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Key Elements in Improving UX

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Designing websites for SEO and designing websites for user experience are often two very different processes. At times the priorities are at odds with each other – what is good for SEO may be difficult for the user, and vice versa. But designing a website with the needs of your visitors in mind can drastically increase your conversions.

While the population as a whole is gradually becoming more comfortable with navigating less-than-friendly websites, some groups – such as senior citizens and the visually-impaired – still struggle with accessing information from difficult or disorienting websites. Not factoring in the needs of these groups can result in a huge loss in sales. One study from the Nielsen Norman Group found that sales could increase by 35% when a website was designed to create the same experience for senior citizens as for other demographics.

Three key elements – appearance, navigation, and action – are crucial in considering how to create the best user experience on your site. Let’s take a look at some real-life examples of websites that incorporate some of the important elements of an accessible user experience.

Appearance

Readable Fonts

Using a font that is easy to read is the only way to guarantee that people gather the information you are presenting on your site. It’s also an important element of making sure your website is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which has guidelines for creating accessible web pages.

Default font size is generally 12-pixels, and using responsive web design can help maintain your layout if a user magnifies text through their browser or accesses your site from a tablet or mobile device. Some sites incorporate a magnifier right on the webpage, which is much more convenient than altering browser settings. Even if your font is a perfect size, it must also be a readable style.

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Further reading: Use Legible Font Sizes from Varvy, Choosing Web Fonts from Vieo Design

Small Chunks of Text

Website visitors are often looking for information quickly, so make it easy to skim by breaking up your content into easily absorbed sections. Separate the sections using bolded headings and subheadings, and incorporate images throughout your pages. This makes your information seem more accessible and less intimidating and makes it more likely that your visitors will stay on your site.

Further reading: Ways to Get More People to Read Your Content from Copyblogger

Vibrant and High-Contrast Colors

First impressions are always influential, but perhaps never more so than on a website. Color is the biggest factor in website first impressions, with one study finding that up to 90% of initial website judgments can be based exclusively on color choice.

Catch visitors’ attention and make navigation easier by using vibrant and/or high contrast colors throughout your site. Bold and vibrant colors are simply attractive, like this example from El Burro.

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Further reading: Vibrant Colors in Web Design from UX Planet

Navigation

Simple Navigation Bar

When visitors arrive at your site, they want to easily know where to go and how to find the information they are looking for. They also need it to be easy to jump between sections of your site. Few things are worse than coming across a website that seems impossible to navigate. Failing to optimize your site for easy navigation can have disastrous consequences that will plague your business. The navigation bar at the top of the page is the most important element of navigation: it is your opportunity to direct your visitors to the most important parts of your site. For the most user-friendly experience, lock the navigation bar, so it is always visible, no matter how far a visitor scrolls down.

TransUnion’s ShareAble for Hires does just that. Their navigation bar remains at the top of every page as an easy reference, and it has only five categories for users to choose from. These categories have specific labels that anticipate what the user might be looking for.

 

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Minimal Moving Parts

For the best user experience, visitors should be able to focus on the task at hand without getting distracted by pop-ups, chat bars, or other elements that intervene with the user’s view. Too many of these can cause a visitor to leave your website out of frustration, especially if they are persistent and have no clear exit. While these elements can be used to great effect for capturing leads, they should be used with caution and always with the user’s experience and intentions in mind.

Further reading: 10 Guidelines for Navigation from Usability Geek

Action

Guide your visitors to precisely the action you want them to take with specific and highly visible call-to-action buttons. Renovate America does this by explaining briefly about the possible tasks, and then having clearly marked buttons like ‘Find a Contractor’ and ‘Get Financing.’

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It’s important to not overuse call-to-action buttons. Place them at strategic points throughout your site, so they show up when it makes sense for a user to click it. For example, a ‘start here’ button makes sense at the top of the homepage, but a ‘try now’ button might have more success farther down on the page after the visitor has had a chance to learn about your product or services. Of course, these buttons need to follow the guidelines for color and font outlined above.

Further reading: How to Create the Perfect Call-to-Action from Optinmonster

Making it easy for your visitors to navigate your site is essential to increasing conversions. Improving your user experience will have the greatest effect on older demographics, but even younger and more tech-savvy consumers will leave your site if it is difficult to use or unattractive to them. Make your website work best for your visitors by considering all of these factors and how they can work together to create the best user experience for your customers.

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Cat Nilsson is a Managing Editor at 365 Business Tips. She is an expert in content marketing and non-branded growth. She enjoys writing on a plethora of topics, from SEO to social media.

5 Tips to Help Boost your Website’s SEO Ranking

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If you are a newbie, you might not be familiar with the word SEO, but there is no need to worry, we will take you point by point. Let’s first get familiar with SEO. It stands for Search engine optimization. These are some methodologies and techniques that can bring your blog to the top of the ranking.

You will get more traffic to your website when a person searches Google if your work appears on the first page. Let’s look at it this way. When you are searching something on Google, you always click on the first two or three links and never bother to go further. The links on the top have the highest ranking and traffic. If you have visited any other SEO blog, you know that they all talk about these tips to rank your site because these are really important.

If you are struggling with getting your blog on the top, here are some detailed steps for you to follow. Go through these thoroughly, and you will be able to do better.

High-quality content

Use of wrong grammar and irrelevant stuff is the biggest turn-off. Imagine if you are in a hurry and try to search something, but all you are getting are long sentences which have nothing to do with the topic. Will you ever visit that site again? Likely the answer is no. Same goes for the grammatical mistakes and poor use of words. Try to increase your vocabulary and do not linger on with the same thing again and again. If your grammar is not very good, you might consider downloading a grammar checker.

Use Images

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It is the human psychology that he/she gets more amused by the colors and graphics. Always try to illustrate things with some pictures or videos. When a person looks at a long page of just words without visuals, it gives a negative impression on his/her mind. Imagine yourself here, you open a document, and it’s all in written form, you will try to read it at first, but at last, it will look like a big headache. You will consider another document, where things are explained with images. What seems better now? Obviously, the picture document one.

Optimize Page Speed

2018 is the age of doing things rapidly. Every single person you see is in some hurry. And what is the point of using the internet when you are not going to get the result on time? Some might consider going to the library if it will take ages to load the page.

Keep your site error free. It is a pain when after a minute full of loading the page it ends up giving an error. Also, Google and Bing consider google page speed as a plus point when ranking the site.

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Now, the point is how to increase the page loading. There are several things that you can do to make your website load faster. Some people use caching plugins. Another way to do it is by optimizing the image size. The larger the image is, the more time it will take to load the page.

Utilize headings and proper subheadings

Making your document just a massive bulk of words is such a bad option. No one likes to run into a wall of text, especially when you are trying to illustrate a procedure. Always make points or headings. Go in stepwise order. An unorderly document is never appreciated. Properly write things, as when the reader gives a glance at the page, he decides in few seconds whether or not he is going to go further. Try to make it worthwhile.

qurban shanQurban is a freelance writer who offers to blog, ghostwriting and copywriting services. He works in close collaboration with businesses providing digital marketing solution that increases brand awareness and search engine visibility. He’s currently working for Vibbi.com, which provides quality Instagram followers, likes, and views.

5 Killer Marketing Ideas for Tech Companies

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Undoubtedly, the advancements in technology have changed the world of marketing completely. Unlike yesterday, marketing and advertisements today are not just limited to billboards and a few TV commercials. Companies today are introducing virtual reality mobile apps to 3D ads to fascinate their customers and keep them engaged. When every company is taking the help of technology to boost their marketing strategy, the tech companies are being expected to come up with more creative and technical initiatives to market and promote their products and services.

If you too are experiencing the crushing pressure of developing innovative technological ideas for marketing, here are some killer ideas to help you out.

Video Content

Over time it has become apparent that videos tend to be more captivating and thrilling than text or images. They provide a more personal insight into the company and their products. This is the reason why several companies hire young social enthusiasts to start vlogs or YouTube series. It has been observed that such series tend to make customers for a longer period. For more episodes of the series, they subscribe to your channel.

Along with making videos, it is also recommended to promote on all social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. On Snapchat, you can create stories for each day. The same option is also available for the Instagram story.

Face Recognition

Influencing clients emotionally is a quick yet efficient way to win more followers. Spreading happiness and love has always been one of the most efficient ways of attracting new customers. Recently, Unilever started a happiness campaign in which vending machines were used to recognize people’s smiling faces and give them free giveaways. This idea was highly appreciated by people around who took a special interest in the products. This way introduced their product while influencing them emotionally.

Face recognition is just an idea that can be used with any other marketing technique to create brand awareness and introduce a new product or service in the market.

Targeted Advertising

Highly specific advertisement sometimes referred to as hyper-targeting is another blooming technique in the market. While surfing the internet, people leave a digital footprint that tells a lot about their interests and searching style. On getting a hand on this data, companies can make highly specific ads. As per their taste, style, and preferences to make their products fit their requirements fully. There is a Technology marketing agency in London that specializes in Targeted Advertising.

Improving your rank on SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is still a potential way to improve your site’s ranking on search engines and thus win more clients. To improve your position, it is essential to start and maintain a blog on a daily basis. You must upload content on your site that is sufficiently rich with substantial keywords that are searched more frequently.

You can write detailed guides, reviews about your products, helpful tips, etc. to keep your readers engaged. If any of your articles perform extraordinarily, i.e., it has more reach than usual, you can also approach a freelance SEO to help you with ranking your website.

Setting a specific budget

Whether you are a tech company or not, to progress regarding your marketing strategies, it is important to set a fixed budget for all your marketing activities. Most companies want their marketing department to stand out, but they usually fail to assign it a specific budget which is why it fails to achieve its goal. It is thus imperative for entrepreneurs to understand that like any other department in the company, marketing to requires proper funding.

qurban

Qurban is a freelance writer who offers to blog, ghostwriting and copywriting services. He works in close collaboration with businesses providing digital marketing solution that increases brand awareness and search engine visibility. He’s currently working for Vibbi.com, which provides quality Instagram followers, likes, and views.