The Evolution of Gamification

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10 septembre 2021/par Service comm.

7 Ways to Use Gamification in Marketing Campaigns

We all want a little more fun and games in our lives. So, why not add some gamification to your next interactive content campaign?

By 2025, the gamification market is expected to witness a massive 30.1% growth rate, with global sales revenue reaching around $32 billion.

That’s because gamification adds more entertainment to the website experience and gets audiences engaged. The idea behind gamification is to bring game mechanics into the design of a website or piece of content. There are many different ways to do this.

Some companies add hidden achievements and bonuses to their blogs that customers can collect by visiting every page and reading their content. Others allow readers to collect points for leaving comments or play games to win potential prizes.

Used correctly, gamification is a fantastic way to connect with your audience and increase engagement levels. So, how can you use gamification in interactive content?

The Evolution of Gamification

Elements of gamification have appeared in everything from marketing campaigns to web design and even eCommerce strategies.

In 2014, an Apple App Store review of more than 100 health apps even found that gamification elements in applications led to greater participation and higher user ratings. In other words, customers are more likely to get involved with an activity that includes gamification components.

While gamification can take on many different forms, the aim for most companies is to create an environment where customers can feel more invested in their interactions with the website. For example, if you win a point every time you comment on a blog post, and you can trade those points in for prizes, you have more of a desire to keep commenting.

The promise of being able to “accomplish” things with pieces of interactive content and websites also appeals to the competitive part of our psychology that pushes us to keep doing things in exchange for the promise of a kind of reward.

Many companies have generated a lot of enthusiasm for their brands through leaderboards, time events, and similar experiences. For example, just look at how popular McDonalds becomes each year when the monopoly game rolls out as part of the purchasing experience.

People buy more items than they usually would during McDonald’s Monopoly just for the opportunity to win. This same boost in engagement benefits your content strategy too.

6 Ways to Add Gamification to Your Content

There’s no one right way to gamify your website or your marketing content. The method you choose will depend heavily on your audience and the kind of experience they respond best to.

The key to success is finding a way to grab your customer’s attention and hold onto it. Here are some of the tried and tested strategies to explore:

1. Create an Actual Game Experience

When it comes to incorporating gamification into your website design and content, you don’t necessarily need to be clever. You can be extremely straightforward and just design an actual game. For instance, to help attract more people to the American Army, the US created a war simulator that potential applicants could play on Steam.

The game aimed to introduce young people who might consider a career in the military to what that job might be like. If the kids liked what they saw on Steam, they could visit the military website and learn more.

For companies who can’t afford to build an entire fully-featured game, something a little smaller can be just as engaging. For instance, rather than using a standard pop-up with a discount code to entice customers to buy the rental service, Gwynnie Bee created a scratch card. People could scratch the spaces using their smartphone or computer cursor and win money off.

The great thing about the interactive content from Gwynnie Bee is that it encouraged potential visitors to connect with the business in a lucrative way. To use the scratch card, you first had to give your email address. This meant the company could build its email list while delighting consumers.

When designing a game experience for your marketing campaign, remember:

Get the right support: Designing a great game is tough, particularly if you want something more complicated than a scratch card. Don’t take the risk of creating something that doesn’t work properly; hire a developer.
Promote the experience: Make sure everyone knows about your new game. Share screenshots on social media and talk about it in your email campaigns.
Focus on fun: Remember, games are supposed to be fun. Measure the reactions of your audience to ensure they’re having a good time.

2. Design a Loyalty or Reward Program

Loyalty is one of the most valuable things your audience can give you. So why not reward them for it? Loyalty programs are fantastic tools for business growth and engagement. They give you a way to turn one-off clients into repeat customers and advocates for your brand.

How you choose to reward your customers (and when) is up to you. Some companies might give customers points every time they share a post on social media or comment on a blog. This encourages more engagement with your brand.

On the other hand, you might just let your customers earn rewards for every purchase they make. This is a strategy that Starbucks uses with its reward program.

As customers increase their spending with Starbucks, they get the reward of extra points that they can put towards future purchases. This keeps customers coming back for more and may even entice some clients to buy Starbucks when they otherwise wouldn’t.

The oVertone company is another excellent example of a brand using gamified rewards with its marketing strategy. The loyalty program breaks down into tiers, where users can see how much they need to spend to ascend to the next level. New rewards and perks appear with each level.

Remember, when building a loyalty program:

Make your customers feel special: Ensure that your audience feels good about being one of the lucky few in your loyalty program. Give discounts and offers they can’t get elsewhere.
Keep them informed: Make it easy for your customers to see what they need to do to get their next reward, so they keep coming back for more.
Mix things up sometimes: To stop the experience from getting boring, roll out things like “double points” days and bonuses for your most active customers.

3. Encourage Customer Interaction

The biggest benefit of gamification is that it encourages and increases customer interaction. You can give rewards to participants that comment on your blog posts, for instance, or share your posts on social. The customer benefits from the reward, while you get the advantage of a better business presence.

Samsung drives interaction with gamification with a function on its website that allows customers to discuss issues and watch videos. The most active participants get a badge for their efforts.

If your business structure requires a lot of engagement from your audience, then using gamification elements can encourage them to stick with you for longer rather than losing interest. For instance, language learning software Duolingo has a four-point gamification strategy for its users.

Duolingo knows that learning a new language takes a lot of time, so it asks users to set small specific goals instead. The smaller tasks bring users back regularly, and consistent users gain rewards. There’s even a progress bar to help you track your progress compared to other customers.

Gamification gives your customers another reason to keep coming back and connecting with your brand. That makes a lot of sense for companies that rely on long-term relationships with customers, like Duolingo and other teaching brands, for instance. Remember:

Make it simple: People will only want to interact with your brand if it’s easy to do so. Make it clear what you want your customer to do and what they need to do next.
Reward every action: Keep people coming back for more by rewarding them for their actions, even if it’s just with a gold star or digital sticker.
Nudge inactive customers: If a client gets involved in your interactive content, then stops participating, send an email reminding them why they should come back.

4. Run Contests and Offer Prizes

Probably one of the easiest ways to use gamification in your advertising campaigns is with a competition. Contests and competitions have been around since the dawn of business. They’re a useful way for companies to collect information from customers, particularly if you ask your clients to sign up to your site with an email address to get involved.

Competitions are also a way to push your audience into doing positive things for your company. For instance, you could run a competition where consumers share a social media post and tag a friend to enter. Or you could have a competition that asks your clients to refer a friend to get involved.

When KIND, a healthy snack company, wanted to connect with its customers and create a new product, it didn’t just do market research. Instead, the company created the “Raise the Bar” contest to let customers cast a vote for which flavor they wanted to see next.

When 123ContactForm wanted to engage its audience, it gave people the chance to win one of three platinum subscriptions for 6 months.

Contests are naturally exciting and fun to take part in. They’re an opportunity to get your audience excited, and you don’t need to give anything huge away either. Just make sure that the prize you offer is something that your audience will be interested in.

A few more pro tips include:

Generate hype first: Don’t just launch a contest out of nowhere; get people excited about the idea with announcement blogs, social media posts, and emails.
Give people a lot of ways to get involved: If people can’t take part in the competition on social media, let them do something on your website instead.
Follow up after the win: When someone does win something from your website, follow up with that winner and post pictures in the form of a blog/case study. This will generate more hype for your brand and get people excited about the next event.

5. Get Your Audience Feeling Competitive

No matter how much they might deny it, most people are at least a little competitive. So when you’re implementing a gamification campaign into your content and marketing efforts, it pays to tap into that sense of competition. All you need to do is find a way to encourage your followers to compete.

The best example of a company that did this particularly well is Nike. Nike and the Run Club app teamed up to motivate people to get involved with healthy activities. The app allowed users to customize and build their ideal training program based on their athletic level.

At the same time, you could also win badges and trophies to share with your running community. The more you took part in challenges on the app, the more you could potentially win.

The Fitbit application has a similar way of keeping customers engaged. When you download Fitbit, you can access information about your exercise strategies and potentially track your progress towards your goals. However, there are also measurable achievements to earn – like a badge when you first walk 500 miles.

Users on Fitbit can also find their friends using the same app and compete with them in various challenges.

To successfully add a competition to your gamification strategy, remember:

It needs to be social: People will be more inclined to get involved if they show off their achievements. So make sure that people can showcase their accomplishments.
Make people want to win: There needs to be a reason to get to the top of the leaderboard. You might offer people discounts or exclusive prizes if they accomplish certain goals.
Show progress: Prompt people to keep working on reaching their targets by showing them how close they are to success.

6. Make Boring Content Seem More Interesting

Some content is naturally more engaging than others. If you want to showcase some important information or data, you might create a whitepaper or a report. Unfortunately, the result can be a relatively bland piece of content.

With elements of gamification, you can make the experience a lot more engaging and interesting. Sites like Daytum.com allow users to turn personal stats and information into charts that showcase information in engaging ways. You can allow your users to track their progress through the report and rack up points as they go.

Adding subtle elements to otherwise clinical and less interesting information is a wonderful way to make the experience more exciting. The more enticed your customers are by your content, the more likely it is that you’ll sell them on your business.

Gamify Your Marketing Strategy

Gamification isn’t a new concept, but it’s one that many companies and designers can begin to take advantage of these days. Thanks to more advanced browsers and smartphones, customers can more fully enjoy the interactive elements of websites and content campaigns.

As your audience dives deeper into the digital world, they expect more unique experiences from you. Gamification can make any website or marketing experience more memorable. It’s time to take advantage.

The post 7 Ways to Use Gamification in Marketing Campaigns first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

8 septembre 2021/par Service comm.

7 Essential Design Tips for a Killer “About Us” Page

Creating an incredible brand experience for an end-user is about more than just designing the right home page or lining up a series of great product pages.

Effective website design conveys crucial information about a company, through everything from font styles, to image choices. Nowhere is this representation of brand identity more important than on the about page.

People frequently confuse the about page with the contact page or fail to leverage it correctly simply because they don’t know what to say. However, creating an about page that speaks to an audience can be immensely powerful.

What is an About Page?

The first step in designing a great about page is understanding the purpose of the space. This isn’t just a page on a website explaining what a company does.

The about page is an introduction to a company’s story, its brand essence, and personality.

Done correctly, this page will demonstrate a crucial sense of affinity between a business and its customers. It will highlight values that resonate with a customer and make it easier for clients to trust businesses.

The Yellow Leaf hammocks company starts its about page with a video.

As you scroll through the interactive site, you discover new elements of the company’s tale, including what prompted the birth of the business to begin with and the brand’s mission.

Yellow Leaf lets its visitors know what the company is all about by using authentic images of real people to external content and bold quotes.

There are even snippets from customer case studies for social proof.

About pages are relevant because they give customers a way to build a real human connection with a business. Harvard professors say that 95% of purchasing decisions are emotional; we don’t buy things just because we need them. Instead, we look for companies that we feel connections with to solve problems.

Using an about page to convey an attitude, personality, or just what makes a business special is how designers can ensure that end-users will care more about the business.

How to Make an About Page Stand Out

So, how do you make an about page stand out?

Since every company is different, there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy for everything. However, there are a few essential steps to consider as you move through the design process.

Here are some pro tips for successfully attracting attention with the about page…

Step 1: Decide What to Include

It’s tempting to assume that a complicated about page will lead to a stronger relationship between a brand and its customers. After all, the longer the story, the more the customer knows about the company – right?

While it’s essential to include plenty of valuable information in an about page, it’s also worth remembering that today’s customers are short on time. They don’t want to spend hours scrolling through one part of a website. Instead, they want access to quick, convenient snippets of information.

The Joseph Payton about page is effective because it cuts the story down into bite-sized chunks. Each piece of information highlights valuable insights for the customer. Plus, hand-drawn images and animations make the experience feel like you’re getting to know Joe on a deeper level.

Before you begin designing, ask yourself:

How much text does the page need? How much space does there need to be for copy? How can you spread the content out in a visually engaging way?
What sections should the page include? For example, does there need to be a link to the contact us page or a contact form somewhere?
How does the page connect to the rest of the website? For example, can you link to things like case studies and reviews with quotes to tie more of the website together?

Step 2: Make the Mission Statement Clear

In a world where emotion influences buyer behavior, clients and customers want to buy from companies they believe in. It’s not enough to have the right product or price point anymore. People want to know that they have a human connection with a business.

On some about pages, it’s difficult to pinpoint the real mission of the company. It seems like you have to scroll through endless paragraphs of text to make your own assumptions about what matters to the company. However, a well-designed about page puts this crucial info front and center.

For instance, on the Apptopia about us page, the subheading tells you everything you need to know about the brand. This heading instantly tells the audience whether it’s worth reading on to find out more.

The best about us pages often include a lot more than just a single sentence of text. But it’s worth pinpointing some of the essential details from these pages and drawing extra attention to them. A larger font or a different font color could be perfect for this purpose.

Alternatively, if it’s difficult to refine the company’s mission down into one message, it might be worth creating a whole segment at the top of the page dedicated to this information. That’s what the Toms shoe company does.

Step 3: Invest in the Right Trust Elements

People aren’t always sure who they can trust these days.

There are millions of websites out there and billions of companies. Not all of them are going to appeal to every customer. Since an about page is all about making a crucial human connection between a business and its client, it’s important to implement as much trust as possible.

The good news is that there are many trust elements you can embed into an about page to make it more reputable. Star ratings taken straight from companies like Trusted Reviews and Google are a great way to show that a company is already impressing its followers.

Quotes plucked from your customers or segments of case studies that you can place throughout the About Page copy is another great way to show your authenticity.

You could even take the same approach as Aja Frost here and embed genuine data and graphs into the about page.

One particularly helpful way to make a website’s about page more trustworthy without eating up too much space is to implement trust stickers. Badges that show all the right groups and regulators approve a company are a great start.

Even showcasing the logos of companies that the business worked for before on a slideshow could be an excellent opportunity to add depth to their authority.

Step 4: Convey Brand Personality

Brand personality is reflected in the tone of voice that a company uses for its content. You can see a company’s personality in the choice of colors it has on its website. It’s in the fonts that convey a message, and the videos, images, and other unique strategies that each business uses.

Although a brand personality needs to shine through in everything the company does, it’s imperative on the about page. This is the environment where a customer is getting to know a business for the first time. As a result, the consumer should instantly recognize what kind of brand archetype they’re working with.

Take a look at the Eight Hour Day about page, for instance. The first thing you see is a picture of two people laughing. That means you instantly get a sense of friendliness.

As you scroll through the page, you’re greeted by friendly, informal copy combined with bright colors and snippets of useful information. Everything feels comfortable and reassuring.

When you reach the bottom of the page, you find a bunch of data that makes the company seem more trustworthy. There are links to its social media pages and a partial client list showcasing brands like JCPenny, Wired, and Purina.

Using the right combination of font, copy, and imagery, this About page tells you exactly what to expect before you begin interacting with the company.

Step 5: Take Visitors on a Journey Through Time

Showing customers where a business is going with things like brand mission statements and values are great. However, it’s also worth giving people an insight into where a brand has already been.

Many of today’s shoppers aren’t comfortable buying from brands that haven’t spent much time in their chosen industry. They want to see that the people they’re working with have experience, heritage, and plenty of background knowledge.

What better way to demonstrate all of these things than with a timeline of accomplishments? Here’s an example of how Marshall showcases its history by mentioning various crucial historical milestones.

A timeline of events doesn’t have to be this complex, however. If you don’t want to overwhelm visitors with a wall of text, an actual timeline that offers quick and easy insights into what the business has done over the years could be a better option.

Another option could be to have a few key statements from the company’s timeline, then link out to a separate “History” page for people who want to find out more.

Step 6: Show the Human Side

People don’t buy from businesses; they buy from other people.

An about page isn’t just a chance to show customers what a company does. It’s also an introduction to the people behind that organization. Showcasing the team members that contributed to the growth and continued development makes that organization more attractive.

Obviously, if there are hundreds or thousands of employees in a team, you might not be able to mention them all on an about page. However, the page should generally include some insights into the c-suite and significant members of staff.

A selection of company photos is a good way to introduce your team. However, you can consider other options too. For instance, to maintain their unique brand, the Tunnel Bear team designed to draw their own bear icons that represented their personalities.

The design is adorable, and it’s a wonderful way to showcase what makes the company so unique. At the same time, using this kind of illustration means you can avoid the hassle of trying to get all of your business photos to look consistent.

Step 7: Show Values with Visuals

Finally, as we’ve mentioned frequently throughout this guide, an about page is an essential place to showcase the values of your business. These are the core principles that guide you in everything that you do. They help tell customers what matters most to you and prevent you from moving in the wrong direction.

However, you’re not restricted to highlighting your values through copy and nothing else. You can also introduce customers to the things that matter most to you through visuals too. Graphics or illustrations that highlight important aspects of your business are a great way to share information without relying too heavily on text.

Videos are another brilliant option, particularly if you have a lot to say but not a lot of time to say it in. That’s what Ben & Jerrys does.

You can also find a stream of “issues” the company cares about on the website too. This means that people can get more information on things like Democracy, Racial Justice, Fair trading, and what Ben & Jerry’s is doing about all of those things.

Visual elements like this are a great way to give an about page more pizazz. Plus, they appeal to people who want to learn about your company but don’t want to spend forever reading through the text.

Create Better About Pages

An about page shouldn’t be an afterthought.

It’s a crucial part of showcasing a company’s unique style and personality. Used correctly, these pages convey crucial information about everything a business stands for.

Use the tips above to give more meaning to your about page design, and remember to pay attention to how much your traffic and conversions evolve with every update you make. A better about page could even help you to drive more conversions.

The post 7 Essential Design Tips for a Killer “About Us” Page first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

25 août 2021/par Service comm.

7 Landing Pages Comparisons To Improve Your Conversions in 2022

Landing pages are crucial for conversions. User-friendly landing pages rank higher in the search engines and generate the maximum leads.

Interestingly, user behavior changes every year, and new website design trends should be kept in mind to continue acquiring sales from your existing landing pages.

If your high-performing landing pages in 2019 have suddenly started underperforming in 2021, then it is a clear indication that your landing pages need a strategic revamp to record higher conversions.

Landing page revisions are necessary for reduced bounce rate, more visitor time on the page, and better user actions.

This article will discuss some of the top web design trends of 2021 that brands have adopted to revamp their landing page designs. You can learn from the trends and apply your own custom design intelligence to redesign your landing pages for 2022 and convert the maximum number of visitors.

Let’s begin…

Why Landing Page Design Is Crucial For Conversions

Landing pages are the first stop on your consumers’ online buying journey and the first chance to put an impression.

People on the internet are becoming less patient. It takes only about 50 milliseconds for a visitor to form an opinion about a brand and decide whether they want to stay or leave the website.

Convincing modern customers to buy products or fill up query forms on a landing page is not easy with traditional website elements.

In 2021, it is now harder to impress visitors landing on your website than in 2019. Keeping in mind the audience of 2021 and beyond, an ideal landing page should be user-friendly, engaging, innovative and should encourage users to take action.

Here are some of the top reasons why landing page design is so crucial for conversions:

You get barely 7 seconds to create a strong impression. It is a time span in which visitors roughly scan the page and make their decisions.
Publishing 40+ effective landing pages at regular intervals can generate 12X more leads.
The average conversion rate from the landing page across all industries is only 2.35%.
Using the right types of targeting and testing can boost landing page conversion rates by up to 300%.

Considering the above stats, it can be easily said that a landing page has to be impressive and quick enough to impact the visitors positively.

7 High Converting Landing Pages & Lessons You Can Learn From Each

Below are some of the best high-converting landing pages, which were just updated recently in 2021. For each page, we list a lesson you can learn to inspire your next design revision in 2021 and ahead:

Example #1 – Replace Boring Customer Info Forms With An Interactive Quiz

Landing Page: Nextiva’s Unified Communications Readiness Quiz Landing Page

Industry: Voice Over IP software

Conversion Measured By: Leads fill out a form if they are interested

Redesign focus: Improve the quantity and quality of leads

Solution: Substitute online form with an interactive quiz

In 2019 and even 2020, many businesses were practicing the trend of including a customer form on their landing pages as a call to action to initiate a quick customer action.

The customer information form was useful for businesses because it helped them generate quick leads. However, at the same time, there was no real reason pushing the customer to fill in the lead forms especially if it consisted of more than 2-3 fields.

Nextiva used its creativity to replace boring lead forms with interactive quizzes. In its 2021 page design, the company added a quiz for visitors to participate in.

The aim is to have interactive pages to keep visitors engaged and persuade them to stay on the page.

Here are the comparisons of both the designs:

2019

2021

Key Takeaways:

The 2021 landing page now has a free Unified Communications Readiness Quiz that allows business owners to fill the form interactively. Adding a quiz with the number of pages mentioned at the top tells the user how many steps are left to complete the quiz, making their waiting time easier.
The background image is replaced with communication icons to simplify the message of the kind of services they offer.
The page looks neater and appears to be easier to scan at a glance.

Example #2 – Emphasize Strong Visuals and Copy that Stresses on Product Details

Landing Page: Western Rise Homepage Variation

Industry: Ecommerce

Conversion Measured By: Apparel purchase

Major redesign focus: Improve the number of leads

Solution: Improve the copy and visuals

Western Rise, a clothing eCommerce company, realized the importance of having impressive images and detailed product information on its landing page.

The 2021 page replaced ordinary product images with strong visuals of the models wearing Western Rise clothing. Also, the product image includes extensive product details, which were missing on the older page.

Here is a clear comparison of the 2019 vs. 2021 landing pages of Western Rise:

2019

2021

Key Takeaways:

The new landing page has a powerful headline – Performance Clothing for Travel, Work, and Play. In just a couple of words, the brand tells everything about itself. ‘Performance Clothing’ is their unique selling proposition (USP) that tells the customers that their product is durable. Besides, the caption ‘Travel, Work, and Play’ tells what the product is about. Modern customers like products that fulfill a particular need, and Western Rise made it easier for the users to realize the importance of their products which fulfilled their specific needs.
The bold visuals in the new page capture contemporary shots of the models that put a strong impression on the audience. Every image is clicked mindfully to explain the style and quality of the Western Rise clothing line.
The products displayed on the new page include every minor detail and feature that often other clothing brands ignore, such as the specialty of the product, occasions to wear, and weight other than colors, fabric, fitting, etc.

Example #3 – Use Strong Social Proof To Increase Conversions

Page: Aura Save 50% Landing Page

Industry: Identity Theft Software

Conversion Measured By: Online registration or an inbound call

Major redesign focus: Improve the number of signups

Solution: Add strong social proof

It is a known fact that social proof on sales pages is essential for increased conversions. But in 2021, the importance of social proof has gone too far.

Aura is an identity theft protection service that aims to build trust with its prospective customers when they first browse their landing page. Take a look at how Aura displays customer reviews above the fold to catch user’s attention.

Unlike others, Aura combined the rating stars and the review to prove customer satisfaction and emphasize their expertise in the field.

BONUS:

Another example of using strong social proof is the Exploding Topics newsletter landing page.

Exploding Topics is a newsletter with a pro subscription for content marketers and anyone interested in trending topics about any topic. It’s an excellent example that uses a lot of social proof on landing pages that give something away for free, like a weekly newsletter or an eBook.

If you could notice, the latest landing page below has multiple forms of social proof on a single page. First, they feature a list of brands that trust Exploding Topics. Secondly, they quote Wired Magazine founder Kevin Kelly’s feedback, followed by the logos and tweets praising the newsletter.

Key Takeaways:

Exploding Topics uses several different types of social proof that appeal to different demographics.
Their “trusted by” logos of world-renowned companies stand out to potential B2B subscribers.
Kevin Kelly’s quote is catching the attention of tech-savvy readers.
Despite packing the page with social proof, the opt-in form is still well above the fold. It is the best landing page practice that applies to nearly all pages.
The landing page uses actually embedded tweets (not screenshots), which help demonstrate that the tweets are legit.

While Exploding Topics have smartly used social proof on its page, the ideas of leveraging social proof are not limited to this only.

Example #4 – Focus On Visually Appealing Above the Fold Content

Landing Page: Perfect Keto Homepage Variation

Industry: Supplements

Conversion Measured By: Online purchase

Major redesign focus: Improve the number of purchases

Solution: Improve Above The Fold Content

Above the fold content greatly impacts customer’s decision-making. Perfect Keto lacked that appeal on its 2019 landing page design.

Hence, the 2021 design was revamped with better visuals and more professional looks.

The 2021 page received major changes in above-the-fold content, such as the top menu bar with the brand name not losing the user’s attention anymore and an additional menu bar giving a quick overview of what the brand offers.

The older page did have many social proofs, but those were limited to customers only. The 2021 design also highlighted the publications where the brand appeared, which proved exceptional in building customer trust.

Take a look at the two landing pages of Perfect Keto in 2019 and 2021:

2019

2021

Key Takeaways:

The 2021 landing page heading is more compelling because it clearly conveys what their product is all about. The older page was missing the actual purpose of the product.
An additional section on the new page to educate customers about the Keto diet and how to start it helps visitors understand the product even better.
The inclusion of a product image above the fold attracts user attention and makes the product trustworthy. People now know what they will be buying right at first sight of the page.
The new page proudly displays the products featured in the publications, such as Women’s Health, Healthline, Reader’s Digest, and Popsugar, which again helped customers trust the brand.
The page also features a video of the Perfect Keto founder that is brilliantly working in gaining visitor’s attention and faith.

Example #5 – Make The Call to Action More Compelling

Landing Page: Zendesk HelpDesk Softwage Landing Page

Industry: SaaS

Conversion Measured By: Online registration

Major redesign focus: Improve the number of registrations through the website

Solution: Make The CTA More Compelling

Zendesk did a clever job by replacing the sign-up form with a single button. On the older page, it was unclear to the user if the company has a trial option for free unless they move to linked pages. Such confusions often resulted in traffic bounces.

Adding the start free trial button on the 2021 page makes it easier for the users to understand that the product comes with a free trial. At the time, it helps the user take quick action.

Similarly, the ‘Get started’ button at the top was replaced with ‘Free trial’ with the same intention.

Moreover, chat support was added to guide users at any stage of the buyer journey. Live chats are vital to help visitors better understand the product and move a step ahead in the customer journey.

Take a look at below two images:

2019

2021

Key Takeaways

The CTA buttons have more actionable text and look more prominent.
The color choice for the button is in contrast with the background but matches the page theme.
The older page missed sales support, which is included in the new page for a better customer experience.
The tabs in the menu bar were reduced to four to make the page simple to use for users.

Example #6 – Use Contrast To Highlight Specific Copy On The Page

Landing Page: GetResponse Website Building Landing Page

Industry: Online Software

Conversion Measured By: Online signup

Major redesign focus: Improve the number of signups

Solution: Use contrast around important copy on the page

GetResponse focuses on attracting visitors’ attention towards the offerings from their business. Starting from above the fold section, the landing page highlights the texts that are important and need the visitors’ attention.

The infographic on the landing page is the next thing that promises to grab user attention while beautifully describing how this website builder works and is useful to the user.

Key Takeaways:

The text highlighted on the landing page draws the user’s attention towards what the business has to offer or unique selling points.
The infographics briefly explain the working of the tool in an easy-to-understand manner.
The Yellow color is used prominently on the landing page to attract user attention and persuades users to try the tool by listing its advantages.

Summary

Landing pages provide the first opportunity to create an impression in the minds of the consumers. A well-structured and mindfully designed page sets the right tone for your brand message and encourages users to choose your business.

However, the strategy for landing pages needs innovations from time to time for better results. The examples and tips shared above prove how landing pages in 2019 have seen significant improvement in 2021.

In the coming year, use these ideas to create landing pages that influence customer decisions and encourage them to take quick actions.

The post 7 Landing Pages Comparisons To Improve Your Conversions in 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

20 août 2021/par Service comm.

How to Work for Free Without Wrecking Your Career

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.

16 août 2021/par Service comm.

Designing UI for the Voice Era

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

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

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

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

Designing for the Age of Voice

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

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

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

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

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

1. Decide How to Experiment with Voice

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

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

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

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

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

2. Examine the Anatomy of Voice Commands

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

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

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

3. Learn How to Prototype with Dialog Flows

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

Dialog flows will outline:

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

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

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

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

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

A Few Tips for Voice UI Design

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

As you’re designing, remember to:

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

Are You Ready for the Voice UI Revolution?

Voice-based user interfaces are here to stay.

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

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

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

Featured image via Unsplash.

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

13 août 2021/par Service comm.

Making Your Mark: 6 Tips for Infusing Brand Essence into Your Website

What makes a company special? There are hundreds of organizations out there selling fast food, but only one McDonalds. You’ve probably stumbled across dozens of technology companies too, but none of them inspire the same kind of loyalty and commitment as Apple. So why do people fall in love with some companies more than others?

Most of the time, it comes down to one thing: brand essence. Your brand essence, or brand identity, represents all of the unique components of your business that separate it from the competition. It’s not just about your logo or the brand colors you choose for your website. Your brand essence entails all of the visual assets you use and those less tangible concepts like brand values and personality.

When your customers decide which companies to buy from, they’re not just looking for another dime-a-dozen venture with the cheapest products. Instead, your audience wants to buy from a business that they feel connected with. That’s where your brand comes in.

Infusing brand essence into your website helps give your digital presence that extra touch that differentiates you from other similar companies.

So, how do you get started?

What is Brand Essence?

Your brand essence is a collection of core characteristics responsible for defining your brand. More than just a single asset, your essence encompasses everything from your unique tone of voice, from your brand image, your message, and even what you stand for.

More than just a single asset, your essence encompasses everything

When you’re trying to boost your chances of sales, a brand essence helps build a kind of affinity with your customers. Your clients see aspects of your character that they can relate to, such as a modern and playful image or a commitment to sustainable practices. It’s that affinity that convinces your customer to choose your company instead of your competition time after time.

Your website is one of the first places that your customer will visit when looking for answers. They might happen across your site when searching for a key phrase on Google or stumble onto it from social media. When they arrive on your product or home page, everything there should help them make an immediate emotional connection.

The only problem?

It’s challenging to portray a unique brand identity through a standard website template. If your site looks the same as a dozen other online stores, how can you convince your customers that you’re better?

Why Your Website Needs Brand Essence

First impressions are a big deal.

In a perfect world, your visitors would land on your website and instantly fall in love with what they find there. So everything from the unique design of your homepage to the pictures on your product pages should delight and impress your audience.

Unfortunately, if just one element is wrong, then you could also make the wrong impression entirely on your customers too. Adding elements of brand essence to your site will:

Build trust with your audience: Your brand should be a consistent component of everything your business does, from selling products to interacting with customers. When your consumers land on your website, everything from your logo to your chosen colors should remind them of who you are and what you stand for. This consistency will lead to better credibility for your business.
Make you stand out: How many other companies just like yours are on the internet today? Your brand essence helps to differentiate you as special by showing what’s truly unique about you. It’s a chance to remind your audience of your values and make them forget all about your competitors.
Create an emotional connection: Brand essence that shows off your unique values, mission, and personality will help create an emotional link with your audience. Remember, people fall in love with the human characteristics behind your brand!

Easy Ways to Add Brand Essence to your Website

Since there are so many elements that add up to a strong brand essence, there are also a variety of ways you can add your brand to your website. Whether it’s using specific colors to elicit an emotional response from your fans or adding your unique tone of voice into content, there’s no shortage of ways to show off what makes you special.

1. Use Your Brand Colors Carefully

Brand colors are an important part of your brand essence. Walk into Target, and the bright shades of red will instantly energize you. Likewise, when you see a McDonalds, that golden arch logo might instantly remind you of joy and nourishment.

Color psychology plays a significant role in every brand asset you create, from the packaging you choose for your products to the shades in your logo. With that in mind, you should be using your colors effectively on your website too. Stick with the same selection of shades in every digital environment online.

For instance, the Knotty Knickers company uses different shades of pink and white to convey feelings of femininity and comfort. Not only is the website packed with this color, but the company also follows through with similar shades on its social media pages too.

Everything from the highlights on the Knotty Kickers Insta to the decorations in their images feature the soft tones of pink that make the company recognizable.

Remember, consistent use of color is psychologically proven to help improve recognition by up to 80%. So let your colors shine through.

2. Know Your Type

Your colors are just one component of your brand essence.

Fonts and typography are other components that your customers use to recognize and understand your business. There are many different styles of font, and new ones appear all the time. However, your company should have a specific selection of fonts that it uses everywhere.

If you have a typeface logo, then you might have one specific kind of font for this, like Original Stitch’s logo here:

On top of that, you may also use one font for the “heading” text on your website and something slightly different for the body text. Your heading and body text need to be extremely clear and easy to read on any device if you want to appeal to your target audience.

However, there’s more to getting your fonts right than choosing something legible. The fonts you pick need to say something about your company and what it stands for. For example, the modern sans-serif font of Original Stitch’s website conveys a sense of forward-thinking cleanliness and style.

The fonts feel trendy and informal, perfect for a luxury fashion company. Alternatively, a serif font like Garamond might look more formal and professional. So what do you want your customers to think and feel when they see your typography?

3. Know Your Images

Stock images look out-of-touch, cliché, and fake. If you cover your website in images like that, then you’re not going to earn the respect of your customers. Instead, it’s up to you to ensure that every graphic on your website conveys the sentiment and personality of your brand.

Bringing your brand essence into your website design means thinking about how you can convey your values in every element of that site. From the photos of your team that show the real humans behind your products and services to the pictures that you use on your product pages, choose your graphics wisely. If you have dedicated brand colors, you can even include these in your photos.

Of course, the most valuable graphic on your website should always be your logo. This is the thing that you need to include on all of your website pages to ensure that your audience knows who they’re shopping with. So ensure that no matter how much visual content you have on your page, your logo still stands out.

Firebox places its logo at the top of the page in the middle of your line of sight, no matter where you go on the website. This ensures that the logo is the thing that instantly grabs attention and reminds consumers of where they are.

Remember to ensure that each of the images you do include in your website is surrounded by plenty of white space so that your customers can see them properly too.

4. Use the Right Tone of Voice

It’s easy to get stuck focusing on things like logos and colors when you’re trying to make your brand essence shine through in your website. However, one of the most common things that your customer will recognize you by is your tone of voice.

Your brand tone of voice is what gives the content you share online personality and depth. It can come through in the kind of words you use, including slang and colloquialisms. In addition, you can add humor to your voice (if it’s appropriate) and even include emojis if that makes sense for your brand.

With formal words, you can make sure that you come across as reliable, dependable, and sophisticated. With informal words, you’re more likely to convince your audience that you’re friendly and relatable. Sticking with the Firebox example, look at how the company writes its product descriptions.

Everything from the length of the sentences to the humor in the tone of voice helps to convey something unique about the brand.

Like all of the elements that bring your brand essence into your website, your tone of voice must remain consistent wherever your customers see it. Make sure that your customer service agents know how to use your voice in chat with customers and that you include that personality on social media too.

5. Focus on Your Message

The tone of voice and personality that you showcase in your website and content is crucial to driving success for your business. However, under all of that, the most important thing to do is ensure you’re sending the right message. In other words, what do you want your customers to think and feel when they land on your website?

If your whole message is that you can make great skincare easy to obtain without asking people to compromise on animal safety, this should be the first thing that comes across when someone arrives on your homepage. That’s why Lush combines clean, simple web pages with credibility-boosting badges that tell customers everything they need to know instantly.

Ensuring that your message can come across correctly means learning how to use all the different brand assets you rely on consistently and effectively. Everything from the colors on your website to how you place trust badges along the bottom of every page makes a difference to how significant and believable your message is.

Notably, when you know what your core message is, it’s important to repeat it. That means that you don’t just talk about what your ideals and values are on your homepage. You also include references to your message on every product page and the “About” page too. Lush has an entire “ethical charter” on its website, where you can learn more about its activities.

Having a similar component included within your web design could be an excellent way to confirm what your most crucial considerations are for your customers.

6. Never Copy the Competition

Exploring other website designs and ideas created by your competitors is one of the easiest ways to get inspiration. Competitive analysis gives you an insight into the trends and design strategies that are more likely to work for your target audience. It’s also an opportunity for you to learn from your competitors’ wrongs and what they’re doing right.

However, it would be best if you never allowed your initial research and exploration to go too far. In other words, when you see something great that your competitor is doing, don’t just copy and paste it onto your own website. This is more likely to remind your customers of the other company and send them to that brand than it is to improve your reputation.

Instead, focus on making your website unique to you. If you’re having trouble with this, then start by looking at your About page. How would you describe your background and your mission as a business to someone who has never heard of you before? What makes your company different from all of the other organizations out there?

Take the unique features that you rave about on your About page and the personality you try to convey through your employees and bring it into the rest of your website design. The whole point of bringing brand essence into your web design strategy is that it helps to differentiate you from the other companies out there.

It’s a good idea to protect any assets that other people might try to steal from you too. Copyrighting your logo, your name, and other essential components of your brand will stop people in your industry from treading on your toes too much.

Make the Most of Your Brand Essence

Your website is one of the most valuable tools that you’ll have as a brand. It’s an opportunity for you to share your products and services with the world, capture the attention of your target audience, and potentially make sales too. However, it’s important not to forget that your website is also a chance for you to demonstrate what your brand is truly all about.

Through your brand essence, you can share the unique values and messages that make your company special. But, more importantly, you can use those components to build a deeper relationship with your audience – the kind of connection that leads to dedicated repeat customers and brand loyalty. People connect with other people – after all, not just faceless corporations.

Once you’ve identified your brand essence, the next step is to make sure that you know how to connect with your customers consistently. Every aspect of your website, application, social media pages, and anything else you make for your business sends the same message.

The post Making Your Mark: 6 Tips for Infusing Brand Essence into Your Website first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

22 juillet 2021/par Service comm.

Popular Design News of the Week: July 5 2021 – July 11, 2021

Every day 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!

The 17 Best WordPress Alternatives (Open-Source & Hosted)

Essential CSS Concepts Every Designer Should Know

Kable – The Better Way to Build Subscription Partnerships

35+ CSS Glow Effects (Free Code + Demos)

3 Essential Design Trends, July 2021

The Anatomy of a Web Page: 14 Basic Elements

How To Build Better UI Designs With layout Grids

User Inyerface – A Worst-Practice UI Experiment

10 CSS & JavaScript Snippets for Creating the Parallax Scrolling Effect

5 Ways To Achieve A Human-Centered Web Design

Mobile loading speeds became a Google ranking signal in July 2018.

11 juillet 2021/par Service comm.

17 Things You Can Do To Improve Your SEO Ranking In 2021

Actualités, Actualités, SEO

There’s no shortcut to success when it comes to Google search results. That is unless you count pay-per-click advertising.

While pay-to-play will shoot your site to the top of the SERP immediately, it’s not a sustainable strategy for maintaining your position there. So, you’re going to have to get serious about SEO.

This guide will show you what to do to improve your SEO ranking and start seeing results this year:

Use Google Analytics to track metrics
Get an SSL certificate
Improve mobile page speed
Design a mobile-first UI
Make your site accessible
Optimize your images
Create great content
Structure your content for scannability and readability
Create click-worthy title tags and meta descriptions
Choose one focus keyword per page
Improve your internal link strategy
Use only trustworthy external links
Get your site listed as a featured snippet
Get high-quality backlinks
Create a Google My Business page
Refresh Your Content
Regularly monitor Google Search Console

How to Increase Your Website’s SEO Ranking

If you can improve your SEO ranking — and get your pages closer to, if not on the highly coveted top SERP — you will:

Boost your site’s overall visibility as its authority in search grows;
Bring high-quality traffic to your pages;
Drive-up your conversion rate.

That said, search engine optimization is most effective when it’s an ongoing strategy as opposed to something you set up and forget about. So, some of the suggestions below will only need to be implemented once, while others you’ll have to return to every six months or so to make sure your site is on track.

Let’s get started.

1. Use Google Analytics to Track Metrics

If you haven’t yet begun tracking your website’s activity with Google Analytics, it’s the very first thing you need to do.

While Google Analytics alone can’t tell you how well or poorly your website ranks, there’s valuable data in there about what happens to the traffic that arrives from Google. Or any search engine your visitors use.

You can find this information under Acquisition > Source/Medium:

What you want to see here is that (1) you’re getting lots of visitors from organic search results (as opposed to paid) and (2) that they’re highly engaged. So, that means:

Longer times on site;
Multiple pages visited;
Lower bounce rates.

And if you configure Google Analytics to track different conversions on your site, you can see how well those organic visits convert.

Obviously, there’s a lot more you can track here. But you must understand if your SEO efforts are working in the first place, and that’s where you’ll get your confirmation.

2. Get an SSL Certificate

HTTPS has long been one of Google’s SEO ranking factors. Yet, of the two billion-plus websites that are online today, BuiltWith data shows that only 155 million have an SSL certificate installed:

Security and privacy are major concerns for consumers. So if you want to increase their confidence in your website, installing an SSL certificate is an easy thing to do. And it’ll put you in Google’s good graces, too.

If you don’t have one already, get one for free from Zero SSL.

3. Improve Mobile Page Speeds

It was something we saw coming ever since smartphones overtook the desktop as the primary device people used to access the Internet. Once it became a ranking factor, though, mobile page speed was something we could no longer treat as a “nice to have.” It became a must.

And with Google’s most recent Core Web Vitals algorithm update, there’s no ignoring how big of a role your site’s mobile loading speeds (i.e., performance) play in ranking it.

To ensure that your site meets Google’s expectations for speed, bookmark the Core Web Vitals tool. It’ll tell you how your site performs across all four of the major ranking categories.

You’ll find your speed-related issues at the bottom of the page, along with resources to help you resolve them.

Most of those tips will have to do with optimizing your code. However, there are other things you can do to make your site load quickly:

Use well-coded themes and plugins;
Remove unused themes, plugins, media, pages, comments, backups, and so on from your database and server;
Install a caching plugin that’ll minify, compress, and otherwise make your site lightweight and fast.

It’s also not a bad idea to review your web hosting plan. You might not have the right amount of server power or resources to keep up with your existing activity.

4. Design a Mobile-First UI

On a related note, a mobile-first design can also improve your site’s loading speeds. Rebekah Carter wrote a really helpful guide on how to do this last year.

In addition to speeding things up — since you won’t be trying to jam a bunch of desktop-first design and content into a smartphone screen — it’s going to help your site rank better.

Just be careful when you do this. A mobile-first design doesn’t mean creating a scaled-back version of the larger site for smartphone users.

In fact, Google explicitly tells us not to do that and why:

“If it’s your intention that the mobile page should have less content than the desktop page, you can expect some traffic loss when your site is enabled mobile-first indexing, since Google can’t get as much information from your page as before.”

And if your response is that the content on desktop-only doesn’t matter, then it really shouldn’t be there. Don’t waste your visitors’ time with useless or repetitive content, as it’ll only give them more reason to abandon your site.

5. Make Your Site Accessible

Accessibility has come to the forefront of the SEO discussion thanks to Core Web Vitals.

Now, running your site through the tool will tell you if there are any inaccessibility issues that Google will ping you for. But that doesn’t make your site completely accessible.

Considering the rise in website accessibility-related lawsuits, you’ll want to take this seriously.

Because a bad experience due to inaccessibility won’t just cost you visitors and a lower search ranking, it’ll cost you a lot of money, too.

Here are some things you can do to ensure that your site and all its content is accessible.

6. Optimize Your Images

Technically, image optimization falls under the page speed tip. However, that’s not the only way you should be optimizing your images, which is why I wanted to address this separately.

According to HTTP Archive, the average weight of a mobile web page these days is 1917.5 KB. Images take up a sizable chunk of that weight:

Because of this, bloated image sizes are often to blame for slow pages.

You can do several things to optimize your images for speed, like using lightweight formats, resizing them, and compressing them. You’ll find 6 other image optimization tips here.

While those tips will help you speed up your site and, consequently, improve your SEO ranking, there’s something else you need to do:

Add alt text to your most important images.

One reason to do this is to improve accessibility. Another is so your web page can rank in both the regular Google search results and image results as this search for “WordPress by the numbers” does:

If you can write alt text that perfectly describes your graphic and matches the image searchers’ intent, you can create another ranking opportunity for your page.

7. Create Great Content

There are many technical ranking factors you have to pay attention to if you want to create a good experience for your visitors and rank well as a result. However, none of that will matter if your content sucks.

So, how do you make great content? It really depends.

Think about the difference between a page describing your web design services and a product page for a blender.

Your web design services page would need to:

Explain why hiring a web designer is a must;
What your design services entail;
What they can expect in terms of results;
Include some proof in the form of testimonials or portfolio samples;
Have information on next steps or how to get in touch.

That would be a comprehensive and useful page. If business owners searched for “hire a web designer near me” or “should I hire a web designer?”, that page would sufficiently answer their query.

A product page, however, would need to:

Provide a brief summary of the blender;
Show photos of the blender, different angles of it, as well as different variations of the product;
Display the price;
Allow customers to Add to Cart or Save for later;
Include technical specs of the blender;
Recommend related products;
Display sortable customer testimonials and ratings.

The last thing a shopper would want is to be directed to a product page that reads like one of your services pages.

So, great content not only needs to be well-written and error-free, but it needs to match the searcher’s intent and expectations. If you can do that, your visitors will stay as long as they need to read through everything, which will help strengthen the page’s ranking.

8. Structure Your Content for Scannability and Readability

Including necessary details and in the right format is an important part of making a page’s content valuable to the visitor. The structure is going to help, too.

For starters, you want to make sure every page is human-readable. So, that involves:

Shorter sentences and paragraphs;
Linkable table of contents for longer pages;
Header tags every few hundred words;
Descriptive and supportive imagery throughout;
Text callouts like blockquotes and bolded phrases.

By making a page less intimidating to read and easier to scan for a quick summary of what it is, you’ll find that more visitors are willing to read it and follow your calls to action.

You can use a tool like Hemingway to improve your page’s readability. Quickly pop the text of each page into the editor and follow the recommended suggestions:

You’re also going to have to think about how well Google’s indexing bots can read your page. They’re smart enough to pick up on cues but not smart enough to sit down and read your article on the benefits of Vitamin D or how to install a new showerhead.

So, you’ll need to use HTML meta tags as well as hierarchical header tags to tell the bots what the page is about.

If you’re building a WordPress site, you can use the Yoast SEO plugin to analyze how scannable and readable each page of your site is (among other things):

9. Create Click-Worthy Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

To get eyeballs on your really great content, the brief preview users see of it in search results needs to be able to lure them in. Get more clicks to your site from search, and Google will take notice.

But they can’t just be superficial clicks. If Google notices that your page is getting a ton of traffic that almost immediately drops off once they see the content on the page, your page will not fare well in search results.

So, your goal is to stay away from clickbait-y title tags and meta descriptions and make them click-worthy.

The first thing to focus on is the length. Google only gives you a certain amount of space to make your pitch.

There are many tools you can use for this, but I prefer Mangools’s SERP Simulator:

It allows you to play around with your URL, title tag, and meta description and to watch in real-time as it fits the allotted space. You can also compare it to the pages that currently rank for the keyword you’re going after, which can be a really useful reference point. After all, if those sites have made it to the first SERP, then they’re doing something right.

Another thing to think about when writing click-worthy titles is how engaging they are.

The tool I recommend for this is CoSchedule’s Headline Studio:

I don’t find this useful so much for basic web pages. You don’t need to get creative with something like your About or Contact pages. But for content marketing? If you want to beat out competing articles for attention in Google, this tool will be very useful.

10. Choose One Focus Keyword Per Page

It’s not as though you can add a keyword tag to your page, and Google will automatically rank your site for it. That’s not what keyword optimization is.

Instead, what you do is select one unique keyword per page and write the content around it. So, it’s really more about creating a clear focus for yourself and then comprehensively unpacking the subject matter on the page.

Keep in mind, though, that if you want to improve your chances of ranking for the keyword, it needs to be relevant to your brand, useful for your audience, and your site needs to actually be able to compete for it.

You can use the Google Keyword Planner to find keywords that fit those criteria:

Ultimately, you should choose a keyword that:

Has a decent amount of monthly searches — over 1,000 is what I aim for;
Have “Low” to “Medium” amount of competition, but the lower, the better;
Matches the user intent. So take that keyword, put it into Google and see what you find. Then, look at the sites on that first page of search results. Do they match what your own page will address? If so, then you’ve found a keyword that aligns with your users’ search intent.

Now, if you’re writing great content that addresses your visitors’ questions and concerns, then optimizing for your focus keywords will happen naturally. The same goes for related keywords you might want to target. As you write the content for each page, the keywords will organically appear.

But remember how I said Google’s indexing bots need certain HTML and header tags to “read” the content on the page? This means you’ll need to include the focus keyword in some of those areas, so there is no question about what the page is about.

Here’s where your focus keyword should show up:

Title tag (H1);
Meta description;
Slug (hyperlink);
Within the intro;
The first H2 header tag;
Alt text for the most important image on the page;
Within the conclusion.

It should also appear throughout the page, along with variations of the keyword that people might search for.

You can use the Yoast SEO plugin to analyze this as well.

11. Improve Your Internal Link Strategy

Okay, so here’s where we start to get into SEO strategies that Google might not directly care about, but that can still drastically improve how well your site ranks.

Internal links, in particular, are valuable because they create an interconnected structure for your site. Here’s a basic example of why that’s important:

Let’s say these are the pages on your website. Each of them can be accessed from the home page and main navigation. This structure tells us that each page is related to the overall message and mission of the company, but they are not related to one another. And that doesn’t make sense, right?

When you’re educating visitors on your Web Design services, it’s naturally going to come up that you also happen to specialize in WordPress and eCommerce design. So, those internal links should appear on your Web Design page. And vice versa.

In addition, your Portfolio and Contact Us pages are likely going to be the most common CTAs on the site. Your prospective clients shouldn’t be forced to backtrack to the homepage or scroll up to the navigation to take action. By including these internal links or buttons within the content of the services pages, you’re giving them a quick and direct line to the next steps.

The more intuitive you make the user journey, the easier it will be for them to convert.

This is one reason why websites with a strong internal linking structure perform well in search results. Another reason is that internal links help Google’s bots find all of the content on your site and better understand how they relate to one another.

12. Use Only Trustworthy External Links

Link juice is one of the reasons why business owners are obsessed with getting backlinks. We’ll get to that shortly.

But it’s also something that comes into play when choosing external links to include on your site.

Link juice is the idea that one site can pass its authority to another through a dofollow link. So, by linking out to authoritative and trustworthy sources, your site may raise its own clout with the search engines because of that connection.

However, it works both ways. If you create external links to websites with misinformation that pose a security threat to visitors or are otherwise untrustworthy, that bad reputation can do your website harm.

So, make sure that every external link you use is necessary and reliable. If not, get rid of it.

13. Get Your Site Listed As a Featured Snippet

I said earlier in this post that pay-per-click advertising is the only way to shortcut the SEO process and get on the first page of Google. That’s not entirely true.

We’ve already seen how optimizing your images for Google Images search can shoot your site to the top of results. Another way to get ahead is by optimizing your page using structured data to land a spot as a featured snippet.

Like this page from Bankrate that answers the question “how do you get a loan”:

Remember that structured data alone won’t instantly move your web page into the featured snippet space. The content needs to be the best it can be, and the structured data needs to be well written.

Schema.org was created to help you pick the right category and write the structured data for it:

Use this to write up the relevant microdata for the pages to make the most sense to do so. For instance, an About page probably wouldn’t benefit from having structured data attached to it. However, a lengthy blog post that explains a step-by-step process would.

There are WordPress plugins (Yoast is one of them) that will help you insert this code into your pages if you prefer.

14. Get High-Quality Backlinks

Backlinks pointing to your website are a huge indicator to Google that your site is share-worthy and authoritative.

However, like everything else in SEO, you can’t cheat your way into a bunch of backlinks. They need to come from authoritative sources, and they need to be relevant. That’s why paying or bartering for backlinks isn’t usually effective. If your web page’s backlink doesn’t organically fit within the content on their site, visitors aren’t going to click on it.

There are lots of ways to go about building up a repository of backlinks that do generate authority for you and improve your SEO ranking in the process:

Get active on social media and become an authority there: The rule is generally that 80% of your posts need to be non-promotional. By sharing content from all kinds of sources that are relevant to your audience, you’re going to get more meaningful engagement. And this’ll eventually put the spotlight on your own content and get people to share it on social media, too.

This is something that Google will look at when ranking your site: What sort of social signals are coming from your brand?

Get featured as an expert: You don’t need to become an influencer for people to view you as an expert in your field. It’s all about your reputation.

By leveraging your reputation to get speaking gigs, you’ll grow your authority even more. Just make sure they’re relevant to what you do. So, look for podcasts, webinars, and conferences in your field that are looking for experts.

Become a guest blogger: If public speaking isn’t your forte, that’s okay. Turn your attention instead to lining up guest blogging gigs.

By writing high-quality content for authoritative websites (whether you get paid or not), you’ll bring more attention to your own brand. And Google will pass that authority onto your site.

15. Create a Google My Business Page

Any business can create a Google My Business page. There are a number of SEO-related benefits to doing this.

The first is that local businesses can literally put themselves on the map with Google My Business. Here’s what a Google search for “restaurants near me” looks like:

Even if your site doesn’t appear on the first SERP, the map that sits at the top of search results can give you a front seat anyway.

Another reason to create a My Business page is that you get to control your knowledge graph sidebar, like Ford’s Garage does here:

By including high-quality graphics, pertinent details about the business, and collecting positive customer reviews, this knowledge graph could do your brand’s reputation a lot of good in the eyes of Google and your prospects.

16. Refresh Your Content

This is useful for all of the content on your site, even your most high-performing pages.

If your site is starting to gain traction, take a close look at your Google Analytics data. You may find a few pages that no one seems to be paying attention to or, worse, that they always seem to bounce from.

In Google Analytics, go to Behavior > Site Content to figure out which pages are underperforming.

Then, ask yourself:

Is this page even a necessary part of the user journey? If not, you can probably scrap it and have one less distraction on your site.
If this page is necessary, what do you need to do to make it more valuable and relevant to your audience?

With the most popular pages on your site, it’s not unreasonable to expect that at least part of what you originally wrote will go stale or become irrelevant within a year or two. So, it’s a good idea to refresh these as well.

To do that, it’s simple. Do a search in Google for your focus keyword. Read through the top five results and see what sort of information your post is missing. Then update it accordingly.

Anything outdated or irrelevant should also be stripped out.

17. Regularly Monitor Google Search Console

Last but not least, you should keep your eyes on Google Search Console.

There’s a lot of valuable information in here that will tell you why your site might not be ranking as well as it could. You’ll find issues related to:

Indexing
Mobile usability
Security
Core Web Vitals

You’ll also find data on how well your site is ranking in general. You’ll find this under the Performance tab:

Use this to identify:

Which keywords you’re ranking for and are driving traffic to your site;
Which keywords you’re getting the most impressions from but not getting clicks from;
Which keywords you’re getting the most clicks from but not a lot of impressions;
Which keywords you rank low for and could stand to improve upon.

You can learn a lot about how strong your SEO strategy is. Just use the Clicks, Impressions, and Position tabs to sort your data so you can better understand what’s going on.

Then, prioritize fixing the pages that can and should be bringing your site highly qualified traffic but aren’t.

Wrap-Up

If you’re wondering how long it’ll take before you see an improvement in your SEO ranking, it depends. If your domain’s current authority is low, it can realistically take about six months to see major changes. That said, if you implement all of the suggestions above, you can certainly expedite that.

Just remember that there are no real shortcuts in SEO. You need to have an authoritative and trustworthy website and brand before anything else. So, take the time to build your credibility online so that these SEO tactics can really work.

The post 17 Things You Can Do To Improve Your SEO Ranking In 2021 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.