Articles

Exciting New Tools For Designers, Holidays 2021

The year’s winding down as everyone segues into a much-needed holiday R&R. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some awesome new tools and resources for website design projects.

Check them out, and hit the ground running in January. Here’s what’s new for designers this holiday period. Enjoy!

Fancy Border Radius Generator

Fancy Border Radius Generator is a fun tool that allows you to create exciting shapes for elements. Use the included templates or create your own border shapes and then export the CSS/HTML for a variety of uses.

Pulsetic

Pulsetic answers the question: “Is your website down?” Get website downtime alerts by phone call, SMS, email, or Slack. Create beautiful status pages and incident management reports and keep visitors (and your team) updated.

Ffflux SVG Generator

Ffflux SVG Generator makes it easy to generate fluid and organic-feeling gradients. You can use the resulting graphics as backgrounds to elements on a page to give a colorful fluid look to page elements. Choose colors and styles, then save or copy your SVG for use.

Fable

Fable is a web-based motion design platform to help you tell moving stories. It’s designed to be easy enough for beginners to use but has tools that even the most experienced motion designers can appreciate. This is a premium tool, but you can try it free.

Modern Fluid Typography Editor

Modern Fluid Typography Editor takes the guesswork out of sizing and scale for type sizes on different screens. Set a few preferences and see ranges your type styles should fall in. This typography calculator is visual and easy to use.

Emoji to Scale

Emoji to Scale is a fun look at emojis in a real-world relationship to each other. Make sure to also note the Pokemon to Scale project, which is just as much fun.

Page Flip Text Effect

Page Flip Text Effect is a fun and straightforward PSD asset that adds a nice element to design projects. Everyone can use some fun, colorful animation, right?

Nanonets

Nanonets is a practical tool for automated table extraction. You can snag tables from PDFs, scanned files, and images. Then capture relevant data stored in tabular structures on any document and convert to JSON Excel, or CSV and download.

Browsers.page

Browsers.page shows browser name and version, matched with a list of the browsers you support as a company or project. It’s a visual reminder to update if you are working with some browser lag. It’s a free tool and includes a frontend API.

UKO UI

UKO UI is a Figma dashboard and design system bundle packed with components and pages to build from. It’s free for personal use.

Floating UI

Floating UI is a low-level library for positioning “floating” elements like tooltips, popovers, dropdowns, menus, and more. Since these types of elements float on top of the UI without disrupting the flow of content, challenges arise when positioning them. It exposes primitives, which enable a floating element to be positioned next to a given reference element while appearing in view for the user.

Style-Dictionary-Play

Style-Dictionary-Play lets you experiment with a style dictionary in your browser with a live preview and mobile and desktop views. It’s an open-source tool and allows for URL project sharing, and you can use it without logging in or signing up.

Airplane Runbooks

Airplane Runbooks makes it easy to turn small amounts of code into complex internal workflows. Model onboarding flows, admin operations, cron-like schedules, and more and share with your team. It’s like Zapier but for first-party operations that touch prod data.

Shoelace

Shoelace is a forward-thinking library of web components that works with any framework. It’s fully customizable – and has a dark mode. It’s built with accessibility in mind, and the open-source tool is packed with components.

Tutorial: Coloring with Code

Coloring with Code is an excellent tutorial by the team at Codrops that will help you create beautiful, inspiring, and unique color palettes/combinations, all from the comfort of your favorite text editor. It’s practical and easy to follow along as you work through the steps on your own.

Stytch

Stytch is a full-stack authentication and authorization platform whose APIs make it simple to seamlessly onboard, authenticate and engage users. Improve security and user experience by going passwordless with this premium tool.

Highlight

Highlight keeps web apps stable. With pixel-perfect session replay, you’ll get complete visibility into issues and interactions that are slowing down users. You can start using this premium tool in minutes, and it works on every framework.

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The post Exciting New Tools For Designers, Holidays 2021 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

13 décembre 2021/par Service comm.

Developer First Culture and Collectives at Stack Overflow

Actualités, Méthodes et organisation des process IT

If you’ve ever written code you’ve probably heard of Stack Overflow.

Most of us have learned from them or shared knowledge on their site. They’ve also got one of the most inclusive and positive engineering cultures out there.

On this week’s episode of Dev Interrupted I bring on Ben Matthews, Director of Engineering at Stack Overflow, to give us the inside scoop on Stack’s operations, teams and company culture. Ben also discusses their newest product launch – Collectives – and why he thinks they will be a game changer for dev teams.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

17 juillet 2021/par Service comm.

10 Elements of Landing Pages That Convert

Actualités, Actualités

Landing pages are central to successful marketing campaigns; they allow you to target particular customers with particular solutions to particular problems.

It’s easy to confuse what a landing page is because users “land” on many pages. When we talk about landing pages, we mean a page that is entirely dedicated to a particular type of customer. In fact, if we could create a unique landing page for each individual user, that would be awesome.

You might think your homepage is a landing page, but it’s not; users reach your landing page in various ways — directly, via organic search, or backlink. A landing page is normally dedicated to a specific marketing campaign. It is accessed from a link in an email, via social media, or most often via a PPC (Pay Per Click) advert.

Here are 10 elements of landing pages that are proven to convert successfully:

1. Use A Single Call To Action

Your potential customers must know how to move forward with your product or service as early in the experience as possible.

Are they signing up for a free trial? Are they signing up for your newsletter? Are they buying a product? Are they contacting you? Whatever you need them to do, make it clear.

The Hick-Hyman law of UX says the more choices you give a user, the less likely they are to make any choice at all; conversely, the fewer choices, the greater the likelihood that they’ll move forward.

Give the user one choice: click the button, or don’t click the button. A single CTA will out-perform multiple options.

2. Keep Forms Simple

Often, your landing page will need a potential customer’s information. They might be creating an account, setting up a trial, or just joining your newsletter.

If the potential customer is signing up for a trial, by all means, ask for their email address. But you don’t need their cell number, their mother’s name, the street they grew up on, their birthday, or any of that other junk that’s used to profile users.

Whatever the purpose, keep your form ultra-simple. That means as few fields as possible. If you really want it, give the user the option to fill it in later as part of an onboarding process — when they’re already invested — but not on the landing page.

3. Make the Headline Punchy

The first thing your potential customer sees on your landing page is the headline, so make it count.

Half a dozen words are usually more than enough. Your goal is to keep it short enough that the potential customer has read the headline before they realize it.

Often, you’ll want to clarify the statement with more information. That’s fine as a sub-heading after you’ve grabbed their interest, but make sure you grab their attention first.

The headline “Coyote Anvils” is best followed by the sub-heading “You’ll be eating roadrunner for dinner!”

Your goal for your headline is to explain your product or service in 2–3 seconds.

4. Center Your Content Around Your Value Proposition

What makes your product or service stand out? What makes it better than the competition? If you’re not sure, spend some time checking out companies in your space.

Creating a value proposition can be one of the toughest challenges a business faces because you need to put yourself in your potential customer’s shoes. But if you get this right, it will carry your marketing. You need to find the benefits within your product or service, not the features.

Value propositions are best when backed by facts. The “World’s Most Accurate Anvils” is best backed by proof: “9/10 coyotes said they were more likely to hit their target than themselves when using our patented AccuAnvil.”

5. Lists, Lists, and More Lists

You’ve got seconds to engage your potential customer, perhaps even less. One way to grab them is with a great headline, but you have to keep them interested beyond the headline.

One great way is bullet lists with short entries. Short-item lists naturally pull our eyes down the page because our eyes take in the whole line in one glance; we don’t need to read to absorb the information.

The longer you can keep someone on the page, the greater the likelihood they’ll keep looking, so pulling them down the page with lists is a great tactic.

6. Exploit the Zeigarnik Effect

The Zeigarnik Effect says that people remember incomplete experiences better than they do completed ones. This is because when a task is seen as completed, it can be filed away as a memory, but if it’s incomplete, then it remains at the front of your mind.

This is a boon for designers creating landing pages because we can create a situation where the potential customer begins an onboarding process and is aware that it hasn’t been completed — they might need to verify their email address, for example.

The lack of completion keeps the landing page and the product or service fresh in the potential customer’s mind. So when they see that onboarding email, they’ll use it.

7. Proof

Anyone can put up a website. It’s easy. And as a result, potential customers don’t necessarily trust you.

One way you can combat this is with some form of proof. That may be in the form of official certifications, or featured testimonials, or just independent reviews.

It rarely occurs to potential customers that you’re cherry-picking the testimonials and reviews you’re choosing to display, so even if only some of your reviews are good, it’s worth including them.

But be careful not to sound too good. If you post nothing but 5* reviews, people will smell a rat; that 3* review may actually do you a favor by making the 5*s seem more genuine.

8. Predictive Images

Potential customers lack imagination, they don’t have all the facts, and unless your product or service is very basic, they may not fully understand what the product does for them.

Use images to quickly show them what life may be like using your product or service. Paint an appealing picture. If they can see themselves in the image, they’ll grant you a little more time to persuade them in the form of further content.

9. Continuity

How did the potential customer arrive at your landing page? Chances are it was via a PPC link, or if you were lucky an organic search link. However they arrived, they were in a certain frame of mind, with a certain problem they wanted to solve; they aren’t going to take kindly to being diverted onto a different train of thought.

Your landing page has to match the tone, style, and value proposition of your adverts. The potential customer’s experience of your organization begins with the advert, not the landing page, so make sure that you don’t break the spell. If your landing page doesn’t match your advert, you could lose the potential customer altogether — and increase your bounce rate while you’re at it.

Remember: the customer was attracted by something in your advert, so give them the same attractive qualities on your landing page.

10. Drop the Nav

Most sites have a single main menu and a rich footer with links to customer service, contact pages, and so forth. These are detrimental on a landing page because you’ll leak traffic to other, less-focused parts of your site.

Your landing page is a streamlined selling machine. The only link you want on the page is your CTA.

It’s fine to keep legal text and even links to privacy policies — users rarely click those anyway. You can also link to your homepage using your logo. But don’t add any navigation that invites a click, or you’ll dilute all the work you’ve put in.

Source

The post 10 Elements of Landing Pages That Convert first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

28 avril 2021/par Service comm.

Poll: Should You Fire Good Clients?

Actualités, Actualités

We all get excited about new projects; we’re daydreaming about possibilities from the first contact with a potential client. Most professionals have an established onboarding process, with contracts to sign and business assets to acquire; if you’re a coder, you probably set up a fresh new repository; if you’re a designer, you create a new project folder. All of us start imagining how the case study will look in our portfolio.

But few, if any, plan for the end of a project. Offboarding clients simply isn’t a thing. We build their site, and then one day, we don’t.

It may be that the client moves on; hopefully, you’ve done a good enough job that they can’t resist bringing you on board for their next startup. All too often, projects languish in some half-life, with occasional security patches that net you a whole $5 in service charges; is that why you got into web design? Probably not. There is the desirable option of upselling; if your client’s business grows due to your work, then more work should grow it some more.

If you’re great at startups, you’re probably not great at maintaining sites in the long term. If you’re great at maintaining sites, you’re probably not great at growing them.

For every cycle of a project’s life, there are different kinds of professionals who suit it best. And conversely, different cycles of a project suit you and your skillset better than others.

We all know that a bad client — demanding, rude, late at paying — should be fired. But what about a good client — a client who pays quickly, is friendly, professional, accommodating? Would you fire a good client if you’d outgrown the work?

Source

The post Poll: Should You Fire Good Clients? first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

9 avril 2021/par Service comm.

Popular Design News of the Week: March 8, 2021 – March 14, 2021

Actualités, Actualités

Everyday design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site.

The best way to keep up with the most important stories for web professionals is to subscribe to Webdesigner News or check out the site regularly. However, in case you missed a day this week, here’s a handy compilation of the top curated stories from the last seven days. Enjoy!

UI Design Testing Tools I Use All The Time

Basic Do’s and Don’ts of Effective Website Design

Nodes.io – a New Way to Create With Code

27 Exciting New Tools For Designers, March 2021

Conic.css – Nice, Simple Conic Gradients

Web Components Are Easier Than You Think

Glassmorphism UI – Modern CSS UI Library

8 Awesome Examples of CSS & JavaScript Polygons

Frontal.JS – Modern HTML Development Framework for Your Static Website

Buy My Side Project

The Rules of Material Design

Alertly.io – Your Personalized Slack Bot for JIRA Alerts

5 Client Onboarding Tools for Web Designers

Source

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

14 mars 2021/par Service comm.

Comment les technologies de formation et les LMS supportent l’upskilling

Actualités, ERP & Applications, Ressources Humaines, SAP

L’upskilling des effectifs est depuis longtemps une priorité pour les organisations. Aujourd’hui, alors que les dirigeants réagissent aux perturbations mondiales, avec pour beaucoup un personnel en télétravail, ils s’appuient plus que jamais sur les technologies et les systèmes de gestion de la formation (LMS).

La crise mondiale du COVID-19 et l’instabilité économique obligent de nombreuses entreprises à « faire plus avec moins » en matière de reskilling et d’upskilling. Heureusement, les technologies de formation sont suffisamment matures pour que les entreprises puissent choisir parmi une gamme de fonctionnalités adaptées à leurs besoins et à leur budget.

Lorsque Discovery, compagnie d’assurance multinationale est passée au travail à distance, les RH ont identifié qu’environ 500 de ses collaborateurs n’étaient pas productifs. Plutôt que de chercher des solutions de court terme pour améliorer la productivité, la compagnie s’est focalisée sur la préparation du personnel aux métiers de l’avenir, par le reskilling. La priorité de l’entreprise reste ses salariés – et cela inclut de les équiper pour demain.

En période de croissance comme de crise les dirigeants s’efforcent de trouver les meilleures solutions pour leurs collaborateurs. Par exemple, les hôpitaux, les instituts de recherche et les organismes de santé répondent aux besoins du personnel de première ligne en créant des technologies de formation et des ressources éducatives visant à prévenir et limiter l’exposition au COVID-19.

Bien que les dernières avancées changent la donne pour les LMS, tous les investissements technologiques ne conviennent pas nécessairement à toutes les entreprises. Voici les éléments que les entreprises peuvent considérer lorsqu’elles investissent dans une nouvelle solution.

1. Des fonctionnalités liées à vos objectifs

Lorsqu’on choisit parmi toutes les options proposées par les technologies de formation, la première chose à vérifier est que les fonctionnalités répondent aux besoins, aux objectifs et à la stratégie des effectifs de l’entreprise. Pour beaucoup d’organisations, des plates-formes flexibles et ouvertes peuvent être nécessaires pour prendre en charge les nombreux éléments critiques.

Par exemple, une entreprise énergétique pourrait limiter l’accès à une zone particulière d’une installation nucléaire aux employés ayant complété une formation obligatoire et certifiante. L’entreprise aurait alors besoin d’un système de gestion de la formation (LMS) capable d’intégrer la certification des employés à ses formations et opérations sensibles.

De même, une entreprise pharmaceutique pourrait avoir besoin de valider l’apprentissage pour se conformer aux réglementations nationales sur les médicaments. Une solution qui offre de l’innovation au niveau de l’écosystème, y compris des applications partenaires, peut fournir des fonctionnalités supplémentaires et flexibles tout au long du cycle de vie des collaborateurs (y compris lors du recrutement, de l’onboarding, du développement et de la gestion de la succession). Si certaines grandes entreprises peuvent avoir besoin de solutions ouvertes qui prennent en charge divers cas d’utilisation, d’autres peuvent vouloir une solution adaptée à un secteur spécifique, comme l’éducation ou la santé. Quoi qu’il en soit, les entreprises devrait prendre le temps de rechercher la technologie pouvant soutenir au mieux leurs objectifs.

2. Flexibilité

De nombreuses entreprises ayant des sites multiples ou un important personnel auront besoin d’un LMS orienté entreprise si elles s’engagent dans le reskilling de centaines voire de centaines de milliers d’employés.

Avec la généralisation du télétravail, les PME/ETI peuvent également avoir besoin d’un LMS qui puisse être étendu au domicile de leurs employés de manière sûre et efficace. Les technologies d’apprentissage mobiles accessibles en déplacement, y compris sur smartphones, pourraient améliorer l’adoption par les télétravailleurs et les employés qui manquent de temps de formation dédié, comme les commerciaux terrain.

Si les outils qui intègrent des formations en réalité virtuelle (VR) ou en réalité augmentée (AR) ne sont peut-être pas adaptés à toutes les situations, ils peuvent être utiles pour préparer les collaborateurs à des situations d’urgence ou à des scénarios uniques. Ces technologies émergentes sont un excellent exemple de la manière dont les outils de formation modernes peuvent aider les entreprises à relever de nouveaux défis et aider les collaborateurs à se perfectionner et se requalifier.

Walmart, par exemple, a formé plus d’un million d’employés en 2019 à la réalité virtuelle afin de proposer un apprentissage immersif. L’entreprise a également envoyé des casques VR dans les magasins pour entraîner les employés à la mise en place d’une machine qui récupère les commandes passées en ligne. Se libérant ainsi de la nécessité d’envoyer plusieurs personnes pour l’assembler, l’entretenir et dispenser une formation.

Qu’ils travaillent dans le retail, sur des plateformes pétrolières ou dans des exploitations agricoles, de nombreux employés pourraient atteindre de nouveaux niveaux de productivité et d’engagement grâce à des solutions personnalisables et flexibles.

3. Collaboration entre les employés – et les employeurs

Dans de nombreux cas, permettre aux collaborateurs de piloter leur apprentissage peut améliorer l’adoption des programmes, l’engagement et la culture de l’apprentissage. De nombreux employés réagiront positivement à l’upskilling itératif. Lequel leur apporte un sentiment d’appartenance et de fierté. Cet upskilling itératif peut par exemple prendre la forme de vidéos produites par les collaborateurs et partagées avec leurs collègues.

L’apprentissage social peut apporter des avantages à un personnel en télétravail. En atténuant l’isolement, l’anxiété et le manque de motivation auxquels les équipes peuvent être confrontées. Les social boards, chats et « missions » gamifiées sont quelques-unes des caractéristiques des LMS qui peuvent améliorer la collaboration tout en maintenant la distanciation physique. Les managers peuvent également utiliser ces fonctionnalités pour cibler les compétences qui correspondent aux nouvelles priorités et encourager les équipes à atteindre leurs objectifs.

4. La gestion du changement en support

Intégrer un programme d’upskilling dans toute l’entreprise est une initiative majeure qui relève de la gestion du changement. L’alignement des valeurs, des personnes et de la culture d’entreprise pour atteindre un résultat souhaité ne viendra pas uniquement de l’adoption d’une nouvelle technologie. La gestion du changement occupe une place essentielle dans les discussions relatives à l’expérience de formation. Et ce pour au moins trois raisons.

Premièrement, s’assurer que la technologie est adaptée à l’organisation et au personnel permet d’augmenter son taux d’adoption et d’en tirer meilleur parti.
Deuxièmement, une gestion du changement réactive et basée sur les données permet de prolonger la durée de vie de la technologie.
Troisièmement, l’intégration d’une technologie de formation dans une organisation requiert une gouvernance. Elle nécessite notamment d’affecter la responsabilité sur les rôles et les données segmentées que vous pouvez collecter. De nombreux experts du reskilling vous diront que la gouvernance est toute aussi importante, si ce n’est plus, que la technologie de formation elle-même.

Les RH ne sont pas les seuls à investir dans ces solutions. La majorité des utilisateurs sont rattachés à la sécurité, conformité et formation à la vente. Alors que les budgets restent serrés et que des tensions peuvent surgir entre les services pour savoir qui doit avoir le contrôle des priorités en matière de reskilling et d’upskilling, les fonctionnalités des LMS devraient fournir un vrai retour sur investissement (ROI). Les bénéfices peuvent inclure le gain de temps lié à la recherche et au partage d’informations ; ou l’augmentation des revenus (ou réduction des coûts) résultant de la normalisation des technologies et du soutien à la formation. Par exemple, une étude indépendante sur SAP Jam, réalisée par Forrester Consulting, a révélé que le ROI moyen a augmenté de 18,5 % entre 2016 et 2018, les clients ayant trouvé davantage de façons d’utiliser la plateforme de collaboration.

Pour soutenir la gestion du changement qui accompagne l’introduction d’une nouvelle technologie, les entreprises doivent chercher des solutions qui offrent la possibilité de bêta-tester, d’itérer et d’adapter cette technologie aux besoins des collaborateurs. Les logiciels d’entreprise doivent offrir un support client aux dirigeants et aux employés pour une expérience d’apprentissage sans faille.

« De nombreux experts du reskilling vous diront que la gouvernance est toute aussi importante, si ce n’est plus, que la technologie de formation elle-même »

5. Méfiez-vous des mots à la mode et restez concentré sur vos collaborateurs

Les LMS d’aujourd’hui peuvent utiliser des technologies de pointe comme l’intelligence artificielle (IA) et le machine learning pour fournir tout ce qui est nécessaire, du coaching aux plans de développement des collaborateurs. Et ce à une échelle jamais atteinte auparavant. Mais alors que les dirigeants évaluent les options de LMS qui offrent ces nouvelles technologies et ces mots à la mode, il est important qu’ils restent d’abord engagés dans une stratégie des effectifs axée sur les objectifs de l’entreprise.

Si des fonctions comme la gamification et l’apprentissage social peuvent avoir un impact majeur pour certaines organisations, elles peuvent manquer de pertinence pour d’autres. Pour de nombreuses organisations, l’apprentissage classique en salle avec un formateur pourrait encore avoir toute sa place à l’avenir. L’écoute continue des collaborateurs fournira des informations utiles pour répondre à leurs besoins et concevoir une expérience d’apprentissage efficace.

De nombreux experts de l’upskilling conviendront que la formation et l’upskilling est un défi pour les employés et les employeurs. Alors que les entreprises investissent massivement dans les nouvelles technologies, l’objectif premier est d’investir efficacement dans le personnel.

La stratégie à long terme d’une entreprise en matière d’effectifs ne se limite pas au système de gestion de la formation (LMS) qu’elle a choisi. La gestion de l’expérience de formation inclut les nouvelles compétences et connaissances que les personnes vont acquérir ainsi qu’une méthode de travail efficace et agile. Un excellent programme d’upskilling aidera les collaborateurs à pivoter vers les nouveaux rôles qu’ils devront occuper demain et à soutenir l’innovation de rupture dans toute l’entreprise.

Publié en anglais sur insights.sap.com

The post Comment les technologies de formation et les LMS supportent l’upskilling appeared first on SAP France News.

Source de l’article sur sap.com

11 février 2021/par Service comm.

Popular Design News of the Week: January 11, 2021 – January 17, 2021

Actualités, Actualités, Business

Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.

Front-End Performance Checklist 2021

Google Design’s Best of 2020

Skynet – Build a Free Internet

An Early Look at Full Site Editing in WordPress

30 Basic Fonts

5 Great Ways to Develop your Eye for Design

No More Facebook – Privacy-friendly Alternatives to Facebook Products

Bold CMS – The CMS that Understands your Content

Design in 2021 – What will Design Activism Look Like?

LT Browser – Next-gen Browser to Build, Test & Debug Mobile Websites

40 Best Canva Alternatives for Effortless Graphic Design

How to Design with Contrast

Design in 2021 – What will Interactive Design Look Like?

20 Essential WordPress Settings to Change

No Meetings, no Deadlines, no Full-Time Employees

Free Porto Illustrations – Free 20 Stylish Hand Drawn Illustrations

Digital Images 101: All You Need to Know as a Designer

8 Typography Design Trends for 2021 – [Infographic]

Learnings from Designing for Multi-language User Interfaces

A UX Analysis of Cyberpunk 2077′s HUD

Five Websites Inspired by Vintage Games

Effective User Onboarding: Top Proven Tips and Examples

Overcoming Common Designer Biases

What Makes a Great Business Idea?

How to Use Design Thinking to Improve your Daily Workflow

Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.

Source

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

17 janvier 2021/par Service comm.

8 Easy Ways To Ruin Your User Onboarding

Actualités, Actualités

To understand why user onboarding is such an indispensable tool, we need to empathize with the people using our products; we all come from different backgrounds and cultures, we make different assumptions, and we see the world differently.

User onboarding helps mitigate these differences by making your product’s learning curve less steep.

However, companies often make unfortunate mistakes that hinder user experience and cause frustration. In today’s article, we’ll take a look at eight ways companies ruin their products’ onboarding process.

Let’s dive right in, shall we?

1. No User Onboarding at all

As a part of the team that created a product, you’ve probably spent hundreds of hours going over its features and the most minute detail. Naturally, you know the product like the back of your hand. The user does not.

Naturally, you know the product like the back of your hand. The user does not

We may believe that the app we’ve worked on is straightforward and that user onboarding is probably overkill — but that’s almost never the case. Guiding our users through a product will help with retention, conversion, and their overall satisfaction.

However, there are very rare cases when you can do without user onboarding, here are a few:

Your product is too straightforward to cause any confusion;
Your product has a formulaic structure, similar to that of other products’ in your category, i.e., social media or e-commerce;
Your product relies heavily on Google or iOS design guidelines with common design patterns;
Your product is too complex (enterprise or business-oriented) — in such cases, users need special training, rather than just an onboarding;

2. Assuming That Users “Get It”

One of the vital UX mottos we should always be mindful of is that “we are not our users.” When onboarding them, we always need to assume that they’re at square one. We should communicate with them as if they have no prior knowledge of our product, its terminology, and the way it works.

Providing freshly-registered users with highly contextual information will most likely confuse them. As a result, this will render your attempts to create a helpful onboarding process useless.

3. Onboarding Users on a Single Touchpoint

it’s tempting to brainstorm which features should make it into the onboarding, then design and code them; that’s a very bad idea

The main problem with the previous point is that it’s too contextual for new users. However, providing no context altogether can be problematic as well. This is commonly found in onboarding processes that focus on a single touchpoint while leaving out the rest of the product.

By choosing to inform users of our product’s features, we force them to detour from their “normal” course of action. This comes at the cost of the user’s frustration.

Since we’re asking people to pay this price, it’s best to provide them with information that will also help them navigate the entire product. As a result, this will decrease the number of times we’ll have to distract them from their ordinary flow.

4. Forcing Users Through Onboarding

We’ve previously mentioned that we mustn’t assume that users have any background knowledge about our products.

The opposite argument can be made — experienced users don’t need a basic onboarding process. It will most likely frustrate them, and it won’t provide them with any real value. Also, forcing users through this process will most likely take the onboarding frustration to a whole other level.

This is why it’s essential that we allow them to skip the parts they don’t find useful. This way, we’ll address the knowledge gaps of the people who really want it and need it.

5. Onboarding Based Purely on Assumptions

This is yet another point that’s implicit in “we are not our users”. Oftentimes, it’s tempting to brainstorm which features should make it into the onboarding, then design and code them; that’s a very bad idea.

Here’s what every designer should do instead:

Do user interviews: You should conduct these before having anything designed; user interviews will help you shortlist and prioritize features in terms of their significance, so that the onboarding is focused around the features that matter most.
Do usability testing: Once you have a good idea of what features your users consider most important, design onboarding that reflects that; having completed your design, make sure to conduct at least 5 usability testing sessions with users, so that you can make sure that your design works.

6. Just Letting Users Quit

While we shouldn’t force people to go through onboarding, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t nudge them in the right direction.

find that sweet spot between being front of mind and annoying

People choose not to onboard for many reasons, but showing them around will benefit both parties. Therefore, it’s never wrong to remind them that they can always resume onboarding via email or push notifications (unless you’re too pushy). Make sure to find that sweet spot between being front of mind and annoying.

Similarly, these two mediums are a great way to deliver valuable information as well.

Here’s a great example of an onboarding email from InVision:

And here’s a clever notification from TripPlanner:

Source: clevertap.com

7. Asking For Too Much Information

We need to always be mindful of the fact that the product’s spokesperson should act as a guide during onboarding. Its goal at the very beginning is to build trust.

We can ask for small favors when we’ve built a solid and lasting relationship

Not only is asking for too much information from the get-go unproductive, but it will also undermine the trust that the user already gave us.

It’s best to abstain from asking freshly-registered users for their credit card information. Nearly 100% of businesses care about profits — and there’s no shame in it. However, today’s most successful companies make money by providing users with value. So it’s best to stimulate users to share their financial data in subtler ways while focusing on customer experience.

The same can be said about subjecting the people using your service to extensive questionnaires. At the first steps of our interaction, it’s all about giving and gaining trust. We can ask for small favors when we’ve built a solid and lasting relationship.

8. Onboarding for the Sake of Onboarding

While there are dozens of reasons why you should guide your users through your product, it needs to be done well. A pointless onboarding process that doesn’t provide users with value is more frustrating than the lack thereof.

Onboarding can be a bit frustrating at times. Pointless onboarding will just raise eyebrows. It will slow users down and disengage them, which is exactly the opposite of what we want.

Conclusion

The process of introducing your users to your product is one of the factors that will define its success.

A critical aspect of user onboarding that we need to always take into account is value. Is this detour from our user’s ordinary course of action valuable to them? Will this improve their experience with the product?

Onboarding demands careful and continuous tailoring. Once perfected, this process will help you win new users’ hearts and help you build brand loyalty.

Featured image via Unsplash.

Source

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

31 août 2020/par Service comm.

Exciting New Tools for Designers, July 2020

Actualités

Some of the changes we are seeing with where we work are starting to pop up in the type of new tools made for designers and developers. More tools with remote collaboration as a key feature are increasing in popularity. (You’ll find a few of those here.)

Here’s what new for designers this month.

Webdesign Toolbox

Webdesign Toolbox is a collection of tools, apps, and resources all in one location for designers and developers. The best part of this resource is that it is human-curated, so every tool is quality checked and makes the list because it has been tested and researched. Search the collection by design, dev, stock, typography, UX, or workflow tools (and more) and use them to help create more efficiently. The collection is constantly growing, too.

CodeStream

CodeStream might be the new-world workflow tool for web designers and developers. It is made for remote teams to review code right inside your IDE without breaking from development flow. You can post and review changes and comments are all independent of the code itself, even though they link to it.

Litur

Litur is a color management app for iOS. Use it to find and collect color swatches, create custom palettes, and even check color combinations against accessibility standards. The app can even generate color codes for you from swatches you find from a photo or image upload or create. The app works on mobile and desktop Mac devices and is a paid app.

Editor X

Editor X, which is still in beta, is a website building tool that combines advanced design and prototyping capabilities with secure web hosting and integrated business solutions. Go from an idea straight to production in a highly intuitive design workspace. The best feature might be exact design precision tools.

Grid Cheatsheet

Grid Cheatsheet is a visual and code-based set of “cheats” based on the W3C CSS Grid Specifications. What’s nice is it makes these guidelines easier to understand and use if reading through them makes you a little uneasy.

Tutorialist

Tutorialist brings together some of the best development tutorials on the web. All of the tutorials are free videos available on YouTube, and this project collects them all in one place.

Pure CSS Halftone Portrait from JPG

Pure CSS Halftone Portrait from JPG is a beautiful pen from Ana Tudor that shows how to change the visual representation of an image. The examples are brilliant and in true halftone fashion. The code snippet works with color, or black and white images as well.

VoiceText for Slack

VoiceText for Slack is another work from home productivity tool. Integrate it with Slack and send messages with text that’s transcribed right in your channels. It’s a free integration and supports 18 languages.

Feature Peek

Feature Peek is a developer tool that helps you get frontend staging environments on demand and gather team feedback earlier in the development process. It’s made for use with GitHub and works with a variety of other tools as well.

Formbutton

Formbutton is a simple and customizable pop-up form. (And we all know websites have plenty of them right now.) It connects to other services you already use, such as Google Sheets and MailChimp, and is simple to set up.

Blocksy Theme

Blocksy is a WordPress theme that’s made for non-coders. It’s a zippy and highly visual theme made for Gutenberg. It works with other builders and allows the user to customize pretty much everything visually. (There’s even a dark mode.) The theme is packed with tools and options and is a free download.

Oh My Startup Illustrations

Oh My Startup Illustrations is a set of vector illustrations in several categories featuring a popular style on many projects. Use the characters and scenes to create a semi-custom story for your startup project.

1mb

1mb is a code editor and host where you can create a static website with a custom domain and SSL included. The editor works in-browser and everything is saved in the cloud.

Linear

Linear is an issue tracking Mac app for teams. It’s designed to help streamline software projects, sprints, and tasks, and can integrate with standard tools such as Github, Figma, and Slack.

Hosting Checker

Hosting Checker solves a common issue – a client wants you to work on their website, but has no idea who hosts it. Hosting Checker shows the user hosting provider and IP address the website uses, along with where its server computers are located and the host’s contact details. It also claims to be 82% faster than other similar tools.

Spike

Spike alerts you to website incidents before customers. Create alerts and get a phone call, text message, email, or Slack notification right away. The tool provides unlimited alerts and integrations to you can stay on top of issues before they become real problems.

Magnus UI

Magnus UI is a framework that helps you building consistent user interfaces in React. It comes with plenty of components ready to use and you can customize the theme.

SpreadSimple

SpreadSimple uses data in Google Sheets to create styled websites with features such as filtering, search, sorting, cart, order collection via forms, and much more. Update the sheet and instantly see changes on the website.

WebP vs. JPEG

Google is starting to suggest using it’s WebP image format to decrease load times, because of the lighter file size. But is WebP better than the traditional JPEG? Developer Johannes Siipola tested the file types at different sizes to answer the question. The answer is a bit complicated, but sometimes it might be better; read the full analysis for more.

Oh Dear

Oh Dear is a website monitoring tool that can help you keep a check on websites. Monitor uptime, SSL certificates, broken links, and more with notifications that come right to you if there’s an issue.

Airconnect

Airconnect is a Zoom video conferencing alternative that you can use for your brand with a custom header, colors, and portal for clients. The tool includes video calling as well as the ability for customers to access their data and automate your onboarding process.

Free Faces

Free Faces is a curated collection of free typefaces that you can browse and use in projects. Search by type style with visual results that include a download link.

All the Roll

All the Roll is a fun novelty font for just the right type of project. It includes 167 characters with swash characters that can be added before or after certain letters.

Backrush

Backrush is a handwriting-style typeface with easy strokes and a pen-like feel. It includes thicker letterforms with nice swashes and a full character set.

Thuner

Thuner is a slab display font with interesting quirks. It’s made for larger than life designs. It includes a full uppercase character set and numerals.

Source

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

13 juillet 2020/par Service comm.