UX articles

Not so long ago, customers only had a couple of ways to interact with brands.  If you had an issue with a product or service, you could reach out through the customer service phone number or send an email. Occasionally, sites would introduce dedicated forms on their website that allowed consumers to send support tickets straight to the service desk – but that was it. The problem with this kind of service was all the waiting.  Send an email or...

In the information age, time is a valuable commodity and something people don’t want to spend too much of. As a result, the average visitor only reads about 20% of the content of a page.  For web designers and developers, that means a few things: first, you need to ensure that the web pages you create are as engaging as possible; secondly, you need to find a way of making the critical information on any page stand out; thirdly, every modern designer...

Businesses rely on designers to help them build the perfect relationship with visitors. After all, as much as companies may wish it wasn’t true, many consumers still judge a book by its cover. A website that fails to prioritize concepts like trust and transparency could instantly lose the confidence of its target audience.  As a designer, it can be tempting to focus on figuring out ways of convincing an audience to convert or give up their...

Inclusive design is often mistaken for accessibility, or even used as an interchangeable term, which is a good indication that most designers don’t know what it means. Accessibility is a process that seeks to mitigate issues in a design that is not sufficiently universal; inclusive design increases the universality of the design. In real-world terms, an accessible building may replace its front steps with a ramp; an inclusive building...

User experience design is something that most of us associate with websites. But why isn’t it something we extend beyond the website? Here’s why I ask this: As a consumer, it’s so rare that your only interaction with a brand is through its website. Take an ecommerce site, for example. You buy a product from it, and then what happens? You get a confirmation email; You get another email when the package ships; You might get another email or...

Landing pages are central to successful marketing campaigns; they allow you to target particular customers with particular solutions to particular problems. It’s easy to confuse what a landing page is because users “land” on many pages. When we talk about landing pages, we mean a page that is entirely dedicated to a particular type of customer. In fact, if we could create a unique landing page for each individual user, that would be...

So, really, you’re in the business of designing websites for your clients’ audiences. But how do you ensure you get it right? You could take what your client tells you at face value, but that’s only going to scrape the surface of who their audience is. What you need to do is figure out how consumers think and why they respond to websites the way they do. A lot of this is already explained to us by psychology principles. Once you memorize them,...

When it comes to compliance, website developers need to keep their eyes on more than just ADA regulations and Section 508. Privacy laws are a big consideration and decisions on how to build privacy into a website start with architects.  And that’s exactly what website developers (and designers!) are. They build up attractive, functional websites and apps for their clients. Yes, they work closely with clients, copywriters, vendors,...

Designing for emotion in and of itself is not a problem. Websites are bound to elicit an emotional reaction from visitors, even if it’s as simple as them feeling at ease because of the soft, pastel color palette you’ve designed the site with. I don’t want to outright villainize emotional design. Unless there is some form of unethical manipulation at play, designing for your visitors’ emotions can actually provide them with a more positive...

To understand why user onboarding is such an indispensable tool, we need to empathize with the people using our products; we all come from different backgrounds and cultures, we make different assumptions, and we see the world differently. User onboarding helps mitigate these differences by making your product’s learning curve less steep. However, companies often make unfortunate mistakes that hinder user experience and cause frustration....

It’s no secret that the senior population is growing. By 2030, people over the age of 65 are predicted to make up 20.6% of the population of the US.  Around the world, people are living longer and remaining more active in the later years of their lives. What’s more, despite what you might have heard in the past, seniors aren’t as wary of the internet as they used to be. In 2019, the Pew Research institute revealed that 73% of people over the...

Users come to your website with certain expectations already in their mind; they’ve seen thousands of other websites before and it’s only natural that they’ve adopted certain habits. Instead of trying to change these patterns, it’s much better to incorporate them into your design. To learn more, let’s have a closer look at a psychological concept known as mental models.  What Are Mental Models? Before we move on to examples,...

If a free trial model is executed well, it can become your new secret weapon for lowering your CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) and increasing conversion rates. However, that level of success doesn’t come without its fair share of challenges. What if you lose money? How do you avoid freeloaders? Which free trial model should you choose?  If you’re looking to dive deeper into the free trial models that have swept across the SaaS industry,...

The web has made it all too easy for consumers to look up anything and everything they’re interested in or have questions about. “Pet stores near me.” “Best web hosting 2020.” “Tom Brady net worth.” And it’s with this easy access to data that consumers have grown pickier about who they do business with. Because if they can get answers to all the other questions in their lives, why can’t they find out everything there is to know...