UX articles

Modals, a nifty little feature that allows you to display different messages at the top of your website, have been touted as extremely useful. Some even claim that they are helpful enough to completely replace the banner ads we all hate so much. But are modals in web design a UX disaster? If you are unfamiliar with the term, a modal is a dialogue window appearing when a visitor clicks on a hyperlink or hover image. Suppose you want to collect on-site...

The purpose of a website is to reach new customers and keep current ones engaged. Therefore, customer-first should be at the top of your list for design features. After all, without your clients, your business won’t grow or succeed. Customer-first has been a buzzword for a few years now. In a nutshell, it’s easy to imagine what customer-first design means. The needs of consumers come before anything else. However, the concept isn’t...

As the ultimate form of social proof, customer reviews are incredibly valuable to your clients’ companies. Around 95% of customers say they read reviews before they make a purchase. Another 72% say they won’t even consider buying items until they’ve read the reviews associated with the business or product.  No matter how good your marketing and promotion strategies might be, your audience will always turn to other customers for...

Personalized marketing is when you attune your marketing efforts based on customer data. This data can be anything from the first and last name to purchase intent, concerns, and history. Personalized marketing has revolutionized the way businesses market their product and service to their audience. It brings value to people’s lives, spiking the sales graph for brands and businesses. So it’s a win-win situation for both the company...

UX laws are an invaluable tool, providing guidelines for designers that ensure we don’t have to continually reinvent the wheel when crafting experiences for the web. However, UX laws tend to be devised by scientists and psychologists — people who are more than comfortable with the exceptions and allowances of academic language. By the time they filter down to us in the trenches, the language has invariably been over-simplified, and...

Acquiring a new customer is difficult, but retaining an existing one is even more challenging. Yet, statistics show that efforts focused on retention bring way more value.  For instance, according to SmallBizGenius, 82% of companies agree that customer retention is cheaper than acquisition. Apart from that, 65% of a company’s revenue comes from existing clients, and increasing the investment in retention by only 5% already gives...

We all know that psychology is a powerful tool. When used correctly, it can influence and persuade people to take action. In the world of web design, this is extremely important. If you want to create an effective website that converts visitors into customers, you need to leverage web design psychology. Keep reading to find out more. What Is Web Design Psychology? Your website design shouldn’t just make your website pretty. It should impress...

Designing for user experiences is what all designers do. UX is often thought of as the preserve of app or web designers; however, even a print designer laying out a magazine anticipates reader reaction to the scale of type, the placement of adverts, and the art direction of successive stories. Because all designers design user experiences, the role of UX Designer has come to mean someone focused on creating a product or service utilizing research...

Micro-interactions effectively communicate brand identity and ethos while strengthening ties with the customer. These habit-forming tools make for a fun and seamless user experience. Facebook’s ‘likes’ and Tinder’s ‘swipes’ are two classic examples.  Micro-interactions originated with the need to guide customers who had hit a snag while using a service or a product. The goal was to ease customers into being more product-savvy...

The importance of scientific research cannot be overstated. User research is crucial to the success of any UX design, and this article will explain all the reasons why. But first, we will explore what UX research is and how it can give you valuable tools. Then we will analyze why user research is an ongoing, dynamic process. By the end of this 5-minute read, you will know every efficient research method (qualitative and quantitative) and how...

Picture a dark office, blinds drawn. Picture a UX designer smoking a cigar. See the light filtered through the smoke whipped to fog by a spinning ceiling fan. Watch as the UX designer sits at a desk and considers the website. The UX designer has devised a series of tests to determine if a green button is better than a red button. One of them involves tipping a tortoise onto its back. He looks the website over carefully and says, “Describe in single...

Many people believe that UX design is all about creating slick, engaging images and top-notch user flows. While those things have their merits, UX designers do much more than that. UX writing is an essential skill in developing an app or solving a UX problem for a client. UX writing is when we craft UI text to communicate with a product/service user. UX writing includes valuable text like instructions, buttons, menus, just-in-time warnings,...

Maps are a fascinating method for delivering content. At their best, they can create an intuitive way of presenting information and interacting with it. This is the advantage that digital maps, through mobile apps and websites, have over print maps and images where no interactivity is possible. But it’s important to understand that more data ≠ better experiences. We all now have so much data available to us through multiple services...

As a UX designer, you get to work on creative, rewarding, even life-changing projects. It’s an industry with flexible working and countless opportunities. All this, and you get paid well too. It doesn’t matter if you’re not a creative prodigy, or a tech grandmaster; you can learn to become a UX designer with the right mindset, a few tools you pick up along the way, and some committed learning. By the time you’ve finished reading this...