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User experience is one of the most important principles of web design. There’s no doubt that you focus on UX with every page you design on the web, whether it’s a portfolio, a profile page, or an entire website.
Unfortunately, what many experts forget is that UX doesn’t just apply to digital pages. That means that you need to discover the right UX strategies for everything from your website homepages to your email marketing messages and even your listings on Google.
Today, we’re going to explore ways you can apply UX principles to your client’s image on search engines.
Why Your Search Engine Listing Matters
Let’s start with the basics…
89% of customers start their purchasing process with a search engine.
That means that whether you’re creating a portfolio to sell your services or building a website for a client, the first connection a customer has with your design isn’t on the homepage.
Developers and designers know that first impressions count when it comes to succeeding online. However, they assume that those first impressions happen on a social media channel, a landing page, or a home page.
The truth is that most of the time, you’re driving a specific experience for an end-user before you even realize it. Before you can wow an audience with a beautiful site design or a fantastic CTA offer, you need to convince them to click on your Google link.
Just as UX on a website is all about giving your audience what they need in an informed and strategic manner, UX in search engine results works the same way.
How to Make Your Search Listing Stand Out with UX
So, how do you begin to apply the principles of UX to your Google Search results?
It’s much easier than you’d think.
Step 1: Show Immediate Value
Delivering an excellent experience on a website often means providing end-users with the information they need as quickly as possible. Imagine designing a landing page; you wouldn’t want your audience to scroll forever to find what they need. Instead, you’d make sure that the value of the page was immediately apparent.
When creating an image for your search engine listing, you’ll need to take the same approach. This often means thinking carefully about two things:
- Your headline
- Your meta description
Around 8 out of 10 users say that they’ll click a title if it’s compelling. That means that before you do anything else to improve your SEO strategy, you need to make sure that the title of your web page is going to grab the audience’s attention.
The best titles deliver instant value.
Immediately, these titles tell the audience exactly what they’re going to get when they click onto the page. The promise drives action, while clarity highlights the informed nature of the brand.
The great thing about using an excellent title for a page is that it doesn’t matter where you’re ranked on the search results. Whether you’re number 2 or number 5, your customers will click if they find something they want.
It’s just like using a CTA on a landing page. Make sure your titles are:
- Informative: Show your audience value immediately
- Optimized for mobile: Remember, your audience might not see your full title on some screens. That means that you need to make the initial words count.
- Easy to read: Keep it short, simple, and straightforward. Speak the end-user’s language
Step 2: Build Trust with Your URLs
Trust factors are another essential part of good UX.
When designing a website for a new brand, you know that it’s your job to make visitors feel at ease. Even in today’s digital world, many customers won’t feel comfortable giving their money or details to a new company.
Within the website that you design, you can implement things like trust symbols, reviews, and testimonials to enhance brand credibility. In the search engines, it all starts with your URL.
Search-friendly URLs that highlight the nature of the page will put your audience’s mind at ease. When they click on a page about “What is SEO” in the SERPs, they want to see an URL that matches, not a bunch of numbers and symbols
Use search-friendly permalink structures to make your listing seem more authoritative. This will increase the chances of your customer clicking through to a page and make them more likely to share the link with friends.
Once you decide on a link structure, make sure that it stays consistent throughout the entire site. If a link doesn’t appear to match the rest of the URLs that your audience sees for your website, they may think they’re on the wrong page. That increases your bounce rate.
Step 3: Be Informative with Your Meta Description
To deliver excellent UX on a website, you ensure that your visitor can find all the answers to their most pressing questions as quickly as possible. This includes providing the right information on each page and using the correct navigational structure to support a visitor’s journey.
In the SERPs, you can deliver that same informative experience with a meta description. Although meta descriptions often get ignored, they can provide a lot of value and help you or your client make the right first impression.
To master your meta descriptions:
- Use the full 160 characters: Make the most of your meta description by providing as much useful information as you can within that small space.
- Include a CTA: Just as CTAs help guide customers through the pages on a website, they can assist with pulling in clicks on the SERPs. A call to action like “read about the” or “click here” makes sense when you’re boosting your search image.
- Focus on value: Concentrate on providing your customers with an insight into what’s in it for them if they click on your listing.
Don’t forget that adding keywords to your meta description is often helpful too. Keywords will boost your chances of a higher ranking, but they’ll also show your audience that they’re looking at the right result.
Step 4: Draw the Eye with Rich Snippets
You’ve probably noticed that the search engine result pages have changed quite a bit in the last couple of years. As Google strives to make results more relevant and informative, we’ve seen the rise of things like rich snippets. Rich snippets are excellent for telling your audience where to look.
On a website, you would use design elements, like contrasting colors and animation, to pull your audience’s attention to a specific space. In search engines, rich snippets can drive the same outcomes. The difference is that instead of telling a visitor what to do next on a page, you’re telling them to click on your site, not a competitor’s.
When Google introduced rich snippets, it wanted to provide administrators with a way of showcasing their best content. Rich snippets are most commonly used today on product and contact pages because they can show off reviews.
Install a rich snippet plugin into your site if you’re a WordPress user or your client is. When you enter the content that you need into the website, use the drop-down menu in your Rich snippet tool to configure the snippet.
Ideally, you’ll want to aim for the full, rich snippet if you want to stand out at the top of the search results. Most featured snippets have both text and an image. You need to access both of these by writing great content and combining it with a relevant image.
Step 5: Provide Diversity (Take Up More of the Results)
As a website designer or developer, you’ll know that different people will often be drawn to different things. Some of your visitors might immediately see a set of bullet-points and use them to search for the answer to their question. Other visitors will want pictures or videos to guide them. So, how do you deliver that kind of diversity in the SERPS?
The easiest option is to aim to take up more of the search result pages. Google now delivers a bunch of different ways for customers to get the answers they crave. When you search for “How to use Google my Business” on Google, you’ll see links to blogs, as well as a list of YouTube Videos and the “People Also Ask” section.
Making sure that you or a client has different content rankings for the same keywords can significantly improve any customer’s experience on the search engines. Often, the process of spreading your image out across the SERPs is as simple as creating some different kinds of content.
To access the benefits of video, ask your client to create YouTube videos for some of their most commonly asked questions or most covered topics. If you’re helping with SEO marketing for your client, then make sure they have an FAQ page or a way of answering questions quickly and concisely on articles, so they’re more likely to appear in “People Also Ask”.
Step 6: Add Authority with Google My Business
Speaking of Google My Business, that’s another excellent tool for improving UX in the search results. It allows business owners to manage how information appears in the search results.
With this service, you can manage a company’s position on Google maps, the Knowledge Graph, and any online reviews. Establishing a company’s location is one of the most important things you can do to help audiences find a business quickly. Remember, half of the customers that do a local search on a smartphone end up visiting the store within the same day.
Start by setting up the Google Business listing for yourself or your client. All you need to do is hit the “Start Now” button and fill out every relevant field offered by Google. The more information you can add to Google My Business, the more your listing will stand out. Make sure you:
- Choose a category for a business, like “Grocery store.”
- Load up high-quality and high-resolution images
- Ensure your information matches on every platform
- Use a local number for contact
- Encourage reviews to give your listing a five-star rating
Taking advantage of a Google My Business listing will ensure that your audience has all the information they need to make an informed decision about your company before they click through to the site. This means that you or your client gets more warm leads and fewer people stumbling onto your website that might not want to buy from you.
Step 7: Use Structured Data Markup to Answer Questions
If you’re already using rich snippets in your Google listings, you should also have a plan for structured schema markup. Schema markup on Google tells the search engines what your data means. This means that you can add extra information to your listings that will more accurately guide your customers to the support they need.
Providing additional schema markup information to your listings gives them an extra finishing touch to ensure that they stand out from the competition. For example, you might add something like a “product price” to a product page or information about the product’s availability.
Alternatively, you could provide the people who see a search result with other options. This could be an excellent option if you’re concerned that some of the people who might come across your listing might need slightly different information.
For instance, you can ask Google to list other pages along with your search results that customers can “jump to” if they need additional insights.
Baking structured data into your design process when you’re working on a website does many positive things. First, it makes the search engine’s job easier so that you can ensure that you or your client ranks higher. Additionally, it means that your web listings will be more thorough and valuable.
Since UX is all about giving your audience the best possible experience with a brand, that starts with making sure they get the information they need in the search results.
Constantly Improve and Experiment
Remember, as you begin to embed elements of UX into your search engine listings, it’s essential to be aware of relevant evolutions. Ultimately, the needs of any audience can change very rapidly. Paying attention to your customers and what kind of links they click on the most will provide you with lots of valuable data. You can use Google analytics to A/B test things like titles, pictures, featured snippets, and other things that may affect UX.
At the same time, it’s worth noting that the Google search algorithms are constantly changing too. Running split tests on different pages will give you an insight into what your customers want. However, you’ll need to keep an eye on the latest documentation about Google Search if you want to avoid falling behind the competition.
Like most aspects of exceptional UX, mastering your SERP position isn’t a “set it and forget it” strategy. Instead, you’ll need to work on constantly expanding your knowledge if you want to show clients that you can combine UX and SEO effectively.
Make sure you have plenty of tools set up to offer reports and insights into the kind of changes that you may need to make to align with search engine expectations.
Making the Most of UX in the SERPS
It’s easy to forget that there’s more to UX than making your buttons clickable on mobile devices or ensuring that scrolling feels smooth. For a designer or developer to deliver excellent UX for a brand, they need to consider every interaction that a company and customer has.
This means starting with the way a website appears when it’s listed on the search engines most of the time. Getting your SEO listing right doesn’t just boost your chances of a good ranking. This strategy also improves your reputation with your audience and delivers more meaningful moments in the buyer journey.
Don’t underestimate the power of UX in SERPs.
Featured image via Pexels.
The post 7 UX Principles to Boost SERPs first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
Background Context
In our first blog, we introduced the definition and evolution of hybrid multicloud, key challenges of the enterprises, and the value realized by implementing a hybrid multicloud strategy. This blog will cover how to create a holistic and business-value-driven multicloud strategy. In order to provide agility, security, reliability, and access to a large ecosystem of services, a robust transformation strategy and program are required. This strategy must align with business objectives such as revenue growth, cost reduction, risk reduction, enhancing the customer experience, and capitalization of market opportunities.
Having created many transformation strategies across many industries, we have observed critical success factors that are worth noting. For instance, successful IT organizations tightly align their cloud strategies to business objectives while developing a target architecture and operating model blueprint while quantifying the costs and benefits in a business case. Organizations that have failed to implement their cloud strategy, or failed to realize their committed benefits, typically do not complete these important elements of a holistic strategy.
Feedback is one of the most valuable resources for any business. Informative messages from your customers can tell you a lot about your company. They’re a way to check that your service strategies are paying off and a chance to learn which parts of your product need an upgrade.
Reviews and testimonials can also help you better understand your audience and the kind of solutions they’re looking for with your brand.
Solid feedback is also how you improve your chances of gaining more customers in the long term. Brands with superior customer service generate about 5.7 times more revenue than their competitors.
Of course, before you can begin tackling challenges like pulling trends from feedback or using your reviews to upgrade your business, you have one essential task to consider: How are you going to collect the valuable information your customers have to share?
There are a lot of options to choose from. You can reach out to clients individually with email messages or set up a feedback form on your website. You could even consider working with a review site to give your audience more options.
Today, we will look at the steps you can take to collect customer feedback the right way.
Unlocking the Benefits of Customer Feedback
Customer feedback is the information and input shared by your community. It provides a behind-the-scenes view of people’s interactions with your team and shows you where you need to focus on beginning driving new opportunities.
Customer feedback becomes a guiding compass for your organization when used correctly. It shows you what you’re getting right and wrong from your customer’s perspective. Positive feedback can even become part of your marketing campaigns. User-generated content in the form of reviews and testimonials makes for excellent tools to encourage new people to purchase your products.
Case studies and in-depth reviews from your clients can also help generate trust among potential customers, so you’re more likely to earn crucial sales.
Only around 3% of customers say that they find marketers and salespeople “trustworthy.” This means that no matter how good your marketing messages might be, you’re only going to be able to accomplish so much with the claims you make about your brand. Ultimately, your clients will turn to other customers like them to determine who they should buy from.
On average, buyers read around seven reviews before they’ll even consider trusting a business.
The good news is that around two-thirds of customers will share their personal information with a brand. Clients are happy to provide feedback in the right circumstances. It’s your job to ensure that the process is as easy as possible for your customers.
So, how do you get customer reviews?
1. Design an Effective Feedback Survey
The most obvious way to encourage feedback from your customers is to ask for it. Unfortunately, designing a good customer survey isn’t always as simple as it seems.
On the one hand, you’re keen to gather as much information as possible from your customer, which could mean that you want to ask many questions. On the other hand, asking too many questions could easily scare your audience away.
To improve your audience’s chances of actually sharing information, keep the feedback requests as simple as possible.
One or two questions at a time should be enough to give you some helpful information about customer preferences and expectations. When choosing what to include in your survey, remember:
- Only ask essential questions: If the answer to a question isn’t going to help you achieve your goals, don’t ask it. You don’t need to know someone’s age if you want to know if they had a good experience with your service reps. Keep it relevant.
- Make the questions thoughtful: Yes or no questions are great for collecting quick information. However, if you want more valuable feedback, leave your queries open-ended, and give customers room to explain themselves.
- Use rating scales: If your customer doesn’t have time to respond to a question in your survey with a complete answer, a rating scale can give you some helpful insights with minimal effort from the client.
Ensure none of the questions on your survey are leading or loaded. Customers don’t want to feel like you’re answering questions for them. It might also be worth showing your audience how much you value their data with a quick response. Hilton Hotels always responds to any adverse reactions to surveys within days of receiving the information.
Customers can even see how their reviews contribute to the overall rating of the business.
2. Master Your Emails and Customer Contact Forms
Email is one of the easiest and most effective ways to gather customer feedback. Because this is a standard support channel for most businesses, there are plenty of opportunities to generate feedback.
The first step in using emails for feedback is to send a message thanking your customer for their recent interaction with you. If someone purchased a product from your company, immediately follow up to let them know you appreciate their custom. A couple of days after, when your customer has had a chance to use your product or service, that’s when you follow up with your feedback request.
Ideally, your email request should be as short and straightforward as possible, with a clear call to action that tells your customer what to do next. This example from Papier keeps things as detailed as possible.
If you want to boost your chances of engagement, you can add elements to your email that might encourage a positive response, for instance:
- Remind them of what they bought: Remind your customer of the item they purchased with a picture and a bit of information. Highlight the key features and benefits of that product, so they have some inspiration on what to write about in their review.
- Offer them a reward: If you want to boost your chances of your customers doing something for you, you need to offer something in return. This could be a discount on their next order, a chance of winning something, or even just free shipping on their next purchase.
- Personalize the message: Make your customer feel special by personalizing the message. Use their name and reference their previous interactions with your company. If they’ve been with your business for a while, mention that in the email.
Remember, many of your customers are likely to check their emails on the go. That means that giving feedback should be as simple as possible, regardless of the tech your customer is using. For instance, in this Zomato example, users can choose to drop an email to the company or send feedback straight from the app.
3. Create App Usability Tests
If you want some in-depth insights into your company, and your business processes, then a usability test could be the best way to generate valuable feedback. If you have your app, ask your customer to submit some information right there and then, after they’ve finished using the service. The great thing about this kind of input is it’s fresh.
Unlike other customer reviews that might come a day or two after your customer has used a product, usability tests allow you to get feedback at the moment. There’s a much better chance that you’re going to get some relevant and detailed responses here.
For instance, in this Skype lab feedback request, customers can tick boxes for any video or audio issues they had and leave a starred review.
If there’s extra information to share, the customer can tap on the comment box to elaborate. However, they don’t need to do this part unless they want to.
With usability tests, it’s a good idea to focus on a few key things that you want to learn about. For instance, Skype’s example above demonstrates that the company wants to check at least five user experience issues for both video and audio.
Giving your customers options that they can choose from reduces the amount of work they need to put into leaving a review. It also means that you can get actionable information on which parts of your app or site need the most improvement.
You can get the same kind of instant feedback on your website, too, mainly if you’re using a live chat app for customer service.
Live chat is quickly becoming an essential part of the customer experience environment because it’s fast, easy to use, and efficient. It’s also highly affordable for most companies, thanks to evolving technology. Set up your Live Chat app to immediately request a review from your customer when the interaction is over.
For instance, SiteGround asks customers to rate their service provider with a picture of the employee they spoke to. The image lets the customer see that they were talking to a real person, which improves the relationship with the company. The statement about feedback improving the customer service and support that SiteGround can offer shows the customer how valuable their reviews are.
4. Conduct Customer Interviews
Conducting a customer interview is a lot like sending out a survey. The main difference is that you ask the client to engage in a much more in-depth conversation. Usually, these interviews will be the initial research required for a published case study on a B2B website.
Reaching out to valuable and loyal customers can give you a fantastic source of in-depth information to learn from. You’ll need to make sure that you have a good relationship with the customer in question before you attempt this, however. Most one-time clients won’t want to get involved with a time-consuming interview.
Look at your CRM technology and find out who your most impressive VIP customers are. Reach out to them with a request for feedback, and make sure you offer something in return. For instance, tell them that you’d like to interview for a case study that you can display on your website. If they’re happy for you to do this, you can reward them with a discount on their next purchase or some gifts.
You could also follow up with a customer who recently contacted your team for an interview, like Ticket Arena does here. With this message, they promise the customer that their insights will make the customer experience better for future clients:
When requesting long-form qualitative feedback, remember to think through your questions carefully. In-depth stories from customers bring nuance and color to your quantitative data. They could even guide your business to making some crucial future decisions.
When talking to your customers:
- Start with an open-ended dialogue: Remember that open-ended questions are crucial to get as much detail as possible from your customers. These queries give your customers more flexibility to cover the details of their experiences.
- Get more specific as you go: Start with simple questions, then build on them as your conversation evolves. Use the things you learn from your customers to dive into topics that are relevant to them. For instance, if a customer mentions your live chat app, go into a deeper discussion about the channels they prefer to use.
- Practice active listening: Make sure that you’re open and receptive to the information you’re given. Actively listen to customers, even if you’re not in the same room, by acknowledging what they say and providing valuable responses.
5. Use Social Media
Sometimes, people are reluctant to give feedback for your business on your website because they’re not in the frame of mind. When customers come to your site, there’s a good chance they’re looking for information from you or want to check out a new product.
They’re probably not in the right mood to start sharing their opinions.
However, if you capture your customers on social media, there’s a good chance they’ll be feeling a lot more talkative. After all, social media platforms are where most customers discuss their issues with companies, talk about purchases with friends, and make their voices heard.
Simply paying attention to when people talk about your company on social media can give you a lot of helpful feedback. Social listening tools allow you to collect post information every time someone mentions your business name or product.
Alternatively, you can actively use the tools on social media to gather data from customers. For instance, Instagram has its own “poll” feature on Stories that allows companies to collect opinions.
If you’re collecting feedback on social media, remember that you shouldn’t be asking any questions that are too complicated. Although people are more willing to share their opinions on social, they’re still looking for a relatively laid-back and casual experience.
Polls, where people can vote for their preferences with a single click, are more likely to garner engagement than a post asking people to tell you about the best purchasing experience they ever had with your brand.
If you do want to encourage more in-depth feedback, the best option is to promise a reward in return for your follower’s effort.
Make the experience fun by transforming it into a competition.
For instance, ask your customers to share their favorite story involving your brand for a chance to win an impressive prize. You can ask each customer to tag their response with a branded hashtag so that relevant answers are easier to find. You could even add users to tag their friends in their posts too, to increase brand reach while you collect feedback:
With gifts and rewards to incentivize them, people will be much more likely to interact with your brand and put effort into the reviews they leave. You could even gather some user-generated content to put into your subsequent ad campaigns.
6. Create a Dedicated Website Page
Finally, if you want to make it as simple as possible for people to leave feedback on your website and for you to collect all of that information into one space, then create a review page on your website. This can double up as social proof for people who need additional evidence to buy from your brand.
A review page could be as simple as a page on your website listing the latest comments that your customers have left. You can include a form at the bottom of the page where people can add their thoughts. Just make sure that you carefully review these posts before they’re submitted to your website if you want to prevent spam from getting through.
You could also create a case study or portfolio page that showcases the work you’ve done with other companies like Fabrik Brands does here:
At the bottom of each case study, give your customers a unique email address they can reach out to if they want to be featured as your following case study. Or include a contact form where people can get in touch to discuss their own experiences.
Having a dedicated review, case study, or testimonial page on your website could be enough to inspire more feedback from your customers. It’s also a fantastic way to demonstrate how credible your company is to potential buyers.
Still, Struggling? Take the Customer Out of the Equation
If, even with all the suggestions above, you still can’t seem to convince your audience to give you some decent feedback, then take them out of the equation. You can learn things about your audience without asking them for information. Google Analytics and other tools will give you valuable insights into which of your blog pages get the most engagement and how many people click on individual buttons throughout your site.
These fundamental insights might not be as good as valuable, contextual feedback from your audience, but they’re an excellent way to start figuring out how to invest in your future growth.
Remember, feedback of any kind – even if it’s just statistics and numbers – gives your business the ability to grow and make informed decisions.
Gather as much feedback as you can, and make sure you use it!
Featured image via Pexels.
The post 6 Tips for Collecting Customer Feedback (The Right Way) first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
Welcome to this month’s collection of what’s making the web look good. This time out we’ve got some new brands and some rebrands, and we’ve got some good examples of branding continuity across media.
Branding continuity doesn’t just mean putting the logo in the corner and using the same colors and type. It’s about capturing the brand identity, the personality of the brand, so the user identifies it even if the logo isn’t immediately visible. Take a look at how some of these sites do it, and enjoy the collection.
Cantina Puiatti
This site for Cantina Puiatti vineyard is almost entirely greyscale, until you get to the wines. There, a single block of color containing information stands out, perfectly matching the label on each bottle.
Revolut
Online banking app Revolut has a site that reflects the look and feel of the app itself, and the design works particularly well on mobile.
Armadillo
Home warranty providers Armadillo have gone for the friendly, non-corporate approach here. Pleasing illustrations and bite-sized text feels non-intimidating and creates an impression of security.
Green Angel Syndicate
Green Angel Syndicate is an angel syndicate investing in companies working to fight climate change. The palette is soft, and some colorful illustration blocks help take the corporate edge off, creating more warmth than might be expected.
Madre
Some beautiful still-life-inspired photography features on this very simple site for home linen company Madre. The shop by color option is a nice touch.
Ovini
This site for Orvini olive snacks is very simple and clean, and the animated illustration from their packaging adds just the right amount of personality.
Cover Story
Cover Story makes a range of plastic-free paints. The site is very simple, allowing the user to focus on the paint colors themselves. And there’s added entertainment value in working out the writer each color is named after.
Seed
Seed offers a synbiotic supplement on a subscription. There is a lot of well-presented scientific information here, and the links to buy are strong without being pushy.
Banza
Like many in the ‘alternative’ food sector, Banza has gone for a bright, bold style with its branding, and its website matches this approach to good effect.
Déjà Pet Food
Déjà takes unsold human food and recycles it into pet food. The animals that feature on the packaging make an appearance here too, to add a bit of softness to the oversized type and 2 color palette.
Little’s Coffee Co.
Little’s Coffee Co.’s site echoes its product labels with a scattering of similar, brightly colored graphic elements. This effectively ties the branding together without being too dominating.
One Hive
The site for OneHive, a business management platform, takes the people-friendly approach with warmer dark blues for text in place of black and grey, and simple illustrations instead of stock photography.
Waltz Creative
Waltz Creative is a rebranding of Schipper Design. Bright candy colors, a hint of vintage type, and some fun graphics combine to create a sense of playfulness without being frivolous.
Stem Design
This portfolio site for floral designer Nicole Cooper features some exceptional photography that effectively showcases her work. There’s a nice nod to Mapplethorpe too.
Vroom!
With its classic comic book style, this site for the forthcoming obstacle racing game Vroom creates a sense of fun appropriate to its subject.
The Space That Makes Us Human
The Space That Makes Us Human is an interactive documentary experience exploring the impact space exploration could have on the future of humanity. This is one of those sites that is just a pleasure to wander around.
Vibor
Following a recent rebrand, Vibor’s new site brings Italian style to the world of industrial sensors with its use of black, white and greys, and accompanying grayscale images.
ArticketBCN
ArticketBCN is a multi-pass, or art passport, for 6 major art museums in Barcelona, designed to look like a passport. The site for it echoes the style effectively while presenting
its information clearly.
Nothing
Taking on the big guys, like Apple and Samsung, takes a lot of confidence and that confidence is apparent here on this site for Nothing’s ear(1) earbuds. And it looks even better on mobile.
Nice One, Dad
And finally, just because it’s Monday and we could all do with a laugh (or a groan), here’s a site of nothing but dad jokes. The jokes may be terrible, but the presentation is nicely done.
The post 20 Best New Sites, September 2021 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
We had a request from a customer asking us if they could implement different integration logic depending on the header of a HTTP request.
In this use case we will accept a payload via HTTP, inspect the header of the request and then depending on the value in the header, write the payload to a SQL database.
In my experience, the biggest challenge that freelancers face — more than winning clients or setting prices — is project management; take on too much work, and you’ll start missing deadlines, take on too little, and you’ll start missing your rent.
Some people are naturally organized; they rock up at their desk at 08:59, fully confident in what they will spend the next 8–12 hours working on. Let’s be kind and say that I am not one of them, and leave it at that. The only way I have managed to survive the industry is by self-consciously micro-managing my schedule on a daily basis.
When I worked in an agency, I knew what I would be working on days in advance. Now, I know 90% of what I’ll be working on, weeks in advance.
That level of organization requires very, very, very careful planning. I hold team meetings at the end of the day, yes, “team” meetings of one person. To do that I use a number of tools that suit me.
How to Choose a Project Management App
The most important aspect of any project is the end. That’s when the client will assess your work, and that’s when you get paid. So when you choose a project management solution, make sure it gives you a clear path to the project conclusion.
I know one freelancer who sets himself a hard stop at 7 pm every day. At 7 pm, he downs tools switches off, and walks away. I once heard him end a client call at 7 pm because he’d reached his cut-off point. It made me wince — I would have stayed on until the call concluded — but it hasn’t affected his business.
I know another successful freelancer who works on a budget. When she has earned the money she needs for that day, she stops. She bills by the hour to make this work, so when she sits down in the morning, she knows exactly what time she’ll finish.
Personally, I prefer a task-based approach. I know what I have to get done; if I can get ahead, then great, but my main focus is ensuring I don’t fall behind. I believe that if you hit your deadlines, everything else will take care of itself. Admittedly, there have been a few late-nights (and all-nights) over the years, but thankfully they’re less common these days.
No one style of project management suits everyone. And it doesn’t matter what approach you take, provided you take an approach.
8 Best Project Management Apps for Freelancers
As a freelancer, the most important thing characteristic you can have is reliability. Cultivate a reputation for delivering on your promises, and you’ll become invaluable to your clients. The best project management app is the one that helps you keep your promises.
There are some excellent tools on the market that facilitate project management, but most are aimed at SMEs, or project managers running a team of freelancers.
The tools here are listed from least, to most useful for the average freelancer. I’ve avoided too many time-tracking apps because I find these tend to encourage billing by the hour, which is potentially damaging to your business long term. If you do need pure time-tracking, check out Harvest. I’ve also avoided solutions that are too large-scale to benefit freelancers. If you’re looking for a project management tool for teams, then Basecamp, Jira, Project.co, and Redbooth are all worth considering.
Sadly none of these apps are perfect, and there’s a good chance you’ll need to use two or three to manage your projects.
8. Todoist
Todoist is hands down the best to-do app on the market. The downside is that its feature set is minimal.
Todoist really excels at lists. You can break down tasks into sub-tasks, and sub-sub-tasks. The downside is there’s no real scheduling or comparison of multiple projects in a single view.
The mobile apps are great, and Todoist recently introduced boards, a form of kanban board that gives you a good overview of everything. If it introduces a gantt chart, I can see myself relying on it more.
Todoist has a free forever plan that is fine for most freelancers, and the paid plans start at just $3 per month.
7. Bonsai
Bonsai is an excellent service for freelancers that grew from a simple invoicing app to include proposals, contracts, time-tracking, and more.
I used Bonsai for invoicing for a couple of years, and it does everything it claims to do. However, there are a couple of significant areas where it falls down. Firstly, its invoicing is super-aggressive and cannot be customized — make sure you’re on friendly terms with any client you send a Bonsai invoice to. Secondly, while it does a good job of tracking what you have done, it doesn’t help you plan what needs to be done beyond a formal proposal.
If you’re running a few simple projects, then it’s possible Bonsai is right for you. Pricing starts at $19 per month.
6. Monday
Monday is one of the biggest players in the project management market. It offers a dizzying array of options, and if this list were aimed at project management for agencies, Monday would be further along our countdown. Monday may suit freelancers, particularly those who have migrated from agency work, but for most, it’s more than we need.
There is a free-forever plan that covers almost everything you could want. However, if you need to view your projects as a gantt chart — and I strongly suggest you do — then you’ll need to update to the standard plan, which starts at $8 per user per month, with a minimum of three seats, meaning at least $24 per month when billed annually.
5. AND.CO
AND.CO stands out as a slick, easy-to-use option for managing a freelance business. Like Bonsai, it allows you to manage proposals, invoicing, time-tracking, expenses, and more.
AND.CO also has extremely well-liked customer support. An underestimated consideration when you don’t have your own accounts team to resolve problems.
As with other solutions of this type, the task-management is lacking. It does include a simple to-do list, but in my opinion, it’s not sufficient, and you’ll need to supplement it with something that supports gantt charts.
There’s a free forever plan, but it’s barely more than a free trial. Pricing for full-featured access starts at $18 per month when billed annually.
4. ClickUp
ClickUp is a SaaS that aims to replace just about everything else you could need. Unlike some options on this list, it includes a CRM, which is a bonus because there’s nothing worse than relying on the search function in your email to track down someone’s contact details.
ClickUp also offers a genuinely free-forever account with enough features to make it usable. If you choose to upgrade to a paid plan, it’s just $5 per user per month, which is excellent value.
If anything, there’s just too much in here. If you’re someone who considers themselves a power-user who enjoys digging into every nuance of a UI, then ClickUp could be for you. But, if, like me, you favor a simple tool that does what it’s told and gets out of the way, then there are better options.
3. Asana
Asana is probably the best-known project management tool on the market. It offers a tremendous number of options and is flexible enough for any style of project management.
There’s a free forever plan that is ideal for getting started and offers you most — you may be sensing a theme here — of the features you’ll need. But Asana’s best feature is its excellent timeline implementation of the gantt chart, for which you’ll need to upgrade to a premium plan costing $10.99 per user per month, with a minimum number of 2 seats that translates to a rather expensive $21.98 per month.
2. Trello
Trello is famous for its kanban boards, and many people prefer them to gantt charts, which has helped the app grow rapidly in the last few years.
If you’re prepared to pay $10 per user per month, Trello actually offers gantt charts as well, in the form of its timeline feature.
Trello is mainly designed for teams, not freelancers. However, if you do have the budget for a premium plan, Trello gives you an enviable ability to switch project management styles on a whim.
1. Toggl
Toggl is perhaps the perfect balance of time-tracking and gantt chart that is ideal for freelance projects.
As with most tools, Toggl is designed for teams, with billing starting at $8 per user per month. However, it offers a solo plan, designed for freelancers, that is free forever.
The main thing you miss out on with Toggl’s Solo plan is team timelines, which you won’t need unless you’re outsourcing work. One other obvious omission is unlimited planning boards, which you may find yourself paying for sooner or later.
But for a mixture of simplicity and powerful features available for $0, Toggl is hard to beat.
Featured image via Pexels
The post 8 Freelance Project Management Apps for 2021+ first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
I’ve just been appointed the CTO of a small company with less than 10 employees. Companies of this size typically don’t have the luxury of hiring a professional Project Manager, hence the role almost automatically goes to the CEO of the company, since he is the product owner – Which creates a problem for me, summarised in the ingress of this article. But as the CTO, I’m also responsible for all IT choices, including infrastructure choices, so let me go through all of my choices below – Since these have consequences for the process we must follow.
Cloudless first
Cloud systems such as Azure or AWS are amazing products, with a feature list covering everything you can imagine. However, they’re also ridiculously expensive, typically at least 10x as expensive as a simple VPS providing the same value from an application deployment point of view. At my last company we paid €5,000 per month for Azure, and probably something similar for our AWS account (Sigh, yes, we used both! Not my decision though!) – Let’s say €8,000 per month to make sure we’re within the boundaries and that I am not exaggerating. I told my developers back at that company that I could have ran the whole company on a handful of VPS servers from DigitalOcean paying no more than €200 per month in total. Nobody believed me until our CTO confirmed my numbers more or less by saying; « At my former company we ran a 300,000 EUROs daily profit FinTech company for some 200 EUROs worth of droplets from DigitalOcean. »
According to a recent Hubspot survey, more than 85% of marketers believe video content is essential for any marketing strategy. This percentage is more than 20% higher than in 2016.
Understanding why this is the case is not hard. Modern digital marketing is all about engaging with your audience and sharing personal stories. And there’s simply no better way to do that than video content.
Videos are engaging for people of all ages and less boring than other types of content. However, it’s not easy to create or optimize video content. That’s why we have created a list of the top 10 video content tips and tricks you should follow.
Top 10 Tips and Tricks to Succeed in Video Content Marketing
Whether you are an influencer, blogger, or business owner, video content is important for promoting your services or products. The following tips will help you improve your video content strategies.
Plus, you can apply these tactics across all websites and platforms: from your website or YouTube channel to social media platforms like Instagram or Twitter.
1. Utilize Video SEO
Contrary to what many believe, SEO does not only apply to written content. In fact, video SEO is just as important for drawing organic traffic to your website or social network account.
You can achieve this in several ways. When you upload a new video, you need to consider things like keywords, tags, file names, and descriptions. However, this is only part of what you can do to optimize your videos for SEO purposes.
There are plenty of video SEO guides for beginners that can help you improve your online presence through your video content.
2. Identify Your Goals and the Scope of Your Videos
As with written and visual content in general, it is critical to identify your business goals for video content. This is one of the first things you should think about when launching a new video content campaign.
Think about what you want to achieve. For example, do you need to generate new customer leads or expand your audience? Considering the reach of your videos can help you stand out from your competitors.
When it comes to video content, planning is key. For this reason, setting the goals of your strategy should be a priority.
3. Schedule Your Video Content
While it’s important to set goals, no video content strategy will work without consistency. Planning your video content is the best way to be consistent when creating, uploading, and promoting.
There are many online apps and tools that can help you organize your video content strategy. For example, scheduling tools like Buffer or MeetEdgar can help you keep everything organized and save time uploading your videos.
In addition to these social media scheduling tools, you can also use apps like Trello to help you organize your content creation in general.
4. Use Premade Material like Instagram Templates
If you are a professional video creator or video editor, you’ll have no problem creating top-notch video content. But what happens if you have no experience with video content at all?
Luckily, there are plenty of tools out there to make your life easier. For example, if you want to create video stories for Instagram, you can use captivating pre-made Instagram templates.
Editing such templates using software like Photoshop can save you both time and money. However, if you do not have Photoshop experience, you can also create videos using simple online editors like Canva.
5. Make Your Videos Engaging and Emotional
There are a few tips we would like to share when it comes to the content of videos. An important thing to keep in mind is that your videos should always be engaging. If you don’t try to engage with your audience through your videos, there is a big chance of failure.
Therefore, whether you own a personal blog or an enormous corporate website, your video content should connect you emotionally with your audience. Adding a personal feel to your videos is a fantastic approach to consider.
By doing so, your customers/readers will feel the need to engage by sharing their stories with you.
6. Create Educational and Relevant Video Content
There are a few tips we’d like to share with you when it comes to video content. One important thing to keep in mind is that your videos should always be engaging. If you are not trying to engage your audience through your videos, there is a high chance of failure.
Whether you have a personal blog or a huge corporate website, your video content should connect emotionally with your audience. Adding a personal touch to your videos is an excellent approach to consider.
This way, your customers/readers will feel the need to engage by sharing their stories with you.
7. Implement CTAs
Calls to action are one of the most effective marketing strategies for written content. Although most websites only include CTAs on the homepage, it’s a brilliant thing to also use them in blog posts, videos, and visual content in general.
You should let your customers know how they can interact with your brand. For example, let them know about your website or how they can follow you on social media for more information.
CTAs are the best way to keep your customers and ultimately increase your conversion rates.
8. Focus on Storytelling
Videos that focus on sales often bore viewers. For this reason, you should add some value to your video content. Creating videos that act like stories is a great thing to do.
When you tell a personal story, your customers can better understand your brand and how it can help them. Remember, storytelling makes your content more engaging and interesting.
9. Promote your Content
Say you have developed a great video content strategy and have already created some top-notch videos. What should be your next step? Well, maximizing your target audience is a smart approach.
You can achieve this by promoting your videos on platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc. Another smart move is to incorporate your video content into other content like blog posts, your website, etc.
10. Occasionally Evaluate your Video Content Strategy
Since you have already established your goals and the scope of your videos, you know exactly what you want to achieve with your video content strategy. Therefore, it’s important to evaluate how your plan is working. If you are happy with the analytics of your videos, that’s great.
If not, you can always consider what’s going wrong. For example, maybe you need to promote your videos better or include more CTAs.
Wrap Up
In this article, we analyzed how important video content has become for marketing. For this reason, implementing videos into your marketing strategies is a great thing to do.
If you follow the tips and tricks above, you will increase your video content strategy’s chances of success.
Featured image via Unsplash.
The post 10 Tips to Help Video Content Succeed in 2021 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
Choosing to work for free, pro bono, gratis, without charge is something that most of us find ourselves doing at one time or another. Whether we’re filling a hole in our portfolio, there’s a friend or relative we feel beholden to, or because there’s an opportunity to aid a cause we value.
Recently, I agreed to take on some work, free of charge, for a charity whose goals I share. Because it’s a cause I believe in, I enjoyed the idea of being able to contribute in a more meaningful way than donating money. But my initial goodwill rapidly diminished as the project spiraled out of control, leaving me resenting the time I spent on it.
No one should feel obliged to give away their time for free, but if you do choose to, there are rules you can apply to ensure that everything runs smoothly and you’re left with a positive experience.
1. Be Specific in What You’re Donating
The most obvious problem with working pro bono is that there is no correlation between cost and value.
Budget reins in project ambitions in a regular designer-client relationship; the more you ask for, the more it costs. Everyone encounters clients who want an ecommerce store “just like Amazon,” only to then rapidly downscale their plans when the actual development cost of a site on that scale is made clear.
working pro bono…there is no correlation between cost and value
But when there is no development budget, ambitions quickly escalate. Clients do not necessarily understand the work involved, and if they’re not footing the bill, there’s no incentive to learn.
As the professional, you need to guide them. Set limits on what you’re expecting to donate, and use that to frame what is reasonably achievable.
“I’m donating 40 hours of my time, which normally costs $3000.” Or, “I’m donating my SEO package, which is enough to meet your initial goals as discussed.” They are both perfectly fine.
The purpose is not to highlight your generosity; it’s to establish clear boundaries to prevent scope creep.
2. They’re Not Doing You a Favour
Any client who suggests that their project will be good for your portfolio or gain you “exposure” knows they’re underpaying you. When you hear it from a pro bono client, walk away immediately.
The client needs to understand you are donating your expertise, not because you need to, not because you’re expecting something in return, but because you’re an awesome human being who wants to make the world a little better.
A client who thinks you’re getting something out of the arrangement does not understand your commercial value and will treat you as a novice. Your evidence will become guesses, your decisions will become suggestions, and the client will have little faith in the project outcome.
Clients, whether paying or not, need guidance. If they don’t respect you and believe in your guidance, they will start to cast around for other opinions to the detriment of the project outcome and your relationship.
This brings us neatly on to…
3. Everyone’s an Expert
Q. What’s the difference between an amateur and a professional? A. Professionals get paid.
You’re not getting paid, so in the client’s eyes, you’re now an amateur. Hey, guess what? Their 12-year-old daughter is an amateur too, and her views are now equally valid.
When you’re working pro bono, you can expect a lot of “help.” You’ll find that someone’s niece is planning to major in graphic design…when she graduates high school…in four years. You’ll find that someone’s partner has a hiking blog, read an SEO article, and is happy to “give it a try.” You may even find that the client themselves fancies a career switch to web design and doesn’t think it looks too hard.
Shut that **** down immediately. Smile, be gracious. Explain that, of course, you’re happy for contributions, and then avoid them like the coronavirus.
You’re donating a professional service that you’ve spent years developing, and you’re donating it to a cause that you value. You’re not there to increase someone’s chance of getting into college or to distract someone from their boring day job. If you do want to mentor people, there are places you can do that.
Everyone Actually Is An Expert
The nature of pro bono work is that more often than not, the people involved actually are experts. The simple truth is that people who aren’t experts in something tend to be in low-paying employment and are too busy trying not to be in low-paying employment to donate their time.
Like you, the people volunteering their time are doing so because they can afford to. For example, you may find that the organization’s head of accounts spends Monday–Friday as a tax advisor; the head of outreach is a project manager at a construction firm; the head of safeguarding is a school teacher.
People bring transferable skills to pro bono roles. Be sensitive to the fact that just as you are an expert in your professional context, so may they be. Simply not being an expert in design does not make them an idiot.
4. Do Not Foot the Bill
It’s tempting to simply donate everything to do with the project: the domain name’s going to cost $10? Well, it’s only $10; hosting’s $5/month? Well, it’s not too arduous to set up a small space on your own server.
imparting your experience sets the organization up for future success
However, when you give everything away, the client doesn’t understand the cost or value they’re receiving. As a professional, it’s part of your job to educate the client on the costs of a project like this; imparting your experience sets the organization up for future success.
Be clear at the start of the project that the client will be responsible for all expenses.
If you wish to — and you should not feel obliged — you are always free to make a financial donation equivalent to the expenses.
5. Stick to Office Hours
When you agree to do pro bono design work, the chances are that you know the person or organization you’re doing the work for. There’s almost always a personal connection of some kind, which means that the person or organization doesn’t see you in the professional context that normal clients see.
All good clients will respect the fact that you don’t answer emails on a Sunday morning. Not so the charity client. Not only will the charity client assume that you’re available outside of office hours, they may even think they are doing you a favor by not disturbing you during your regular office hours.
It’s important that you find some downtime outside of work to live your life. If you don’t want your evening out with friends to descend into an impromptu planning meeting (you don’t), set clear boundaries about when and how you’re prepared to work on the project.
Unless you’re self-employed, you can’t donate time when you should be working; what you can do is append pro bono work to your paid employment — do an hour after work, on weekday evenings, for example.
If you are literally doing this in your spare time, then allocate a specific time slot, such as a Saturday afternoon, and stick to it.
7. Stick to the Plan, and the Deadline
It is a universal truth that projects run better when there’s a structured approach. It doesn’t matter if it’s lean, agile, waterfall, or whatever you want to dub it. What matters is that you have a plan that works for you and is suitable for the project goals.
A structured approach, especially one that includes a timeline, will combat most disruptions. On the project I was working on recently, I was preparing for final sign-off when one volunteer announced it was time to “start thinking about what pages we need on the site.” 
Discipline is crucial in pro bono work because different stakeholders will have different levels of commitment; some people will be full-time volunteers, others will be donating an hour per week. What matters is that the project that you are responsible for runs on your schedule.
8. You Have Zero Availability
Non-profits tend to talk to one another. When your friends and family see what you’ve done for Joe’s startup, they will start having ideas of their own. The client you’re completed the project for will have other projects lined up. When you aren’t charging, there’s no shortage of clients.
be prepared to say, “no,” at some point
Before you agree to do any pro bono work at all, be prepared to say “no,” at some point.
The simplest way out is to say you have zero availability: you’re already booked up with paying work, or your boss has let you know she needs you for overtime next month.
Don’t feel bad about it. It’s probably true. There are only so many hours in the day, and even if you do have some time to spare, doesn’t your partner, dog, or social life deserve some attention?
There’s No Profit In Non-Profits
Working for free is not transactional. It probably won’t benefit your portfolio. It definitely won’t lead to paying work. Any skills or experience you acquire probably won’t be transferable. (It might give you the topic for a blog post.)
If the work were meant to benefit you, it would be called personalis bono.
Nevertheless, many of us will find ourselves agreeing to do pro bono work, either out of obligation or idealism. It’s not something to shy away from; changing the world — whether for a group or an individual — is a noble pursuit.
The key is that while you will not profit, neither should you suffer a loss. Volunteering your time, skills, and experience should be a sustainable process. One that you will not come to regret.
Featured image via Unsplash.
The post How to Work for Free Without Wrecking Your Career first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
