UX articles

Unless you’ve been hiding under a tinfoil hat for the last few years, you probably know that UX and UI are not the same thing because “UX is more ergonomic”, or some such nonsense. But what about the unified part? Normally speaking, I’ve got very little patience for hipster acronyms and nit-picking, but actually it turns out there’s more to this than fake specs and chai latte. Imagine you’re standing outside two different coffee...

Once in a while, every professional comes across a challenge so great, so ridiculous, that they just can’t help themselves. They just have to go for it. It’s like the story of David and Goliath… if David was just bored and Goliath wasn’t threatening his entire nation. As for me, I’m about to argue for putting sounds on a website, and discuss how to do it right. Yeah, I know… I’m one of the “Never Ever Autoplay Sounds on Your Site”...

As a web designer, you may be starting with little to no data of your own. It’s not until a website has launched (or relaunched) that you can start gathering real analytics on its performance. Even then, it can take awhile to draw any meaningful insights from it. So, in many cases, what web designers are working with before and while they design a new website is industry data: audience insights; competitive research; keyword analysis; Google...

Iconic comedy duo Mitchell and Webb once asked a very important question: “Are we the baddies?” Given that, at the time, they were dressed in Nazi uniforms with skulls on their hats, and looked like rejected villains from a Wolfenstein game, the answer was something of a foregone conclusion. But what about us? No, no web or UX designers that I know of have ever invaded Poland, or done any of the more horrifying things that Nazis are known for,...

Let’s start with a common example: You’ve just finished a website design for someone. It looks and functions exactly like the wireframe. Everyone on the design team has praised the project. The client hates it, but they can’t explain why. The culprit might be color. Different colors can evoke such strong emotions that people have sharp reactions to them. It’s part personal preference, part psychological, and even part social norms....

The Internet of today is a highly competitive place. With so many individuals and businesses spending money and time on digital marketing and SEO — trying to outperform their rivals and sit at the top of the Google heap — it’s harder than ever to get users to visit any given website over another. Given the difficulty of acquiring new visitors, you might think that all the webmasters of the world would do everything in their power to provide...

Tricking people can be… well… tricky. The problem, at its most fundamental level, is that people only like to be tricked when they expect to be tricked. Obviously, if you trick them and take money they never intended to give away, well that’s theft. They rightfully get angry. If you say, “Hey, wanna see a trick? Give me a dollar.”; well then they expect some David Copperfield-level magic, don’t they? In fact, they demand it. And that’s...

Building a learnable website is much tougher than it sounds. One thinks one’s design is clear and comprehensible; however, a design that might be obvious for you, might be perceived totally different by a user with a different set of experiences. Therefore, the goal is to design a clear user path that visitors can quickly pick up and understand. Why Learnability Matters Learnability has a strong correlation with usability. It is vital for...

In 2014, I was a busy, young software engineer working full-time for a tech company in London. On a quest to be hyper efficient, I was always was on the hunt for user-friendly tools that would streamline my workflows and cut back on paper usage, which proved to be a challenge. I fell right into a market gap when I needed to edit and modify PDFs but none of the tools on the market offered a user-friendly interface with the functionality I needed or wanted....

The purpose of almost every web design is to entice customers into buying your products, or subscribing to your services. However, your website can’t accomplish that goal without providing a superior user experience, which is largely defined by a great user flow. User flow refers to a series of steps that will help your prospects interact with your website without any distractions or hindrances. Thus, it improves your conversion funnel...

Every human being needs, rather desperately, to feel accepted. They don’t necessarily need to feel accepted by everyone, but they do need to feel accepted by someone. It’s a part of our nature, and nature in general. Even as I type this, my cat Cleocatra is demanding that I give her attention, and if I don’t, she’ll leave my room in a huff. [A few minutes later:] She didn’t leave. She stuck her claws into me. Users can have very similar...

Okay, for the love of any God you prefer, read this bit before you start writing comments…please? I’ve been studying up on philosophical Taoism lately because someone very near and dear to me is a (philosophical) Taoist, and I wanted to understand her better. What I’ve found is that web and UX designers have, by studying the data, come to a lot of the same conclusions as ancient Eastern philosophers. While the lessons in this article may...


If WordPress is the world’s favorite blogging platform, then WooCommerce is surely the most popular e-commerce solution available. WooCommerce is currently leading the WordPress e-commerce market and in popularity exceeds its nearest rivals—Shopify and Magento—roughly 4 times over. In this post we’ll learn how to capture and recover abandoned shopping carts in WooCommerce and how to create a successful abandoned cart...

Creating great UX is a primary goal for all product designers. It’s up to the designer to make a process of interaction with a product as simple as possible. Modern products try to achieve simplicity by following a fundamentally different approach called Anticipatory Design. This article is intended to make you familiar with the concept of anticipatory design, as well as share a few excellent examples of how anticipatory design can be used...