on the rise in these recent years.
It is a two-way road. While you are on the lookout for your target market, at the same time, the customers expect businesses to know what they need. The market you’re currently serving expects you to know what products or services are fit for them.
So this is where it gets crucial: you have to dig deeper into your niche and find the specs of your audience’s needs. Having a general idea about the needs of your target audience and personalized marketing usually don’t go harmoniously.
Planning a better-personalized marketing strategy will not be a piece of cake but will be much more rewarding for every aspect of your business. May it be sales, return on investments, customer relationships, or personalized marketing campaigns.
The first rule of business is convincing the customer that you are their best friend. Now that you know what they want, you pledge to provide them with whatever best you can. Limiting personalization to marketing is not the solution. You have to be vigilant in meeting these individual requirements at every stage. And remember that consistency is the name of the game. That is how you bring your business into the running.
You can integrate CRM automation, email marketing tools and deploy other content marketing strategies to help make this process a lot simpler. Personalized live chat and chatbots, such as those offered by ThriveDesk, allow businesses to personalize their offerings and build their brand reputation.
As a customer, my requirement would be reading content, browsing, and experiencing products that would hit home. A personalized experience is what every consumer demands. And this is what makes them want to go back and do business with you again.
By creating helpful and relevant content, recommending the right products to them, and giving out convenient payment options, you are setting your business apart from the rest. Doing this allows you to have personalized every touchpoint that your customers do with your business.
Consider customer engagement as absolutely necessary. Having the best data set and knowing what your customers want is not enough. In the competitive space of business and marketing, everyone is trying to get the attention of one another. And this is what you are supposed to do. This helps in building consumer-brand relations.
When a consumer engages, meaningful things happen. Engaging content pushes the consumer through the funnel and hence promotes conversions. Your content should be creative and eye-catching.
Engaging content blended with personalization boosts the brand experience. Increased loyalty, trust-building, and improved customer experience enhance the conversion and sales speed.
A great way to use personalization in an engaging manner that most businesses overlook would be through exit-intent popups.
This is an element that some businesses miss out on. They have created excellent social media marketing content but only distributed it on the wrong channel. For personalized marketing to be effective, it needs to be seen by people.
Are you questioning your marketing techniques because all you see is stagnancy? You have set up an engaging online store on Shopify or Wix, collected all the relevant data, your content is engaging enough, and your marketing strategy is top-notch. But you are still unable to reach your clientele.
You start wondering what you are missing out on. Your content and your strategies will not be prolific if you are on the wrong channel. Remember: the message of your content has to reach the right people for it to be effective.
Should you be on social media? If so, which one? Do you get more traction with email campaigns? Or do you have more engagements on forums?
Find out where your market is, then spend your focus there. Now the next step is how to know where they spend most of their time?
This is where we go back in the loop. And hence we again emphasize that data collection is the foundation of any great marketing strategy.
Don’t rest on your laurels when you’ve gotten everything down to a tee and have attained your desired marketing analytics behind your personalized marketing content. Always think of ways how you can improve.
Evolving at every step will keep you in the running. Don’t be misguided into thinking that your work is done if you feel like you have reached the pinnacle. Keep looking for ways to get better. Set bigger goals and status for your business.
Always go back to the drawing board and brainstorm with your team on how you can change and strive with the dynamically changing world and mindsets. In the end, all you want is to build better relationships with your customers, new and existing.
For enhanced productivity, your marketing team should always look for new strategies. This is how fresh and great marketing ideas are made.
Irrelevant information can waste energy and time for both customers and the business. Personalized marketing hits the bull’s eye 99% of the time. It brings immeasurable value to the company as well as the customer.
Here are some of the top benefits of personalized marketing:
The first target personalized marketing aims at is grabbing an individual’s attention. And this results in better engagement eventually. If you are presenting your customer with something that wows them, needless to say, it will grab their attention.
This will help bridge the gap between your customer and your brand. Identifying customers’ needs and then giving them what they want will help improve customer interaction with your brand.
It can even be enough for them to follow your call to action. The next thing you know, they will be checking your website, signing up for a list, or even purchasing a product right then and there.
Are you there for your customer at the right time and place? One-on-one marketing provides easy solutions to customers because you hit them with just what they are looking for at the right time.
When potential customers realize that you understand what they’re going through and provide the solution, most won’t hesitate to try your business out.
Personalization isn’t just focused on content. It can also be integrated into your processes. This results in aiding the increase of higher conversion rates.
Offering personalization will significantly improve the user experience. Once you provide the products, services, and content that meet their needs, their opinion of your business automatically improves.
Considering the statistics about personalized experiences, it is evident that consumers demand personalization strategies from companies. And if you offer such an experience, you increase the chance of making them do more business with you. Personalization helps businesses in reducing cart abandonment rates, better customer journey, increased customer satisfaction, and many more.
Retaining persisting customers is equally important to your business as bringing new ones. Most businesses face low customer retention. It’s also a factor that some companies overlook. You must understand that it’s not all about converting prospects into paying customers. Your focus should also be on retaining those customers to make them loyal advocates of your brand.
One of the major benefits of consistent personalization is an improved customer retention rate. Consumers tend to stay with a business that understands their needs and provides solutions to their problems.
Once you can transfer a customer to a loyal advocate, you can also receive a ton of benefits. These are people that are going to defend your brand from critics. These are the same people who will give you free marketing via word of mouth and positive reviews.
Personalized experience leads to customer retention, eventually building better relationships with your nurtured customers. These entities are connected in a loop.
Customer relationships are an aspect of business that significantly helps with scalability and higher revenue. So connecting with your customers and building a relationship with them is as important as the product you are selling. This is why strengthening customer relationships should be a top priority for businesses.
Personalization makes you an expert on your target market trends. You get to know your audience deeper, which helps you build a foundation for creating a great customer relationship. And this requires marketing and customer experience teams to work together in a symphony.
For this, you can use team collaboration software which aids in the optimization of content and your approach toward the market. You’ll have a better strategy in getting their attention, providing what they want, and recommending things they’ll be interested in.
All of these things help in building customer rapport. When a customer feels that you treat them as more than just a paying customer, their customer loyalty goes to your business.
To inspire you to integrate this marketing strategy into your operations, below are different personalization marketing campaigns done exceptionally by various businesses. Grab inspiration, ideas, and motivation from these examples.
We all know the most basic form of personalization is addressing your customers’ names, but Coca-Cola took this simple idea into a massive global campaign. Their “Share a Coke” campaign started in 2011, wherein they printed different popular names on their Coke bottles and cans.
It seemed like a regular campaign at first, but it started getting traction as more customers wanted to get the name of their family, friends, and themselves. Coca-Cola said the campaign’s purpose was “to create a more personal relationship with consumers and inspire shared moments of happiness.”
The soft drinks giant used personalization and tied such a strategy with its mission: to bring memories and happiness to its consumers. You, too, can do the same – combine your mission and personalization strategy to create a unique campaign.
Spotify leverages user data in its marketing strategy. They have several campaigns that make users want to use their application more often because it gives out a more tailored experience.
Other than their year-end campaign( #spotifywrapped), where they show the most played songs and podcasts their users listen to (which was a viral hit), they now also have an #OnlyYou campaign that shows your unique listening taste partnered with a musical astrology reading.
Nike has consistently been recognized for authentic, personalized, and heartfelt ad campaigns. This personalization always makes them capture an audience who can relate and those who start connecting to the brand. So Nike isn’t new to personalization. Their aim is robust community engagement.
Their highly inspirational campaigns with real-life heroes induce inspiration in their audience. Nike is great at converting people because of its excellent storytelling ability while adding personalization to the mix.
Nike’s just launched a new app that offers personalized content and rewards for committed fans. They tackle challenges and issues head-on, but they always make their marketing messages relatable to their audience. That is why they “just do it.”
Personalized marketing is the secret sauce to thriving businesses in the world today. However, incorporating this marketing strategy and finding success is not as simple as you might think. You will face challenges, but with enough perseverance and brainstorming, you can surpass them and successfully create a great campaign.
Remember, this marketing approach can be a hit or a miss. The first step to making it a success is relevant data collection followed by judicious implementation. This isn’t an overnight activity that you can do. It requires months of diligence in the right direction with the proper guidance. And you can gain valuable insights into this guidance via the content marketing strategies outlined in this article. But remember, once you start rolling, there is no looking back.
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The term “web design” refers to the process of planning, organizing, and editing content online. On the surface, it seems like a simple enough concept. However, the reality is what we consider “web design” can change over time, influenced by our perception of the “web.”
In 2022, a professional web designer might create custom websites from scratch, but they may also be responsible for:
Web design isn’t just about making a site look attractive anymore. The definition goes beyond the aesthetic to include a complete consideration of the functionality, performance, and abilities of countless assets we engage within the digital world.
Web design is the practice responsible for creating a website’s overall look and feel or web asset (such as web and mobile apps). It involves the process of planning and building elements of your project, from structure and layout choices to graphics and presentation.
Web design has various components that work together to create the final “experience” of a website, including graphic design, interface design, user experience design, search engine optimization, content creation, etc. These elements determine how a web asset looks, feels and performs on various devices.
Though the definition of web design in 2022 has evolved, it’s still different from web development, which refers to the actual coding which makes a website work. When you’re building a website, you’ll need web design and web development.
When designing a website, modern designers need to consider two overlapping concepts: the overall appearance of the website and its functionality. The proper connection between these elements will maximize the site’s overall performance and usability, and make a design more memorable (for all of the right reasons).
Let’s break down the elements of web design into its visual and functional components.
Visual elements of web design influence how a design looks. The various visual components of a design should still follow the basic principles of graphic design. In other words, designers should be thinking about contrast, balance, unity, and alignment simultaneously. The visual elements of web design include:
Functional elements in web design are the practical components designers need to consider to ensure websites and assets work as they’re supposed to. A website, app, or any other web asset needs to function correctly to be accessible to users.
Functional elements of web design may include:
More than ever, achieving high-quality web design is crucial to success in any industry or landscape. More than half of the world’s population is active online. If you’re not appealing to this audience correctly, you’re missing out on endless opportunities.
Notably, while elements of good web design can be subjective, such as which themes or colors someone might prefer for their website, the underlying foundations of strong web design are the same for everyone in 2022.
Good web design is any design that looks good, performs as it should, and delivers the best possible experience to your target audience. Effective web design should include components like:
Other elements like eye-catching imagery and professional photography can help your web design stand out. Using the right building blocks, like a strong color palette and the right shapes or icons in your design is helpful.
Of course, there is some scope for variation in good web design. A web designer in 2022 needs to be able to adapt their use of the various essential elements of design to suit a specific target audience or the unique identity of a brand.
Just as web design elements seem to appear consistently in all excellent examples, there are also parts of web design we’ve left behind over the years. Simpler, more straightforward designs have replaced cluttered spaces, flashing images, and endless animations.
The focus in 2022 is on creating an experience that’s simple, engaging, and intuitive, capable of speaking to the right audience without confusion or being visually overwhelming. In most cases, some of the top components to avoid include:
Today, the underlying definition of web design has a lot of similarities to the definition we’ve known for several years already. Creating a great website or web asset still requires focusing on user experience, aesthetic appeal, and functionality. However, today’s web designers generally have more components and different devices.
Web design in 2022 is about creating high-quality experiences for customers that can support various environments and devices. The best web designs are aesthetically appealing, functionally reliable, and capable of adhering to the latest trends in web creation, like augmented reality, 360-degree video, and ultra-high resolution.
Featured image via Pexels.
The post What Even Is Web Design in 2022? first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
A career as a web designer can be extremely lucrative. The average web designer in the US makes around $50-55,000 per year, equating to an hourly rate of around $25. Of course, not every designer will automatically get a full-time, high-paying job as soon as they earn their web design credentials.
Sometimes, you might need to generate a little extra cash, perhaps to supplement your part-time income or keep the lights on while you’re taking some new courses. You can even use your web design skills to earn some extra money on the side while working a standard 9-to-5.
Today, we will be looking at some of the most effective ways to make extra cash on your web design skills.
Starting with the simplest option, working as a freelancer is one of the best ways to start making cash with your design skills. There are dozens of websites out there to help freelancers find clients these days. Some of the best options include:
As a freelancer, you’ll be able to choose which hours you want to work, and which projects to work on. You can make money from all kinds of design skills this way, from making pages for a website to designing widgets and applications.
However, you’ll also be responsible for tracking down potential leads, building your portfolio, and managing your own taxes, so keep this in mind.
As a web design professional, you’ll end up with a lot of assets over the years. Whether you’re working freelance or full-time, not every asset you create is going to be picked up by your customers. Sometimes, you’ll end up with unused content sitting on your computer.
Fortunately, you can leverage these assets for some extra cash. You can sell things like icons, backgrounds, UI assets, and more. You can even sell themes on sites like ThemeForest if you’ve built something your clients weren’t happy with.
There’s a market out there for just about every asset, from icons and PSD templates to documents, fonts, UI assets, backgrounds, and brushes. You might even build your own website where you can sell assets in the future.
Feel like getting in on the cutting-edge of a new marketplace? NFTs are probably one of the hottest topics in the digital world today. As concepts like Web 3.0 and the metaverse gain traction, NFTs will only become more valuable.
Countless companies and innovators are looking for people to design their NFTs for them these days. If you don’t mind dedicating some of your free time to creating digital graphics, you’re in for a significant amount of earning potential.
If you learn enough about the NFT landscape and blockchain, you could even create your own NFTs. However, this would probably require a lot of time and research. You can learn more about the NFT design and art landscape here.
Don’t have time to build endless new websites right now? No problem, just help other people build their sites instead. Consultants are people in any industry with expertise and insights they can share to support other people. As a web design consultant, you can offer your expertise to other upcoming freelance designers or business leaders.
You’ll need to invest some time into building your personal brand as a consultant. This means developing your social media pages (like LinkedIn) and creating a portfolio. It also helps to have an air of thought leadership. This usually means you’ll need to share at least some content online.
Consulting can be an excellent way to share your skills with other people without having to do all the work of building a design course.
On the other hand, if you like the idea of being a teacher, you can make money almost passively with web design courses and webinars these days. While you do have the option of selling one-on-one education to students, this will usually take up a lot of your time.
If your focus right now is on a side hustle to increase your earnings, it’s often much easier to use a site like Udemy or Skillshare. The great thing about teaching web design these days, it’s much easier than you might expect. The majority of solutions on the web allow you to drip content to your clients automatically. This means you only have to create the content once.
You can create a handful of videos, quizzes, and downloadable assets, and make money off your educational resources while you sleep.
Blogging is still a surprisingly lucrative way to make money. If you have a creative streak and you know how to write about web design in a way other people can understand, you can turn this into an excellent side hustle.
Start by building your own website using your design skills, then start publishing regular blogs with the content you know your customers would be interested in. It’s a good idea to cover a range of topics, from Photoshop, to how to design widgets and more. You can even share reviews of various web design tools and add affiliate links to earn money that way.
Make sure you use SEO strategies to improve your chances of customers actually seeing your blog and promote your content as often as you can across social media. Once you have your blog, you can make money from it by:
If you decide to take the affiliate route, here are some excellent programs to consider.
If you don’t have time to launch your own website and build a following for your blog, you can still make money from writing in other ways. Becoming a freelance web design writer means you can sell your blogs and content to other leading publications.
Many popular websites are constantly looking for new content to add to their blog. If you develop a strong relationship with some of these site owners, you could get yourself a regular gig.
Contributing to other sites as a writer helps you to develop your thought leadership. Many companies will even allow you to link back to your social media pages or profile.
At the same time, you get to earn some extra money writing about things you enjoy.
A lot of web designers today rely on other themes and templates created for WordPress to help them build their websites. Access to themes and templates can make building a new website a much easier, straightforward process.
If you’ve got some excellent coding prowess, you can develop and sell a host of website themes and templates, and sell them wherever you choose. As mentioned above, there are a number of websites available for selling web design assets. Alternatively, you can sell your own packages and templates on your website, depending on your needs.
If you create a particularly valuable theme, you can actually earn a full-time passive income over time. Placing your themes and templates on marketplace sites will also get you a lot of attention from potential clients in the future.
If you’ve ever seen one of those shows where someone buys a house, makes it look great, and then sells it for a higher price, you’ll understand the basic premise of flipping websites. The idea is to purchase an existing website for a low price (preferably with a good domain name), then fix it up to sell on a website selling directory.
If you want to earn a decent amount of money for your website, you’ll need to dedicate a decent amount of time to building traffic, improving the appearance of the site, and so on. However, it can be fun to take on these projects in your free time if you’re looking for a way to hone your skills.
You might learn some important lessons about how to make websites more profitable while you’re flipping your various sites, which could make you more appealing to customers in the long term.
Similar to flipping websites or producing an income from a high-traffic blog, writing a book isn’t something that’s going to give you a lot of extra income overnight. However, it can be an excellent source of passive income in time if you know how to use this strategy correctly.
If you have a specialist skill in web design, or you serve a specific niche, you can generate a lot of attention for an eBook or physical book sharing plenty of accurate and specific information. Remember, writing about web design, in general, will usually make it harder to earn money because there’s already a lot of competition out there.
Writing a book is a fantastic way to create a possible extra source of income as a side hustle, and it can also make you more credible if you decide to go full-time with your web design skills in the future. It’s definitely more impressive to present yourself to clients as a published author.
Remember to advertise your book whenever you can to improve your chances of additional sales.
Web design skills are highly sought after in various parts of the digital world. If you’re willing to devote a little time and creativity to exploring the various avenues above, they can all deliver an excellent source of income to you and your potential business. All you need to do is figure out which side hustle makes the most sense for you.
Remember, there’s no one-size-fits-all. In some cases, you might even be able to run multiple side hustles at the same time, particularly if you’re using strategies for passive income, like writing your own book or selling your own course.
Featured image via Unsplash.
The post Side Hustles for Web Design Professionals: How to Make Some Extra Cash first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
We all know that psychology is a powerful tool. When used correctly, it can influence and persuade people to take action. In the world of web design, this is extremely important.
If you want to create an effective website that converts visitors into customers, you need to leverage web design psychology. Keep reading to find out more.
Your website design shouldn’t just make your website pretty. It should impress your visitors, hold their attention, and lead them to action.
That’s where web design psychology comes in. Each color, typeface, and space has a psychological significance, helping people connect to your website. These elements trigger subconscious reactions, which you must leverage to get that desired action.
It takes seconds for people to decide whether your website has all the choices and information you need. Web design psychology helps you, the designer, understand these subconscious processes and how to harness them.
The primary benefit of leveraging psychology in web design is talking to people in their language. It’s also talking in your language and finding common ground. That’s how you can build trust.
You want to use familiar colors and patterns, elements that make you stand out but also connect to people. You need visitors to understand what your website is about and where they can get more info quickly. Then, you have to push the right triggers. Comic Sans, for example, is a superb trigger, and we’ll discuss it below. Color, space, and lines also create a specific impact on how people perceive your website.
More importantly, all these elements set the tone for visitors’ engagement with your website.
Now you understand why knowing the basics of human psychology is essential in web design. Let’s see how you can leverage it!
Gestalt psychology shows how these elements below influence your visitors:
The Target Jobs website is an excellent example here because:
Each shape has a different subconscious association:
Just look at the AT&T website. Everything showcases community and tranquility, from the round logo to the horizontal lines delimiting each section.
But this website is anything but dull. Notice how each CTA button (“learn more,” “enroll now”) is followed by a tiny arrow. This shape uses a square angle split into two acute angles by the arrow’s body. As such, although small, the arrow suggests action and strength. Besides, the sections are arranged in squares, again a symbol of decision and power.
No matter what industry your business is part of, space is essential in web design. Don’t clutter your web pages even if your natural impulse is squeezing in as much information as possible.
Use plenty of white space and try to have a minimalistic approach. Identify the unique selling point on each page and help people focus on that.
Check out the DOGUE webpage. White spaces separate each essential element, so each section is presented clearly. The first thing you notice is the title and the image with the happy dogs. Then, your gaze moves to the slogan on the right-hand side. After that, you notice the sections below that huge “Dogue.” The next part of the website highlights the company’s services (e.g., groom, dine, play, etc.). Notice how each service is represented through a quick, easy-to-get keyword. Besides, the images depict these keywords perfectly. Even better, these images have whitish-grey backgrounds that blend with the white spaces between them. So although the website is more crowded than others, you won’t perceive it as messy or unclear.
SendInBlue, an email marketing service, uses a similar white space approach to their design, and it works great because website visitors can find what they want with much more ease, and it generally looks much cleaner.
The right colors can attract attention, maintain interest and even lead to action. Besides, color increases brand recognition by 80%.
Here’s the bare minimum you have to consider:
The Moat front page is a fantastic example of color:
Lending Bee Singapore uses color and white space to showcase user-generated content on its webpage:
Another excellent example of combining different colors to build trust is Identity Guard’s website, which provides identity theft protection services. As you can see on the website, they use a minimalistic white color combined with green, which is the official color at Trustpilot (one of the most popular review directories). This color selection helps to highlight the veracity of reviews along with the mention that these reviews are taken from Trustpilot.
A good web design is like a good outfit: it should be eye-catching but not too over the top.
The same is true of typefaces.
While a website should use various typefaces to add interest, it’s essential to use them in moderation. Too many different typefaces can be overwhelming and make your site look cluttered.
Instead, focus on using a few critical typefaces throughout your site, and use variations (like bold or italics) to add visual interest. For example, you might want to use a serif typeface for your headlines and a sans serif typeface for your body text.
Beyond simply looking good, fonts can also be used to guide users towards taking specific actions. For example, Sans-serif fonts like Arial or Helvetica are generally considered to be more readable online, making them a good choice for body text. On the other hand, scripts and decorative fonts are better suited for headlines or calls to action, as they help draw attention to essential elements on the page.
Marvel’s Captain Marvel page looks like something a 10-year-old would have designed in the 1990s. This web page is horrible from the glitters, gifs, crowded space, and the abominable Comic Sans typeface.
And that’s the point; avoiding plot-spoilers, Captain Marvel is linked to the 90s, and the retro look is part of that message. The moral of the webpage is that sometimes you have to be brave and break the rules if you want to convey a certain feeling to your audience. Marvel manages to do that with its simple design that acts as a time machine into the long-long-loooong past nineties.
If you want to keep your website visitors’ attention, maintain interest and lead to action, it’s essential to use the design principles above. By leveraging space, typefaces, arrangement, shapes, and colors in your web design, you can create a website that is both visually appealing and effective at getting your message across.
However, these principles are just guidelines. You should stay brave and use your intuition. Remember that the point of web design is speaking to your audience using their language.
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No one likes talking about money. Most of us got into web design because we loved it. But the fact is, we’ve all got bills to pay.
If you’re a half-decent designer or a relatively competent developer, then there’s no reason you can’t make a living as a web designer. Here are six simple steps towards earning a living using the skills you already have.
Many individual bloggers and small company owners require websites to reach a larger audience. You might exploit this opportunity to begin a side business as a freelancer.
One of the most efficient ways to start is to look through employment networks and online classifieds. Eventually though, you’re going to need a portfolio. Building your freelancing company website could be your first opportunity to demonstrate your web development talents. As you embark on new projects, this website can display client testimonials that demonstrate your expertise. Ensure that it’s up to date, relevant, and follows current design trends. Also, make sure your website is linked to your social media profiles.
Even though you are responsible for finding clients, you have a great deal of flexibility: you can choose your working hours and exercise more freedom and creativity. However, you’d still be accountable for your work and have to execute assignments on time to keep your clients satisfied.
It’s also important to remember that you’ll have to keep track of your taxes and other financial paperwork. Furthermore, you would not have a standard employer who will provide you with health insurance and other perks.
Today’s market offers a wide choice of web design services most suited to our needs. From designing and building custom websites to creating social media websites to managing SEO and PPCs, web design services offer various services. And while it is beneficial to have a general understanding of what all these services entail, it is always good to identify and refine your expertise. Becoming proficient in one aspect of web design will give you more confidence and direction regarding the kind of work you would like to do.
Allowing yourself to land repeat clients specializing in one type of service will make it easier for you to create processes in your business to complete work accurately and quickly. These processes will also help you build a team should you need one.
You should leverage social networking sites such as LinkedIn, practical tools for engaging with colleagues and potential customers. Ensure your profile is updated with all the services offered and all talents you deliver. Make sure you include links to any past projects you’ve worked on. There’s also a career board on LinkedIn that can help you avail yourself of many freelance projects. Registering and engaging with relevant organizations can allow you to acquire more visibility.
Freelancers are generally matched with modest design/development assignments through these websites. Although some developers heavily vouch for them, getting work from these websites when you’re just starting may be exceedingly challenging, considering most of your time will be exhausted in securing billable employment.
Blogs and podcasts are an excellent way to organically acquire fresh customers and other relevant parties. A well-written blog is a terrific source of amusement and knowledge for potential clients. Aside from showcasing your services, a blog may be used to earn money in various ways. Once the blog grows large enough, you can incorporate backlinks, ads, or author-sponsored content. Many popular blogs eventually grow into fully-fledged businesses.
When you start a blog from scratch, it can take a long time to see a return on investment. Consider producing freelance articles for a blog with a constant stream of traffic to help you get started. This will enable you to demonstrate your skills while also getting compensated for them.
Working at a design agency or in-house could be an ideal option if you desire a more traditional job title. It also helps you build your portfolio with larger and more recognizable clients than those you can secure as a freelancer.
Instead of stressing about the management side of things, you can focus on serving clients and constructing websites with this approach. You wouldn’t have to look for new clients, and you’ll get all of the paid benefits that regular employees get. However, you’d have to work under strict supervision and have less creative control over your projects. There will also be harsh deadlines looming over your shoulder. And this procedure will also set a wage ceiling for you. On the other hand, obtaining employee insurance and securing a source of income can be very reassuring.
Once you feel you have enough relevant experience and are confident in your abilities to perform and manage things well, you can start your own agency. It’s like freelance work, but on a much larger scale. The flexibility to employ others to do your work is the fundamental advantage of having your own agency. You can recruit additional designers and eventually recruiters to help you secure clients.
Having your own agency allows you to do the work you want and how you desire. As a general rule, start as a freelancer and gradually create the foundations for your agency as you gain expertise. You can eventually automate the entire process with hard effort and an innovative business plan.
You must actively network with other people in your business and reach out to new clients in addition to working on your skills. If you can create a solid customer base and take measured chances with your chosen projects, you can procure meatier projects and become prominent in the corporate sector.
Featured image via Unsplash.
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“Minimum Viable Product,” or “MVP,” is a concept of agile development and business growth. With a minimum viable product, you focus on creating the simplest, most basic version of your product, web application, or code possible.
Minimum viable products include just enough features to attract early adopters and validate your idea in the early stages of the development lifecycle. Choosing an MVP workflow can be particularly valuable in the software environment because it helps teams receive, learn from, and respond to feedback as quickly as possible.
The question is, how exactly do you define the “minimum” in MVP? How do you know if your MVP creation is basic enough while still being “viable”?
The concept of “Minimum Viable Product” comes from the Lean Start-up Methodology, introduced by Eric Ries. The purpose of MVP is to help companies quickly create versions of a product while collecting validated insights from customers for each iteration. Companies may choose to develop and release minimum viable products because they want to:
Aside from allowing your company to validate an idea for a product without building the entire concept from scratch, an MVP can also reduce the demand on a company’s time and resources. This is why so many smaller start-ups with limited budgets use the MVP and lean production strategy to keep costs as low as possible.
When you’re building a Minimum Viable Product, you’re concentrating on developing only the most “essential” features that need to be in that product. For instance, you might be building a shopping app for a website. For the app to be “viable,” it would need to allow customers to search through products and add them to a basket or shopping cart. The app would also need a checkout feature and security components.
However, additional functionality, like the ability to send questions about an item to a customer service team or features that allow clients to add products to a “wish list,” may not be necessary straight away. Part of defining a minimum viable product is understanding what it isn’t. For instance, an MVP is not:
When finding the “minimum” in a minimum viable product, the primary challenge is ensuring the right balance. Ideally, you need your MVP to be as essential, cost-effective, and straightforward as possible so that you can create several iterations in a short space of time. The simpler the product, the easier it is to adapt it, roll it out to your customers, and learn from their feedback.
However, developers and business leaders shouldn’t get so caught up focusing on the “Minimum” part of Minimum Viable Product that they forget the central segment: “Viable”; your product still needs to achieve a specific purpose.
So, how do you find the minimum in your MVP?
First, you’ll need to determine what your product needs to do to be deemed viable. What goal or target do you hope to achieve with your new product? For instance, in the example we mentioned above, where you’re creating an ecommerce shopping app, the most basic thing the app needs to do is allow customers to shop for and purchase items on a smartphone.
Consider the overall selling point of your product or service and decide what the “nice to haves” are, compared to the essential features. For instance, your AR app needs to allow people to interact with augmented digital content on a smartphone, but it may not need to work with all versions of the latest AR smart glasses.
Once you know the goal or purpose of your product, the next step is to make a list of features or capabilities you can rank according to importance. You can base your knowledge of what’s “most important” for your customers by looking at things like:
Once you’ve defined your most important features, the next stage is simply building the simplest version of your product. Build the item according to what you consider to be its most essential features and ask yourself whether it’s serving its purpose.
If your solution seems to be “viable,” you can roll it out to your target audience or a small group of beta testers to get their feedback and validate the offering. Use focus groups and market interviews to collect as much information as possible about what people like or dislike.
Using your feedback, you can begin to implement changes to your “minimum” viable product to add more essential features or functionality.
Minimum viable products are evident throughout multiple industries and markets today – particularly in the digitally transforming world. For instance, Amazon might be one of the world’s most popular online marketplaces today, but it didn’t start that way. Instead, Jeff Bezos began purchasing books from distributors and shipping them to customers every time his online store received an order to determine whether the book-selling landscape would work.
When Foursquare first began, it had only one feature. People could check-in at different locations and win badges. The gamification factor was what made people so excited about using the service. Other examples include:
Your definition of a “minimum viable product” may not be the same as the definition chosen by another developer or business leader. The key to success is finding the right balance between viability – and the purpose of your product, and simplicity – or minimizing your features.
Start by figuring out what your product simply can’t be without, and gradually add more features as you learn and gain feedback from your audience. While it can be challenging to produce something so “minimalistic” at first, you need to be willing to release those small and consistent iterations if you want to leverage all the benefits of an MVP.
Suppose you can successfully define the meaning of the words “Minimum” and “Viable” simultaneously with your new product creations. In that case, the result should be an agile business, lean workflows, and better development processes for your entire team.
Featured image via Pexels.
The post What is the “Minimum” in Minimum Viable Product? first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
AR (Augmented Reality) continues to build as one of the most exciting technology innovations to appear in recent years. More accessible than virtual reality experiences, since no specialist headset is required, AR has quickly emerged as a crucial tool for building unique experiences.
Although interest in AR as a tool for customer interaction and experience has been growing, demand has skyrocketed in recent years. In addition, since the pandemic of 2020, companies no longer have the same in-person opportunities available to create meaningful relationships with customers.
To ensure a client is fully invested in your brand today, you need to find a new way of building that emotional link. As an immersive, experience-led solution for brand building, AR can improve a company’s chance of earning brand loyalty. What’s more, around 71% of consumers say they would shop more often if AR technology were available.
The question is, how do you develop your own AR branded experiences?
For an augmented reality experience to be effective, you need more than just the right technology; you need a strategy for how you’re going to engage, empower, and support your target audience.
The best AR branded experiences aren’t just multi-dimensional advertisements; they’re tools intended to engage, inform, and entertain your audience in a new, highly immersive realm. Before you can begin to work on your AR app, you need to think about what kind of branded experience you want to develop. Here are some excellent examples to get you started.
Globally, ecommerce sales are growing at an astronomical pace. Going forward, there’s no question that the digital landscape will become the new platform for shopping and transactions. But, unfortunately, there are some limitations when it comes to shopping online.
While the right website developer or designer can create a stunning site packed with information about a product or service, there’s only so much that a webpage can do. Delivering a truly immersive user experience for your target audience involves replicating the kind of in-person experiences they would get in a digital format.
The best example of this is the “try-before-you-buy” AR app. Most commonly seen in the clothing and beauty industries, this app allows customers to use AR filters to see what everything from a new hair color to a shade of lipstick might look like on them. The experience is highly accessible and engaging because it builds on customers’ familiarity with filters and similar effects on social media channels like TikTok and Instagram.
A popular example of an AR try-before-you-buy experience comes from Sephora, with the “Virtual Artist” application. Originally installed within the Sephora app in 2016, the technology uses Modiface to scan and track the eyes and lips of the customer using a smartphone camera. After that, the system can overlay eye-shadows, lipsticks, and other products, to give the customer idea of what they might look like in real-life.
As AR applications become more mainstream, new solutions are emerging for companies concerned about things like privacy. Consumers who don’t want to load their image into a system for try-before-you-buy experiences can still access the benefits of AR with the right tools.
For instance, ASOS created the new “See My Fit” service in 2020 to help customers shop for clothing during the pandemic. The solution allows users to see what clothing will look like on a model with a similar body type to their own. This helps to show shoppers how products realistically look in similar bodies while reducing the risk of returns.
Today, my team and I have launched at @ASOS ‘See My Fit’, an innovative experience aiming to help customers understand if a product will suit them through AI. This feature is a stepping stone allowing customers to see an item of clothing on a ‘model like them’.
pic.twitter.com/WDuAmCvNeX
— Linda Martins (@Lindas_Martins) January 13, 2020
ASOS certainly saw the benefit of this innovation, with an increase in revenues of around 24% in the six months leading to the end of February 2021.
We all remember what it was like to flick through the glossy pages of a magazine or catalog for our favorite stores. Unfortunately, in today’s digital age, these paper brochures are far from the most efficient tool for shopping. We need a more digital experience that allows us to select products, see what they will look like, and add them to our virtual baskets.
One excellent example of how companies can use AR to improve the overall shopping and visualization experience for customers comes from Home Depot. The brand was one of the first to upgrade its user experience strategy with a new Project Color application in 2015. Although this app might seem a little outdated by today’s standards, it’s still an excellent insight into what companies can do to improve their customer’s brand experience.
The Home Depot app used AR to scan a room and implement the color a customer chose for their walls into that space, considering things like furniture, shadow, and lighting, to allow for a more realistic insight. The app has updated significantly over the years to become increasingly immersive.
Visualizing products in a real, contextual space is hugely beneficial for a customer’s purchasing experience and perception of a specific brand. If your customer sees buying the right product from you as simple and convenient, they’re more likely to stick with your organization long-term.
The product catalog and visualization approach to AR in brand development has grown increasingly popular in the last two years, perhaps driven by the demand for more online shopping opportunities. In 2020, Wayfair announced the release of an updated version of its “View in Room” app, which now uses LiDAR technology to provide enhanced utility when shopping for home products.
According to Wayfair, the LiDAR technology and “RealityKit” software give customers a more authentic and realistic view, so they can make better decisions about what they want to buy. According to Apple, customers are 11 times more likely to buy an item of furniture if they have seen how it looks in their home using AR.
AR is one of the technology innovations in our current landscape, helping blur the lines between digital worlds and reality. In a future defined by the rise of the metaverse, AR could have a significant impact on how we spend our time in a more virtual world.
Already, companies are taking advantage of this, with things like virtual pop-up shops and temporary experiences intended to differentiate their brands. For instance, Machine-A, a London-based concept store, is usually committed to showcasing contemporary fashion designs.
When it became apparent that London fashion week for 2020 would be virtual, Machine-A came up with a virtual boutique enabled by AR. By scanning a QR code embedded into billboards and posters across London, users could enter the boutique virtually from their phones and experience the designs themselves.
The concept created by Machine-A has opened the minds of countless business brand teams and marketers to new methods of increasing engagement and awareness among customers. In a world where you can’t necessarily interact with your top customers in person, providing them with a new and immersive experience can be a great way to generate loyalty.
The companies more willing to invest in innovative solutions like AR are also more likely to stand out as innovators in their field. Other companies have experimented with similar “pop-up” experiences and unique ways to capture audience attention. For example, Burberry placed a QR code in a Harrods store, which customers could scan to visit a branded experience, where an Elphis statue walked around in their surroundings through the lens of their smartphone camera.
It’s even possible to use AR experiences to attract the attention of new audience groups. For instance, the retail brand, Pull & Bear launched an AR game created with Facebook to help the company reach the 90% of Gen Z customers who identify as “gamers.”
As many of today’s businesses know, memorable branding isn’t just about having the right image or website; it’s also about providing the correct level of customer service and support. Most purchasing and brand loyalty decisions made today are based on customer experience.
Providing customers with unique experiences to improve their shopping journey is sure to make your company stand out in the new digital age. But it’s also possible to go even further with AR in your brand CX strategy too.
Amazon Salon, for instance, the first bricks-and-mortar hair salon created by Amazon, was partially established to test new technology. The “point and learn” service, for example, allowed customers to point a product they were interested in on a display or shelf and immediately access educational content. Users could also scan QR codes to visit the product page on the QR site.
This helps customers immediately get to the product they want to buy without relying on input from human services agents. In a similar vein, AR could be an excellent way to onboard a customer, learning how to use a new product for the first time.
Imagine having a user’s manual your customer can enjoy scanning through, thanks to AR technology. All your customer needs to do is scan the QR code on the back of a product, and they can see the item they need to build or install coming to life in front of them. This reduces the risk of customers having to call for help from tech support and means clients can see the value in their purchases a lot faster.
Companies can embrace AR as a virtual learning experience, helping users collect information and learn how to do things through an immersive first-hand experience. This kind of immersive technology could help to make any brand stand out as more user-experience-focused. Even car companies could essentially provide their customers with a complete virtual HUD showing them how each button and dial on their dashboard works.
Perhaps the most common way companies will be using AR to create branded experiences today is by updating their website. You’ve probably already seen examples of AR being used in a host of retail sites, with new experiences designed specifically for the age of augmented reality.
360-degree images, for instance, allow customers to essentially “look around” a product, and see it from different angles, just like they would if they were looking at the item in-store. We can see an excellent example of this on the BMW build-your-own web page, where vehicle browsers can see their vehicles from every angle.
The 360-degree product viewing experience lets you check everything from the side molding to the sculpted edges in perfect detail.
QR codes and app downloads can also allow customers to take their AR experience even further, looking at things like what life would be like behind the wheel of one of these virtually augmented vehicles.
As AR becomes more commonplace and the tools available for designers in this arena continue to expand, there will be even more opportunities available to bring AR into the website experience. Even essential website upgrades today might include allowing customers to upload pictures of themselves or their homes, then using augmented reality technology to implement parts of a product catalog into the space.
Finally, when it comes to exploring all the unique ways you can build a better brand experience and excellent customer relationships with AR, it’s worth looking at the event space. The event landscape has struggled significantly over the last couple of years. The pandemic forced most live events to be canceled, and although the post-pandemic era holds new hope for upcoming in-person experiences, the landscape will be very different.
Going forward, most companies plan to avoid a complete shift back to in-person events by creating “hybrid” experiences and augmented reality events instead. Augmented and virtual reality tools allow customers to step into an event arena from wherever they are.
For instance, the Pot Noodle Unilever brand hosted a virtual alternative careers fair in AR, where people could use their phones to navigate through a range of graduate employer booths. The unique career fair experience was designed to replace the more common in-person interactions graduates might have as they approached the end of their education.
The custom-developed 3D booths featured a range of different employers, and students could tap on the booth screen they were interested in to see a video from each employer. As an added bonus, the connection to the Pot Noodle AR careers fair website meant that students could also instantly apply for any of the jobs they were interested in.
Similar events could help brands recreate some of the meaningful experiential experiences that their customers have been missing out on in the last couple of years. They could also act as a valuable tool for bringing together people in a hybrid event, where someone visiting an in-person demo table could scan a QR code to send virtual demonstrations of a product back to their team.
This would reduce the number of people who needed to be present in an event environment at any given time, reducing the risk of health issues.
In the new consumer landscape, brand relationships are more important than ever. As a result, customers are making more careful choices about who they purchase from, based on their understanding of that company’s values and differentiators.
Now that you won’t always have an opportunity to interact with customers in-person to earn their trust, AR could be the solution for a lot of companies in search of new engagement tools. All you need to do is figure out how you’ll leverage all the benefits AR can offer.
Will you be creating an app, building a new website with enhanced 360-degree photos, or designing in-person experiences? Hopefully, these examples have inspired you to start exploring your options.
Featured image via Unsplash.
The post How to Use AR in Brand Experiences first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
