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The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency 5 Proven Ways To Fund Your App At The Idea Stage September 21, 2015 by Tracy Vides 0 Comments 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-at-the-idea-stage You may have a revolutionary idea for the next big app. However, without the right funding for your winning app, that idea will probably never see light of day. Unlike a business startup, where the entrepreneur knows exactly what he or she’s going to do, what products or services will be offered and how, what will be the monetization model, etc., app developers have little idea about any of these at the initial stages of building the app. User testing throws up curve balls that often call for drastic changes. Most apps go through so many modifications and iterations that the final product will look radically different from the initial idea. For this reason, creating a bound business plan and approaching banks for loans becomes really tough. So what do you do? Here are a few thoughts to get you started. 1. Bootstrap Your Way Up with Co-Founders There is no source of funds more dependable than your own savings. If you cannot spare cash to invest in your own bright idea, asking others to contribute to it is a little unfair, don’t you think? Bank savings, personal loans, credit card loans, friends and family are all perfectly legitimate sources of funds when your app is in its infancy. However, you don’t always have to go it alone. Find the perfect co-founder to shoulder the responsibility of launching a new app. A co-founder is a lot more than a friend or shoulder during bad times. Pick a co-founder based on your needs. A tech-savvy co-founder can help you design and build a prototype of your app from scratch without spending a penny on outside developers. Bobby Murphy, co-founder of Snapchat was the development brains behind what was essentially Evan Spiegel and Reggie Brown’s Stanford classroom project. Currently the app stands valued at close to $20 billion. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-co-founders Image Source: VentureVillage Alternately, find a partner who can fund your app while you develop it yourself. Case in point – Uber. Travis Kalanick was the cash supply for developer/co-founder Garrett Camp. 2. Set up a Crowdfunding Campaign Crowdfunding is an attractive funding avenue for startups that have absolutely no resources of their own to get going with their ideas. Even though hundreds of app and startup ideas go unnoticed and unfunded on crowdfunding sites, the right pitch can promise a bonanza for your dream app. In return for a service fee from the crowdfunding platform and a transaction fee from the payment processor, you are assured of sufficient funds to get your dream off the ground. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-crowdfunding Image Source: Traquity.com (website no longer exists) Crowdfunding has various models that you can pick from. The leader in the crowdfunding space, Kickstarter, is an all or nothing platform. This means that once you set your funding goal, you better reach the target amount to get the money. If you fall short of your target, the contributions get refunded to the individual investors. On the other hand, Indiegogo offers both flexible funding and fixed funding options, thus meaning that if you fail to reach your target amount, you can keep your collection in return for a higher service fee. You may also want to consider app-specific crowdfunding platforms like AppsFunder and AppSplit. 3. Raise Donations on Your Own Site The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency Crowdfunding is a great way to get quick resources. However it also has quite a few negatives tacked on to it. There’s tons of competition out there and standing out from a sea of wannabe entrepreneurs can be near-impossible for many. Then there are the myriad of fees that you shell out in return for the funding that you request. A smart way to eliminate these problems is by raising funds on your own site. Yes, nothing stops you from: Describing your proposed app to your readers Asking them for a small donation towards your app Offering them a gift / pre-orders of your app / monetary compensation once your app rolls out in return for their contributions A tool like 123ContactForm allows you to build a donation form in minutes. Even better, it integrates easily with various payment processors like PayPal, Stripe, Braintree and FreshBooks to make the process of setting up your self-owned own funding campaign a one-stop affair. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-donation-form Image Source: Smashing Forms 4. Participate in Funding Contests If you’re a would-be entrepreneur in the connected world, there’s no way you’ve not seen the entrepreneurial TV series Shark Tank. With over $44 million in funding given out across its five seasons, the hit show is an entrepreneur’s dream come true. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-funding-contest Shark Tank – Image Source: The Hollywood Reporter I am not suggesting that you try and get on Shark Tank to get your app funded. You should if you can, but that’s not the point here. There are tons of contests available sponsored by universities, technology companies, angel investor networks and more that offer new entrepreneurs the resources to fulfill their business idea. Check out Biz Plan Competitions to pick from hundreds of contests around the world. You can even zoom in on a contest near you and learn about how to qualify and participate to win the funding that your app deserves. 5. Angel Investors and Strategic Partners Many startups are tempted to approach Venture Capitalists (VCs) for seed funding. However, the fact remains that less than 3% of seed funding comes from VCs. Instead, angel investors or strategic investors are strong contenders for kick starting your brand new app. These are not always companies or institutions. Individuals and successful entrepreneurs often take an active interest in funding new startups. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer are but two examples of avid angel investors in early stage apps. Angel investors can offer anything from $25,000 to a few million in funding, depending on your app idea and stage of development. The size of the angel investment market currently stands at $20 billion annually. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-strategic-partners Marissa Mayer – Image Source: Business Insider While angel investors are easier to convince than VCs at a seed stage, you still need to be prepared to give a potential angel investor details like: The total amount of capital you will need How quickly will you burn through it (monthly burn rate) What is your go-to-market strategy How will you promote the app Why do you deserve funding, that is, the technical and business capabilities of the founders Coda It’s not just you. Before Peter Thiel stepped in with the first external funds that Facebook would receive, Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin managed their operating costs by hustling for every last dollar. The monthly expense of $85 for renting their very first server was covered by banner ads on Facebook using platforms like AdSense. Moral of the story? With a little bit of creativity, you can always make sure that your dream app doesn’t remain only in your dreams. (Lead image source: Rocío Lara) Customer Experience vs. User Experience: What’s The Difference? September 23, 2015 by Zev Ginzburg 2 Comments customer-experience-user-experience-difference Often times promising entrepreneurs will come up with a genius idea for an app but end up entangling a lot of important components into one product. If you’re a geek in any capacity that works in tech today, there is no doubt you’ve heard the following: “I’ve got this great idea for an app, tell me what you think…” To which us geeks inevitably roll our eyes as the individual begins to describe a blend of apps on the market and how it solves a crucial problem of our generation. What many of these entrepreneurs tend to overlook is the revenue model doesn’t necessarily mesh well with the usability. Making the mistake of combining a customer experience and a user experience has ramifications that could result in a poor experience on both ends. The User Experience (UX), as many usability geeks would be aware of, would include most operational needs, which includes the information architecture, the general navigation, and completing functional tasks relatively easy. The Customer Experience (CX) has many external variables embedded in it. It embodies user experience, because after all, a customer is a usertype. The major differences here need to accommodate the mission of a particular web or mobile app. A customer experience may, and often does, impede on the mission. The Revenue Model: Brickless and Mortarless Advertisements are often an easy way to monetize and take advantage of a large user base that does not pay for usage. These advertisements have a direct correlation to the quality of user experience and customer experience. Advertisements, unless otherwise stated, are something a user would want to avoid. YouTube for instance knows this by adding a ‘skip ad’ button. Hulu, Pandora, Spotify, and even Skype all include advertisements which in some instances significantly hinder the user experience. Earning revenue is very important to the stability of an application, obviously. So some means of providing a balance between the customer experience and user experience is crucial. The most apparent examples of this customer experience and user experience balance is in simple games on mobile. Games like Clash of Clans, Game of War, and many similar strategy games implemented the token system for users to buy. The token system has several advantages to the harmony needed between customer experience and user experience, the first of which guarantees that the user experience is good because the user wants to keep engaging (playing) with game. There is a hard way to advance and just like life there is an easy way, all one needs to do is pay for it. Some users take the game extremely seriously and get into. A sizable portion of users are willing to shell out a couple of dollars to beat a level they’re just cognitively unequipped to beat. It is wholly appropriate here because the tokens for sale are now a resource for the user, and as such resources tend to be a positive tool in a user experience. It also tends to be a negative experience for a user’s wallet. The Revenue Model: Bricks and Mortar What about a case where a company has brick and mortar stores? They already have a customer experience in store and they may want to transfer this experience to a digital front. Companies like Starbucks or Wal­Mart may be hyper aware that the shopping experience needs to optimize cross platform usage. The Starbucks app enables users to reimburse rewards and pay for their coffee right from their mobile device. The whole app is catered for the customer which makes the UX development a lot easier. The customer has a set of defined tasks, one cannot simply peruse the Starbucks app, it is task oriented. Wal­Mart took an already acceptable customer experience and improved it through their technical solution called ‘savings catcher.’ Now while the politics of Wal­Mart are extremely divisive, the savings catcher is a very unique and progressive means of providing a good customer experience. It’s such a novel concept in some senses, the user first shops at Wal­Mart, then scans his or her receipt, then Wal­Mart will run a check for the same product at multiple retailers. If the price was cheaper anywhere else, Wal­Mart will refund you the money. Wal­Mart does all the work too, the user just uploads their proof of purchase. With a global customer base of over 100,000,000 there are sure to be savings and the more a customer spends, the likelihood of getting the best deal increases. The UX of the application, however, is nothing revolutionary. The bells and whistles are purposely diluted in order to accommodate that potential of 100,000,000 customers who would be app users. The Bottom Line Designing and developing for a good user experience means beginning at a bottom line: are we here to make money from a customer, or are we here to provide something else? Service based products like Spotify or Pandora do really well providing music. Earning revenue however was not necessarily part of the game plan from beginning. Including a customer experience helps if you know what kind of customer would integrate well into a user experience. (Lead image source: Jason Howie) 10 Guidelines For Navigation Usability September 28, 2015 by Preston Pierce 0 Comments 10-guidelines-for-navigation-usability When it comes to usability, ease-of-navigation should be a top priority for web developers. The number one most annoying feature of a website is improper or confusing navigation, leaving users lost and wondering what to do next. If you’re lucky enough, some users just might scour through the website to accomplish their purpose of visiting the website. However, most users simply pop-out and add more numbers to the website bounce rate — and we all want to avoid that! So, what makes website navigation easy and usable? Follow these simple guidelines to ensure that your site navigation is a user-friendly one. 1. Embrace Predictability Being creative with your website is nice, but don’t practice this in areas where predictability may be preferred over uniqueness. This is particularly true for website navigation menus that visitors are going to use simply to get from one page to another. Creating unconventional navigation will only make it confusing – and confused users are less likely to stay on your page any longer. 10-guidelines-navigation-usability-unusual An Example of an unconventional navigation menu that takes time to make sense of (Source: YouZee) 2. Keep it Simple In a way, this goes hand-in-hand with predictability, except here you avoid making your navigation extremely difficult to comprehend. For example, you may have a predictable design, but if it is full of cluttered menus and submenus in a disorganized fashion, you’re far from making it easy for users to navigate through your website. 3. Don’t Overdo Minimalism Recently minimalism has caught on and everyone seems to be reducing content, promoting “white space”, and simplifying typography. This is great because nowadays internet users are more concerned about getting work done as fast as possible through mobile devices on-the-go, rather than viewing fancy pages that may take forever to download. However, some designers over-do minimalism, rendering clear and proper navigation useless. This is a big mistake! 10-guidelines-navigation-usability-minimal All you can see on the startupstockphotos website is the “About” option. Where’s the rest? (Source: StartupStockPhotos) 4. Keep it Consistent It’s always good to keep the theme and structure of your pages consistent. The first time a user visits your website, he/she is going to make sense of it in just a matter of seconds (shouldn’t take longer). After that, your user is going to expect all the pages to be similar in terms of structure and design. Having an entirely different navigation system page by page will only frustrate the user because the “making sense of it all” process will have to repeated unnecessarily every time. 5. Clear Hierarchical Structure Navigation menus should have a clear hierarchical structure with every category and clickable sub categories included in the menu. It’s okay if your parent categories are extensive, so long as all the available subcategories are listed in order. This gives the user a clear idea of what you can offer without having to go through several pages to find what they are looking for. This is particularly important for websites that offer a wide array of products and services. 10-guidelines-navigation-usability-hierarchical Aliexpress has a perfect navigation where hierarchal structure is clear with clickable grouped subcategories under parent categories (Source: AliExpress) 6. Make it Manageable Clear navigation in your user interface is highly usable when it tells visitors where they have come from, where they are currently, and where they can go from their current location. This obviously requires a breadcrumb trail on your website, allowing users to keep track of their location, making navigation more manageable and under their control. Remember that not all users will start visiting your site from the home page. Many will land on an inner page after clicking a link from another site or from the Search Engine Results Page. 7. Link the Logo to the Homepage A good practice is to link the homepage from the website’s logo (which should appear on every page at the same spot). Users have a tendency to start all over by going back to the home page and redoing the search process from there. Furthermore, many users are highly likely to search up your website using a search engine which could lead them to a specific page deep within your website. Users are going to want to click on your homepage from there so they can explore more of your website. 8. Include a Sitemap Sitemaps are crucial for a usable navigation system. Any lost user will resort to a sitemap that has links to all pages (or the main pages) of a website. The site map will list down the pages of your site in a clear, hierarchical order giving a plain overview of your website. Bear in mind that the sitemap should be concise without extraneous details on every single topic. 9 Guidelines For Writing A Killer Headline For Conversion September 30, 2015 by Florence Mendoza 1 Comment 9-guidelines-for-writing-killer-headline-converts If boosting conversion is your goal, writing the right headline is arguably more important than writing good copy. Indeed, a famous quote by advertising legend, David Ogilvy says that on average, five times as many people will read the headline than the actual content. And what good is writing anything at all if you can’t pique your readers’ interest? Even if, hypothetically-speaking, you wrote the best advertising copy or blog post in the world, if no one clicks on your bland headline, you’ve essentially wasted your time (not to mention money). In this article, I will be discussing 9 guidelines for writing headlines with the aim of boosting conversion. I know that there are several guidelines when it comes to this topic and likewise, there are numerous articles that have discussed it in sufficient depth. So what makes this article different? Simply put, this is not just ‘another list’. What I am presenting here are what I consider as being the most effective guidelines for writing headlines. Before we begin, know this: writing headlines is a science, not an art. 1. Use a Formula to Create Your Headline If using a formula seems wrong to you instinctively, consider this: lots of headlines online already follow certain formulae, and, clearly, no one cares. Look at popular content on the Internet (like Buzzfeed, Upworthy or high-ranking Youtube channels) and you’ll notice a lot of their headlines and titles following familiar patterns. This obviously doesn’t bother anyone in the slightest. Not to mention the fact that the first two examples have made a name for themselves by using attention-grabbing headlines that are so standardized, they’ve been parodied to death. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, really. At this point, a typical Internet user sees so many headlines daily on social media and elsewhere, something completely atypical will surely throw them off and be dismissed on sight. 2. Use Numbers in the Headline A clickable headline has numbers – and for good reasons. We all know that words can be manipulated in many ways and any outrageous claim made on the Internet – especially in a headline – will be met with skepticism. Numbers, on the other hand, elicit another reaction – trust. Any statistician would, at this point, remark that numbers can themselves be manipulated and misleading, but we’re talking about the readers’ gut reaction. Compare the following two headlines: This Pill Will Make You the Most Productive Worker in the World This Pill Will Raise Your Efficiency Factor by 20% or More Note that the second headline, the one that uses numbers, is more attractive than the first one that just looks like an empty promise. According to a study by Conductor that analyzed click traffic on social media, using a number in the headline is the most effective in boosting click-through rate out of all measured factors. Numbers in this study, by the way, don’t just mean statistics – they are headlines like “20 Things to do Before You Die”. 3. Try and Use These Words and Phrases (Where Possible) So which words convert more? Kevan Lee has created an incredible list of words and phrases that are most used in viral headlines by analyzing more than 3,000 headlines from 24 top content sites. He split his findings into two categories: ‘most popular words’ and ‘most popular uncommon words’. Perhaps even more interesting is the 2-word and 3-word phrases that he observed in these viral headlines: Most Popular 2-Word Phrases: ‘this is’, ‘in the’, ‘how to’, ‘is the’, ‘of the’ Most Popular 3-Word Phrases: ‘this is the’, ‘will make you’, ‘when you see’, ’til you see’, ‘what happens when’ Another useful resource is Josh Rhodes’ list of 179 emotional words that make powerful headings and high converting landing pages. According to this study, some of the most popular words in headlines are: ‘focus’, ‘wanted’, ‘free’, ‘sale’, ‘new’ and lowest. In yet another huge study, this time of 1 million headlines, Garret Moon came up with the following list of the most popular words and phrases in highly-shared headlines: ‘list post’, ‘you/your’, ‘free/giveaway’, ‘how to’, ‘diy’. 4. A Headline Should be X Words / Characters LongThe Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency Needless to say, there is much debate as to how long a headline should be. Here are some of the guidelines which I consider as being most useful: 8 words (according to The Guardian) 62 characters (according to Kevan Lee) 81-100 characters (according to HubSpot and Outbrain) 5. Make Your Headline Sound Useful Look again at the example about the efficiency pill. This is a good, clickable headline because of the fact that anyone can ‘try it on’. Wow, I can boost my efficiency by 20%? Now look at spam comments found anywhere on the Internet: “I made $6,000 using this website, etc., etc.” These are engineered to be clickable, and what do they do?: They use numbers The reader can instantly try it on and see what benefit they will get. The point is: if your headline isn’t somehow useful to the reader, it will be dismissed right away, so do try and make it as applicable as possible. To get the ‘usefulness’ effect try addressing the reader. This will mean that “How to Buy a Used Car” should be rewritten into “Things You Should Know Before Buying a Used Car”, or, better yet “10 Things You Should Know Before Buying a Used Car” 6. Choose Your Words Carefully This guideline takes many dimensions. What are the “ideal” words to use in a headline? Citing Stephen King, Jeff Bullas writes that simplicity is a key element. One can have an impressive vocabulary but taking an approach to headline writing that is too intellectual can backfire. Readers will always understand a simple headline. If you want to make it more appealing, then try and arouse their curiosity. According to Barry Feldman, the process of choosing which words to use also involves choosing which words to leave out. 7. Negative Spin Tends to do Better According to a study of 100 tech blogs done by Oribi, using words like “Kill”, “Fear”, “Dark”, “Bleeding” will get more attention, even if the headlines themselves are not violent at all. The same study found that headlines that feature words like “without”, “no” and “stop” end up at the top posts a lot. The takeaway from this is that giving your headline a negative spin is more likely to pique your readers’ interests. So “10 Things to do This Summer” becomes “The 10 Activities Your Summer Will Suck Without.” 8. Pose a Question There’s no way to be more engaging than asking a question. Whether it’s something that the readers have been wondering themselves or something new that they haven’t considered yet, a question will surely get attention. This is what is called a curiosity gap – it’s an itch that demands to be scratched. The proverbial scratching is reading the article. Leave the question headlines to the more important topics, though. It would be easy enough to get tired of a feed filled with question marks. So make sure you save this one for special occasions. 9. Finally, Don’t Lie This is so obvious, it shouldn’t even count as advice, but, unfortunately, it needs to be said – such is the state of things. If you promise someone they can lose weight at a rate of 5 pounds every day, only the most credulous would believe you. And since you’re writing for the cynical world of the Internet, credulity and naïveté is not something you should expect. If you’re counting on a lie getting you massive amounts of clicks, try and think through to the next step: what happens when they do click, and the content doesn’t follow up on the promise? They’ll close the tab and never come back to your site again, that’s what. The Art Of UX In MVP October 5, 2015 by Yona Gidalevitz 2 Comments ux-in-mvp UX is UX is UX – right? Not really. User Experience Designers (UXDs) working on Minimum Viable Product (MVP) builds have it rough. The thought process has to shift ever so slightly in MVP builds, and in such a way that it can disrupt your conception of what “good UX” really is. UX Designers, listen up: MVP builds serve a different purpose than full builds. MVP builds are tasked with learning as much as possible about the features required by users. Rather than producing a fully­-featured product, which addresses the needs of every possible user type, MVP builds are designed to create the absolute minimally viable product—one which creates the smallest feature set that someone would pay for, or even just use. In turn, the UX process has to change, slightly, to reflect this. So, you ask, how does it change? UX In MVP Is About Changing What You Measure UX Designers, at a really high level, are tasked with: Building out features Building them well (to put it bluntly) Ryan Singer of Basecamp has designed a very good way to visualize this. Let’s call it “the blob”. ux-mvp-blob Image Source: Signal v. Noise UX Designers are taught from the get-­go to ask themselves: “Is this user friendly?” — is the blob deep, and does it take up a large surface area? In MVP builds, a new question begins to take precedence: “Would users pay the same price for this feature set?” — does the blob really have to be this huge? The idea here is simple. In MVP builds, the depth of the blob should never change — that is, the quality of execution ought to remain consistent. The surface area, however, is what becomes the subject of significant scrutiny. By diminishing the surface area of the blob, you are able to experiment with the notion that, perhaps users are perfectly okay without the ability to fulfil a particular task that, otherwise, you would have spent precious time perfecting, and time is money. Testing feature-­set viability is the bread and butter of MVP­-driven UX Design. And Becoming More Agile The classic MVP [Build → Measure → Learn] cycle is the source of inspiration for the UX process in MVP builds: [UX → Measure → Learn → Repeat] Such a pattern emphasizes two key qualitative differences between non-­MVP and MVP­-based User Experiences: MVP builds ought to be produced quickly, and they ought to offer the absolute minimum set of features deemed acceptable by users. Your UX senses are tingling here, I know. This goes against what you’ve learned about UX, and feels wrong. You take pride in the quality of your work, and in the depth of features that you account for in your designs. UXDs: MVP builds do not inherently create gaps in the UX, contrary to what you may believe. Speed, here, does not necessarily equate to the absence of quality. Adopting agile methods in your UX Design process will ensure fast, “quality” cycles of work, due to the inherently repetitive model of testing that is used in the Agile process. This does not mean that building an MVP is a straightforward process. In fact, at my place of work we have found it beneficial to create a dedicated page to explain the importance of MVP and assist potential clients with building one. What I suggest is: Trust your UXD judgement, and embrace the MVP process and you will not be led astray. Kinks will be worked out in the multiple rounds of testing, while missing features will be discovered and implemented, during the many [Measure → Learn] portions of the Agile process. Most importantly, don’t forget: MVP builds are an excellent opportunity to learn about your users, and what they want from you. Often, what you give them is much more than they are willing to put up with for the price. And if that sounds too cynical to you, you’re in the wrong business, my friend. (Lead image source: Pulpolux !!!) 6 Powerful Ways Of Improving On-Site User Engagement October 12, 2015 by Ankit Panchal 0 Comments improve-user-engagement So you have an immersive website with the right aesthetic appeal. What is the next practical step? It is to prevent bounces and enhance on-site user engagement. However, most marketers are stuck at fluffing their website and pruning their social media page. A successful conversion model includes everything from on-site optimization to neat navigation and most websites take these in their stride. Despite that they have extremely high bounce rates. Could it be the lack of right information, prices or something intangible altogether? Here we shall discuss effective ways of preventing bounces and enhancing user engagement that leads up to increased conversions. 1. Target the Right Sources for Website VisitorsThe Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency Each website is unique and so is each visitor. You may generalize your group but know that each type of visitor comes from a specific source. For instance, a 30 y.o. tech nut will be more trusting about peer reviews on social sites. Now if you analyze your website traffic, you will see three distinct steps in conversion: Awareness brought about by search and discovery, Consideration after carefully looking at reviews, research and social media sites, and Action (Purchase or Bounce). Find out the sources from where your visitors come, based on that decide the type of information they are looking for on your website and then give a personalized experience thus enhancing user engagement. If your visitor came from a reference link on a blog on pesticides, don’t make them search amongst hundreds of gardening tools and seeds and plants. Sure they are pretty to look at but it won’t serve the purpose and hence the end result could be a compromised bounce rate. 2. Let Data Show You the Way There are several methods to acquire data of website engagement; Google Analytics is the most popular of all. The data thus acquired is extremely important to understand that whether your website is successfully retaining visitors and giving them something to learn, see of discover. Commonly, inbound links are able to get traffic from all over the world, but only 40-50% of it is relevant traffic. They caveat here is to successfully keep that 40-50% engaged enough on your website, so they take some actionable steps like buy, subscribe, bookmark, share etc. Another important part of data analysis is user behavior. Measure session duration to see if they were just site hopping or were they looking for something seriously. Users will give you 35 seconds before they decide that you are not what they are looking for. Session duration will let you understand if majority of your users think that way. And if the answer is yes, you better start taking reformative steps to enhance user engagement. Page-wise performance data is the third step in the way. It allows you to do A/B testing and decide what works best for your audience. If you have multi-group audience, it allows you to cater for various contents based on the group taste. 3. Create Immersive Experiences for Visitors Immersive experience is more than a buzzword. We don’t wish to burden you with the hackneyed example of Amazon and how they created an immersive experience, so we have found some of the best immersive websites on the internet. Take a cue from them and discover ways you can create an immersive experience for your visitors. From interesting blog posts to videos, the ways and means to keep your audience hooked are surprisingly simple and inexhaustible. Ask 3 questions to yourself if you wish to create an immersive website: Are we offering more than they thought / wanted? Are we giving something new, something irresistible? Have we taken an unbeaten path? Check out how this Auto Service facility created an amazing immersive experience on their website. Surely they didn’t need to do it, but they did it anyways and the path less trodden led them to great success. improve-user-engagement-hmr Image credit: http://hmrservis.cz/ And now see the typical car service website and the likes of which you find in abundance on the internet. improve-user-engagement-york Image credit: http://www.yorkspringandradiator.ca/en/ 4. Carry the Experience Beyond Your Website This is one boat you simply can’t miss. Over these last couple of years, triggered emails or auto-responders have become one of the most important user engagement tactics. However, simple emails with ‘Howdy’ and ‘We Miss Ya’ or persistent emails and reminders won’t do. You have to carry the soul of your website theme and create a similar experience in emails. The same goes for social media and PR. This is one powerful way to garner repeat visits. 5. Watch the Calendar It is very important to gauge user engagement at a certain time of the day, certain days of the week, certain holidays, certain months of the year and so on. You will notice a hike in traffic at a particular period. Get to the root of it: Why was there a hike? What was the bounce rate then? Was it because of a particular offer or an event you organized? … and so on. Again Google Analytics allows you to compare activity in a particular period with activity in another period. 6. Be Like the Giraffe Did you know that in New Age religion, the giraffe is considered as being a symbol for intuition and flexibility? It is extremely easy to find yourself lost in the labyrinths of data and social media, thus forgetting your innate sense of intuition. Most of the times we don’t trust our instincts and see what is laid out right in front of our eyes. Get a bird’s eye view of your website or see it from a solely unattached point-of-view. This will help you to forget all the mind-numbing rules and metrics and discover a simpler and effective way to keep your users engaged. Also, learn from the giraffe to be flexible and ready for change. Take Away Once the user interface and user experience problems are out of your way, the only thing that remains to focus on is user engagement. It is extremely crucial to keep your users engaged and keep coming for more in order to build a loyal audience. These 6 powerful rules to enhance user engagement will help you bring down bounce rates and lead to successful conversion. Humans: The Missing Link In Online Security October 14, 2015 by Gabor Koródi 0 Comments humans-missing-link-security Implementing online security is ultimately a human undertaking. The tools have to be sufficient enough to protect you and your clients, but efficient enough not to get in the way of providing the best user experience possible. While technology will get you part of the way, the inevitable corner-cutting by users will ultimately expose the notion that technology cannot provide total protection against our human nature. The Username/Password Combination For example, historically the username/password combination provided both authorization and authentication in one convenient package. For earlier systems, not open to the public and only providing access from a well-defined physical location, this was a great solution. It quickly became apparent, however, that users are terrible at remembering some random password; they forget to change it every 90 days and would rather write it down. The technology, as always playing catch-up to its users, quickly evolved into password-strength measuring libraries and automated functions to force users into changing their passwords. As a typical example of leading with technology and not considering the human factors, the resistance from end-users was palpable. Many of us remember the passwords on sticky notes on someone’s monitor, or the easy to guess (and pronounce) ones that were shared around the office. Improvements are being made continuously, both technical and behavioral fronts. Users are much more aware of the need for proper security. Businesses with an online presence spend significant amount of resources on protecting their infrastructure and their users from a growing variety of threats. Administrators are much more vigilant on implementing security protocols that are harder to circumvent by both internal and external users. The Use of CAPTCHA Not too long ago, CAPTCHAs were the new favorite technical solutions against hackers trying to break into high-value targets. The wide-spread use of sophisticated UI interfaces over the Internet allowed this visual password system to be used in many circumstances. While it works in most implementations, there are shortcomings – again, based on human factors not anticipated in the initial design. CAPTCHAs do not work for people with certain physical limitations or cultural backgrounds and will not just limit unauthorized access, but will prevent legitimate use as well. Given the global user-base that most businesses are trying to target, these limitations will not be appropriate. The visually impaired or recent immigrants trying to access their first bank account will face enormous difficulties trying to decipher the requirements that this type of gatekeeper demands of them. Relying on Senses as a Means of Security A security implementation that relies on one of the user’s five senses or memory ultimately will hit the limits to which any particular user is able to employ them. Perhaps an online photo album does not need the same level of protection as someone’s access to his or her bank account? Perhaps Facebook and Google need to implement two-factor authentication for all their online properties? These questions can only be answered calmly and methodically by considering the needs of each user that comes in contact with the system. All businesses need to conduct a pre-purchase discovery with these questions in mind. Design professionals need to focus on the interactions that result from a variety of behaviors and pick all the tools that are appropriate – including those for security and protection. Human-centered design thinking is a necessary augmentation to the limits of technology. The awareness of how and why certain interactions are implemented, the understanding of the benefits, has the potential to counteract those hard to control behaviors from which technology alone has no chance of protecting any given system. Human-centered design has the capability for a longer lasting impact than a simple certificate and encryption protocol between a browser and a server. The Use of Two-Factor Authentication An example of a purely technical, or rather mathematical solution is two-factor authentication. Random, single-use tokens combined with strong password requirements are becoming widespread. With current technology, it is impossible, or to be more precise, almost impossible to break. However, it is the lack of consideration for human behavior that is this solution’s flaw. While it fits into the established and understood process implementation of username/password paradigm, it adds more complexity – not necessarily what the average user desires. Using a Reminder Question Another recent approach, still employing the additional complexity to slow down a brute force attacker, is the “reminder question” type of security. In addition to the username/password, some common question is asked, the answer to which the system presumes only the user would know. However, a disgruntled friend or family member or a social media “friend” can easily find out the name of our first pet or the high school we graduated from. Again, this demonstrates the limits of technology and how it cannot cover all the intricacies of human behavior. Security Lessons Learnt From Experience At the company I work for, Story+Structure, we are convinced that the solution to these issues lies in the combination of the strength of currently available technology and the trust building capabilities of a human-centered design approach. One great example, originally from the banking industry, is the Know Your Customer (KYC) process. This interaction, specifically for the benefit of the protection of the customer, is technology agnostic. It requires certain steps from a service provider to take with each of their customers before engaging in any sensitive business. Its benefit is validated by corresponding legal mandates. In the banking sector, training has to be provided and certain requirements have to be met, before any employee can engage with a potential or existing customer. Similar procedures are in place, in combination with technology, when fraud protection departments stop certain large item purchases. In today’s fast-paced retail environments, this could be seen as a mistake. It is the designer’s role to explain why it is worth the frustration and that after the initial confusion, the understanding will lead to a better experience and a stronger relationship. Technology that enables this type of protection cannot adequately address all the human emotions that are in play. Designers, however, can, and a holistic view of the entire interaction ecosystem allows them to incorporate security into their approach toward a solution. In Conclusion In conclusion, the online security process must evolve to consider human components – not just technical safeguards. The human-centered approach, such as formulating a holistic view of the workflow, understanding the customer’s real need and through this discovery helping them notice out-of-the-ordinary activities, helps organizations protect their users by being mindful of who they are, what they need and how they operate. Not just for a better user experience, but as part of a comprehensive protection against errors (malicious or otherwise). UX For Enterprise: Using IoT To Design Integrated Systems For The Workplace October 19, 2015 by Yona Gidalevitz 0 Comments ux-enterprise-iot While beacons have yet to emerge as a mainstream technology, they have not only begun to revolutionize the customer experience model, but also validate predictions regarding the future of the Internet of Things (IoT). Proximity marketing and contextual functionality have contributed to a tailored, custom experience for users of apps that have implemented beacons as a usability enhancement tool. But what can beacons do for usability outside of the context of marketing and user-oriented application development? At the enterprise level, beacons could potentially foster an environment where, for all intents and purposes, the usability of a large office building may rival that of a finely tuned mobile application. Enterprise Efficiency is a Product of Usability Due to the nature of beacon technology, the potential for data-capture is vast–a largely untapped resource. Most of the benefits of integrating beacons around the office come from their inherent ability to collect data (and use it to make decisions). At the enterprise level, there are a number of metrics which can keep businesses operating at maximum efficiency and safety–and therefore maintaining maximum office usability. How, you ask? When designing integrated systems for employees, just as with customer-facing products, there are quantifiable factors which can affect workplace efficiency. 1. Asset Tracking Beacons provide an affordable solution for the tracking of company assets, such as machinery, power tools, and medical equipment. Tracking data can be stored, and analyzed over a time period, in order to isolate potential bottlenecks. In turn, there are two ways that asset tracking can directly affect integrated system usability around the office: Reduced bottlenecks mean reduced interactions. Asset tracking means everything is at your fingertips. I know what you’re thinking. Your UX senses are tingling: “Reduced interactions? Everything is findable? That sounds like good UX Design to me.” Yes, it is, my friend. But don’t forget, there is more to the puzzle than asset tracking. 2. Office Efficiency By implementing beacons throughout the office, enterprises can create connected, intelligent workplaces that make time-saving, and money-saving decisions, without the need for employee engagement, thus limiting the need to micromanage. Whenever you have a system that allows users of the system (in this case, employees) to roam freely across the vast plains of its functionality (using the office without the need to stop and make decisions), we can safely attribute it to good UX Design. 3. Health and Safety Automating the enforcement of an organization’s occupational health and safety policies, by supplementing them with beacon technology, will soon be central to the employee experience, and an innovative way to minimize the necessary interactions between the administration and the workforce. Safety protocols can be enforced by pushing contextual notifications to employees when needed, or by limiting the ability of employees to engage in a particular activity without having met a predetermined set of requirements. For example, a piece of enterprise software which allows its employees to survey industrial equipment may conditionally lock an employee out if, say, they are in a dangerous zone, where they cannot afford to divert attention to the software. 4. Data Collection Beacons can be used to collect data on employee efficiency, and analyze the factors that most greatly contribute to workplace distractions. In turn, conditional automation can be used to combat the factors which diminish the employee experience. For example, factors such as temperature, lighting, employee placement, work hours, computer limitations, and noise level, can have a severe effect on the ability of a worker to perform at their assigned task. Developing integrated systems which address these concerns automatically, based on data collected through beacon implementations, is no longer a science fiction concept, but a very real (and necessary) possibility. Towards a Better Definition of “User” User Experience Design ought to be seen as a tool not only for the betterment of customer experiences, but also in contexts where there may not be any mobile applications to speak of. Such a shift in mindset will require User Experience Designers to reflect on what it means to be a user. It’s about time someone said it. Anyone, using any system, is a user. Thus, any user who uses a system, requires a seamless experience. This is inherently relevant in the context of employee experiences, especially where integrated systems are concerned. At my workplace, we have found it beneficial to create a dedicated page for adding beacon technology into workplaces, and assist potential clients with integrating beacon technology to their already-built software. UX Designers, listen up: if you are working on integrated systems at the enterprise level, you ought to implement beacon technology into your UX designs, in order to help contextualize, and automate, the actions that employees do not necessarily have to, or want to take. UX And Stock Photos: An Interview With A Curator October 21, 2015 by Justin Mifsud 0 Comments ux-stock-photos-interview-curator A couple of weeks ago, a late-night conversation with one of the readers of this blog led to a discussion about the use of stock photos and their contribution (or lack of thereof) towards improving the overall user experience of a site. Much has been said in blogs and online discussions that stock photos and other decorative graphic elements do not add anything significant to the user experience. Although this argument is even backed up by eyetracking studies, I felt the need, more than ever, to reach out to see if there is another side to this argument. So I browsed around in my LinkedIn contacts and found someone who can potentially provide this perspective – Robyn Lange. Enter Robyn Lange – Curator of Stock Photos Robyn is the curator of stock photos at Shutterstock, which as most of you know, is a global technology company that is one of the largest two-sided marketplace for creative professionals to license content. Previously, Robyn served as a photo editor for top national publications. She has worked closely with some of the most talented photographers in the industry; produced elaborate photo shoots across the globe; and cultivated extensive knowledge of image libraries both rare and internationally acclaimed. I reached out to Robyn and asked her a number of questions whose topic ranges from the curation of stock photos to user experience principles. The Interview 1. Hi Robyn, thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Can you start off by telling us about yourself? Hi Justin, thank you for this opportunity. Well, I worked previously for over a decade as a freelance photo editor and producer in magazine publishing. I love both photography and design. I’ve marveled at how much more essential and widespread photography has become in all kinds of places to help businesses look better. 2. So you currently occupy the post of curator of stock photos with a leading supplier of stock photography. How did you fall into this line of work? When I came across the job posting for a curator, I was immediately intrigued. Photo editing and curating have a lot in common. I knew that in this role I could take what I knew already, but apply it in new ways. One of the aspects of the job that got me most excited was the thought of making a suggestion that could be implemented and changed quickly. 3. What does your role involve and how does it differ from the ‘traditional’ position of curator in a museum or art gallery? It’s my job to make the visitor’s experience as pleasant and memorable as possible. That’s true across platforms for all curators. Having 60 million assets (including photos, vectors and illustrations) at my disposal gives me a great resource to pull from. Working for a digital company, it’s incredibly interesting to test different photos and to see what the public clicks on more than others. You learn a lot throughout the process about what attracts an audience and in which context. 4. How would you describe the typical categories of customers? We service 1.3 million customers and the most typical are in the fields of marketing, advertising and media. 5. Acquiring collections is a very important part of curation. How do you reach out to contributors of stock photos in order to raise the quality of the photos that you offer? I don’t reach out personally, but we have a contributor team that reviews every single image and provides immediate and insightful feedback on the work. The team also reaches out to contributors to communicate opportunities based on what clients are asking for in a given season. 6. So what makes a good, high quality stock photo that users would want to buy? Authenticity. Our best contributors have a certain style and vision that gets conveyed through their work. Clients sometimes don’t know what exactly they’re looking for, and a strong image that tells a story itself and conjures up emotions for the viewer can really make an impact. If the client feels something when he or she searches the collection, chances are so will the audience seeing that image inside a larger product. The photographers who perform best think from the beginning about the end use, and how and why this image would valuable to have. 7. In traditional curation, the art gallery curator would select the theme for exhibits. How does this transpire in the digital world of tagging stock photos into categories? Keywords are integral to finding what you look for. It helps organize the imagery. But I’ve found them to be useful in other ways, too. What I’ll do is search an idea or a theme and then look at the similar keywords that turn up with them. A lot of the time the term I searched initially won’t be the term I wind up using to find what I really want. There’s a path to follow. I’m selecting the best images from the bunch, but through doing searches myself, I get a good, strong look at the experience a customer would have as he or she searches. Replicating the user experience, and acting like a customer would, helps me better understand the customer, and how I can assist them. 8. I have read that one of the requirements for becoming a job curator for stock photography is to have a “knack for storytelling”. How does storytelling fit in your role? When I choose imagery for our website, Instagram account, or for other marketing campaigns, I am doing my part to tell the Shutterstock story. At the same time, though, the beauty and authenticity you see can be had by anyone on a budget. We’re leading by example every day. If people who haven’t come across Shutterstock before are introduced to it with something bold and vibrant, then they’re more likely to think highly of the company and our collection. Every campaign or social-media post is a small piece of the overall story. 9. There was also mention that your role involves working closely with the User Experience design team by suggesting how the website should look and feel like. What measures could be taken to improve the user experience of a stock photography website? It’s really important to have clean, uncluttered imagery that reads well on a number of platforms, whether web, mobile, or somewhere else. It should enhance the experience, but it should also stimulate the imagination. I love to experiment with different types of photos and vectors to use as our hero images (the large images at the top of the homepage), and it can be really surprising and exciting to see what content works. And I think the same rules apply to stock sites as to magazine pages – less is more. Lots of little images make less of an impact than a few really gorgeous ones. 10. There is a considerable number of user experience professionals who advise against the use of stock photography of ‘generic people’ because users ignore them. In some cases, this is even backed up by research such as the eye tracking results presented by Dr. Jakob Nielsen in his article “Photos as Web Content”. What is your view on this argument? This is a fascinating read; thank you for sharing. And I couldn’t agree more with the UX pros. Humans are so adept at reading social cues on a subconscious level that it’s very easy to spot the false scenarios. For that reason, it’s difficult for people to relate to such staged imagery. I recently curated our Changing Faces infographic, and the premise of it was to show that customers are searching for faces that better represent our diverse world. It’s a wonderful celebration of the real and authentic people within our collection and a testament that we all still desire to make a natural, human connection with one another. Thank you Robyn accepting my invitation for this interview and for dedicating your time to share with us these great insights. May I take this opportunity to wish you success for your new role. The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency 5 Proven Ways To Fund Your App At The Idea Stage September 21, 2015 by Tracy Vides 0 Comments 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-at-the-idea-stage You may have a revolutionary idea for the next big app. However, without the right funding for your winning app, that idea will probably never see light of day. Unlike a business startup, where the entrepreneur knows exactly what he or she’s going to do, what products or services will be offered and how, what will be the monetization model, etc., app developers have little idea about any of these at the initial stages of building the app. User testing throws up curve balls that often call for drastic changes. Most apps go through so many modifications and iterations that the final product will look radically different from the initial idea. For this reason, creating a bound business plan and approaching banks for loans becomes really tough. So what do you do? Here are a few thoughts to get you started. 1. Bootstrap Your Way Up with Co-Founders There is no source of funds more dependable than your own savings. If you cannot spare cash to invest in your own bright idea, asking others to contribute to it is a little unfair, don’t you think? Bank savings, personal loans, credit card loans, friends and family are all perfectly legitimate sources of funds when your app is in its infancy. However, you don’t always have to go it alone. Find the perfect co-founder to shoulder the responsibility of launching a new app. A co-founder is a lot more than a friend or shoulder during bad times. Pick a co-founder based on your needs. A tech-savvy co-founder can help you design and build a prototype of your app from scratch without spending a penny on outside developers. Bobby Murphy, co-founder of Snapchat was the development brains behind what was essentially Evan Spiegel and Reggie Brown’s Stanford classroom project. Currently the app stands valued at close to $20 billion. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-co-founders Image Source: VentureVillage Alternately, find a partner who can fund your app while you develop it yourself. Case in point – Uber. Travis Kalanick was the cash supply for developer/co-founder Garrett Camp. 2. Set up a Crowdfunding Campaign Crowdfunding is an attractive funding avenue for startups that have absolutely no resources of their own to get going with their ideas. Even though hundreds of app and startup ideas go unnoticed and unfunded on crowdfunding sites, the right pitch can promise a bonanza for your dream app. In return for a service fee from the crowdfunding platform and a transaction fee from the payment processor, you are assured of sufficient funds to get your dream off the ground. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-crowdfunding Image Source: Traquity.com (website no longer exists) Crowdfunding has various models that you can pick from. The leader in the crowdfunding space, Kickstarter, is an all or nothing platform. This means that once you set your funding goal, you better reach the target amount to get the money. If you fall short of your target, the contributions get refunded to the individual investors. On the other hand, Indiegogo offers both flexible funding and fixed funding options, thus meaning that if you fail to reach your target amount, you can keep your collection in return for a higher service fee. You may also want to consider app-specific crowdfunding platforms like AppsFunder and AppSplit. 3. Raise Donations on Your Own Site The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency Crowdfunding is a great way to get quick resources. However it also has quite a few negatives tacked on to it. There’s tons of competition out there and standing out from a sea of wannabe entrepreneurs can be near-impossible for many. Then there are the myriad of fees that you shell out in return for the funding that you request. A smart way to eliminate these problems is by raising funds on your own site. Yes, nothing stops you from: Describing your proposed app to your readers Asking them for a small donation towards your app Offering them a gift / pre-orders of your app / monetary compensation once your app rolls out in return for their contributions A tool like 123ContactForm allows you to build a donation form in minutes. Even better, it integrates easily with various payment processors like PayPal, Stripe, Braintree and FreshBooks to make the process of setting up your self-owned own funding campaign a one-stop affair. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-donation-form Image Source: Smashing Forms 4. Participate in Funding Contests If you’re a would-be entrepreneur in the connected world, there’s no way you’ve not seen the entrepreneurial TV series Shark Tank. With over $44 million in funding given out across its five seasons, the hit show is an entrepreneur’s dream come true. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-funding-contest Shark Tank – Image Source: The Hollywood Reporter I am not suggesting that you try and get on Shark Tank to get your app funded. You should if you can, but that’s not the point here. There are tons of contests available sponsored by universities, technology companies, angel investor networks and more that offer new entrepreneurs the resources to fulfill their business idea. Check out Biz Plan Competitions to pick from hundreds of contests around the world. You can even zoom in on a contest near you and learn about how to qualify and participate to win the funding that your app deserves. 5. Angel Investors and Strategic Partners Many startups are tempted to approach Venture Capitalists (VCs) for seed funding. However, the fact remains that less than 3% of seed funding comes from VCs. Instead, angel investors or strategic investors are strong contenders for kick starting your brand new app. These are not always companies or institutions. Individuals and successful entrepreneurs often take an active interest in funding new startups. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer are but two examples of avid angel investors in early stage apps. Angel investors can offer anything from $25,000 to a few million in funding, depending on your app idea and stage of development. The size of the angel investment market currently stands at $20 billion annually. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-strategic-partners Marissa Mayer – Image Source: Business Insider While angel investors are easier to convince than VCs at a seed stage, you still need to be prepared to give a potential angel investor details like: The total amount of capital you will need How quickly will you burn through it (monthly burn rate) What is your go-to-market strategy How will you promote the app Why do you deserve funding, that is, the technical and business capabilities of the founders Coda It’s not just you. Before Peter Thiel stepped in with the first external funds that Facebook would receive, Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin managed their operating costs by hustling for every last dollar. The monthly expense of $85 for renting their very first server was covered by banner ads on Facebook using platforms like AdSense. Moral of the story? With a little bit of creativity, you can always make sure that your dream app doesn’t remain only in your dreams. (Lead image source: Rocío Lara) Customer Experience vs. User Experience: What’s The Difference? September 23, 2015 by Zev Ginzburg 2 Comments customer-experience-user-experience-difference Often times promising entrepreneurs will come up with a genius idea for an app but end up entangling a lot of important components into one product. If you’re a geek in any capacity that works in tech today, there is no doubt you’ve heard the following: “I’ve got this great idea for an app, tell me what you think…” To which us geeks inevitably roll our eyes as the individual begins to describe a blend of apps on the market and how it solves a crucial problem of our generation. What many of these entrepreneurs tend to overlook is the revenue model doesn’t necessarily mesh well with the usability. Making the mistake of combining a customer experience and a user experience has ramifications that could result in a poor experience on both ends. The User Experience (UX), as many usability geeks would be aware of, would include most operational needs, which includes the information architecture, the general navigation, and completing functional tasks relatively easy. The Customer Experience (CX) has many external variables embedded in it. It embodies user experience, because after all, a customer is a usertype. The major differences here need to accommodate the mission of a particular web or mobile app. A customer experience may, and often does, impede on the mission. The Revenue Model: Brickless and Mortarless Advertisements are often an easy way to monetize and take advantage of a large user base that does not pay for usage. These advertisements have a direct correlation to the quality of user experience and customer experience. Advertisements, unless otherwise stated, are something a user would want to avoid. YouTube for instance knows this by adding a ‘skip ad’ button. Hulu, Pandora, Spotify, and even Skype all include advertisements which in some instances significantly hinder the user experience. Earning revenue is very important to the stability of an application, obviously. So some means of providing a balance between the customer experience and user experience is crucial. The most apparent examples of this customer experience and user experience balance is in simple games on mobile. Games like Clash of Clans, Game of War, and many similar strategy games implemented the token system for users to buy. The token system has several advantages to the harmony needed between customer experience and user experience, the first of which guarantees that the user experience is good because the user wants to keep engaging (playing) with game. There is a hard way to advance and just like life there is an easy way, all one needs to do is pay for it. Some users take the game extremely seriously and get into. A sizable portion of users are willing to shell out a couple of dollars to beat a level they’re just cognitively unequipped to beat. It is wholly appropriate here because the tokens for sale are now a resource for the user, and as such resources tend to be a positive tool in a user experience. It also tends to be a negative experience for a user’s wallet. The Revenue Model: Bricks and Mortar What about a case where a company has brick and mortar stores? They already have a customer experience in store and they may want to transfer this experience to a digital front. Companies like Starbucks or Wal­Mart may be hyper aware that the shopping experience needs to optimize cross platform usage. The Starbucks app enables users to reimburse rewards and pay for their coffee right from their mobile device. The whole app is catered for the customer which makes the UX development a lot easier. The customer has a set of defined tasks, one cannot simply peruse the Starbucks app, it is task oriented. Wal­Mart took an already acceptable customer experience and improved it through their technical solution called ‘savings catcher.’ Now while the politics of Wal­Mart are extremely divisive, the savings catcher is a very unique and progressive means of providing a good customer experience. It’s such a novel concept in some senses, the user first shops at Wal­Mart, then scans his or her receipt, then Wal­Mart will run a check for the same product at multiple retailers. If the price was cheaper anywhere else, Wal­Mart will refund you the money. Wal­Mart does all the work too, the user just uploads their proof of purchase. With a global customer base of over 100,000,000 there are sure to be savings and the more a customer spends, the likelihood of getting the best deal increases. The UX of the application, however, is nothing revolutionary. The bells and whistles are purposely diluted in order to accommodate that potential of 100,000,000 customers who would be app users. The Bottom Line Designing and developing for a good user experience means beginning at a bottom line: are we here to make money from a customer, or are we here to provide something else? Service based products like Spotify or Pandora do really well providing music. Earning revenue however was not necessarily part of the game plan from beginning. Including a customer experience helps if you know what kind of customer would integrate well into a user experience. (Lead image source: Jason Howie) 10 Guidelines For Navigation Usability September 28, 2015 by Preston Pierce 0 Comments 10-guidelines-for-navigation-usability When it comes to usability, ease-of-navigation should be a top priority for web developers. The number one most annoying feature of a website is improper or confusing navigation, leaving users lost and wondering what to do next. If you’re lucky enough, some users just might scour through the website to accomplish their purpose of visiting the website. However, most users simply pop-out and add more numbers to the website bounce rate — and we all want to avoid that! So, what makes website navigation easy and usable? Follow these simple guidelines to ensure that your site navigation is a user-friendly one. 1. Embrace Predictability Being creative with your website is nice, but don’t practice this in areas where predictability may be preferred over uniqueness. This is particularly true for website navigation menus that visitors are going to use simply to get from one page to another. Creating unconventional navigation will only make it confusing – and confused users are less likely to stay on your page any longer. 10-guidelines-navigation-usability-unusual An Example of an unconventional navigation menu that takes time to make sense of (Source: YouZee) 2. Keep it Simple In a way, this goes hand-in-hand with predictability, except here you avoid making your navigation extremely difficult to comprehend. For example, you may have a predictable design, but if it is full of cluttered menus and submenus in a disorganized fashion, you’re far from making it easy for users to navigate through your website. 3. Don’t Overdo Minimalism Recently minimalism has caught on and everyone seems to be reducing content, promoting “white space”, and simplifying typography. This is great because nowadays internet users are more concerned about getting work done as fast as possible through mobile devices on-the-go, rather than viewing fancy pages that may take forever to download. However, some designers over-do minimalism, rendering clear and proper navigation useless. This is a big mistake! 10-guidelines-navigation-usability-minimal All you can see on the startupstockphotos website is the “About” option. Where’s the rest? (Source: StartupStockPhotos) 4. Keep it Consistent It’s always good to keep the theme and structure of your pages consistent. The first time a user visits your website, he/she is going to make sense of it in just a matter of seconds (shouldn’t take longer). After that, your user is going to expect all the pages to be similar in terms of structure and design. Having an entirely different navigation system page by page will only frustrate the user because the “making sense of it all” process will have to repeated unnecessarily every time. 5. Clear Hierarchical Structure Navigation menus should have a clear hierarchical structure with every category and clickable sub categories included in the menu. It’s okay if your parent categories are extensive, so long as all the available subcategories are listed in order. This gives the user a clear idea of what you can offer without having to go through several pages to find what they are looking for. This is particularly important for websites that offer a wide array of products and services. 10-guidelines-navigation-usability-hierarchical Aliexpress has a perfect navigation where hierarchal structure is clear with clickable grouped subcategories under parent categories (Source: AliExpress) 6. Make it Manageable Clear navigation in your user interface is highly usable when it tells visitors where they have come from, where they are currently, and where they can go from their current location. This obviously requires a breadcrumb trail on your website, allowing users to keep track of their location, making navigation more manageable and under their control. Remember that not all users will start visiting your site from the home page. Many will land on an inner page after clicking a link from another site or from the Search Engine Results Page. 7. Link the Logo to the Homepage A good practice is to link the homepage from the website’s logo (which should appear on every page at the same spot). Users have a tendency to start all over by going back to the home page and redoing the search process from there. Furthermore, many users are highly likely to search up your website using a search engine which could lead them to a specific page deep within your website. Users are going to want to click on your homepage from there so they can explore more of your website. 8. Include a Sitemap Sitemaps are crucial for a usable navigation system. Any lost user will resort to a sitemap that has links to all pages (or the main pages) of a website. The site map will list down the pages of your site in a clear, hierarchical order giving a plain overview of your website. Bear in mind that the sitemap should be concise without extraneous details on every single topic. 9 Guidelines For Writing A Killer Headline For Conversion September 30, 2015 by Florence Mendoza 1 Comment 9-guidelines-for-writing-killer-headline-converts If boosting conversion is your goal, writing the right headline is arguably more important than writing good copy. Indeed, a famous quote by advertising legend, David Ogilvy says that on average, five times as many people will read the headline than the actual content. And what good is writing anything at all if you can’t pique your readers’ interest? Even if, hypothetically-speaking, you wrote the best advertising copy or blog post in the world, if no one clicks on your bland headline, you’ve essentially wasted your time (not to mention money). In this article, I will be discussing 9 guidelines for writing headlines with the aim of boosting conversion. I know that there are several guidelines when it comes to this topic and likewise, there are numerous articles that have discussed it in sufficient depth. So what makes this article different? Simply put, this is not just ‘another list’. What I am presenting here are what I consider as being the most effective guidelines for writing headlines. Before we begin, know this: writing headlines is a science, not an art. 1. Use a Formula to Create Your Headline If using a formula seems wrong to you instinctively, consider this: lots of headlines online already follow certain formulae, and, clearly, no one cares. Look at popular content on the Internet (like Buzzfeed, Upworthy or high-ranking Youtube channels) and you’ll notice a lot of their headlines and titles following familiar patterns. This obviously doesn’t bother anyone in the slightest. Not to mention the fact that the first two examples have made a name for themselves by using attention-grabbing headlines that are so standardized, they’ve been parodied to death. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, really. At this point, a typical Internet user sees so many headlines daily on social media and elsewhere, something completely atypical will surely throw them off and be dismissed on sight. 2. Use Numbers in the Headline A clickable headline has numbers – and for good reasons. We all know that words can be manipulated in many ways and any outrageous claim made on the Internet – especially in a headline – will be met with skepticism. Numbers, on the other hand, elicit another reaction – trust. Any statistician would, at this point, remark that numbers can themselves be manipulated and misleading, but we’re talking about the readers’ gut reaction. Compare the following two headlines: This Pill Will Make You the Most Productive Worker in the World This Pill Will Raise Your Efficiency Factor by 20% or More Note that the second headline, the one that uses numbers, is more attractive than the first one that just looks like an empty promise. According to a study by Conductor that analyzed click traffic on social media, using a number in the headline is the most effective in boosting click-through rate out of all measured factors. Numbers in this study, by the way, don’t just mean statistics – they are headlines like “20 Things to do Before You Die”. 3. Try and Use These Words and Phrases (Where Possible) So which words convert more? Kevan Lee has created an incredible list of words and phrases that are most used in viral headlines by analyzing more than 3,000 headlines from 24 top content sites. He split his findings into two categories: ‘most popular words’ and ‘most popular uncommon words’. Perhaps even more interesting is the 2-word and 3-word phrases that he observed in these viral headlines: Most Popular 2-Word Phrases: ‘this is’, ‘in the’, ‘how to’, ‘is the’, ‘of the’ Most Popular 3-Word Phrases: ‘this is the’, ‘will make you’, ‘when you see’, ’til you see’, ‘what happens when’ Another useful resource is Josh Rhodes’ list of 179 emotional words that make powerful headings and high converting landing pages. According to this study, some of the most popular words in headlines are: ‘focus’, ‘wanted’, ‘free’, ‘sale’, ‘new’ and lowest. In yet another huge study, this time of 1 million headlines, Garret Moon came up with the following list of the most popular words and phrases in highly-shared headlines: ‘list post’, ‘you/your’, ‘free/giveaway’, ‘how to’, ‘diy’. 4. A Headline Should be X Words / Characters LongThe Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency Needless to say, there is much debate as to how long a headline should be. Here are some of the guidelines which I consider as being most useful: 8 words (according to The Guardian) 62 characters (according to Kevan Lee) 81-100 characters (according to HubSpot and Outbrain) 5. Make Your Headline Sound Useful Look again at the example about the efficiency pill. This is a good, clickable headline because of the fact that anyone can ‘try it on’. Wow, I can boost my efficiency by 20%? Now look at spam comments found anywhere on the Internet: “I made $6,000 using this website, etc., etc.” These are engineered to be clickable, and what do they do?: They use numbers The reader can instantly try it on and see what benefit they will get. The point is: if your headline isn’t somehow useful to the reader, it will be dismissed right away, so do try and make it as applicable as possible. To get the ‘usefulness’ effect try addressing the reader. This will mean that “How to Buy a Used Car” should be rewritten into “Things You Should Know Before Buying a Used Car”, or, better yet “10 Things You Should Know Before Buying a Used Car” 6. Choose Your Words Carefully This guideline takes many dimensions. What are the “ideal” words to use in a headline? Citing Stephen King, Jeff Bullas writes that simplicity is a key element. One can have an impressive vocabulary but taking an approach to headline writing that is too intellectual can backfire. Readers will always understand a simple headline. If you want to make it more appealing, then try and arouse their curiosity. According to Barry Feldman, the process of choosing which words to use also involves choosing which words to leave out. 7. Negative Spin Tends to do Better According to a study of 100 tech blogs done by Oribi, using words like “Kill”, “Fear”, “Dark”, “Bleeding” will get more attention, even if the headlines themselves are not violent at all. The same study found that headlines that feature words like “without”, “no” and “stop” end up at the top posts a lot. The takeaway from this is that giving your headline a negative spin is more likely to pique your readers’ interests. So “10 Things to do This Summer” becomes “The 10 Activities Your Summer Will Suck Without.” 8. Pose a Question There’s no way to be more engaging than asking a question. Whether it’s something that the readers have been wondering themselves or something new that they haven’t considered yet, a question will surely get attention. This is what is called a curiosity gap – it’s an itch that demands to be scratched. The proverbial scratching is reading the article. Leave the question headlines to the more important topics, though. It would be easy enough to get tired of a feed filled with question marks. So make sure you save this one for special occasions. 9. Finally, Don’t Lie This is so obvious, it shouldn’t even count as advice, but, unfortunately, it needs to be said – such is the state of things. If you promise someone they can lose weight at a rate of 5 pounds every day, only the most credulous would believe you. And since you’re writing for the cynical world of the Internet, credulity and naïveté is not something you should expect. If you’re counting on a lie getting you massive amounts of clicks, try and think through to the next step: what happens when they do click, and the content doesn’t follow up on the promise? They’ll close the tab and never come back to your site again, that’s what. The Art Of UX In MVP October 5, 2015 by Yona Gidalevitz 2 Comments ux-in-mvp UX is UX is UX – right? Not really. User Experience Designers (UXDs) working on Minimum Viable Product (MVP) builds have it rough. The thought process has to shift ever so slightly in MVP builds, and in such a way that it can disrupt your conception of what “good UX” really is. UX Designers, listen up: MVP builds serve a different purpose than full builds. MVP builds are tasked with learning as much as possible about the features required by users. Rather than producing a fully­-featured product, which addresses the needs of every possible user type, MVP builds are designed to create the absolute minimally viable product—one which creates the smallest feature set that someone would pay for, or even just use. In turn, the UX process has to change, slightly, to reflect this. So, you ask, how does it change? UX In MVP Is About Changing What You Measure UX Designers, at a really high level, are tasked with: Building out features Building them well (to put it bluntly) Ryan Singer of Basecamp has designed a very good way to visualize this. Let’s call it “the blob”. ux-mvp-blob Image Source: Signal v. Noise UX Designers are taught from the get-­go to ask themselves: “Is this user friendly?” — is the blob deep, and does it take up a large surface area? In MVP builds, a new question begins to take precedence: “Would users pay the same price for this feature set?” — does the blob really have to be this huge? The idea here is simple. In MVP builds, the depth of the blob should never change — that is, the quality of execution ought to remain consistent. The surface area, however, is what becomes the subject of significant scrutiny. By diminishing the surface area of the blob, you are able to experiment with the notion that, perhaps users are perfectly okay without the ability to fulfil a particular task that, otherwise, you would have spent precious time perfecting, and time is money. Testing feature-­set viability is the bread and butter of MVP­-driven UX Design. And Becoming More Agile The classic MVP [Build → Measure → Learn] cycle is the source of inspiration for the UX process in MVP builds: [UX → Measure → Learn → Repeat] Such a pattern emphasizes two key qualitative differences between non-­MVP and MVP­-based User Experiences: MVP builds ought to be produced quickly, and they ought to offer the absolute minimum set of features deemed acceptable by users. Your UX senses are tingling here, I know. This goes against what you’ve learned about UX, and feels wrong. You take pride in the quality of your work, and in the depth of features that you account for in your designs. UXDs: MVP builds do not inherently create gaps in the UX, contrary to what you may believe. Speed, here, does not necessarily equate to the absence of quality. Adopting agile methods in your UX Design process will ensure fast, “quality” cycles of work, due to the inherently repetitive model of testing that is used in the Agile process. This does not mean that building an MVP is a straightforward process. In fact, at my place of work we have found it beneficial to create a dedicated page to explain the importance of MVP and assist potential clients with building one. What I suggest is: Trust your UXD judgement, and embrace the MVP process and you will not be led astray. Kinks will be worked out in the multiple rounds of testing, while missing features will be discovered and implemented, during the many [Measure → Learn] portions of the Agile process. Most importantly, don’t forget: MVP builds are an excellent opportunity to learn about your users, and what they want from you. Often, what you give them is much more than they are willing to put up with for the price. And if that sounds too cynical to you, you’re in the wrong business, my friend. (Lead image source: Pulpolux !!!) 6 Powerful Ways Of Improving On-Site User Engagement October 12, 2015 by Ankit Panchal 0 Comments improve-user-engagement So you have an immersive website with the right aesthetic appeal. What is the next practical step? It is to prevent bounces and enhance on-site user engagement. However, most marketers are stuck at fluffing their website and pruning their social media page. A successful conversion model includes everything from on-site optimization to neat navigation and most websites take these in their stride. Despite that they have extremely high bounce rates. Could it be the lack of right information, prices or something intangible altogether? Here we shall discuss effective ways of preventing bounces and enhancing user engagement that leads up to increased conversions. 1. Target the Right Sources for Website VisitorsThe Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency Each website is unique and so is each visitor. You may generalize your group but know that each type of visitor comes from a specific source. For instance, a 30 y.o. tech nut will be more trusting about peer reviews on social sites. Now if you analyze your website traffic, you will see three distinct steps in conversion: Awareness brought about by search and discovery, Consideration after carefully looking at reviews, research and social media sites, and Action (Purchase or Bounce). Find out the sources from where your visitors come, based on that decide the type of information they are looking for on your website and then give a personalized experience thus enhancing user engagement. If your visitor came from a reference link on a blog on pesticides, don’t make them search amongst hundreds of gardening tools and seeds and plants. Sure they are pretty to look at but it won’t serve the purpose and hence the end result could be a compromised bounce rate. 2. Let Data Show You the Way There are several methods to acquire data of website engagement; Google Analytics is the most popular of all. The data thus acquired is extremely important to understand that whether your website is successfully retaining visitors and giving them something to learn, see of discover. Commonly, inbound links are able to get traffic from all over the world, but only 40-50% of it is relevant traffic. They caveat here is to successfully keep that 40-50% engaged enough on your website, so they take some actionable steps like buy, subscribe, bookmark, share etc. Another important part of data analysis is user behavior. Measure session duration to see if they were just site hopping or were they looking for something seriously. Users will give you 35 seconds before they decide that you are not what they are looking for. Session duration will let you understand if majority of your users think that way. And if the answer is yes, you better start taking reformative steps to enhance user engagement. Page-wise performance data is the third step in the way. It allows you to do A/B testing and decide what works best for your audience. If you have multi-group audience, it allows you to cater for various contents based on the group taste. 3. Create Immersive Experiences for Visitors Immersive experience is more than a buzzword. We don’t wish to burden you with the hackneyed example of Amazon and how they created an immersive experience, so we have found some of the best immersive websites on the internet. Take a cue from them and discover ways you can create an immersive experience for your visitors. From interesting blog posts to videos, the ways and means to keep your audience hooked are surprisingly simple and inexhaustible. Ask 3 questions to yourself if you wish to create an immersive website: Are we offering more than they thought / wanted? Are we giving something new, something irresistible? Have we taken an unbeaten path? Check out how this Auto Service facility created an amazing immersive experience on their website. Surely they didn’t need to do it, but they did it anyways and the path less trodden led them to great success. improve-user-engagement-hmr Image credit: http://hmrservis.cz/ And now see the typical car service website and the likes of which you find in abundance on the internet. improve-user-engagement-york Image credit: http://www.yorkspringandradiator.ca/en/ 4. Carry the Experience Beyond Your Website This is one boat you simply can’t miss. Over these last couple of years, triggered emails or auto-responders have become one of the most important user engagement tactics. However, simple emails with ‘Howdy’ and ‘We Miss Ya’ or persistent emails and reminders won’t do. You have to carry the soul of your website theme and create a similar experience in emails. The same goes for social media and PR. This is one powerful way to garner repeat visits. 5. Watch the Calendar It is very important to gauge user engagement at a certain time of the day, certain days of the week, certain holidays, certain months of the year and so on. You will notice a hike in traffic at a particular period. Get to the root of it: Why was there a hike? What was the bounce rate then? Was it because of a particular offer or an event you organized? … and so on. Again Google Analytics allows you to compare activity in a particular period with activity in another period. 6. Be Like the Giraffe Did you know that in New Age religion, the giraffe is considered as being a symbol for intuition and flexibility? It is extremely easy to find yourself lost in the labyrinths of data and social media, thus forgetting your innate sense of intuition. Most of the times we don’t trust our instincts and see what is laid out right in front of our eyes. Get a bird’s eye view of your website or see it from a solely unattached point-of-view. This will help you to forget all the mind-numbing rules and metrics and discover a simpler and effective way to keep your users engaged. Also, learn from the giraffe to be flexible and ready for change. Take Away Once the user interface and user experience problems are out of your way, the only thing that remains to focus on is user engagement. It is extremely crucial to keep your users engaged and keep coming for more in order to build a loyal audience. These 6 powerful rules to enhance user engagement will help you bring down bounce rates and lead to successful conversion. Humans: The Missing Link In Online Security October 14, 2015 by Gabor Koródi 0 Comments humans-missing-link-security Implementing online security is ultimately a human undertaking. The tools have to be sufficient enough to protect you and your clients, but efficient enough not to get in the way of providing the best user experience possible. While technology will get you part of the way, the inevitable corner-cutting by users will ultimately expose the notion that technology cannot provide total protection against our human nature. The Username/Password Combination For example, historically the username/password combination provided both authorization and authentication in one convenient package. For earlier systems, not open to the public and only providing access from a well-defined physical location, this was a great solution. It quickly became apparent, however, that users are terrible at remembering some random password; they forget to change it every 90 days and would rather write it down. The technology, as always playing catch-up to its users, quickly evolved into password-strength measuring libraries and automated functions to force users into changing their passwords. As a typical example of leading with technology and not considering the human factors, the resistance from end-users was palpable. Many of us remember the passwords on sticky notes on someone’s monitor, or the easy to guess (and pronounce) ones that were shared around the office. Improvements are being made continuously, both technical and behavioral fronts. Users are much more aware of the need for proper security. Businesses with an online presence spend significant amount of resources on protecting their infrastructure and their users from a growing variety of threats. Administrators are much more vigilant on implementing security protocols that are harder to circumvent by both internal and external users. The Use of CAPTCHA Not too long ago, CAPTCHAs were the new favorite technical solutions against hackers trying to break into high-value targets. The wide-spread use of sophisticated UI interfaces over the Internet allowed this visual password system to be used in many circumstances. While it works in most implementations, there are shortcomings – again, based on human factors not anticipated in the initial design. CAPTCHAs do not work for people with certain physical limitations or cultural backgrounds and will not just limit unauthorized access, but will prevent legitimate use as well. Given the global user-base that most businesses are trying to target, these limitations will not be appropriate. The visually impaired or recent immigrants trying to access their first bank account will face enormous difficulties trying to decipher the requirements that this type of gatekeeper demands of them. Relying on Senses as a Means of Security A security implementation that relies on one of the user’s five senses or memory ultimately will hit the limits to which any particular user is able to employ them. Perhaps an online photo album does not need the same level of protection as someone’s access to his or her bank account? Perhaps Facebook and Google need to implement two-factor authentication for all their online properties? These questions can only be answered calmly and methodically by considering the needs of each user that comes in contact with the system. All businesses need to conduct a pre-purchase discovery with these questions in mind. Design professionals need to focus on the interactions that result from a variety of behaviors and pick all the tools that are appropriate – including those for security and protection. Human-centered design thinking is a necessary augmentation to the limits of technology. The awareness of how and why certain interactions are implemented, the understanding of the benefits, has the potential to counteract those hard to control behaviors from which technology alone has no chance of protecting any given system. Human-centered design has the capability for a longer lasting impact than a simple certificate and encryption protocol between a browser and a server. The Use of Two-Factor Authentication An example of a purely technical, or rather mathematical solution is two-factor authentication. Random, single-use tokens combined with strong password requirements are becoming widespread. With current technology, it is impossible, or to be more precise, almost impossible to break. However, it is the lack of consideration for human behavior that is this solution’s flaw. While it fits into the established and understood process implementation of username/password paradigm, it adds more complexity – not necessarily what the average user desires. Using a Reminder Question Another recent approach, still employing the additional complexity to slow down a brute force attacker, is the “reminder question” type of security. In addition to the username/password, some common question is asked, the answer to which the system presumes only the user would know. However, a disgruntled friend or family member or a social media “friend” can easily find out the name of our first pet or the high school we graduated from. Again, this demonstrates the limits of technology and how it cannot cover all the intricacies of human behavior. Security Lessons Learnt From Experience At the company I work for, Story+Structure, we are convinced that the solution to these issues lies in the combination of the strength of currently available technology and the trust building capabilities of a human-centered design approach. One great example, originally from the banking industry, is the Know Your Customer (KYC) process. This interaction, specifically for the benefit of the protection of the customer, is technology agnostic. It requires certain steps from a service provider to take with each of their customers before engaging in any sensitive business. Its benefit is validated by corresponding legal mandates. In the banking sector, training has to be provided and certain requirements have to be met, before any employee can engage with a potential or existing customer. Similar procedures are in place, in combination with technology, when fraud protection departments stop certain large item purchases. In today’s fast-paced retail environments, this could be seen as a mistake. It is the designer’s role to explain why it is worth the frustration and that after the initial confusion, the understanding will lead to a better experience and a stronger relationship. Technology that enables this type of protection cannot adequately address all the human emotions that are in play. Designers, however, can, and a holistic view of the entire interaction ecosystem allows them to incorporate security into their approach toward a solution. In Conclusion In conclusion, the online security process must evolve to consider human components – not just technical safeguards. The human-centered approach, such as formulating a holistic view of the workflow, understanding the customer’s real need and through this discovery helping them notice out-of-the-ordinary activities, helps organizations protect their users by being mindful of who they are, what they need and how they operate. Not just for a better user experience, but as part of a comprehensive protection against errors (malicious or otherwise). UX For Enterprise: Using IoT To Design Integrated Systems For The Workplace October 19, 2015 by Yona Gidalevitz 0 Comments ux-enterprise-iot While beacons have yet to emerge as a mainstream technology, they have not only begun to revolutionize the customer experience model, but also validate predictions regarding the future of the Internet of Things (IoT). Proximity marketing and contextual functionality have contributed to a tailored, custom experience for users of apps that have implemented beacons as a usability enhancement tool. But what can beacons do for usability outside of the context of marketing and user-oriented application development? At the enterprise level, beacons could potentially foster an environment where, for all intents and purposes, the usability of a large office building may rival that of a finely tuned mobile application. Enterprise Efficiency is a Product of Usability Due to the nature of beacon technology, the potential for data-capture is vast–a largely untapped resource. Most of the benefits of integrating beacons around the office come from their inherent ability to collect data (and use it to make decisions). At the enterprise level, there are a number of metrics which can keep businesses operating at maximum efficiency and safety–and therefore maintaining maximum office usability. How, you ask? When designing integrated systems for employees, just as with customer-facing products, there are quantifiable factors which can affect workplace efficiency. 1. Asset Tracking Beacons provide an affordable solution for the tracking of company assets, such as machinery, power tools, and medical equipment. Tracking data can be stored, and analyzed over a time period, in order to isolate potential bottlenecks. In turn, there are two ways that asset tracking can directly affect integrated system usability around the office: Reduced bottlenecks mean reduced interactions. Asset tracking means everything is at your fingertips. I know what you’re thinking. Your UX senses are tingling: “Reduced interactions? Everything is findable? That sounds like good UX Design to me.” Yes, it is, my friend. But don’t forget, there is more to the puzzle than asset tracking. 2. Office Efficiency By implementing beacons throughout the office, enterprises can create connected, intelligent workplaces that make time-saving, and money-saving decisions, without the need for employee engagement, thus limiting the need to micromanage. Whenever you have a system that allows users of the system (in this case, employees) to roam freely across the vast plains of its functionality (using the office without the need to stop and make decisions), we can safely attribute it to good UX Design. 3. Health and Safety Automating the enforcement of an organization’s occupational health and safety policies, by supplementing them with beacon technology, will soon be central to the employee experience, and an innovative way to minimize the necessary interactions between the administration and the workforce. Safety protocols can be enforced by pushing contextual notifications to employees when needed, or by limiting the ability of employees to engage in a particular activity without having met a predetermined set of requirements. For example, a piece of enterprise software which allows its employees to survey industrial equipment may conditionally lock an employee out if, say, they are in a dangerous zone, where they cannot afford to divert attention to the software. 4. Data Collection Beacons can be used to collect data on employee efficiency, and analyze the factors that most greatly contribute to workplace distractions. In turn, conditional automation can be used to combat the factors which diminish the employee experience. For example, factors such as temperature, lighting, employee placement, work hours, computer limitations, and noise level, can have a severe effect on the ability of a worker to perform at their assigned task. Developing integrated systems which address these concerns automatically, based on data collected through beacon implementations, is no longer a science fiction concept, but a very real (and necessary) possibility. Towards a Better Definition of “User” User Experience Design ought to be seen as a tool not only for the betterment of customer experiences, but also in contexts where there may not be any mobile applications to speak of. Such a shift in mindset will require User Experience Designers to reflect on what it means to be a user. It’s about time someone said it. Anyone, using any system, is a user. Thus, any user who uses a system, requires a seamless experience. This is inherently relevant in the context of employee experiences, especially where integrated systems are concerned. At my workplace, we have found it beneficial to create a dedicated page for adding beacon technology into workplaces, and assist potential clients with integrating beacon technology to their already-built software. UX Designers, listen up: if you are working on integrated systems at the enterprise level, you ought to implement beacon technology into your UX designs, in order to help contextualize, and automate, the actions that employees do not necessarily have to, or want to take. UX And Stock Photos: An Interview With A Curator October 21, 2015 by Justin Mifsud 0 Comments ux-stock-photos-interview-curator A couple of weeks ago, a late-night conversation with one of the readers of this blog led to a discussion about the use of stock photos and their contribution (or lack of thereof) towards improving the overall user experience of a site. Much has been said in blogs and online discussions that stock photos and other decorative graphic elements do not add anything significant to the user experience. Although this argument is even backed up by eyetracking studies, I felt the need, more than ever, to reach out to see if there is another side to this argument. So I browsed around in my LinkedIn contacts and found someone who can potentially provide this perspective – Robyn Lange. Enter Robyn Lange – Curator of Stock Photos Robyn is the curator of stock photos at Shutterstock, which as most of you know, is a global technology company that is one of the largest two-sided marketplace for creative professionals to license content. Previously, Robyn served as a photo editor for top national publications. She has worked closely with some of the most talented photographers in the industry; produced elaborate photo shoots across the globe; and cultivated extensive knowledge of image libraries both rare and internationally acclaimed. I reached out to Robyn and asked her a number of questions whose topic ranges from the curation of stock photos to user experience principles. The Interview 1. Hi Robyn, thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Can you start off by telling us about yourself? Hi Justin, thank you for this opportunity. Well, I worked previously for over a decade as a freelance photo editor and producer in magazine publishing. I love both photography and design. I’ve marveled at how much more essential and widespread photography has become in all kinds of places to help businesses look better. 2. So you currently occupy the post of curator of stock photos with a leading supplier of stock photography. How did you fall into this line of work? When I came across the job posting for a curator, I was immediately intrigued. Photo editing and curating have a lot in common. I knew that in this role I could take what I knew already, but apply it in new ways. One of the aspects of the job that got me most excited was the thought of making a suggestion that could be implemented and changed quickly. 3. What does your role involve and how does it differ from the ‘traditional’ position of curator in a museum or art gallery? It’s my job to make the visitor’s experience as pleasant and memorable as possible. That’s true across platforms for all curators. Having 60 million assets (including photos, vectors and illustrations) at my disposal gives me a great resource to pull from. Working for a digital company, it’s incredibly interesting to test different photos and to see what the public clicks on more than others. You learn a lot throughout the process about what attracts an audience and in which context. 4. How would you describe the typical categories of customers? We service 1.3 million customers and the most typical are in the fields of marketing, advertising and media. 5. Acquiring collections is a very important part of curation. How do you reach out to contributors of stock photos in order to raise the quality of the photos that you offer? I don’t reach out personally, but we have a contributor team that reviews every single image and provides immediate and insightful feedback on the work. The team also reaches out to contributors to communicate opportunities based on what clients are asking for in a given season. 6. So what makes a good, high quality stock photo that users would want to buy? Authenticity. Our best contributors have a certain style and vision that gets conveyed through their work. Clients sometimes don’t know what exactly they’re looking for, and a strong image that tells a story itself and conjures up emotions for the viewer can really make an impact. If the client feels something when he or she searches the collection, chances are so will the audience seeing that image inside a larger product. The photographers who perform best think from the beginning about the end use, and how and why this image would valuable to have. 7. In traditional curation, the art gallery curator would select the theme for exhibits. How does this transpire in the digital world of tagging stock photos into categories? Keywords are integral to finding what you look for. It helps organize the imagery. But I’ve found them to be useful in other ways, too. What I’ll do is search an idea or a theme and then look at the similar keywords that turn up with them. A lot of the time the term I searched initially won’t be the term I wind up using to find what I really want. There’s a path to follow. I’m selecting the best images from the bunch, but through doing searches myself, I get a good, strong look at the experience a customer would have as he or she searches. Replicating the user experience, and acting like a customer would, helps me better understand the customer, and how I can assist them. 8. I have read that one of the requirements for becoming a job curator for stock photography is to have a “knack for storytelling”. How does storytelling fit in your role? When I choose imagery for our website, Instagram account, or for other marketing campaigns, I am doing my part to tell the Shutterstock story. At the same time, though, the beauty and authenticity you see can be had by anyone on a budget. We’re leading by example every day. If people who haven’t come across Shutterstock before are introduced to it with something bold and vibrant, then they’re more likely to think highly of the company and our collection. Every campaign or social-media post is a small piece of the overall story. 9. There was also mention that your role involves working closely with the User Experience design team by suggesting how the website should look and feel like. What measures could be taken to improve the user experience of a stock photography website? It’s really important to have clean, uncluttered imagery that reads well on a number of platforms, whether web, mobile, or somewhere else. It should enhance the experience, but it should also stimulate the imagination. I love to experiment with different types of photos and vectors to use as our hero images (the large images at the top of the homepage), and it can be really surprising and exciting to see what content works. And I think the same rules apply to stock sites as to magazine pages – less is more. Lots of little images make less of an impact than a few really gorgeous ones. 10. There is a considerable number of user experience professionals who advise against the use of stock photography of ‘generic people’ because users ignore them. In some cases, this is even backed up by research such as the eye tracking results presented by Dr. Jakob Nielsen in his article “Photos as Web Content”. What is your view on this argument? This is a fascinating read; thank you for sharing. And I couldn’t agree more with the UX pros. Humans are so adept at reading social cues on a subconscious level that it’s very easy to spot the false scenarios. For that reason, it’s difficult for people to relate to such staged imagery. I recently curated our Changing Faces infographic, and the premise of it was to show that customers are searching for faces that better represent our diverse world. It’s a wonderful celebration of the real and authentic people within our collection and a testament that we all still desire to make a natural, human connection with one another. Thank you Robyn accepting my invitation for this interview and for dedicating your time to share with us these great insights. May I take this opportunity to wish you success for your new role. The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency 5 Proven Ways To Fund Your App At The Idea Stage September 21, 2015 by Tracy Vides 0 Comments 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-at-the-idea-stage You may have a revolutionary idea for the next big app. However, without the right funding for your winning app, that idea will probably never see light of day. Unlike a business startup, where the entrepreneur knows exactly what he or she’s going to do, what products or services will be offered and how, what will be the monetization model, etc., app developers have little idea about any of these at the initial stages of building the app. User testing throws up curve balls that often call for drastic changes. Most apps go through so many modifications and iterations that the final product will look radically different from the initial idea. For this reason, creating a bound business plan and approaching banks for loans becomes really tough. So what do you do? Here are a few thoughts to get you started. 1. Bootstrap Your Way Up with Co-Founders There is no source of funds more dependable than your own savings. If you cannot spare cash to invest in your own bright idea, asking others to contribute to it is a little unfair, don’t you think? Bank savings, personal loans, credit card loans, friends and family are all perfectly legitimate sources of funds when your app is in its infancy. However, you don’t always have to go it alone. Find the perfect co-founder to shoulder the responsibility of launching a new app. A co-founder is a lot more than a friend or shoulder during bad times. Pick a co-founder based on your needs. A tech-savvy co-founder can help you design and build a prototype of your app from scratch without spending a penny on outside developers. Bobby Murphy, co-founder of Snapchat was the development brains behind what was essentially Evan Spiegel and Reggie Brown’s Stanford classroom project. Currently the app stands valued at close to $20 billion. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-co-founders Image Source: VentureVillage Alternately, find a partner who can fund your app while you develop it yourself. Case in point – Uber. Travis Kalanick was the cash supply for developer/co-founder Garrett Camp. 2. Set up a Crowdfunding Campaign Crowdfunding is an attractive funding avenue for startups that have absolutely no resources of their own to get going with their ideas. Even though hundreds of app and startup ideas go unnoticed and unfunded on crowdfunding sites, the right pitch can promise a bonanza for your dream app. In return for a service fee from the crowdfunding platform and a transaction fee from the payment processor, you are assured of sufficient funds to get your dream off the ground. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-crowdfunding Image Source: Traquity.com (website no longer exists) Crowdfunding has various models that you can pick from. The leader in the crowdfunding space, Kickstarter, is an all or nothing platform. This means that once you set your funding goal, you better reach the target amount to get the money. If you fall short of your target, the contributions get refunded to the individual investors. On the other hand, Indiegogo offers both flexible funding and fixed funding options, thus meaning that if you fail to reach your target amount, you can keep your collection in return for a higher service fee. You may also want to consider app-specific crowdfunding platforms like AppsFunder and AppSplit. 3. Raise Donations on Your Own Site The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency Crowdfunding is a great way to get quick resources. However it also has quite a few negatives tacked on to it. There’s tons of competition out there and standing out from a sea of wannabe entrepreneurs can be near-impossible for many. Then there are the myriad of fees that you shell out in return for the funding that you request. A smart way to eliminate these problems is by raising funds on your own site. Yes, nothing stops you from: Describing your proposed app to your readers Asking them for a small donation towards your app Offering them a gift / pre-orders of your app / monetary compensation once your app rolls out in return for their contributions A tool like 123ContactForm allows you to build a donation form in minutes. Even better, it integrates easily with various payment processors like PayPal, Stripe, Braintree and FreshBooks to make the process of setting up your self-owned own funding campaign a one-stop affair. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-donation-form Image Source: Smashing Forms 4. Participate in Funding Contests If you’re a would-be entrepreneur in the connected world, there’s no way you’ve not seen the entrepreneurial TV series Shark Tank. With over $44 million in funding given out across its five seasons, the hit show is an entrepreneur’s dream come true. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-funding-contest Shark Tank – Image Source: The Hollywood Reporter I am not suggesting that you try and get on Shark Tank to get your app funded. You should if you can, but that’s not the point here. There are tons of contests available sponsored by universities, technology companies, angel investor networks and more that offer new entrepreneurs the resources to fulfill their business idea. Check out Biz Plan Competitions to pick from hundreds of contests around the world. You can even zoom in on a contest near you and learn about how to qualify and participate to win the funding that your app deserves. 5. Angel Investors and Strategic Partners Many startups are tempted to approach Venture Capitalists (VCs) for seed funding. However, the fact remains that less than 3% of seed funding comes from VCs. Instead, angel investors or strategic investors are strong contenders for kick starting your brand new app. These are not always companies or institutions. Individuals and successful entrepreneurs often take an active interest in funding new startups. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer are but two examples of avid angel investors in early stage apps. Angel investors can offer anything from $25,000 to a few million in funding, depending on your app idea and stage of development. The size of the angel investment market currently stands at $20 billion annually. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-strategic-partners Marissa Mayer – Image Source: Business Insider While angel investors are easier to convince than VCs at a seed stage, you still need to be prepared to give a potential angel investor details like: The total amount of capital you will need How quickly will you burn through it (monthly burn rate) What is your go-to-market strategy How will you promote the app Why do you deserve funding, that is, the technical and business capabilities of the founders Coda It’s not just you. Before Peter Thiel stepped in with the first external funds that Facebook would receive, Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin managed their operating costs by hustling for every last dollar. The monthly expense of $85 for renting their very first server was covered by banner ads on Facebook using platforms like AdSense. Moral of the story? With a little bit of creativity, you can always make sure that your dream app doesn’t remain only in your dreams. (Lead image source: Rocío Lara) Customer Experience vs. User Experience: What’s The Difference? September 23, 2015 by Zev Ginzburg 2 Comments customer-experience-user-experience-difference Often times promising entrepreneurs will come up with a genius idea for an app but end up entangling a lot of important components into one product. If you’re a geek in any capacity that works in tech today, there is no doubt you’ve heard the following: “I’ve got this great idea for an app, tell me what you think…” To which us geeks inevitably roll our eyes as the individual begins to describe a blend of apps on the market and how it solves a crucial problem of our generation. What many of these entrepreneurs tend to overlook is the revenue model doesn’t necessarily mesh well with the usability. Making the mistake of combining a customer experience and a user experience has ramifications that could result in a poor experience on both ends. The User Experience (UX), as many usability geeks would be aware of, would include most operational needs, which includes the information architecture, the general navigation, and completing functional tasks relatively easy. The Customer Experience (CX) has many external variables embedded in it. It embodies user experience, because after all, a customer is a usertype. The major differences here need to accommodate the mission of a particular web or mobile app. A customer experience may, and often does, impede on the mission. The Revenue Model: Brickless and Mortarless Advertisements are often an easy way to monetize and take advantage of a large user base that does not pay for usage. These advertisements have a direct correlation to the quality of user experience and customer experience. Advertisements, unless otherwise stated, are something a user would want to avoid. YouTube for instance knows this by adding a ‘skip ad’ button. Hulu, Pandora, Spotify, and even Skype all include advertisements which in some instances significantly hinder the user experience. Earning revenue is very important to the stability of an application, obviously. So some means of providing a balance between the customer experience and user experience is crucial. The most apparent examples of this customer experience and user experience balance is in simple games on mobile. Games like Clash of Clans, Game of War, and many similar strategy games implemented the token system for users to buy. The token system has several advantages to the harmony needed between customer experience and user experience, the first of which guarantees that the user experience is good because the user wants to keep engaging (playing) with game. There is a hard way to advance and just like life there is an easy way, all one needs to do is pay for it. Some users take the game extremely seriously and get into. A sizable portion of users are willing to shell out a couple of dollars to beat a level they’re just cognitively unequipped to beat. It is wholly appropriate here because the tokens for sale are now a resource for the user, and as such resources tend to be a positive tool in a user experience. It also tends to be a negative experience for a user’s wallet. The Revenue Model: Bricks and Mortar What about a case where a company has brick and mortar stores? They already have a customer experience in store and they may want to transfer this experience to a digital front. Companies like Starbucks or Wal­Mart may be hyper aware that the shopping experience needs to optimize cross platform usage. The Starbucks app enables users to reimburse rewards and pay for their coffee right from their mobile device. The whole app is catered for the customer which makes the UX development a lot easier. The customer has a set of defined tasks, one cannot simply peruse the Starbucks app, it is task oriented. Wal­Mart took an already acceptable customer experience and improved it through their technical solution called ‘savings catcher.’ Now while the politics of Wal­Mart are extremely divisive, the savings catcher is a very unique and progressive means of providing a good customer experience. It’s such a novel concept in some senses, the user first shops at Wal­Mart, then scans his or her receipt, then Wal­Mart will run a check for the same product at multiple retailers. If the price was cheaper anywhere else, Wal­Mart will refund you the money. Wal­Mart does all the work too, the user just uploads their proof of purchase. With a global customer base of over 100,000,000 there are sure to be savings and the more a customer spends, the likelihood of getting the best deal increases. The UX of the application, however, is nothing revolutionary. The bells and whistles are purposely diluted in order to accommodate that potential of 100,000,000 customers who would be app users. The Bottom Line Designing and developing for a good user experience means beginning at a bottom line: are we here to make money from a customer, or are we here to provide something else? Service based products like Spotify or Pandora do really well providing music. Earning revenue however was not necessarily part of the game plan from beginning. Including a customer experience helps if you know what kind of customer would integrate well into a user experience. (Lead image source: Jason Howie) 10 Guidelines For Navigation Usability September 28, 2015 by Preston Pierce 0 Comments 10-guidelines-for-navigation-usability When it comes to usability, ease-of-navigation should be a top priority for web developers. The number one most annoying feature of a website is improper or confusing navigation, leaving users lost and wondering what to do next. If you’re lucky enough, some users just might scour through the website to accomplish their purpose of visiting the website. However, most users simply pop-out and add more numbers to the website bounce rate — and we all want to avoid that! So, what makes website navigation easy and usable? Follow these simple guidelines to ensure that your site navigation is a user-friendly one. 1. Embrace Predictability Being creative with your website is nice, but don’t practice this in areas where predictability may be preferred over uniqueness. This is particularly true for website navigation menus that visitors are going to use simply to get from one page to another. Creating unconventional navigation will only make it confusing – and confused users are less likely to stay on your page any longer. 10-guidelines-navigation-usability-unusual An Example of an unconventional navigation menu that takes time to make sense of (Source: YouZee) 2. Keep it Simple In a way, this goes hand-in-hand with predictability, except here you avoid making your navigation extremely difficult to comprehend. For example, you may have a predictable design, but if it is full of cluttered menus and submenus in a disorganized fashion, you’re far from making it easy for users to navigate through your website. 3. Don’t Overdo Minimalism Recently minimalism has caught on and everyone seems to be reducing content, promoting “white space”, and simplifying typography. This is great because nowadays internet users are more concerned about getting work done as fast as possible through mobile devices on-the-go, rather than viewing fancy pages that may take forever to download. However, some designers over-do minimalism, rendering clear and proper navigation useless. This is a big mistake! 10-guidelines-navigation-usability-minimal All you can see on the startupstockphotos website is the “About” option. Where’s the rest? (Source: StartupStockPhotos) 4. Keep it Consistent It’s always good to keep the theme and structure of your pages consistent. The first time a user visits your website, he/she is going to make sense of it in just a matter of seconds (shouldn’t take longer). After that, your user is going to expect all the pages to be similar in terms of structure and design. Having an entirely different navigation system page by page will only frustrate the user because the “making sense of it all” process will have to repeated unnecessarily every time. 5. Clear Hierarchical Structure Navigation menus should have a clear hierarchical structure with every category and clickable sub categories included in the menu. It’s okay if your parent categories are extensive, so long as all the available subcategories are listed in order. This gives the user a clear idea of what you can offer without having to go through several pages to find what they are looking for. This is particularly important for websites that offer a wide array of products and services. 10-guidelines-navigation-usability-hierarchical Aliexpress has a perfect navigation where hierarchal structure is clear with clickable grouped subcategories under parent categories (Source: AliExpress) 6. Make it Manageable Clear navigation in your user interface is highly usable when it tells visitors where they have come from, where they are currently, and where they can go from their current location. This obviously requires a breadcrumb trail on your website, allowing users to keep track of their location, making navigation more manageable and under their control. Remember that not all users will start visiting your site from the home page. Many will land on an inner page after clicking a link from another site or from the Search Engine Results Page. 7. Link the Logo to the Homepage A good practice is to link the homepage from the website’s logo (which should appear on every page at the same spot). Users have a tendency to start all over by going back to the home page and redoing the search process from there. Furthermore, many users are highly likely to search up your website using a search engine which could lead them to a specific page deep within your website. Users are going to want to click on your homepage from there so they can explore more of your website. 8. Include a Sitemap Sitemaps are crucial for a usable navigation system. Any lost user will resort to a sitemap that has links to all pages (or the main pages) of a website. The site map will list down the pages of your site in a clear, hierarchical order giving a plain overview of your website. Bear in mind that the sitemap should be concise without extraneous details on every single topic. 9 Guidelines For Writing A Killer Headline For Conversion September 30, 2015 by Florence Mendoza 1 Comment 9-guidelines-for-writing-killer-headline-converts If boosting conversion is your goal, writing the right headline is arguably more important than writing good copy. Indeed, a famous quote by advertising legend, David Ogilvy says that on average, five times as many people will read the headline than the actual content. And what good is writing anything at all if you can’t pique your readers’ interest? Even if, hypothetically-speaking, you wrote the best advertising copy or blog post in the world, if no one clicks on your bland headline, you’ve essentially wasted your time (not to mention money). In this article, I will be discussing 9 guidelines for writing headlines with the aim of boosting conversion. I know that there are several guidelines when it comes to this topic and likewise, there are numerous articles that have discussed it in sufficient depth. So what makes this article different? Simply put, this is not just ‘another list’. What I am presenting here are what I consider as being the most effective guidelines for writing headlines. Before we begin, know this: writing headlines is a science, not an art. 1. Use a Formula to Create Your Headline If using a formula seems wrong to you instinctively, consider this: lots of headlines online already follow certain formulae, and, clearly, no one cares. Look at popular content on the Internet (like Buzzfeed, Upworthy or high-ranking Youtube channels) and you’ll notice a lot of their headlines and titles following familiar patterns. This obviously doesn’t bother anyone in the slightest. Not to mention the fact that the first two examples have made a name for themselves by using attention-grabbing headlines that are so standardized, they’ve been parodied to death. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, really. At this point, a typical Internet user sees so many headlines daily on social media and elsewhere, something completely atypical will surely throw them off and be dismissed on sight. 2. Use Numbers in the Headline A clickable headline has numbers – and for good reasons. We all know that words can be manipulated in many ways and any outrageous claim made on the Internet – especially in a headline – will be met with skepticism. Numbers, on the other hand, elicit another reaction – trust. Any statistician would, at this point, remark that numbers can themselves be manipulated and misleading, but we’re talking about the readers’ gut reaction. Compare the following two headlines: This Pill Will Make You the Most Productive Worker in the World This Pill Will Raise Your Efficiency Factor by 20% or More Note that the second headline, the one that uses numbers, is more attractive than the first one that just looks like an empty promise. According to a study by Conductor that analyzed click traffic on social media, using a number in the headline is the most effective in boosting click-through rate out of all measured factors. Numbers in this study, by the way, don’t just mean statistics – they are headlines like “20 Things to do Before You Die”. 3. Try and Use These Words and Phrases (Where Possible) So which words convert more? Kevan Lee has created an incredible list of words and phrases that are most used in viral headlines by analyzing more than 3,000 headlines from 24 top content sites. He split his findings into two categories: ‘most popular words’ and ‘most popular uncommon words’. Perhaps even more interesting is the 2-word and 3-word phrases that he observed in these viral headlines: Most Popular 2-Word Phrases: ‘this is’, ‘in the’, ‘how to’, ‘is the’, ‘of the’ Most Popular 3-Word Phrases: ‘this is the’, ‘will make you’, ‘when you see’, ’til you see’, ‘what happens when’ Another useful resource is Josh Rhodes’ list of 179 emotional words that make powerful headings and high converting landing pages. According to this study, some of the most popular words in headlines are: ‘focus’, ‘wanted’, ‘free’, ‘sale’, ‘new’ and lowest. In yet another huge study, this time of 1 million headlines, Garret Moon came up with the following list of the most popular words and phrases in highly-shared headlines: ‘list post’, ‘you/your’, ‘free/giveaway’, ‘how to’, ‘diy’. 4. A Headline Should be X Words / Characters LongThe Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency Needless to say, there is much debate as to how long a headline should be. Here are some of the guidelines which I consider as being most useful: 8 words (according to The Guardian) 62 characters (according to Kevan Lee) 81-100 characters (according to HubSpot and Outbrain) 5. Make Your Headline Sound Useful Look again at the example about the efficiency pill. This is a good, clickable headline because of the fact that anyone can ‘try it on’. Wow, I can boost my efficiency by 20%? Now look at spam comments found anywhere on the Internet: “I made $6,000 using this website, etc., etc.” These are engineered to be clickable, and what do they do?: They use numbers The reader can instantly try it on and see what benefit they will get. The point is: if your headline isn’t somehow useful to the reader, it will be dismissed right away, so do try and make it as applicable as possible. To get the ‘usefulness’ effect try addressing the reader. This will mean that “How to Buy a Used Car” should be rewritten into “Things You Should Know Before Buying a Used Car”, or, better yet “10 Things You Should Know Before Buying a Used Car” 6. Choose Your Words Carefully This guideline takes many dimensions. What are the “ideal” words to use in a headline? Citing Stephen King, Jeff Bullas writes that simplicity is a key element. One can have an impressive vocabulary but taking an approach to headline writing that is too intellectual can backfire. Readers will always understand a simple headline. If you want to make it more appealing, then try and arouse their curiosity. According to Barry Feldman, the process of choosing which words to use also involves choosing which words to leave out. 7. Negative Spin Tends to do Better According to a study of 100 tech blogs done by Oribi, using words like “Kill”, “Fear”, “Dark”, “Bleeding” will get more attention, even if the headlines themselves are not violent at all. The same study found that headlines that feature words like “without”, “no” and “stop” end up at the top posts a lot. The takeaway from this is that giving your headline a negative spin is more likely to pique your readers’ interests. So “10 Things to do This Summer” becomes “The 10 Activities Your Summer Will Suck Without.” 8. Pose a Question There’s no way to be more engaging than asking a question. Whether it’s something that the readers have been wondering themselves or something new that they haven’t considered yet, a question will surely get attention. This is what is called a curiosity gap – it’s an itch that demands to be scratched. The proverbial scratching is reading the article. Leave the question headlines to the more important topics, though. It would be easy enough to get tired of a feed filled with question marks. So make sure you save this one for special occasions. 9. Finally, Don’t Lie This is so obvious, it shouldn’t even count as advice, but, unfortunately, it needs to be said – such is the state of things. If you promise someone they can lose weight at a rate of 5 pounds every day, only the most credulous would believe you. And since you’re writing for the cynical world of the Internet, credulity and naïveté is not something you should expect. If you’re counting on a lie getting you massive amounts of clicks, try and think through to the next step: what happens when they do click, and the content doesn’t follow up on the promise? They’ll close the tab and never come back to your site again, that’s what. The Art Of UX In MVP October 5, 2015 by Yona Gidalevitz 2 Comments ux-in-mvp UX is UX is UX – right? Not really. User Experience Designers (UXDs) working on Minimum Viable Product (MVP) builds have it rough. The thought process has to shift ever so slightly in MVP builds, and in such a way that it can disrupt your conception of what “good UX” really is. UX Designers, listen up: MVP builds serve a different purpose than full builds. MVP builds are tasked with learning as much as possible about the features required by users. Rather than producing a fully­-featured product, which addresses the needs of every possible user type, MVP builds are designed to create the absolute minimally viable product—one which creates the smallest feature set that someone would pay for, or even just use. In turn, the UX process has to change, slightly, to reflect this. So, you ask, how does it change? UX In MVP Is About Changing What You Measure UX Designers, at a really high level, are tasked with: Building out features Building them well (to put it bluntly) Ryan Singer of Basecamp has designed a very good way to visualize this. Let’s call it “the blob”. ux-mvp-blob Image Source: Signal v. Noise UX Designers are taught from the get-­go to ask themselves: “Is this user friendly?” — is the blob deep, and does it take up a large surface area? In MVP builds, a new question begins to take precedence: “Would users pay the same price for this feature set?” — does the blob really have to be this huge? The idea here is simple. In MVP builds, the depth of the blob should never change — that is, the quality of execution ought to remain consistent. The surface area, however, is what becomes the subject of significant scrutiny. By diminishing the surface area of the blob, you are able to experiment with the notion that, perhaps users are perfectly okay without the ability to fulfil a particular task that, otherwise, you would have spent precious time perfecting, and time is money. Testing feature-­set viability is the bread and butter of MVP­-driven UX Design. And Becoming More Agile The classic MVP [Build → Measure → Learn] cycle is the source of inspiration for the UX process in MVP builds: [UX → Measure → Learn → Repeat] Such a pattern emphasizes two key qualitative differences between non-­MVP and MVP­-based User Experiences: MVP builds ought to be produced quickly, and they ought to offer the absolute minimum set of features deemed acceptable by users. Your UX senses are tingling here, I know. This goes against what you’ve learned about UX, and feels wrong. You take pride in the quality of your work, and in the depth of features that you account for in your designs. UXDs: MVP builds do not inherently create gaps in the UX, contrary to what you may believe. Speed, here, does not necessarily equate to the absence of quality. Adopting agile methods in your UX Design process will ensure fast, “quality” cycles of work, due to the inherently repetitive model of testing that is used in the Agile process. This does not mean that building an MVP is a straightforward process. In fact, at my place of work we have found it beneficial to create a dedicated page to explain the importance of MVP and assist potential clients with building one. What I suggest is: Trust your UXD judgement, and embrace the MVP process and you will not be led astray. Kinks will be worked out in the multiple rounds of testing, while missing features will be discovered and implemented, during the many [Measure → Learn] portions of the Agile process. Most importantly, don’t forget: MVP builds are an excellent opportunity to learn about your users, and what they want from you. Often, what you give them is much more than they are willing to put up with for the price. And if that sounds too cynical to you, you’re in the wrong business, my friend. (Lead image source: Pulpolux !!!) 6 Powerful Ways Of Improving On-Site User Engagement October 12, 2015 by Ankit Panchal 0 Comments improve-user-engagement So you have an immersive website with the right aesthetic appeal. What is the next practical step? It is to prevent bounces and enhance on-site user engagement. However, most marketers are stuck at fluffing their website and pruning their social media page. A successful conversion model includes everything from on-site optimization to neat navigation and most websites take these in their stride. Despite that they have extremely high bounce rates. Could it be the lack of right information, prices or something intangible altogether? Here we shall discuss effective ways of preventing bounces and enhancing user engagement that leads up to increased conversions. 1. Target the Right Sources for Website VisitorsThe Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency Each website is unique and so is each visitor. You may generalize your group but know that each type of visitor comes from a specific source. For instance, a 30 y.o. tech nut will be more trusting about peer reviews on social sites. Now if you analyze your website traffic, you will see three distinct steps in conversion: Awareness brought about by search and discovery, Consideration after carefully looking at reviews, research and social media sites, and Action (Purchase or Bounce). Find out the sources from where your visitors come, based on that decide the type of information they are looking for on your website and then give a personalized experience thus enhancing user engagement. If your visitor came from a reference link on a blog on pesticides, don’t make them search amongst hundreds of gardening tools and seeds and plants. Sure they are pretty to look at but it won’t serve the purpose and hence the end result could be a compromised bounce rate. 2. Let Data Show You the Way There are several methods to acquire data of website engagement; Google Analytics is the most popular of all. The data thus acquired is extremely important to understand that whether your website is successfully retaining visitors and giving them something to learn, see of discover. Commonly, inbound links are able to get traffic from all over the world, but only 40-50% of it is relevant traffic. They caveat here is to successfully keep that 40-50% engaged enough on your website, so they take some actionable steps like buy, subscribe, bookmark, share etc. Another important part of data analysis is user behavior. Measure session duration to see if they were just site hopping or were they looking for something seriously. Users will give you 35 seconds before they decide that you are not what they are looking for. Session duration will let you understand if majority of your users think that way. And if the answer is yes, you better start taking reformative steps to enhance user engagement. Page-wise performance data is the third step in the way. It allows you to do A/B testing and decide what works best for your audience. If you have multi-group audience, it allows you to cater for various contents based on the group taste. 3. Create Immersive Experiences for Visitors Immersive experience is more than a buzzword. We don’t wish to burden you with the hackneyed example of Amazon and how they created an immersive experience, so we have found some of the best immersive websites on the internet. Take a cue from them and discover ways you can create an immersive experience for your visitors. From interesting blog posts to videos, the ways and means to keep your audience hooked are surprisingly simple and inexhaustible. Ask 3 questions to yourself if you wish to create an immersive website: Are we offering more than they thought / wanted? Are we giving something new, something irresistible? Have we taken an unbeaten path? Check out how this Auto Service facility created an amazing immersive experience on their website. Surely they didn’t need to do it, but they did it anyways and the path less trodden led them to great success. improve-user-engagement-hmr Image credit: http://hmrservis.cz/ And now see the typical car service website and the likes of which you find in abundance on the internet. improve-user-engagement-york Image credit: http://www.yorkspringandradiator.ca/en/ 4. Carry the Experience Beyond Your Website This is one boat you simply can’t miss. Over these last couple of years, triggered emails or auto-responders have become one of the most important user engagement tactics. However, simple emails with ‘Howdy’ and ‘We Miss Ya’ or persistent emails and reminders won’t do. You have to carry the soul of your website theme and create a similar experience in emails. The same goes for social media and PR. This is one powerful way to garner repeat visits. 5. Watch the Calendar It is very important to gauge user engagement at a certain time of the day, certain days of the week, certain holidays, certain months of the year and so on. You will notice a hike in traffic at a particular period. Get to the root of it: Why was there a hike? What was the bounce rate then? Was it because of a particular offer or an event you organized? … and so on. Again Google Analytics allows you to compare activity in a particular period with activity in another period. 6. Be Like the Giraffe Did you know that in New Age religion, the giraffe is considered as being a symbol for intuition and flexibility? It is extremely easy to find yourself lost in the labyrinths of data and social media, thus forgetting your innate sense of intuition. Most of the times we don’t trust our instincts and see what is laid out right in front of our eyes. Get a bird’s eye view of your website or see it from a solely unattached point-of-view. This will help you to forget all the mind-numbing rules and metrics and discover a simpler and effective way to keep your users engaged. Also, learn from the giraffe to be flexible and ready for change. Take Away Once the user interface and user experience problems are out of your way, the only thing that remains to focus on is user engagement. It is extremely crucial to keep your users engaged and keep coming for more in order to build a loyal audience. These 6 powerful rules to enhance user engagement will help you bring down bounce rates and lead to successful conversion. Humans: The Missing Link In Online Security October 14, 2015 by Gabor Koródi 0 Comments humans-missing-link-security Implementing online security is ultimately a human undertaking. The tools have to be sufficient enough to protect you and your clients, but efficient enough not to get in the way of providing the best user experience possible. While technology will get you part of the way, the inevitable corner-cutting by users will ultimately expose the notion that technology cannot provide total protection against our human nature. The Username/Password Combination For example, historically the username/password combination provided both authorization and authentication in one convenient package. For earlier systems, not open to the public and only providing access from a well-defined physical location, this was a great solution. It quickly became apparent, however, that users are terrible at remembering some random password; they forget to change it every 90 days and would rather write it down. The technology, as always playing catch-up to its users, quickly evolved into password-strength measuring libraries and automated functions to force users into changing their passwords. As a typical example of leading with technology and not considering the human factors, the resistance from end-users was palpable. Many of us remember the passwords on sticky notes on someone’s monitor, or the easy to guess (and pronounce) ones that were shared around the office. Improvements are being made continuously, both technical and behavioral fronts. Users are much more aware of the need for proper security. Businesses with an online presence spend significant amount of resources on protecting their infrastructure and their users from a growing variety of threats. Administrators are much more vigilant on implementing security protocols that are harder to circumvent by both internal and external users. The Use of CAPTCHA Not too long ago, CAPTCHAs were the new favorite technical solutions against hackers trying to break into high-value targets. The wide-spread use of sophisticated UI interfaces over the Internet allowed this visual password system to be used in many circumstances. While it works in most implementations, there are shortcomings – again, based on human factors not anticipated in the initial design. CAPTCHAs do not work for people with certain physical limitations or cultural backgrounds and will not just limit unauthorized access, but will prevent legitimate use as well. Given the global user-base that most businesses are trying to target, these limitations will not be appropriate. The visually impaired or recent immigrants trying to access their first bank account will face enormous difficulties trying to decipher the requirements that this type of gatekeeper demands of them. Relying on Senses as a Means of Security A security implementation that relies on one of the user’s five senses or memory ultimately will hit the limits to which any particular user is able to employ them. Perhaps an online photo album does not need the same level of protection as someone’s access to his or her bank account? Perhaps Facebook and Google need to implement two-factor authentication for all their online properties? These questions can only be answered calmly and methodically by considering the needs of each user that comes in contact with the system. All businesses need to conduct a pre-purchase discovery with these questions in mind. Design professionals need to focus on the interactions that result from a variety of behaviors and pick all the tools that are appropriate – including those for security and protection. Human-centered design thinking is a necessary augmentation to the limits of technology. The awareness of how and why certain interactions are implemented, the understanding of the benefits, has the potential to counteract those hard to control behaviors from which technology alone has no chance of protecting any given system. Human-centered design has the capability for a longer lasting impact than a simple certificate and encryption protocol between a browser and a server. The Use of Two-Factor Authentication An example of a purely technical, or rather mathematical solution is two-factor authentication. Random, single-use tokens combined with strong password requirements are becoming widespread. With current technology, it is impossible, or to be more precise, almost impossible to break. However, it is the lack of consideration for human behavior that is this solution’s flaw. While it fits into the established and understood process implementation of username/password paradigm, it adds more complexity – not necessarily what the average user desires. Using a Reminder Question Another recent approach, still employing the additional complexity to slow down a brute force attacker, is the “reminder question” type of security. In addition to the username/password, some common question is asked, the answer to which the system presumes only the user would know. However, a disgruntled friend or family member or a social media “friend” can easily find out the name of our first pet or the high school we graduated from. Again, this demonstrates the limits of technology and how it cannot cover all the intricacies of human behavior. Security Lessons Learnt From Experience At the company I work for, Story+Structure, we are convinced that the solution to these issues lies in the combination of the strength of currently available technology and the trust building capabilities of a human-centered design approach. One great example, originally from the banking industry, is the Know Your Customer (KYC) process. This interaction, specifically for the benefit of the protection of the customer, is technology agnostic. It requires certain steps from a service provider to take with each of their customers before engaging in any sensitive business. Its benefit is validated by corresponding legal mandates. In the banking sector, training has to be provided and certain requirements have to be met, before any employee can engage with a potential or existing customer. Similar procedures are in place, in combination with technology, when fraud protection departments stop certain large item purchases. In today’s fast-paced retail environments, this could be seen as a mistake. It is the designer’s role to explain why it is worth the frustration and that after the initial confusion, the understanding will lead to a better experience and a stronger relationship. Technology that enables this type of protection cannot adequately address all the human emotions that are in play. Designers, however, can, and a holistic view of the entire interaction ecosystem allows them to incorporate security into their approach toward a solution. In Conclusion In conclusion, the online security process must evolve to consider human components – not just technical safeguards. The human-centered approach, such as formulating a holistic view of the workflow, understanding the customer’s real need and through this discovery helping them notice out-of-the-ordinary activities, helps organizations protect their users by being mindful of who they are, what they need and how they operate. Not just for a better user experience, but as part of a comprehensive protection against errors (malicious or otherwise). UX For Enterprise: Using IoT To Design Integrated Systems For The Workplace October 19, 2015 by Yona Gidalevitz 0 Comments ux-enterprise-iot While beacons have yet to emerge as a mainstream technology, they have not only begun to revolutionize the customer experience model, but also validate predictions regarding the future of the Internet of Things (IoT). Proximity marketing and contextual functionality have contributed to a tailored, custom experience for users of apps that have implemented beacons as a usability enhancement tool. But what can beacons do for usability outside of the context of marketing and user-oriented application development? At the enterprise level, beacons could potentially foster an environment where, for all intents and purposes, the usability of a large office building may rival that of a finely tuned mobile application. Enterprise Efficiency is a Product of Usability Due to the nature of beacon technology, the potential for data-capture is vast–a largely untapped resource. Most of the benefits of integrating beacons around the office come from their inherent ability to collect data (and use it to make decisions). At the enterprise level, there are a number of metrics which can keep businesses operating at maximum efficiency and safety–and therefore maintaining maximum office usability. How, you ask? When designing integrated systems for employees, just as with customer-facing products, there are quantifiable factors which can affect workplace efficiency. 1. Asset Tracking Beacons provide an affordable solution for the tracking of company assets, such as machinery, power tools, and medical equipment. Tracking data can be stored, and analyzed over a time period, in order to isolate potential bottlenecks. In turn, there are two ways that asset tracking can directly affect integrated system usability around the office: Reduced bottlenecks mean reduced interactions. Asset tracking means everything is at your fingertips. I know what you’re thinking. Your UX senses are tingling: “Reduced interactions? Everything is findable? That sounds like good UX Design to me.” Yes, it is, my friend. But don’t forget, there is more to the puzzle than asset tracking. 2. Office Efficiency By implementing beacons throughout the office, enterprises can create connected, intelligent workplaces that make time-saving, and money-saving decisions, without the need for employee engagement, thus limiting the need to micromanage. Whenever you have a system that allows users of the system (in this case, employees) to roam freely across the vast plains of its functionality (using the office without the need to stop and make decisions), we can safely attribute it to good UX Design. 3. Health and Safety Automating the enforcement of an organization’s occupational health and safety policies, by supplementing them with beacon technology, will soon be central to the employee experience, and an innovative way to minimize the necessary interactions between the administration and the workforce. Safety protocols can be enforced by pushing contextual notifications to employees when needed, or by limiting the ability of employees to engage in a particular activity without having met a predetermined set of requirements. For example, a piece of enterprise software which allows its employees to survey industrial equipment may conditionally lock an employee out if, say, they are in a dangerous zone, where they cannot afford to divert attention to the software. 4. Data Collection Beacons can be used to collect data on employee efficiency, and analyze the factors that most greatly contribute to workplace distractions. In turn, conditional automation can be used to combat the factors which diminish the employee experience. For example, factors such as temperature, lighting, employee placement, work hours, computer limitations, and noise level, can have a severe effect on the ability of a worker to perform at their assigned task. Developing integrated systems which address these concerns automatically, based on data collected through beacon implementations, is no longer a science fiction concept, but a very real (and necessary) possibility. Towards a Better Definition of “User” User Experience Design ought to be seen as a tool not only for the betterment of customer experiences, but also in contexts where there may not be any mobile applications to speak of. Such a shift in mindset will require User Experience Designers to reflect on what it means to be a user. It’s about time someone said it. Anyone, using any system, is a user. Thus, any user who uses a system, requires a seamless experience. This is inherently relevant in the context of employee experiences, especially where integrated systems are concerned. At my workplace, we have found it beneficial to create a dedicated page for adding beacon technology into workplaces, and assist potential clients with integrating beacon technology to their already-built software. UX Designers, listen up: if you are working on integrated systems at the enterprise level, you ought to implement beacon technology into your UX designs, in order to help contextualize, and automate, the actions that employees do not necessarily have to, or want to take. UX And Stock Photos: An Interview With A Curator October 21, 2015 by Justin Mifsud 0 Comments ux-stock-photos-interview-curator A couple of weeks ago, a late-night conversation with one of the readers of this blog led to a discussion about the use of stock photos and their contribution (or lack of thereof) towards improving the overall user experience of a site. Much has been said in blogs and online discussions that stock photos and other decorative graphic elements do not add anything significant to the user experience. Although this argument is even backed up by eyetracking studies, I felt the need, more than ever, to reach out to see if there is another side to this argument. So I browsed around in my LinkedIn contacts and found someone who can potentially provide this perspective – Robyn Lange. Enter Robyn Lange – Curator of Stock Photos Robyn is the curator of stock photos at Shutterstock, which as most of you know, is a global technology company that is one of the largest two-sided marketplace for creative professionals to license content. Previously, Robyn served as a photo editor for top national publications. She has worked closely with some of the most talented photographers in the industry; produced elaborate photo shoots across the globe; and cultivated extensive knowledge of image libraries both rare and internationally acclaimed. I reached out to Robyn and asked her a number of questions whose topic ranges from the curation of stock photos to user experience principles. The Interview 1. Hi Robyn, thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Can you start off by telling us about yourself? Hi Justin, thank you for this opportunity. Well, I worked previously for over a decade as a freelance photo editor and producer in magazine publishing. I love both photography and design. I’ve marveled at how much more essential and widespread photography has become in all kinds of places to help businesses look better. 2. So you currently occupy the post of curator of stock photos with a leading supplier of stock photography. How did you fall into this line of work? When I came across the job posting for a curator, I was immediately intrigued. Photo editing and curating have a lot in common. I knew that in this role I could take what I knew already, but apply it in new ways. One of the aspects of the job that got me most excited was the thought of making a suggestion that could be implemented and changed quickly. 3. What does your role involve and how does it differ from the ‘traditional’ position of curator in a museum or art gallery? It’s my job to make the visitor’s experience as pleasant and memorable as possible. That’s true across platforms for all curators. Having 60 million assets (including photos, vectors and illustrations) at my disposal gives me a great resource to pull from. Working for a digital company, it’s incredibly interesting to test different photos and to see what the public clicks on more than others. You learn a lot throughout the process about what attracts an audience and in which context. 4. How would you describe the typical categories of customers? We service 1.3 million customers and the most typical are in the fields of marketing, advertising and media. 5. Acquiring collections is a very important part of curation. How do you reach out to contributors of stock photos in order to raise the quality of the photos that you offer? I don’t reach out personally, but we have a contributor team that reviews every single image and provides immediate and insightful feedback on the work. The team also reaches out to contributors to communicate opportunities based on what clients are asking for in a given season. 6. So what makes a good, high quality stock photo that users would want to buy? Authenticity. Our best contributors have a certain style and vision that gets conveyed through their work. Clients sometimes don’t know what exactly they’re looking for, and a strong image that tells a story itself and conjures up emotions for the viewer can really make an impact. If the client feels something when he or she searches the collection, chances are so will the audience seeing that image inside a larger product. The photographers who perform best think from the beginning about the end use, and how and why this image would valuable to have. 7. In traditional curation, the art gallery curator would select the theme for exhibits. How does this transpire in the digital world of tagging stock photos into categories? Keywords are integral to finding what you look for. It helps organize the imagery. But I’ve found them to be useful in other ways, too. What I’ll do is search an idea or a theme and then look at the similar keywords that turn up with them. A lot of the time the term I searched initially won’t be the term I wind up using to find what I really want. There’s a path to follow. I’m selecting the best images from the bunch, but through doing searches myself, I get a good, strong look at the experience a customer would have as he or she searches. Replicating the user experience, and acting like a customer would, helps me better understand the customer, and how I can assist them. 8. I have read that one of the requirements for becoming a job curator for stock photography is to have a “knack for storytelling”. How does storytelling fit in your role? When I choose imagery for our website, Instagram account, or for other marketing campaigns, I am doing my part to tell the Shutterstock story. At the same time, though, the beauty and authenticity you see can be had by anyone on a budget. We’re leading by example every day. If people who haven’t come across Shutterstock before are introduced to it with something bold and vibrant, then they’re more likely to think highly of the company and our collection. Every campaign or social-media post is a small piece of the overall story. 9. There was also mention that your role involves working closely with the User Experience design team by suggesting how the website should look and feel like. What measures could be taken to improve the user experience of a stock photography website? It’s really important to have clean, uncluttered imagery that reads well on a number of platforms, whether web, mobile, or somewhere else. It should enhance the experience, but it should also stimulate the imagination. I love to experiment with different types of photos and vectors to use as our hero images (the large images at the top of the homepage), and it can be really surprising and exciting to see what content works. And I think the same rules apply to stock sites as to magazine pages – less is more. Lots of little images make less of an impact than a few really gorgeous ones. 10. There is a considerable number of user experience professionals who advise against the use of stock photography of ‘generic people’ because users ignore them. In some cases, this is even backed up by research such as the eye tracking results presented by Dr. Jakob Nielsen in his article “Photos as Web Content”. What is your view on this argument? This is a fascinating read; thank you for sharing. And I couldn’t agree more with the UX pros. Humans are so adept at reading social cues on a subconscious level that it’s very easy to spot the false scenarios. For that reason, it’s difficult for people to relate to such staged imagery. I recently curated our Changing Faces infographic, and the premise of it was to show that customers are searching for faces that better represent our diverse world. It’s a wonderful celebration of the real and authentic people within our collection and a testament that we all still desire to make a natural, human connection with one another. Thank you Robyn accepting my invitation for this interview and for dedicating your time to share with us these great insights. May I take this opportunity to wish you success for your new role. The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency 5 Proven Ways To Fund Your App At The Idea Stage September 21, 2015 by Tracy Vides 0 Comments 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-at-the-idea-stage You may have a revolutionary idea for the next big app. However, without the right funding for your winning app, that idea will probably never see light of day. Unlike a business startup, where the entrepreneur knows exactly what he or she’s going to do, what products or services will be offered and how, what will be the monetization model, etc., app developers have little idea about any of these at the initial stages of building the app. User testing throws up curve balls that often call for drastic changes. Most apps go through so many modifications and iterations that the final product will look radically different from the initial idea. For this reason, creating a bound business plan and approaching banks for loans becomes really tough. So what do you do? Here are a few thoughts to get you started. 1. Bootstrap Your Way Up with Co-Founders There is no source of funds more dependable than your own savings. If you cannot spare cash to invest in your own bright idea, asking others to contribute to it is a little unfair, don’t you think? Bank savings, personal loans, credit card loans, friends and family are all perfectly legitimate sources of funds when your app is in its infancy. However, you don’t always have to go it alone. Find the perfect co-founder to shoulder the responsibility of launching a new app. A co-founder is a lot more than a friend or shoulder during bad times. Pick a co-founder based on your needs. A tech-savvy co-founder can help you design and build a prototype of your app from scratch without spending a penny on outside developers. Bobby Murphy, co-founder of Snapchat was the development brains behind what was essentially Evan Spiegel and Reggie Brown’s Stanford classroom project. Currently the app stands valued at close to $20 billion. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-co-founders Image Source: VentureVillage Alternately, find a partner who can fund your app while you develop it yourself. Case in point – Uber. Travis Kalanick was the cash supply for developer/co-founder Garrett Camp. 2. Set up a Crowdfunding Campaign Crowdfunding is an attractive funding avenue for startups that have absolutely no resources of their own to get going with their ideas. Even though hundreds of app and startup ideas go unnoticed and unfunded on crowdfunding sites, the right pitch can promise a bonanza for your dream app. In return for a service fee from the crowdfunding platform and a transaction fee from the payment processor, you are assured of sufficient funds to get your dream off the ground. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-crowdfunding Image Source: Traquity.com (website no longer exists) Crowdfunding has various models that you can pick from. The leader in the crowdfunding space, Kickstarter, is an all or nothing platform. This means that once you set your funding goal, you better reach the target amount to get the money. If you fall short of your target, the contributions get refunded to the individual investors. On the other hand, Indiegogo offers both flexible funding and fixed funding options, thus meaning that if you fail to reach your target amount, you can keep your collection in return for a higher service fee. You may also want to consider app-specific crowdfunding platforms like AppsFunder and AppSplit. 3. Raise Donations on Your Own Site The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency Crowdfunding is a great way to get quick resources. However it also has quite a few negatives tacked on to it. There’s tons of competition out there and standing out from a sea of wannabe entrepreneurs can be near-impossible for many. Then there are the myriad of fees that you shell out in return for the funding that you request. A smart way to eliminate these problems is by raising funds on your own site. Yes, nothing stops you from: Describing your proposed app to your readers Asking them for a small donation towards your app Offering them a gift / pre-orders of your app / monetary compensation once your app rolls out in return for their contributions A tool like 123ContactForm allows you to build a donation form in minutes. Even better, it integrates easily with various payment processors like PayPal, Stripe, Braintree and FreshBooks to make the process of setting up your self-owned own funding campaign a one-stop affair. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-donation-form Image Source: Smashing Forms 4. Participate in Funding Contests If you’re a would-be entrepreneur in the connected world, there’s no way you’ve not seen the entrepreneurial TV series Shark Tank. With over $44 million in funding given out across its five seasons, the hit show is an entrepreneur’s dream come true. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-funding-contest Shark Tank – Image Source: The Hollywood Reporter I am not suggesting that you try and get on Shark Tank to get your app funded. You should if you can, but that’s not the point here. There are tons of contests available sponsored by universities, technology companies, angel investor networks and more that offer new entrepreneurs the resources to fulfill their business idea. Check out Biz Plan Competitions to pick from hundreds of contests around the world. You can even zoom in on a contest near you and learn about how to qualify and participate to win the funding that your app deserves. 5. Angel Investors and Strategic Partners Many startups are tempted to approach Venture Capitalists (VCs) for seed funding. However, the fact remains that less than 3% of seed funding comes from VCs. Instead, angel investors or strategic investors are strong contenders for kick starting your brand new app. These are not always companies or institutions. Individuals and successful entrepreneurs often take an active interest in funding new startups. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer are but two examples of avid angel investors in early stage apps. Angel investors can offer anything from $25,000 to a few million in funding, depending on your app idea and stage of development. The size of the angel investment market currently stands at $20 billion annually. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-strategic-partners Marissa Mayer – Image Source: Business Insider While angel investors are easier to convince than VCs at a seed stage, you still need to be prepared to give a potential angel investor details like: The total amount of capital you will need How quickly will you burn through it (monthly burn rate) What is your go-to-market strategy How will you promote the app Why do you deserve funding, that is, the technical and business capabilities of the founders Coda It’s not just you. Before Peter Thiel stepped in with the first external funds that Facebook would receive, Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin managed their operating costs by hustling for every last dollar. The monthly expense of $85 for renting their very first server was covered by banner ads on Facebook using platforms like AdSense. Moral of the story? With a little bit of creativity, you can always make sure that your dream app doesn’t remain only in your dreams. (Lead image source: Rocío Lara) Customer Experience vs. User Experience: What’s The Difference? September 23, 2015 by Zev Ginzburg 2 Comments customer-experience-user-experience-difference Often times promising entrepreneurs will come up with a genius idea for an app but end up entangling a lot of important components into one product. If you’re a geek in any capacity that works in tech today, there is no doubt you’ve heard the following: “I’ve got this great idea for an app, tell me what you think…” To which us geeks inevitably roll our eyes as the individual begins to describe a blend of apps on the market and how it solves a crucial problem of our generation. What many of these entrepreneurs tend to overlook is the revenue model doesn’t necessarily mesh well with the usability. Making the mistake of combining a customer experience and a user experience has ramifications that could result in a poor experience on both ends. The User Experience (UX), as many usability geeks would be aware of, would include most operational needs, which includes the information architecture, the general navigation, and completing functional tasks relatively easy. The Customer Experience (CX) has many external variables embedded in it. It embodies user experience, because after all, a customer is a usertype. The major differences here need to accommodate the mission of a particular web or mobile app. A customer experience may, and often does, impede on the mission. The Revenue Model: Brickless and Mortarless Advertisements are often an easy way to monetize and take advantage of a large user base that does not pay for usage. These advertisements have a direct correlation to the quality of user experience and customer experience. Advertisements, unless otherwise stated, are something a user would want to avoid. YouTube for instance knows this by adding a ‘skip ad’ button. Hulu, Pandora, Spotify, and even Skype all include advertisements which in some instances significantly hinder the user experience. Earning revenue is very important to the stability of an application, obviously. So some means of providing a balance between the customer experience and user experience is crucial. The most apparent examples of this customer experience and user experience balance is in simple games on mobile. Games like Clash of Clans, Game of War, and many similar strategy games implemented the token system for users to buy. The token system has several advantages to the harmony needed between customer experience and user experience, the first of which guarantees that the user experience is good because the user wants to keep engaging (playing) with game. There is a hard way to advance and just like life there is an easy way, all one needs to do is pay for it. Some users take the game extremely seriously and get into. A sizable portion of users are willing to shell out a couple of dollars to beat a level they’re just cognitively unequipped to beat. It is wholly appropriate here because the tokens for sale are now a resource for the user, and as such resources tend to be a positive tool in a user experience. It also tends to be a negative experience for a user’s wallet. The Revenue Model: Bricks and Mortar What about a case where a company has brick and mortar stores? They already have a customer experience in store and they may want to transfer this experience to a digital front. Companies like Starbucks or Wal­Mart may be hyper aware that the shopping experience needs to optimize cross platform usage. The Starbucks app enables users to reimburse rewards and pay for their coffee right from their mobile device. The whole app is catered for the customer which makes the UX development a lot easier. The customer has a set of defined tasks, one cannot simply peruse the Starbucks app, it is task oriented. Wal­Mart took an already acceptable customer experience and improved it through their technical solution called ‘savings catcher.’ Now while the politics of Wal­Mart are extremely divisive, the savings catcher is a very unique and progressive means of providing a good customer experience. It’s such a novel concept in some senses, the user first shops at Wal­Mart, then scans his or her receipt, then Wal­Mart will run a check for the same product at multiple retailers. If the price was cheaper anywhere else, Wal­Mart will refund you the money. Wal­Mart does all the work too, the user just uploads their proof of purchase. With a global customer base of over 100,000,000 there are sure to be savings and the more a customer spends, the likelihood of getting the best deal increases. The UX of the application, however, is nothing revolutionary. The bells and whistles are purposely diluted in order to accommodate that potential of 100,000,000 customers who would be app users. The Bottom Line Designing and developing for a good user experience means beginning at a bottom line: are we here to make money from a customer, or are we here to provide something else? Service based products like Spotify or Pandora do really well providing music. Earning revenue however was not necessarily part of the game plan from beginning. Including a customer experience helps if you know what kind of customer would integrate well into a user experience. (Lead image source: Jason Howie) 10 Guidelines For Navigation Usability September 28, 2015 by Preston Pierce 0 Comments 10-guidelines-for-navigation-usability When it comes to usability, ease-of-navigation should be a top priority for web developers. The number one most annoying feature of a website is improper or confusing navigation, leaving users lost and wondering what to do next. If you’re lucky enough, some users just might scour through the website to accomplish their purpose of visiting the website. However, most users simply pop-out and add more numbers to the website bounce rate — and we all want to avoid that! So, what makes website navigation easy and usable? Follow these simple guidelines to ensure that your site navigation is a user-friendly one. 1. Embrace Predictability Being creative with your website is nice, but don’t practice this in areas where predictability may be preferred over uniqueness. This is particularly true for website navigation menus that visitors are going to use simply to get from one page to another. Creating unconventional navigation will only make it confusing – and confused users are less likely to stay on your page any longer. 10-guidelines-navigation-usability-unusual An Example of an unconventional navigation menu that takes time to make sense of (Source: YouZee) 2. Keep it Simple In a way, this goes hand-in-hand with predictability, except here you avoid making your navigation extremely difficult to comprehend. For example, you may have a predictable design, but if it is full of cluttered menus and submenus in a disorganized fashion, you’re far from making it easy for users to navigate through your website. 3. Don’t Overdo Minimalism Recently minimalism has caught on and everyone seems to be reducing content, promoting “white space”, and simplifying typography. This is great because nowadays internet users are more concerned about getting work done as fast as possible through mobile devices on-the-go, rather than viewing fancy pages that may take forever to download. However, some designers over-do minimalism, rendering clear and proper navigation useless. This is a big mistake! 10-guidelines-navigation-usability-minimal All you can see on the startupstockphotos website is the “About” option. Where’s the rest? (Source: StartupStockPhotos) 4. Keep it Consistent It’s always good to keep the theme and structure of your pages consistent. The first time a user visits your website, he/she is going to make sense of it in just a matter of seconds (shouldn’t take longer). After that, your user is going to expect all the pages to be similar in terms of structure and design. Having an entirely different navigation system page by page will only frustrate the user because the “making sense of it all” process will have to repeated unnecessarily every time. 5. Clear Hierarchical Structure Navigation menus should have a clear hierarchical structure with every category and clickable sub categories included in the menu. It’s okay if your parent categories are extensive, so long as all the available subcategories are listed in order. This gives the user a clear idea of what you can offer without having to go through several pages to find what they are looking for. This is particularly important for websites that offer a wide array of products and services. 10-guidelines-navigation-usability-hierarchical Aliexpress has a perfect navigation where hierarchal structure is clear with clickable grouped subcategories under parent categories (Source: AliExpress) 6. Make it Manageable Clear navigation in your user interface is highly usable when it tells visitors where they have come from, where they are currently, and where they can go from their current location. This obviously requires a breadcrumb trail on your website, allowing users to keep track of their location, making navigation more manageable and under their control. Remember that not all users will start visiting your site from the home page. Many will land on an inner page after clicking a link from another site or from the Search Engine Results Page. 7. Link the Logo to the Homepage A good practice is to link the homepage from the website’s logo (which should appear on every page at the same spot). Users have a tendency to start all over by going back to the home page and redoing the search process from there. Furthermore, many users are highly likely to search up your website using a search engine which could lead them to a specific page deep within your website. Users are going to want to click on your homepage from there so they can explore more of your website. 8. Include a Sitemap Sitemaps are crucial for a usable navigation system. Any lost user will resort to a sitemap that has links to all pages (or the main pages) of a website. The site map will list down the pages of your site in a clear, hierarchical order giving a plain overview of your website. Bear in mind that the sitemap should be concise without extraneous details on every single topic. 9 Guidelines For Writing A Killer Headline For Conversion September 30, 2015 by Florence Mendoza 1 Comment 9-guidelines-for-writing-killer-headline-converts If boosting conversion is your goal, writing the right headline is arguably more important than writing good copy. Indeed, a famous quote by advertising legend, David Ogilvy says that on average, five times as many people will read the headline than the actual content. And what good is writing anything at all if you can’t pique your readers’ interest? Even if, hypothetically-speaking, you wrote the best advertising copy or blog post in the world, if no one clicks on your bland headline, you’ve essentially wasted your time (not to mention money). In this article, I will be discussing 9 guidelines for writing headlines with the aim of boosting conversion. I know that there are several guidelines when it comes to this topic and likewise, there are numerous articles that have discussed it in sufficient depth. So what makes this article different? Simply put, this is not just ‘another list’. What I am presenting here are what I consider as being the most effective guidelines for writing headlines. Before we begin, know this: writing headlines is a science, not an art. 1. Use a Formula to Create Your Headline If using a formula seems wrong to you instinctively, consider this: lots of headlines online already follow certain formulae, and, clearly, no one cares. Look at popular content on the Internet (like Buzzfeed, Upworthy or high-ranking Youtube channels) and you’ll notice a lot of their headlines and titles following familiar patterns. This obviously doesn’t bother anyone in the slightest. Not to mention the fact that the first two examples have made a name for themselves by using attention-grabbing headlines that are so standardized, they’ve been parodied to death. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, really. At this point, a typical Internet user sees so many headlines daily on social media and elsewhere, something completely atypical will surely throw them off and be dismissed on sight. 2. Use Numbers in the Headline A clickable headline has numbers – and for good reasons. We all know that words can be manipulated in many ways and any outrageous claim made on the Internet – especially in a headline – will be met with skepticism. Numbers, on the other hand, elicit another reaction – trust. Any statistician would, at this point, remark that numbers can themselves be manipulated and misleading, but we’re talking about the readers’ gut reaction. Compare the following two headlines: This Pill Will Make You the Most Productive Worker in the World This Pill Will Raise Your Efficiency Factor by 20% or More Note that the second headline, the one that uses numbers, is more attractive than the first one that just looks like an empty promise. According to a study by Conductor that analyzed click traffic on social media, using a number in the headline is the most effective in boosting click-through rate out of all measured factors. Numbers in this study, by the way, don’t just mean statistics – they are headlines like “20 Things to do Before You Die”. 3. Try and Use These Words and Phrases (Where Possible) So which words convert more? Kevan Lee has created an incredible list of words and phrases that are most used in viral headlines by analyzing more than 3,000 headlines from 24 top content sites. He split his findings into two categories: ‘most popular words’ and ‘most popular uncommon words’. Perhaps even more interesting is the 2-word and 3-word phrases that he observed in these viral headlines: Most Popular 2-Word Phrases: ‘this is’, ‘in the’, ‘how to’, ‘is the’, ‘of the’ Most Popular 3-Word Phrases: ‘this is the’, ‘will make you’, ‘when you see’, ’til you see’, ‘what happens when’ Another useful resource is Josh Rhodes’ list of 179 emotional words that make powerful headings and high converting landing pages. According to this study, some of the most popular words in headlines are: ‘focus’, ‘wanted’, ‘free’, ‘sale’, ‘new’ and lowest. In yet another huge study, this time of 1 million headlines, Garret Moon came up with the following list of the most popular words and phrases in highly-shared headlines: ‘list post’, ‘you/your’, ‘free/giveaway’, ‘how to’, ‘diy’. 4. A Headline Should be X Words / Characters LongThe Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency Needless to say, there is much debate as to how long a headline should be. Here are some of the guidelines which I consider as being most useful: 8 words (according to The Guardian) 62 characters (according to Kevan Lee) 81-100 characters (according to HubSpot and Outbrain) 5. Make Your Headline Sound Useful Look again at the example about the efficiency pill. This is a good, clickable headline because of the fact that anyone can ‘try it on’. Wow, I can boost my efficiency by 20%? Now look at spam comments found anywhere on the Internet: “I made $6,000 using this website, etc., etc.” These are engineered to be clickable, and what do they do?: They use numbers The reader can instantly try it on and see what benefit they will get. The point is: if your headline isn’t somehow useful to the reader, it will be dismissed right away, so do try and make it as applicable as possible. To get the ‘usefulness’ effect try addressing the reader. This will mean that “How to Buy a Used Car” should be rewritten into “Things You Should Know Before Buying a Used Car”, or, better yet “10 Things You Should Know Before Buying a Used Car” 6. Choose Your Words Carefully This guideline takes many dimensions. What are the “ideal” words to use in a headline? Citing Stephen King, Jeff Bullas writes that simplicity is a key element. One can have an impressive vocabulary but taking an approach to headline writing that is too intellectual can backfire. Readers will always understand a simple headline. If you want to make it more appealing, then try and arouse their curiosity. According to Barry Feldman, the process of choosing which words to use also involves choosing which words to leave out. 7. Negative Spin Tends to do Better According to a study of 100 tech blogs done by Oribi, using words like “Kill”, “Fear”, “Dark”, “Bleeding” will get more attention, even if the headlines themselves are not violent at all. The same study found that headlines that feature words like “without”, “no” and “stop” end up at the top posts a lot. The takeaway from this is that giving your headline a negative spin is more likely to pique your readers’ interests. So “10 Things to do This Summer” becomes “The 10 Activities Your Summer Will Suck Without.” 8. Pose a Question There’s no way to be more engaging than asking a question. Whether it’s something that the readers have been wondering themselves or something new that they haven’t considered yet, a question will surely get attention. This is what is called a curiosity gap – it’s an itch that demands to be scratched. The proverbial scratching is reading the article. Leave the question headlines to the more important topics, though. It would be easy enough to get tired of a feed filled with question marks. So make sure you save this one for special occasions. 9. Finally, Don’t Lie This is so obvious, it shouldn’t even count as advice, but, unfortunately, it needs to be said – such is the state of things. If you promise someone they can lose weight at a rate of 5 pounds every day, only the most credulous would believe you. And since you’re writing for the cynical world of the Internet, credulity and naïveté is not something you should expect. If you’re counting on a lie getting you massive amounts of clicks, try and think through to the next step: what happens when they do click, and the content doesn’t follow up on the promise? They’ll close the tab and never come back to your site again, that’s what. The Art Of UX In MVP October 5, 2015 by Yona Gidalevitz 2 Comments ux-in-mvp UX is UX is UX – right? Not really. User Experience Designers (UXDs) working on Minimum Viable Product (MVP) builds have it rough. The thought process has to shift ever so slightly in MVP builds, and in such a way that it can disrupt your conception of what “good UX” really is. UX Designers, listen up: MVP builds serve a different purpose than full builds. MVP builds are tasked with learning as much as possible about the features required by users. Rather than producing a fully­-featured product, which addresses the needs of every possible user type, MVP builds are designed to create the absolute minimally viable product—one which creates the smallest feature set that someone would pay for, or even just use. In turn, the UX process has to change, slightly, to reflect this. So, you ask, how does it change? UX In MVP Is About Changing What You Measure UX Designers, at a really high level, are tasked with: Building out features Building them well (to put it bluntly) Ryan Singer of Basecamp has designed a very good way to visualize this. Let’s call it “the blob”. ux-mvp-blob Image Source: Signal v. Noise UX Designers are taught from the get-­go to ask themselves: “Is this user friendly?” — is the blob deep, and does it take up a large surface area? In MVP builds, a new question begins to take precedence: “Would users pay the same price for this feature set?” — does the blob really have to be this huge? The idea here is simple. In MVP builds, the depth of the blob should never change — that is, the quality of execution ought to remain consistent. The surface area, however, is what becomes the subject of significant scrutiny. By diminishing the surface area of the blob, you are able to experiment with the notion that, perhaps users are perfectly okay without the ability to fulfil a particular task that, otherwise, you would have spent precious time perfecting, and time is money. Testing feature-­set viability is the bread and butter of MVP­-driven UX Design. And Becoming More Agile The classic MVP [Build → Measure → Learn] cycle is the source of inspiration for the UX process in MVP builds: [UX → Measure → Learn → Repeat] Such a pattern emphasizes two key qualitative differences between non-­MVP and MVP­-based User Experiences: MVP builds ought to be produced quickly, and they ought to offer the absolute minimum set of features deemed acceptable by users. Your UX senses are tingling here, I know. This goes against what you’ve learned about UX, and feels wrong. You take pride in the quality of your work, and in the depth of features that you account for in your designs. UXDs: MVP builds do not inherently create gaps in the UX, contrary to what you may believe. Speed, here, does not necessarily equate to the absence of quality. Adopting agile methods in your UX Design process will ensure fast, “quality” cycles of work, due to the inherently repetitive model of testing that is used in the Agile process. This does not mean that building an MVP is a straightforward process. In fact, at my place of work we have found it beneficial to create a dedicated page to explain the importance of MVP and assist potential clients with building one. What I suggest is: Trust your UXD judgement, and embrace the MVP process and you will not be led astray. Kinks will be worked out in the multiple rounds of testing, while missing features will be discovered and implemented, during the many [Measure → Learn] portions of the Agile process. Most importantly, don’t forget: MVP builds are an excellent opportunity to learn about your users, and what they want from you. Often, what you give them is much more than they are willing to put up with for the price. And if that sounds too cynical to you, you’re in the wrong business, my friend. (Lead image source: Pulpolux !!!) 6 Powerful Ways Of Improving On-Site User Engagement October 12, 2015 by Ankit Panchal 0 Comments improve-user-engagement So you have an immersive website with the right aesthetic appeal. What is the next practical step? It is to prevent bounces and enhance on-site user engagement. However, most marketers are stuck at fluffing their website and pruning their social media page. A successful conversion model includes everything from on-site optimization to neat navigation and most websites take these in their stride. Despite that they have extremely high bounce rates. Could it be the lack of right information, prices or something intangible altogether? Here we shall discuss effective ways of preventing bounces and enhancing user engagement that leads up to increased conversions. 1. Target the Right Sources for Website VisitorsThe Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency Each website is unique and so is each visitor. You may generalize your group but know that each type of visitor comes from a specific source. For instance, a 30 y.o. tech nut will be more trusting about peer reviews on social sites. Now if you analyze your website traffic, you will see three distinct steps in conversion: Awareness brought about by search and discovery, Consideration after carefully looking at reviews, research and social media sites, and Action (Purchase or Bounce). Find out the sources from where your visitors come, based on that decide the type of information they are looking for on your website and then give a personalized experience thus enhancing user engagement. If your visitor came from a reference link on a blog on pesticides, don’t make them search amongst hundreds of gardening tools and seeds and plants. Sure they are pretty to look at but it won’t serve the purpose and hence the end result could be a compromised bounce rate. 2. Let Data Show You the Way There are several methods to acquire data of website engagement; Google Analytics is the most popular of all. The data thus acquired is extremely important to understand that whether your website is successfully retaining visitors and giving them something to learn, see of discover. Commonly, inbound links are able to get traffic from all over the world, but only 40-50% of it is relevant traffic. They caveat here is to successfully keep that 40-50% engaged enough on your website, so they take some actionable steps like buy, subscribe, bookmark, share etc. Another important part of data analysis is user behavior. Measure session duration to see if they were just site hopping or were they looking for something seriously. Users will give you 35 seconds before they decide that you are not what they are looking for. Session duration will let you understand if majority of your users think that way. And if the answer is yes, you better start taking reformative steps to enhance user engagement. Page-wise performance data is the third step in the way. It allows you to do A/B testing and decide what works best for your audience. If you have multi-group audience, it allows you to cater for various contents based on the group taste. 3. Create Immersive Experiences for Visitors Immersive experience is more than a buzzword. We don’t wish to burden you with the hackneyed example of Amazon and how they created an immersive experience, so we have found some of the best immersive websites on the internet. Take a cue from them and discover ways you can create an immersive experience for your visitors. From interesting blog posts to videos, the ways and means to keep your audience hooked are surprisingly simple and inexhaustible. Ask 3 questions to yourself if you wish to create an immersive website: Are we offering more than they thought / wanted? Are we giving something new, something irresistible? Have we taken an unbeaten path? Check out how this Auto Service facility created an amazing immersive experience on their website. Surely they didn’t need to do it, but they did it anyways and the path less trodden led them to great success. improve-user-engagement-hmr Image credit: http://hmrservis.cz/ And now see the typical car service website and the likes of which you find in abundance on the internet. improve-user-engagement-york Image credit: http://www.yorkspringandradiator.ca/en/ 4. Carry the Experience Beyond Your Website This is one boat you simply can’t miss. Over these last couple of years, triggered emails or auto-responders have become one of the most important user engagement tactics. However, simple emails with ‘Howdy’ and ‘We Miss Ya’ or persistent emails and reminders won’t do. You have to carry the soul of your website theme and create a similar experience in emails. The same goes for social media and PR. This is one powerful way to garner repeat visits. 5. Watch the Calendar It is very important to gauge user engagement at a certain time of the day, certain days of the week, certain holidays, certain months of the year and so on. You will notice a hike in traffic at a particular period. Get to the root of it: Why was there a hike? What was the bounce rate then? Was it because of a particular offer or an event you organized? … and so on. Again Google Analytics allows you to compare activity in a particular period with activity in another period. 6. Be Like the Giraffe Did you know that in New Age religion, the giraffe is considered as being a symbol for intuition and flexibility? It is extremely easy to find yourself lost in the labyrinths of data and social media, thus forgetting your innate sense of intuition. Most of the times we don’t trust our instincts and see what is laid out right in front of our eyes. Get a bird’s eye view of your website or see it from a solely unattached point-of-view. This will help you to forget all the mind-numbing rules and metrics and discover a simpler and effective way to keep your users engaged. Also, learn from the giraffe to be flexible and ready for change. Take Away Once the user interface and user experience problems are out of your way, the only thing that remains to focus on is user engagement. It is extremely crucial to keep your users engaged and keep coming for more in order to build a loyal audience. These 6 powerful rules to enhance user engagement will help you bring down bounce rates and lead to successful conversion. Humans: The Missing Link In Online Security October 14, 2015 by Gabor Koródi 0 Comments humans-missing-link-security Implementing online security is ultimately a human undertaking. The tools have to be sufficient enough to protect you and your clients, but efficient enough not to get in the way of providing the best user experience possible. While technology will get you part of the way, the inevitable corner-cutting by users will ultimately expose the notion that technology cannot provide total protection against our human nature. The Username/Password Combination For example, historically the username/password combination provided both authorization and authentication in one convenient package. For earlier systems, not open to the public and only providing access from a well-defined physical location, this was a great solution. It quickly became apparent, however, that users are terrible at remembering some random password; they forget to change it every 90 days and would rather write it down. The technology, as always playing catch-up to its users, quickly evolved into password-strength measuring libraries and automated functions to force users into changing their passwords. As a typical example of leading with technology and not considering the human factors, the resistance from end-users was palpable. Many of us remember the passwords on sticky notes on someone’s monitor, or the easy to guess (and pronounce) ones that were shared around the office. Improvements are being made continuously, both technical and behavioral fronts. Users are much more aware of the need for proper security. Businesses with an online presence spend significant amount of resources on protecting their infrastructure and their users from a growing variety of threats. Administrators are much more vigilant on implementing security protocols that are harder to circumvent by both internal and external users. The Use of CAPTCHA Not too long ago, CAPTCHAs were the new favorite technical solutions against hackers trying to break into high-value targets. The wide-spread use of sophisticated UI interfaces over the Internet allowed this visual password system to be used in many circumstances. While it works in most implementations, there are shortcomings – again, based on human factors not anticipated in the initial design. CAPTCHAs do not work for people with certain physical limitations or cultural backgrounds and will not just limit unauthorized access, but will prevent legitimate use as well. Given the global user-base that most businesses are trying to target, these limitations will not be appropriate. The visually impaired or recent immigrants trying to access their first bank account will face enormous difficulties trying to decipher the requirements that this type of gatekeeper demands of them. Relying on Senses as a Means of Security A security implementation that relies on one of the user’s five senses or memory ultimately will hit the limits to which any particular user is able to employ them. Perhaps an online photo album does not need the same level of protection as someone’s access to his or her bank account? Perhaps Facebook and Google need to implement two-factor authentication for all their online properties? These questions can only be answered calmly and methodically by considering the needs of each user that comes in contact with the system. All businesses need to conduct a pre-purchase discovery with these questions in mind. Design professionals need to focus on the interactions that result from a variety of behaviors and pick all the tools that are appropriate – including those for security and protection. Human-centered design thinking is a necessary augmentation to the limits of technology. The awareness of how and why certain interactions are implemented, the understanding of the benefits, has the potential to counteract those hard to control behaviors from which technology alone has no chance of protecting any given system. Human-centered design has the capability for a longer lasting impact than a simple certificate and encryption protocol between a browser and a server. The Use of Two-Factor Authentication An example of a purely technical, or rather mathematical solution is two-factor authentication. Random, single-use tokens combined with strong password requirements are becoming widespread. With current technology, it is impossible, or to be more precise, almost impossible to break. However, it is the lack of consideration for human behavior that is this solution’s flaw. While it fits into the established and understood process implementation of username/password paradigm, it adds more complexity – not necessarily what the average user desires. Using a Reminder Question Another recent approach, still employing the additional complexity to slow down a brute force attacker, is the “reminder question” type of security. In addition to the username/password, some common question is asked, the answer to which the system presumes only the user would know. However, a disgruntled friend or family member or a social media “friend” can easily find out the name of our first pet or the high school we graduated from. Again, this demonstrates the limits of technology and how it cannot cover all the intricacies of human behavior. Security Lessons Learnt From Experience At the company I work for, Story+Structure, we are convinced that the solution to these issues lies in the combination of the strength of currently available technology and the trust building capabilities of a human-centered design approach. One great example, originally from the banking industry, is the Know Your Customer (KYC) process. This interaction, specifically for the benefit of the protection of the customer, is technology agnostic. It requires certain steps from a service provider to take with each of their customers before engaging in any sensitive business. Its benefit is validated by corresponding legal mandates. In the banking sector, training has to be provided and certain requirements have to be met, before any employee can engage with a potential or existing customer. Similar procedures are in place, in combination with technology, when fraud protection departments stop certain large item purchases. In today’s fast-paced retail environments, this could be seen as a mistake. It is the designer’s role to explain why it is worth the frustration and that after the initial confusion, the understanding will lead to a better experience and a stronger relationship. Technology that enables this type of protection cannot adequately address all the human emotions that are in play. Designers, however, can, and a holistic view of the entire interaction ecosystem allows them to incorporate security into their approach toward a solution. In Conclusion In conclusion, the online security process must evolve to consider human components – not just technical safeguards. The human-centered approach, such as formulating a holistic view of the workflow, understanding the customer’s real need and through this discovery helping them notice out-of-the-ordinary activities, helps organizations protect their users by being mindful of who they are, what they need and how they operate. Not just for a better user experience, but as part of a comprehensive protection against errors (malicious or otherwise). UX For Enterprise: Using IoT To Design Integrated Systems For The Workplace October 19, 2015 by Yona Gidalevitz 0 Comments ux-enterprise-iot While beacons have yet to emerge as a mainstream technology, they have not only begun to revolutionize the customer experience model, but also validate predictions regarding the future of the Internet of Things (IoT). Proximity marketing and contextual functionality have contributed to a tailored, custom experience for users of apps that have implemented beacons as a usability enhancement tool. But what can beacons do for usability outside of the context of marketing and user-oriented application development? At the enterprise level, beacons could potentially foster an environment where, for all intents and purposes, the usability of a large office building may rival that of a finely tuned mobile application. Enterprise Efficiency is a Product of Usability Due to the nature of beacon technology, the potential for data-capture is vast–a largely untapped resource. Most of the benefits of integrating beacons around the office come from their inherent ability to collect data (and use it to make decisions). At the enterprise level, there are a number of metrics which can keep businesses operating at maximum efficiency and safety–and therefore maintaining maximum office usability. How, you ask? When designing integrated systems for employees, just as with customer-facing products, there are quantifiable factors which can affect workplace efficiency. 1. Asset Tracking Beacons provide an affordable solution for the tracking of company assets, such as machinery, power tools, and medical equipment. Tracking data can be stored, and analyzed over a time period, in order to isolate potential bottlenecks. In turn, there are two ways that asset tracking can directly affect integrated system usability around the office: Reduced bottlenecks mean reduced interactions. Asset tracking means everything is at your fingertips. I know what you’re thinking. Your UX senses are tingling: “Reduced interactions? Everything is findable? That sounds like good UX Design to me.” Yes, it is, my friend. But don’t forget, there is more to the puzzle than asset tracking. 2. Office Efficiency By implementing beacons throughout the office, enterprises can create connected, intelligent workplaces that make time-saving, and money-saving decisions, without the need for employee engagement, thus limiting the need to micromanage. Whenever you have a system that allows users of the system (in this case, employees) to roam freely across the vast plains of its functionality (using the office without the need to stop and make decisions), we can safely attribute it to good UX Design. 3. Health and Safety Automating the enforcement of an organization’s occupational health and safety policies, by supplementing them with beacon technology, will soon be central to the employee experience, and an innovative way to minimize the necessary interactions between the administration and the workforce. Safety protocols can be enforced by pushing contextual notifications to employees when needed, or by limiting the ability of employees to engage in a particular activity without having met a predetermined set of requirements. For example, a piece of enterprise software which allows its employees to survey industrial equipment may conditionally lock an employee out if, say, they are in a dangerous zone, where they cannot afford to divert attention to the software. 4. Data Collection Beacons can be used to collect data on employee efficiency, and analyze the factors that most greatly contribute to workplace distractions. In turn, conditional automation can be used to combat the factors which diminish the employee experience. For example, factors such as temperature, lighting, employee placement, work hours, computer limitations, and noise level, can have a severe effect on the ability of a worker to perform at their assigned task. Developing integrated systems which address these concerns automatically, based on data collected through beacon implementations, is no longer a science fiction concept, but a very real (and necessary) possibility. Towards a Better Definition of “User” User Experience Design ought to be seen as a tool not only for the betterment of customer experiences, but also in contexts where there may not be any mobile applications to speak of. Such a shift in mindset will require User Experience Designers to reflect on what it means to be a user. It’s about time someone said it. Anyone, using any system, is a user. Thus, any user who uses a system, requires a seamless experience. This is inherently relevant in the context of employee experiences, especially where integrated systems are concerned. At my workplace, we have found it beneficial to create a dedicated page for adding beacon technology into workplaces, and assist potential clients with integrating beacon technology to their already-built software. UX Designers, listen up: if you are working on integrated systems at the enterprise level, you ought to implement beacon technology into your UX designs, in order to help contextualize, and automate, the actions that employees do not necessarily have to, or want to take. UX And Stock Photos: An Interview With A Curator October 21, 2015 by Justin Mifsud 0 Comments ux-stock-photos-interview-curator A couple of weeks ago, a late-night conversation with one of the readers of this blog led to a discussion about the use of stock photos and their contribution (or lack of thereof) towards improving the overall user experience of a site. Much has been said in blogs and online discussions that stock photos and other decorative graphic elements do not add anything significant to the user experience. Although this argument is even backed up by eyetracking studies, I felt the need, more than ever, to reach out to see if there is another side to this argument. So I browsed around in my LinkedIn contacts and found someone who can potentially provide this perspective – Robyn Lange. Enter Robyn Lange – Curator of Stock Photos Robyn is the curator of stock photos at Shutterstock, which as most of you know, is a global technology company that is one of the largest two-sided marketplace for creative professionals to license content. Previously, Robyn served as a photo editor for top national publications. She has worked closely with some of the most talented photographers in the industry; produced elaborate photo shoots across the globe; and cultivated extensive knowledge of image libraries both rare and internationally acclaimed. I reached out to Robyn and asked her a number of questions whose topic ranges from the curation of stock photos to user experience principles. The Interview 1. Hi Robyn, thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Can you start off by telling us about yourself? Hi Justin, thank you for this opportunity. Well, I worked previously for over a decade as a freelance photo editor and producer in magazine publishing. I love both photography and design. I’ve marveled at how much more essential and widespread photography has become in all kinds of places to help businesses look better. 2. So you currently occupy the post of curator of stock photos with a leading supplier of stock photography. How did you fall into this line of work? When I came across the job posting for a curator, I was immediately intrigued. Photo editing and curating have a lot in common. I knew that in this role I could take what I knew already, but apply it in new ways. One of the aspects of the job that got me most excited was the thought of making a suggestion that could be implemented and changed quickly. 3. What does your role involve and how does it differ from the ‘traditional’ position of curator in a museum or art gallery? It’s my job to make the visitor’s experience as pleasant and memorable as possible. That’s true across platforms for all curators. Having 60 million assets (including photos, vectors and illustrations) at my disposal gives me a great resource to pull from. Working for a digital company, it’s incredibly interesting to test different photos and to see what the public clicks on more than others. You learn a lot throughout the process about what attracts an audience and in which context. 4. How would you describe the typical categories of customers? We service 1.3 million customers and the most typical are in the fields of marketing, advertising and media. 5. Acquiring collections is a very important part of curation. How do you reach out to contributors of stock photos in order to raise the quality of the photos that you offer? I don’t reach out personally, but we have a contributor team that reviews every single image and provides immediate and insightful feedback on the work. The team also reaches out to contributors to communicate opportunities based on what clients are asking for in a given season. 6. So what makes a good, high quality stock photo that users would want to buy? Authenticity. Our best contributors have a certain style and vision that gets conveyed through their work. Clients sometimes don’t know what exactly they’re looking for, and a strong image that tells a story itself and conjures up emotions for the viewer can really make an impact. If the client feels something when he or she searches the collection, chances are so will the audience seeing that image inside a larger product. The photographers who perform best think from the beginning about the end use, and how and why this image would valuable to have. 7. In traditional curation, the art gallery curator would select the theme for exhibits. How does this transpire in the digital world of tagging stock photos into categories? Keywords are integral to finding what you look for. It helps organize the imagery. But I’ve found them to be useful in other ways, too. What I’ll do is search an idea or a theme and then look at the similar keywords that turn up with them. A lot of the time the term I searched initially won’t be the term I wind up using to find what I really want. There’s a path to follow. I’m selecting the best images from the bunch, but through doing searches myself, I get a good, strong look at the experience a customer would have as he or she searches. Replicating the user experience, and acting like a customer would, helps me better understand the customer, and how I can assist them. 8. I have read that one of the requirements for becoming a job curator for stock photography is to have a “knack for storytelling”. How does storytelling fit in your role? When I choose imagery for our website, Instagram account, or for other marketing campaigns, I am doing my part to tell the Shutterstock story. At the same time, though, the beauty and authenticity you see can be had by anyone on a budget. We’re leading by example every day. If people who haven’t come across Shutterstock before are introduced to it with something bold and vibrant, then they’re more likely to think highly of the company and our collection. Every campaign or social-media post is a small piece of the overall story. 9. There was also mention that your role involves working closely with the User Experience design team by suggesting how the website should look and feel like. What measures could be taken to improve the user experience of a stock photography website? It’s really important to have clean, uncluttered imagery that reads well on a number of platforms, whether web, mobile, or somewhere else. It should enhance the experience, but it should also stimulate the imagination. I love to experiment with different types of photos and vectors to use as our hero images (the large images at the top of the homepage), and it can be really surprising and exciting to see what content works. And I think the same rules apply to stock sites as to magazine pages – less is more. Lots of little images make less of an impact than a few really gorgeous ones. 10. There is a considerable number of user experience professionals who advise against the use of stock photography of ‘generic people’ because users ignore them. In some cases, this is even backed up by research such as the eye tracking results presented by Dr. Jakob Nielsen in his article “Photos as Web Content”. What is your view on this argument? This is a fascinating read; thank you for sharing. And I couldn’t agree more with the UX pros. Humans are so adept at reading social cues on a subconscious level that it’s very easy to spot the false scenarios. For that reason, it’s difficult for people to relate to such staged imagery. I recently curated our Changing Faces infographic, and the premise of it was to show that customers are searching for faces that better represent our diverse world. It’s a wonderful celebration of the real and authentic people within our collection and a testament that we all still desire to make a natural, human connection with one another. Thank you Robyn accepting my invitation for this interview and for dedicating your time to share with us these great insights. May I take this opportunity to wish you success for your new role. The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency 5 Proven Ways To Fund Your App At The Idea Stage September 21, 2015 by Tracy Vides 0 Comments 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-at-the-idea-stage You may have a revolutionary idea for the next big app. However, without the right funding for your winning app, that idea will probably never see light of day. Unlike a business startup, where the entrepreneur knows exactly what he or she’s going to do, what products or services will be offered and how, what will be the monetization model, etc., app developers have little idea about any of these at the initial stages of building the app. User testing throws up curve balls that often call for drastic changes. Most apps go through so many modifications and iterations that the final product will look radically different from the initial idea. For this reason, creating a bound business plan and approaching banks for loans becomes really tough. So what do you do? Here are a few thoughts to get you started. 1. Bootstrap Your Way Up with Co-Founders There is no source of funds more dependable than your own savings. If you cannot spare cash to invest in your own bright idea, asking others to contribute to it is a little unfair, don’t you think? Bank savings, personal loans, credit card loans, friends and family are all perfectly legitimate sources of funds when your app is in its infancy. However, you don’t always have to go it alone. Find the perfect co-founder to shoulder the responsibility of launching a new app. A co-founder is a lot more than a friend or shoulder during bad times. Pick a co-founder based on your needs. A tech-savvy co-founder can help you design and build a prototype of your app from scratch without spending a penny on outside developers. Bobby Murphy, co-founder of Snapchat was the development brains behind what was essentially Evan Spiegel and Reggie Brown’s Stanford classroom project. Currently the app stands valued at close to $20 billion. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-co-founders Image Source: VentureVillage Alternately, find a partner who can fund your app while you develop it yourself. Case in point – Uber. Travis Kalanick was the cash supply for developer/co-founder Garrett Camp. 2. Set up a Crowdfunding Campaign Crowdfunding is an attractive funding avenue for startups that have absolutely no resources of their own to get going with their ideas. Even though hundreds of app and startup ideas go unnoticed and unfunded on crowdfunding sites, the right pitch can promise a bonanza for your dream app. In return for a service fee from the crowdfunding platform and a transaction fee from the payment processor, you are assured of sufficient funds to get your dream off the ground. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-crowdfunding Image Source: Traquity.com (website no longer exists) Crowdfunding has various models that you can pick from. The leader in the crowdfunding space, Kickstarter, is an all or nothing platform. This means that once you set your funding goal, you better reach the target amount to get the money. If you fall short of your target, the contributions get refunded to the individual investors. On the other hand, Indiegogo offers both flexible funding and fixed funding options, thus meaning that if you fail to reach your target amount, you can keep your collection in return for a higher service fee. You may also want to consider app-specific crowdfunding platforms like AppsFunder and AppSplit. 3. Raise Donations on Your Own Site The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency Crowdfunding is a great way to get quick resources. However it also has quite a few negatives tacked on to it. There’s tons of competition out there and standing out from a sea of wannabe entrepreneurs can be near-impossible for many. Then there are the myriad of fees that you shell out in return for the funding that you request. A smart way to eliminate these problems is by raising funds on your own site. Yes, nothing stops you from: Describing your proposed app to your readers Asking them for a small donation towards your app Offering them a gift / pre-orders of your app / monetary compensation once your app rolls out in return for their contributions A tool like 123ContactForm allows you to build a donation form in minutes. Even better, it integrates easily with various payment processors like PayPal, Stripe, Braintree and FreshBooks to make the process of setting up your self-owned own funding campaign a one-stop affair. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-donation-form Image Source: Smashing Forms 4. Participate in Funding Contests If you’re a would-be entrepreneur in the connected world, there’s no way you’ve not seen the entrepreneurial TV series Shark Tank. With over $44 million in funding given out across its five seasons, the hit show is an entrepreneur’s dream come true. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-funding-contest Shark Tank – Image Source: The Hollywood Reporter I am not suggesting that you try and get on Shark Tank to get your app funded. You should if you can, but that’s not the point here. There are tons of contests available sponsored by universities, technology companies, angel investor networks and more that offer new entrepreneurs the resources to fulfill their business idea. Check out Biz Plan Competitions to pick from hundreds of contests around the world. You can even zoom in on a contest near you and learn about how to qualify and participate to win the funding that your app deserves. 5. Angel Investors and Strategic Partners Many startups are tempted to approach Venture Capitalists (VCs) for seed funding. However, the fact remains that less than 3% of seed funding comes from VCs. Instead, angel investors or strategic investors are strong contenders for kick starting your brand new app. These are not always companies or institutions. Individuals and successful entrepreneurs often take an active interest in funding new startups. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer are but two examples of avid angel investors in early stage apps. Angel investors can offer anything from $25,000 to a few million in funding, depending on your app idea and stage of development. The size of the angel investment market currently stands at $20 billion annually. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-strategic-partners Marissa Mayer – Image Source: Business Insider While angel investors are easier to convince than VCs at a seed stage, you still need to be prepared to give a potential angel investor details like: The total amount of capital you will need How quickly will you burn through it (monthly burn rate) What is your go-to-market strategy How will you promote the app Why do you deserve funding, that is, the technical and business capabilities of the founders Coda It’s not just you. Before Peter Thiel stepped in with the first external funds that Facebook would receive, Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin managed their operating costs by hustling for every last dollar. The monthly expense of $85 for renting their very first server was covered by banner ads on Facebook using platforms like AdSense. Moral of the story? With a little bit of creativity, you can always make sure that your dream app doesn’t remain only in your dreams. (Lead image source: Rocío Lara) Customer Experience vs. User Experience: What’s The Difference? September 23, 2015 by Zev Ginzburg 2 Comments customer-experience-user-experience-difference Often times promising entrepreneurs will come up with a genius idea for an app but end up entangling a lot of important components into one product. If you’re a geek in any capacity that works in tech today, there is no doubt you’ve heard the following: “I’ve got this great idea for an app, tell me what you think…” To which us geeks inevitably roll our eyes as the individual begins to describe a blend of apps on the market and how it solves a crucial problem of our generation. What many of these entrepreneurs tend to overlook is the revenue model doesn’t necessarily mesh well with the usability. Making the mistake of combining a customer experience and a user experience has ramifications that could result in a poor experience on both ends. The User Experience (UX), as many usability geeks would be aware of, would include most operational needs, which includes the information architecture, the general navigation, and completing functional tasks relatively easy. The Customer Experience (CX) has many external variables embedded in it. It embodies user experience, because after all, a customer is a usertype. The major differences here need to accommodate the mission of a particular web or mobile app. A customer experience may, and often does, impede on the mission. The Revenue Model: Brickless and Mortarless Advertisements are often an easy way to monetize and take advantage of a large user base that does not pay for usage. These advertisements have a direct correlation to the quality of user experience and customer experience. Advertisements, unless otherwise stated, are something a user would want to avoid. YouTube for instance knows this by adding a ‘skip ad’ button. Hulu, Pandora, Spotify, and even Skype all include advertisements which in some instances significantly hinder the user experience. Earning revenue is very important to the stability of an application, obviously. So some means of providing a balance between the customer experience and user experience is crucial. The most apparent examples of this customer experience and user experience balance is in simple games on mobile. Games like Clash of Clans, Game of War, and many similar strategy games implemented the token system for users to buy. The token system has several advantages to the harmony needed between customer experience and user experience, the first of which guarantees that the user experience is good because the user wants to keep engaging (playing) with game. There is a hard way to advance and just like life there is an easy way, all one needs to do is pay for it. Some users take the game extremely seriously and get into. A sizable portion of users are willing to shell out a couple of dollars to beat a level they’re just cognitively unequipped to beat. It is wholly appropriate here because the tokens for sale are now a resource for the user, and as such resources tend to be a positive tool in a user experience. It also tends to be a negative experience for a user’s wallet. The Revenue Model: Bricks and Mortar What about a case where a company has brick and mortar stores? They already have a customer experience in store and they may want to transfer this experience to a digital front. Companies like Starbucks or Wal­Mart may be hyper aware that the shopping experience needs to optimize cross platform usage. The Starbucks app enables users to reimburse rewards and pay for their coffee right from their mobile device. The whole app is catered for the customer which makes the UX development a lot easier. The customer has a set of defined tasks, one cannot simply peruse the Starbucks app, it is task oriented. Wal­Mart took an already acceptable customer experience and improved it through their technical solution called ‘savings catcher.’ Now while the politics of Wal­Mart are extremely divisive, the savings catcher is a very unique and progressive means of providing a good customer experience. It’s such a novel concept in some senses, the user first shops at Wal­Mart, then scans his or her receipt, then Wal­Mart will run a check for the same product at multiple retailers. If the price was cheaper anywhere else, Wal­Mart will refund you the money. Wal­Mart does all the work too, the user just uploads their proof of purchase. With a global customer base of over 100,000,000 there are sure to be savings and the more a customer spends, the likelihood of getting the best deal increases. The UX of the application, however, is nothing revolutionary. The bells and whistles are purposely diluted in order to accommodate that potential of 100,000,000 customers who would be app users. The Bottom Line Designing and developing for a good user experience means beginning at a bottom line: are we here to make money from a customer, or are we here to provide something else? Service based products like Spotify or Pandora do really well providing music. Earning revenue however was not necessarily part of the game plan from beginning. Including a customer experience helps if you know what kind of customer would integrate well into a user experience. (Lead image source: Jason Howie) 10 Guidelines For Navigation Usability September 28, 2015 by Preston Pierce 0 Comments 10-guidelines-for-navigation-usability When it comes to usability, ease-of-navigation should be a top priority for web developers. The number one most annoying feature of a website is improper or confusing navigation, leaving users lost and wondering what to do next. If you’re lucky enough, some users just might scour through the website to accomplish their purpose of visiting the website. However, most users simply pop-out and add more numbers to the website bounce rate — and we all want to avoid that! So, what makes website navigation easy and usable? Follow these simple guidelines to ensure that your site navigation is a user-friendly one. 1. Embrace Predictability Being creative with your website is nice, but don’t practice this in areas where predictability may be preferred over uniqueness. This is particularly true for website navigation menus that visitors are going to use simply to get from one page to another. Creating unconventional navigation will only make it confusing – and confused users are less likely to stay on your page any longer. 10-guidelines-navigation-usability-unusual An Example of an unconventional navigation menu that takes time to make sense of (Source: YouZee) 2. Keep it Simple In a way, this goes hand-in-hand with predictability, except here you avoid making your navigation extremely difficult to comprehend. For example, you may have a predictable design, but if it is full of cluttered menus and submenus in a disorganized fashion, you’re far from making it easy for users to navigate through your website. 3. Don’t Overdo Minimalism Recently minimalism has caught on and everyone seems to be reducing content, promoting “white space”, and simplifying typography. This is great because nowadays internet users are more concerned about getting work done as fast as possible through mobile devices on-the-go, rather than viewing fancy pages that may take forever to download. However, some designers over-do minimalism, rendering clear and proper navigation useless. This is a big mistake! 10-guidelines-navigation-usability-minimal All you can see on the startupstockphotos website is the “About” option. Where’s the rest? (Source: StartupStockPhotos) 4. Keep it Consistent It’s always good to keep the theme and structure of your pages consistent. The first time a user visits your website, he/she is going to make sense of it in just a matter of seconds (shouldn’t take longer). After that, your user is going to expect all the pages to be similar in terms of structure and design. Having an entirely different navigation system page by page will only frustrate the user because the “making sense of it all” process will have to repeated unnecessarily every time. 5. Clear Hierarchical Structure Navigation menus should have a clear hierarchical structure with every category and clickable sub categories included in the menu. It’s okay if your parent categories are extensive, so long as all the available subcategories are listed in order. This gives the user a clear idea of what you can offer without having to go through several pages to find what they are looking for. This is particularly important for websites that offer a wide array of products and services. 10-guidelines-navigation-usability-hierarchical Aliexpress has a perfect navigation where hierarchal structure is clear with clickable grouped subcategories under parent categories (Source: AliExpress) 6. Make it Manageable Clear navigation in your user interface is highly usable when it tells visitors where they have come from, where they are currently, and where they can go from their current location. This obviously requires a breadcrumb trail on your website, allowing users to keep track of their location, making navigation more manageable and under their control. Remember that not all users will start visiting your site from the home page. Many will land on an inner page after clicking a link from another site or from the Search Engine Results Page. 7. Link the Logo to the Homepage A good practice is to link the homepage from the website’s logo (which should appear on every page at the same spot). Users have a tendency to start all over by going back to the home page and redoing the search process from there. Furthermore, many users are highly likely to search up your website using a search engine which could lead them to a specific page deep within your website. Users are going to want to click on your homepage from there so they can explore more of your website. 8. Include a Sitemap Sitemaps are crucial for a usable navigation system. Any lost user will resort to a sitemap that has links to all pages (or the main pages) of a website. The site map will list down the pages of your site in a clear, hierarchical order giving a plain overview of your website. Bear in mind that the sitemap should be concise without extraneous details on every single topic. 9 Guidelines For Writing A Killer Headline For Conversion September 30, 2015 by Florence Mendoza 1 Comment 9-guidelines-for-writing-killer-headline-converts If boosting conversion is your goal, writing the right headline is arguably more important than writing good copy. Indeed, a famous quote by advertising legend, David Ogilvy says that on average, five times as many people will read the headline than the actual content. And what good is writing anything at all if you can’t pique your readers’ interest? Even if, hypothetically-speaking, you wrote the best advertising copy or blog post in the world, if no one clicks on your bland headline, you’ve essentially wasted your time (not to mention money). In this article, I will be discussing 9 guidelines for writing headlines with the aim of boosting conversion. I know that there are several guidelines when it comes to this topic and likewise, there are numerous articles that have discussed it in sufficient depth. So what makes this article different? Simply put, this is not just ‘another list’. What I am presenting here are what I consider as being the most effective guidelines for writing headlines. Before we begin, know this: writing headlines is a science, not an art. 1. Use a Formula to Create Your Headline If using a formula seems wrong to you instinctively, consider this: lots of headlines online already follow certain formulae, and, clearly, no one cares. Look at popular content on the Internet (like Buzzfeed, Upworthy or high-ranking Youtube channels) and you’ll notice a lot of their headlines and titles following familiar patterns. This obviously doesn’t bother anyone in the slightest. Not to mention the fact that the first two examples have made a name for themselves by using attention-grabbing headlines that are so standardized, they’ve been parodied to death. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, really. At this point, a typical Internet user sees so many headlines daily on social media and elsewhere, something completely atypical will surely throw them off and be dismissed on sight. 2. Use Numbers in the Headline A clickable headline has numbers – and for good reasons. We all know that words can be manipulated in many ways and any outrageous claim made on the Internet – especially in a headline – will be met with skepticism. Numbers, on the other hand, elicit another reaction – trust. Any statistician would, at this point, remark that numbers can themselves be manipulated and misleading, but we’re talking about the readers’ gut reaction. Compare the following two headlines: This Pill Will Make You the Most Productive Worker in the World This Pill Will Raise Your Efficiency Factor by 20% or More Note that the second headline, the one that uses numbers, is more attractive than the first one that just looks like an empty promise. According to a study by Conductor that analyzed click traffic on social media, using a number in the headline is the most effective in boosting click-through rate out of all measured factors. Numbers in this study, by the way, don’t just mean statistics – they are headlines like “20 Things to do Before You Die”. 3. Try and Use These Words and Phrases (Where Possible) So which words convert more? Kevan Lee has created an incredible list of words and phrases that are most used in viral headlines by analyzing more than 3,000 headlines from 24 top content sites. He split his findings into two categories: ‘most popular words’ and ‘most popular uncommon words’. Perhaps even more interesting is the 2-word and 3-word phrases that he observed in these viral headlines: Most Popular 2-Word Phrases: ‘this is’, ‘in the’, ‘how to’, ‘is the’, ‘of the’ Most Popular 3-Word Phrases: ‘this is the’, ‘will make you’, ‘when you see’, ’til you see’, ‘what happens when’ Another useful resource is Josh Rhodes’ list of 179 emotional words that make powerful headings and high converting landing pages. According to this study, some of the most popular words in headlines are: ‘focus’, ‘wanted’, ‘free’, ‘sale’, ‘new’ and lowest. In yet another huge study, this time of 1 million headlines, Garret Moon came up with the following list of the most popular words and phrases in highly-shared headlines: ‘list post’, ‘you/your’, ‘free/giveaway’, ‘how to’, ‘diy’. 4. A Headline Should be X Words / Characters LongThe Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency Needless to say, there is much debate as to how long a headline should be. Here are some of the guidelines which I consider as being most useful: 8 words (according to The Guardian) 62 characters (according to Kevan Lee) 81-100 characters (according to HubSpot and Outbrain) 5. Make Your Headline Sound Useful Look again at the example about the efficiency pill. This is a good, clickable headline because of the fact that anyone can ‘try it on’. Wow, I can boost my efficiency by 20%? Now look at spam comments found anywhere on the Internet: “I made $6,000 using this website, etc., etc.” These are engineered to be clickable, and what do they do?: They use numbers The reader can instantly try it on and see what benefit they will get. The point is: if your headline isn’t somehow useful to the reader, it will be dismissed right away, so do try and make it as applicable as possible. To get the ‘usefulness’ effect try addressing the reader. This will mean that “How to Buy a Used Car” should be rewritten into “Things You Should Know Before Buying a Used Car”, or, better yet “10 Things You Should Know Before Buying a Used Car” 6. Choose Your Words Carefully This guideline takes many dimensions. What are the “ideal” words to use in a headline? Citing Stephen King, Jeff Bullas writes that simplicity is a key element. One can have an impressive vocabulary but taking an approach to headline writing that is too intellectual can backfire. Readers will always understand a simple headline. If you want to make it more appealing, then try and arouse their curiosity. According to Barry Feldman, the process of choosing which words to use also involves choosing which words to leave out. 7. Negative Spin Tends to do Better According to a study of 100 tech blogs done by Oribi, using words like “Kill”, “Fear”, “Dark”, “Bleeding” will get more attention, even if the headlines themselves are not violent at all. The same study found that headlines that feature words like “without”, “no” and “stop” end up at the top posts a lot. The takeaway from this is that giving your headline a negative spin is more likely to pique your readers’ interests. So “10 Things to do This Summer” becomes “The 10 Activities Your Summer Will Suck Without.” 8. Pose a Question There’s no way to be more engaging than asking a question. Whether it’s something that the readers have been wondering themselves or something new that they haven’t considered yet, a question will surely get attention. This is what is called a curiosity gap – it’s an itch that demands to be scratched. The proverbial scratching is reading the article. Leave the question headlines to the more important topics, though. It would be easy enough to get tired of a feed filled with question marks. So make sure you save this one for special occasions. 9. Finally, Don’t Lie This is so obvious, it shouldn’t even count as advice, but, unfortunately, it needs to be said – such is the state of things. If you promise someone they can lose weight at a rate of 5 pounds every day, only the most credulous would believe you. And since you’re writing for the cynical world of the Internet, credulity and naïveté is not something you should expect. If you’re counting on a lie getting you massive amounts of clicks, try and think through to the next step: what happens when they do click, and the content doesn’t follow up on the promise? They’ll close the tab and never come back to your site again, that’s what. The Art Of UX In MVP October 5, 2015 by Yona Gidalevitz 2 Comments ux-in-mvp UX is UX is UX – right? Not really. User Experience Designers (UXDs) working on Minimum Viable Product (MVP) builds have it rough. The thought process has to shift ever so slightly in MVP builds, and in such a way that it can disrupt your conception of what “good UX” really is. UX Designers, listen up: MVP builds serve a different purpose than full builds. MVP builds are tasked with learning as much as possible about the features required by users. Rather than producing a fully­-featured product, which addresses the needs of every possible user type, MVP builds are designed to create the absolute minimally viable product—one which creates the smallest feature set that someone would pay for, or even just use. In turn, the UX process has to change, slightly, to reflect this. So, you ask, how does it change? UX In MVP Is About Changing What You Measure UX Designers, at a really high level, are tasked with: Building out features Building them well (to put it bluntly) Ryan Singer of Basecamp has designed a very good way to visualize this. Let’s call it “the blob”. ux-mvp-blob Image Source: Signal v. Noise UX Designers are taught from the get-­go to ask themselves: “Is this user friendly?” — is the blob deep, and does it take up a large surface area? In MVP builds, a new question begins to take precedence: “Would users pay the same price for this feature set?” — does the blob really have to be this huge? The idea here is simple. In MVP builds, the depth of the blob should never change — that is, the quality of execution ought to remain consistent. The surface area, however, is what becomes the subject of significant scrutiny. By diminishing the surface area of the blob, you are able to experiment with the notion that, perhaps users are perfectly okay without the ability to fulfil a particular task that, otherwise, you would have spent precious time perfecting, and time is money. Testing feature-­set viability is the bread and butter of MVP­-driven UX Design. And Becoming More Agile The classic MVP [Build → Measure → Learn] cycle is the source of inspiration for the UX process in MVP builds: [UX → Measure → Learn → Repeat] Such a pattern emphasizes two key qualitative differences between non-­MVP and MVP­-based User Experiences: MVP builds ought to be produced quickly, and they ought to offer the absolute minimum set of features deemed acceptable by users. Your UX senses are tingling here, I know. This goes against what you’ve learned about UX, and feels wrong. You take pride in the quality of your work, and in the depth of features that you account for in your designs. UXDs: MVP builds do not inherently create gaps in the UX, contrary to what you may believe. Speed, here, does not necessarily equate to the absence of quality. Adopting agile methods in your UX Design process will ensure fast, “quality” cycles of work, due to the inherently repetitive model of testing that is used in the Agile process. This does not mean that building an MVP is a straightforward process. In fact, at my place of work we have found it beneficial to create a dedicated page to explain the importance of MVP and assist potential clients with building one. What I suggest is: Trust your UXD judgement, and embrace the MVP process and you will not be led astray. Kinks will be worked out in the multiple rounds of testing, while missing features will be discovered and implemented, during the many [Measure → Learn] portions of the Agile process. Most importantly, don’t forget: MVP builds are an excellent opportunity to learn about your users, and what they want from you. Often, what you give them is much more than they are willing to put up with for the price. And if that sounds too cynical to you, you’re in the wrong business, my friend. (Lead image source: Pulpolux !!!) 6 Powerful Ways Of Improving On-Site User Engagement October 12, 2015 by Ankit Panchal 0 Comments improve-user-engagement So you have an immersive website with the right aesthetic appeal. What is the next practical step? It is to prevent bounces and enhance on-site user engagement. However, most marketers are stuck at fluffing their website and pruning their social media page. A successful conversion model includes everything from on-site optimization to neat navigation and most websites take these in their stride. Despite that they have extremely high bounce rates. Could it be the lack of right information, prices or something intangible altogether? Here we shall discuss effective ways of preventing bounces and enhancing user engagement that leads up to increased conversions. 1. Target the Right Sources for Website VisitorsThe Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency Each website is unique and so is each visitor. You may generalize your group but know that each type of visitor comes from a specific source. For instance, a 30 y.o. tech nut will be more trusting about peer reviews on social sites. Now if you analyze your website traffic, you will see three distinct steps in conversion: Awareness brought about by search and discovery, Consideration after carefully looking at reviews, research and social media sites, and Action (Purchase or Bounce). Find out the sources from where your visitors come, based on that decide the type of information they are looking for on your website and then give a personalized experience thus enhancing user engagement. If your visitor came from a reference link on a blog on pesticides, don’t make them search amongst hundreds of gardening tools and seeds and plants. Sure they are pretty to look at but it won’t serve the purpose and hence the end result could be a compromised bounce rate. 2. Let Data Show You the Way There are several methods to acquire data of website engagement; Google Analytics is the most popular of all. The data thus acquired is extremely important to understand that whether your website is successfully retaining visitors and giving them something to learn, see of discover. Commonly, inbound links are able to get traffic from all over the world, but only 40-50% of it is relevant traffic. They caveat here is to successfully keep that 40-50% engaged enough on your website, so they take some actionable steps like buy, subscribe, bookmark, share etc. Another important part of data analysis is user behavior. Measure session duration to see if they were just site hopping or were they looking for something seriously. Users will give you 35 seconds before they decide that you are not what they are looking for. Session duration will let you understand if majority of your users think that way. And if the answer is yes, you better start taking reformative steps to enhance user engagement. Page-wise performance data is the third step in the way. It allows you to do A/B testing and decide what works best for your audience. If you have multi-group audience, it allows you to cater for various contents based on the group taste. 3. Create Immersive Experiences for Visitors Immersive experience is more than a buzzword. We don’t wish to burden you with the hackneyed example of Amazon and how they created an immersive experience, so we have found some of the best immersive websites on the internet. Take a cue from them and discover ways you can create an immersive experience for your visitors. From interesting blog posts to videos, the ways and means to keep your audience hooked are surprisingly simple and inexhaustible. Ask 3 questions to yourself if you wish to create an immersive website: Are we offering more than they thought / wanted? Are we giving something new, something irresistible? Have we taken an unbeaten path? Check out how this Auto Service facility created an amazing immersive experience on their website. Surely they didn’t need to do it, but they did it anyways and the path less trodden led them to great success. improve-user-engagement-hmr Image credit: http://hmrservis.cz/ And now see the typical car service website and the likes of which you find in abundance on the internet. improve-user-engagement-york Image credit: http://www.yorkspringandradiator.ca/en/ 4. Carry the Experience Beyond Your Website This is one boat you simply can’t miss. Over these last couple of years, triggered emails or auto-responders have become one of the most important user engagement tactics. However, simple emails with ‘Howdy’ and ‘We Miss Ya’ or persistent emails and reminders won’t do. You have to carry the soul of your website theme and create a similar experience in emails. The same goes for social media and PR. This is one powerful way to garner repeat visits. 5. Watch the Calendar It is very important to gauge user engagement at a certain time of the day, certain days of the week, certain holidays, certain months of the year and so on. You will notice a hike in traffic at a particular period. Get to the root of it: Why was there a hike? What was the bounce rate then? Was it because of a particular offer or an event you organized? … and so on. Again Google Analytics allows you to compare activity in a particular period with activity in another period. 6. Be Like the Giraffe Did you know that in New Age religion, the giraffe is considered as being a symbol for intuition and flexibility? It is extremely easy to find yourself lost in the labyrinths of data and social media, thus forgetting your innate sense of intuition. Most of the times we don’t trust our instincts and see what is laid out right in front of our eyes. Get a bird’s eye view of your website or see it from a solely unattached point-of-view. This will help you to forget all the mind-numbing rules and metrics and discover a simpler and effective way to keep your users engaged. Also, learn from the giraffe to be flexible and ready for change. Take Away Once the user interface and user experience problems are out of your way, the only thing that remains to focus on is user engagement. It is extremely crucial to keep your users engaged and keep coming for more in order to build a loyal audience. These 6 powerful rules to enhance user engagement will help you bring down bounce rates and lead to successful conversion. Humans: The Missing Link In Online Security October 14, 2015 by Gabor Koródi 0 Comments humans-missing-link-security Implementing online security is ultimately a human undertaking. The tools have to be sufficient enough to protect you and your clients, but efficient enough not to get in the way of providing the best user experience possible. While technology will get you part of the way, the inevitable corner-cutting by users will ultimately expose the notion that technology cannot provide total protection against our human nature. The Username/Password Combination For example, historically the username/password combination provided both authorization and authentication in one convenient package. For earlier systems, not open to the public and only providing access from a well-defined physical location, this was a great solution. It quickly became apparent, however, that users are terrible at remembering some random password; they forget to change it every 90 days and would rather write it down. The technology, as always playing catch-up to its users, quickly evolved into password-strength measuring libraries and automated functions to force users into changing their passwords. As a typical example of leading with technology and not considering the human factors, the resistance from end-users was palpable. Many of us remember the passwords on sticky notes on someone’s monitor, or the easy to guess (and pronounce) ones that were shared around the office. Improvements are being made continuously, both technical and behavioral fronts. Users are much more aware of the need for proper security. Businesses with an online presence spend significant amount of resources on protecting their infrastructure and their users from a growing variety of threats. Administrators are much more vigilant on implementing security protocols that are harder to circumvent by both internal and external users. The Use of CAPTCHA Not too long ago, CAPTCHAs were the new favorite technical solutions against hackers trying to break into high-value targets. The wide-spread use of sophisticated UI interfaces over the Internet allowed this visual password system to be used in many circumstances. While it works in most implementations, there are shortcomings – again, based on human factors not anticipated in the initial design. CAPTCHAs do not work for people with certain physical limitations or cultural backgrounds and will not just limit unauthorized access, but will prevent legitimate use as well. Given the global user-base that most businesses are trying to target, these limitations will not be appropriate. The visually impaired or recent immigrants trying to access their first bank account will face enormous difficulties trying to decipher the requirements that this type of gatekeeper demands of them. Relying on Senses as a Means of Security A security implementation that relies on one of the user’s five senses or memory ultimately will hit the limits to which any particular user is able to employ them. Perhaps an online photo album does not need the same level of protection as someone’s access to his or her bank account? Perhaps Facebook and Google need to implement two-factor authentication for all their online properties? These questions can only be answered calmly and methodically by considering the needs of each user that comes in contact with the system. All businesses need to conduct a pre-purchase discovery with these questions in mind. Design professionals need to focus on the interactions that result from a variety of behaviors and pick all the tools that are appropriate – including those for security and protection. Human-centered design thinking is a necessary augmentation to the limits of technology. The awareness of how and why certain interactions are implemented, the understanding of the benefits, has the potential to counteract those hard to control behaviors from which technology alone has no chance of protecting any given system. Human-centered design has the capability for a longer lasting impact than a simple certificate and encryption protocol between a browser and a server. The Use of Two-Factor Authentication An example of a purely technical, or rather mathematical solution is two-factor authentication. Random, single-use tokens combined with strong password requirements are becoming widespread. With current technology, it is impossible, or to be more precise, almost impossible to break. However, it is the lack of consideration for human behavior that is this solution’s flaw. While it fits into the established and understood process implementation of username/password paradigm, it adds more complexity – not necessarily what the average user desires. Using a Reminder Question Another recent approach, still employing the additional complexity to slow down a brute force attacker, is the “reminder question” type of security. In addition to the username/password, some common question is asked, the answer to which the system presumes only the user would know. However, a disgruntled friend or family member or a social media “friend” can easily find out the name of our first pet or the high school we graduated from. Again, this demonstrates the limits of technology and how it cannot cover all the intricacies of human behavior. Security Lessons Learnt From Experience At the company I work for, Story+Structure, we are convinced that the solution to these issues lies in the combination of the strength of currently available technology and the trust building capabilities of a human-centered design approach. One great example, originally from the banking industry, is the Know Your Customer (KYC) process. This interaction, specifically for the benefit of the protection of the customer, is technology agnostic. It requires certain steps from a service provider to take with each of their customers before engaging in any sensitive business. Its benefit is validated by corresponding legal mandates. In the banking sector, training has to be provided and certain requirements have to be met, before any employee can engage with a potential or existing customer. Similar procedures are in place, in combination with technology, when fraud protection departments stop certain large item purchases. In today’s fast-paced retail environments, this could be seen as a mistake. It is the designer’s role to explain why it is worth the frustration and that after the initial confusion, the understanding will lead to a better experience and a stronger relationship. Technology that enables this type of protection cannot adequately address all the human emotions that are in play. Designers, however, can, and a holistic view of the entire interaction ecosystem allows them to incorporate security into their approach toward a solution. In Conclusion In conclusion, the online security process must evolve to consider human components – not just technical safeguards. The human-centered approach, such as formulating a holistic view of the workflow, understanding the customer’s real need and through this discovery helping them notice out-of-the-ordinary activities, helps organizations protect their users by being mindful of who they are, what they need and how they operate. Not just for a better user experience, but as part of a comprehensive protection against errors (malicious or otherwise). UX For Enterprise: Using IoT To Design Integrated Systems For The Workplace October 19, 2015 by Yona Gidalevitz 0 Comments ux-enterprise-iot While beacons have yet to emerge as a mainstream technology, they have not only begun to revolutionize the customer experience model, but also validate predictions regarding the future of the Internet of Things (IoT). Proximity marketing and contextual functionality have contributed to a tailored, custom experience for users of apps that have implemented beacons as a usability enhancement tool. But what can beacons do for usability outside of the context of marketing and user-oriented application development? At the enterprise level, beacons could potentially foster an environment where, for all intents and purposes, the usability of a large office building may rival that of a finely tuned mobile application. Enterprise Efficiency is a Product of Usability Due to the nature of beacon technology, the potential for data-capture is vast–a largely untapped resource. Most of the benefits of integrating beacons around the office come from their inherent ability to collect data (and use it to make decisions). At the enterprise level, there are a number of metrics which can keep businesses operating at maximum efficiency and safety–and therefore maintaining maximum office usability. How, you ask? When designing integrated systems for employees, just as with customer-facing products, there are quantifiable factors which can affect workplace efficiency. 1. Asset Tracking Beacons provide an affordable solution for the tracking of company assets, such as machinery, power tools, and medical equipment. Tracking data can be stored, and analyzed over a time period, in order to isolate potential bottlenecks. In turn, there are two ways that asset tracking can directly affect integrated system usability around the office: Reduced bottlenecks mean reduced interactions. Asset tracking means everything is at your fingertips. I know what you’re thinking. Your UX senses are tingling: “Reduced interactions? Everything is findable? That sounds like good UX Design to me.” Yes, it is, my friend. But don’t forget, there is more to the puzzle than asset tracking. 2. Office Efficiency By implementing beacons throughout the office, enterprises can create connected, intelligent workplaces that make time-saving, and money-saving decisions, without the need for employee engagement, thus limiting the need to micromanage. Whenever you have a system that allows users of the system (in this case, employees) to roam freely across the vast plains of its functionality (using the office without the need to stop and make decisions), we can safely attribute it to good UX Design. 3. Health and Safety Automating the enforcement of an organization’s occupational health and safety policies, by supplementing them with beacon technology, will soon be central to the employee experience, and an innovative way to minimize the necessary interactions between the administration and the workforce. Safety protocols can be enforced by pushing contextual notifications to employees when needed, or by limiting the ability of employees to engage in a particular activity without having met a predetermined set of requirements. For example, a piece of enterprise software which allows its employees to survey industrial equipment may conditionally lock an employee out if, say, they are in a dangerous zone, where they cannot afford to divert attention to the software. 4. Data Collection Beacons can be used to collect data on employee efficiency, and analyze the factors that most greatly contribute to workplace distractions. In turn, conditional automation can be used to combat the factors which diminish the employee experience. For example, factors such as temperature, lighting, employee placement, work hours, computer limitations, and noise level, can have a severe effect on the ability of a worker to perform at their assigned task. Developing integrated systems which address these concerns automatically, based on data collected through beacon implementations, is no longer a science fiction concept, but a very real (and necessary) possibility. Towards a Better Definition of “User” User Experience Design ought to be seen as a tool not only for the betterment of customer experiences, but also in contexts where there may not be any mobile applications to speak of. Such a shift in mindset will require User Experience Designers to reflect on what it means to be a user. It’s about time someone said it. Anyone, using any system, is a user. Thus, any user who uses a system, requires a seamless experience. This is inherently relevant in the context of employee experiences, especially where integrated systems are concerned. At my workplace, we have found it beneficial to create a dedicated page for adding beacon technology into workplaces, and assist potential clients with integrating beacon technology to their already-built software. UX Designers, listen up: if you are working on integrated systems at the enterprise level, you ought to implement beacon technology into your UX designs, in order to help contextualize, and automate, the actions that employees do not necessarily have to, or want to take. UX And Stock Photos: An Interview With A Curator October 21, 2015 by Justin Mifsud 0 Comments ux-stock-photos-interview-curator A couple of weeks ago, a late-night conversation with one of the readers of this blog led to a discussion about the use of stock photos and their contribution (or lack of thereof) towards improving the overall user experience of a site. Much has been said in blogs and online discussions that stock photos and other decorative graphic elements do not add anything significant to the user experience. Although this argument is even backed up by eyetracking studies, I felt the need, more than ever, to reach out to see if there is another side to this argument. So I browsed around in my LinkedIn contacts and found someone who can potentially provide this perspective – Robyn Lange. Enter Robyn Lange – Curator of Stock Photos Robyn is the curator of stock photos at Shutterstock, which as most of you know, is a global technology company that is one of the largest two-sided marketplace for creative professionals to license content. Previously, Robyn served as a photo editor for top national publications. She has worked closely with some of the most talented photographers in the industry; produced elaborate photo shoots across the globe; and cultivated extensive knowledge of image libraries both rare and internationally acclaimed. I reached out to Robyn and asked her a number of questions whose topic ranges from the curation of stock photos to user experience principles. The Interview 1. Hi Robyn, thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Can you start off by telling us about yourself? Hi Justin, thank you for this opportunity. Well, I worked previously for over a decade as a freelance photo editor and producer in magazine publishing. I love both photography and design. I’ve marveled at how much more essential and widespread photography has become in all kinds of places to help businesses look better. 2. So you currently occupy the post of curator of stock photos with a leading supplier of stock photography. How did you fall into this line of work? When I came across the job posting for a curator, I was immediately intrigued. Photo editing and curating have a lot in common. I knew that in this role I could take what I knew already, but apply it in new ways. One of the aspects of the job that got me most excited was the thought of making a suggestion that could be implemented and changed quickly. 3. What does your role involve and how does it differ from the ‘traditional’ position of curator in a museum or art gallery? It’s my job to make the visitor’s experience as pleasant and memorable as possible. That’s true across platforms for all curators. Having 60 million assets (including photos, vectors and illustrations) at my disposal gives me a great resource to pull from. Working for a digital company, it’s incredibly interesting to test different photos and to see what the public clicks on more than others. You learn a lot throughout the process about what attracts an audience and in which context. 4. How would you describe the typical categories of customers? We service 1.3 million customers and the most typical are in the fields of marketing, advertising and media. 5. Acquiring collections is a very important part of curation. How do you reach out to contributors of stock photos in order to raise the quality of the photos that you offer? I don’t reach out personally, but we have a contributor team that reviews every single image and provides immediate and insightful feedback on the work. The team also reaches out to contributors to communicate opportunities based on what clients are asking for in a given season. 6. So what makes a good, high quality stock photo that users would want to buy? Authenticity. Our best contributors have a certain style and vision that gets conveyed through their work. Clients sometimes don’t know what exactly they’re looking for, and a strong image that tells a story itself and conjures up emotions for the viewer can really make an impact. If the client feels something when he or she searches the collection, chances are so will the audience seeing that image inside a larger product. The photographers who perform best think from the beginning about the end use, and how and why this image would valuable to have. 7. In traditional curation, the art gallery curator would select the theme for exhibits. How does this transpire in the digital world of tagging stock photos into categories? Keywords are integral to finding what you look for. It helps organize the imagery. But I’ve found them to be useful in other ways, too. What I’ll do is search an idea or a theme and then look at the similar keywords that turn up with them. A lot of the time the term I searched initially won’t be the term I wind up using to find what I really want. There’s a path to follow. I’m selecting the best images from the bunch, but through doing searches myself, I get a good, strong look at the experience a customer would have as he or she searches. Replicating the user experience, and acting like a customer would, helps me better understand the customer, and how I can assist them. 8. I have read that one of the requirements for becoming a job curator for stock photography is to have a “knack for storytelling”. How does storytelling fit in your role? When I choose imagery for our website, Instagram account, or for other marketing campaigns, I am doing my part to tell the Shutterstock story. At the same time, though, the beauty and authenticity you see can be had by anyone on a budget. We’re leading by example every day. If people who haven’t come across Shutterstock before are introduced to it with something bold and vibrant, then they’re more likely to think highly of the company and our collection. Every campaign or social-media post is a small piece of the overall story. 9. There was also mention that your role involves working closely with the User Experience design team by suggesting how the website should look and feel like. What measures could be taken to improve the user experience of a stock photography website? It’s really important to have clean, uncluttered imagery that reads well on a number of platforms, whether web, mobile, or somewhere else. It should enhance the experience, but it should also stimulate the imagination. I love to experiment with different types of photos and vectors to use as our hero images (the large images at the top of the homepage), and it can be really surprising and exciting to see what content works. And I think the same rules apply to stock sites as to magazine pages – less is more. Lots of little images make less of an impact than a few really gorgeous ones. 10. There is a considerable number of user experience professionals who advise against the use of stock photography of ‘generic people’ because users ignore them. In some cases, this is even backed up by research such as the eye tracking results presented by Dr. Jakob Nielsen in his article “Photos as Web Content”. What is your view on this argument? This is a fascinating read; thank you for sharing. And I couldn’t agree more with the UX pros. Humans are so adept at reading social cues on a subconscious level that it’s very easy to spot the false scenarios. For that reason, it’s difficult for people to relate to such staged imagery. I recently curated our Changing Faces infographic, and the premise of it was to show that customers are searching for faces that better represent our diverse world. It’s a wonderful celebration of the real and authentic people within our collection and a testament that we all still desire to make a natural, human connection with one another. Thank you Robyn accepting my invitation for this interview and for dedicating your time to share with us these great insights. May I take this opportunity to wish you success for your new role. The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency 5 Proven Ways To Fund Your App At The Idea Stage September 21, 2015 by Tracy Vides 0 Comments 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-at-the-idea-stage You may have a revolutionary idea for the next big app. However, without the right funding for your winning app, that idea will probably never see light of day. Unlike a business startup, where the entrepreneur knows exactly what he or she’s going to do, what products or services will be offered and how, what will be the monetization model, etc., app developers have little idea about any of these at the initial stages of building the app. User testing throws up curve balls that often call for drastic changes. Most apps go through so many modifications and iterations that the final product will look radically different from the initial idea. For this reason, creating a bound business plan and approaching banks for loans becomes really tough. So what do you do? Here are a few thoughts to get you started. 1. Bootstrap Your Way Up with Co-Founders There is no source of funds more dependable than your own savings. If you cannot spare cash to invest in your own bright idea, asking others to contribute to it is a little unfair, don’t you think? Bank savings, personal loans, credit card loans, friends and family are all perfectly legitimate sources of funds when your app is in its infancy. However, you don’t always have to go it alone. Find the perfect co-founder to shoulder the responsibility of launching a new app. A co-founder is a lot more than a friend or shoulder during bad times. Pick a co-founder based on your needs. A tech-savvy co-founder can help you design and build a prototype of your app from scratch without spending a penny on outside developers. Bobby Murphy, co-founder of Snapchat was the development brains behind what was essentially Evan Spiegel and Reggie Brown’s Stanford classroom project. Currently the app stands valued at close to $20 billion. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-co-founders Image Source: VentureVillage Alternately, find a partner who can fund your app while you develop it yourself. Case in point – Uber. Travis Kalanick was the cash supply for developer/co-founder Garrett Camp. 2. Set up a Crowdfunding Campaign Crowdfunding is an attractive funding avenue for startups that have absolutely no resources of their own to get going with their ideas. Even though hundreds of app and startup ideas go unnoticed and unfunded on crowdfunding sites, the right pitch can promise a bonanza for your dream app. In return for a service fee from the crowdfunding platform and a transaction fee from the payment processor, you are assured of sufficient funds to get your dream off the ground. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-crowdfunding Image Source: Traquity.com (website no longer exists) Crowdfunding has various models that you can pick from. The leader in the crowdfunding space, Kickstarter, is an all or nothing platform. This means that once you set your funding goal, you better reach the target amount to get the money. If you fall short of your target, the contributions get refunded to the individual investors. On the other hand, Indiegogo offers both flexible funding and fixed funding options, thus meaning that if you fail to reach your target amount, you can keep your collection in return for a higher service fee. You may also want to consider app-specific crowdfunding platforms like AppsFunder and AppSplit. 3. Raise Donations on Your Own Site The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency Crowdfunding is a great way to get quick resources. However it also has quite a few negatives tacked on to it. There’s tons of competition out there and standing out from a sea of wannabe entrepreneurs can be near-impossible for many. Then there are the myriad of fees that you shell out in return for the funding that you request. A smart way to eliminate these problems is by raising funds on your own site. Yes, nothing stops you from: Describing your proposed app to your readers Asking them for a small donation towards your app Offering them a gift / pre-orders of your app / monetary compensation once your app rolls out in return for their contributions A tool like 123ContactForm allows you to build a donation form in minutes. Even better, it integrates easily with various payment processors like PayPal, Stripe, Braintree and FreshBooks to make the process of setting up your self-owned own funding campaign a one-stop affair. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-donation-form Image Source: Smashing Forms 4. Participate in Funding Contests If you’re a would-be entrepreneur in the connected world, there’s no way you’ve not seen the entrepreneurial TV series Shark Tank. With over $44 million in funding given out across its five seasons, the hit show is an entrepreneur’s dream come true. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-funding-contest Shark Tank – Image Source: The Hollywood Reporter I am not suggesting that you try and get on Shark Tank to get your app funded. You should if you can, but that’s not the point here. There are tons of contests available sponsored by universities, technology companies, angel investor networks and more that offer new entrepreneurs the resources to fulfill their business idea. Check out Biz Plan Competitions to pick from hundreds of contests around the world. You can even zoom in on a contest near you and learn about how to qualify and participate to win the funding that your app deserves. 5. Angel Investors and Strategic Partners Many startups are tempted to approach Venture Capitalists (VCs) for seed funding. However, the fact remains that less than 3% of seed funding comes from VCs. Instead, angel investors or strategic investors are strong contenders for kick starting your brand new app. These are not always companies or institutions. Individuals and successful entrepreneurs often take an active interest in funding new startups. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer are but two examples of avid angel investors in early stage apps. Angel investors can offer anything from $25,000 to a few million in funding, depending on your app idea and stage of development. The size of the angel investment market currently stands at $20 billion annually. 5-proven-ways-to-fund-your-app-strategic-partners Marissa Mayer – Image Source: Business Insider While angel investors are easier to convince than VCs at a seed stage, you still need to be prepared to give a potential angel investor details like: The total amount of capital you will need How quickly will you burn through it (monthly burn rate) What is your go-to-market strategy How will you promote the app Why do you deserve funding, that is, the technical and business capabilities of the founders Coda It’s not just you. Before Peter Thiel stepped in with the first external funds that Facebook would receive, Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin managed their operating costs by hustling for every last dollar. The monthly expense of $85 for renting their very first server was covered by banner ads on Facebook using platforms like AdSense. Moral of the story? With a little bit of creativity, you can always make sure that your dream app doesn’t remain only in your dreams. (Lead image source: Rocío Lara) Customer Experience vs. User Experience: What’s The Difference? September 23, 2015 by Zev Ginzburg 2 Comments customer-experience-user-experience-difference Often times promising entrepreneurs will come up with a genius idea for an app but end up entangling a lot of important components into one product. If you’re a geek in any capacity that works in tech today, there is no doubt you’ve heard the following: “I’ve got this great idea for an app, tell me what you think…” To which us geeks inevitably roll our eyes as the individual begins to describe a blend of apps on the market and how it solves a crucial problem of our generation. What many of these entrepreneurs tend to overlook is the revenue model doesn’t necessarily mesh well with the usability. Making the mistake of combining a customer experience and a user experience has ramifications that could result in a poor experience on both ends. The User Experience (UX), as many usability geeks would be aware of, would include most operational needs, which includes the information architecture, the general navigation, and completing functional tasks relatively easy. The Customer Experience (CX) has many external variables embedded in it. It embodies user experience, because after all, a customer is a usertype. The major differences here need to accommodate the mission of a particular web or mobile app. A customer experience may, and often does, impede on the mission. The Revenue Model: Brickless and Mortarless Advertisements are often an easy way to monetize and take advantage of a large user base that does not pay for usage. These advertisements have a direct correlation to the quality of user experience and customer experience. Advertisements, unless otherwise stated, are something a user would want to avoid. YouTube for instance knows this by adding a ‘skip ad’ button. Hulu, Pandora, Spotify, and even Skype all include advertisements which in some instances significantly hinder the user experience. Earning revenue is very important to the stability of an application, obviously. So some means of providing a balance between the customer experience and user experience is crucial. The most apparent examples of this customer experience and user experience balance is in simple games on mobile. Games like Clash of Clans, Game of War, and many similar strategy games implemented the token system for users to buy. The token system has several advantages to the harmony needed between customer experience and user experience, the first of which guarantees that the user experience is good because the user wants to keep engaging (playing) with game. There is a hard way to advance and just like life there is an easy way, all one needs to do is pay for it. Some users take the game extremely seriously and get into. A sizable portion of users are willing to shell out a couple of dollars to beat a level they’re just cognitively unequipped to beat. It is wholly appropriate here because the tokens for sale are now a resource for the user, and as such resources tend to be a positive tool in a user experience. It also tends to be a negative experience for a user’s wallet. The Revenue Model: Bricks and Mortar What about a case where a company has brick and mortar stores? They already have a customer experience in store and they may want to transfer this experience to a digital front. Companies like Starbucks or Wal­Mart may be hyper aware that the shopping experience needs to optimize cross platform usage. The Starbucks app enables users to reimburse rewards and pay for their coffee right from their mobile device. The whole app is catered for the customer which makes the UX development a lot easier. The customer has a set of defined tasks, one cannot simply peruse the Starbucks app, it is task oriented. Wal­Mart took an already acceptable customer experience and improved it through their technical solution called ‘savings catcher.’ Now while the politics of Wal­Mart are extremely divisive, the savings catcher is a very unique and progressive means of providing a good customer experience. It’s such a novel concept in some senses, the user first shops at Wal­Mart, then scans his or her receipt, then Wal­Mart will run a check for the same product at multiple retailers. If the price was cheaper anywhere else, Wal­Mart will refund you the money. Wal­Mart does all the work too, the user just uploads their proof of purchase. With a global customer base of over 100,000,000 there are sure to be savings and the more a customer spends, the likelihood of getting the best deal increases. The UX of the application, however, is nothing revolutionary. The bells and whistles are purposely diluted in order to accommodate that potential of 100,000,000 customers who would be app users. The Bottom Line Designing and developing for a good user experience means beginning at a bottom line: are we here to make money from a customer, or are we here to provide something else? Service based products like Spotify or Pandora do really well providing music. Earning revenue however was not necessarily part of the game plan from beginning. Including a customer experience helps if you know what kind of customer would integrate well into a user experience. (Lead image source: Jason Howie) 10 Guidelines For Navigation Usability September 28, 2015 by Preston Pierce 0 Comments 10-guidelines-for-navigation-usability When it comes to usability, ease-of-navigation should be a top priority for web developers. The number one most annoying feature of a website is improper or confusing navigation, leaving users lost and wondering what to do next. If you’re lucky enough, some users just might scour through the website to accomplish their purpose of visiting the website. However, most users simply pop-out and add more numbers to the website bounce rate — and we all want to avoid that! So, what makes website navigation easy and usable? Follow these simple guidelines to ensure that your site navigation is a user-friendly one. 1. Embrace Predictability Being creative with your website is nice, but don’t practice this in areas where predictability may be preferred over uniqueness. This is particularly true for website navigation menus that visitors are going to use simply to get from one page to another. Creating unconventional navigation will only make it confusing – and confused users are less likely to stay on your page any longer. 10-guidelines-navigation-usability-unusual An Example of an unconventional navigation menu that takes time to make sense of (Source: YouZee) 2. Keep it Simple In a way, this goes hand-in-hand with predictability, except here you avoid making your navigation extremely difficult to comprehend. For example, you may have a predictable design, but if it is full of cluttered menus and submenus in a disorganized fashion, you’re far from making it easy for users to navigate through your website. 3. Don’t Overdo Minimalism Recently minimalism has caught on and everyone seems to be reducing content, promoting “white space”, and simplifying typography. This is great because nowadays internet users are more concerned about getting work done as fast as possible through mobile devices on-the-go, rather than viewing fancy pages that may take forever to download. However, some designers over-do minimalism, rendering clear and proper navigation useless. This is a big mistake! 10-guidelines-navigation-usability-minimal All you can see on the startupstockphotos website is the “About” option. Where’s the rest? (Source: StartupStockPhotos) 4. Keep it Consistent It’s always good to keep the theme and structure of your pages consistent. The first time a user visits your website, he/she is going to make sense of it in just a matter of seconds (shouldn’t take longer). After that, your user is going to expect all the pages to be similar in terms of structure and design. Having an entirely different navigation system page by page will only frustrate the user because the “making sense of it all” process will have to repeated unnecessarily every time. 5. Clear Hierarchical Structure Navigation menus should have a clear hierarchical structure with every category and clickable sub categories included in the menu. It’s okay if your parent categories are extensive, so long as all the available subcategories are listed in order. This gives the user a clear idea of what you can offer without having to go through several pages to find what they are looking for. This is particularly important for websites that offer a wide array of products and services. 10-guidelines-navigation-usability-hierarchical Aliexpress has a perfect navigation where hierarchal structure is clear with clickable grouped subcategories under parent categories (Source: AliExpress) 6. Make it Manageable Clear navigation in your user interface is highly usable when it tells visitors where they have come from, where they are currently, and where they can go from their current location. This obviously requires a breadcrumb trail on your website, allowing users to keep track of their location, making navigation more manageable and under their control. Remember that not all users will start visiting your site from the home page. Many will land on an inner page after clicking a link from another site or from the Search Engine Results Page. 7. Link the Logo to the Homepage A good practice is to link the homepage from the website’s logo (which should appear on every page at the same spot). Users have a tendency to start all over by going back to the home page and redoing the search process from there. Furthermore, many users are highly likely to search up your website using a search engine which could lead them to a specific page deep within your website. Users are going to want to click on your homepage from there so they can explore more of your website. 8. Include a Sitemap Sitemaps are crucial for a usable navigation system. Any lost user will resort to a sitemap that has links to all pages (or the main pages) of a website. The site map will list down the pages of your site in a clear, hierarchical order giving a plain overview of your website. Bear in mind that the sitemap should be concise without extraneous details on every single topic. 9 Guidelines For Writing A Killer Headline For Conversion September 30, 2015 by Florence Mendoza 1 Comment 9-guidelines-for-writing-killer-headline-converts If boosting conversion is your goal, writing the right headline is arguably more important than writing good copy. Indeed, a famous quote by advertising legend, David Ogilvy says that on average, five times as many people will read the headline than the actual content. And what good is writing anything at all if you can’t pique your readers’ interest? Even if, hypothetically-speaking, you wrote the best advertising copy or blog post in the world, if no one clicks on your bland headline, you’ve essentially wasted your time (not to mention money). In this article, I will be discussing 9 guidelines for writing headlines with the aim of boosting conversion. I know that there are several guidelines when it comes to this topic and likewise, there are numerous articles that have discussed it in sufficient depth. So what makes this article different? Simply put, this is not just ‘another list’. What I am presenting here are what I consider as being the most effective guidelines for writing headlines. Before we begin, know this: writing headlines is a science, not an art. 1. Use a Formula to Create Your Headline If using a formula seems wrong to you instinctively, consider this: lots of headlines online already follow certain formulae, and, clearly, no one cares. Look at popular content on the Internet (like Buzzfeed, Upworthy or high-ranking Youtube channels) and you’ll notice a lot of their headlines and titles following familiar patterns. This obviously doesn’t bother anyone in the slightest. Not to mention the fact that the first two examples have made a name for themselves by using attention-grabbing headlines that are so standardized, they’ve been parodied to death. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, really. At this point, a typical Internet user sees so many headlines daily on social media and elsewhere, something completely atypical will surely throw them off and be dismissed on sight. 2. Use Numbers in the Headline A clickable headline has numbers – and for good reasons. We all know that words can be manipulated in many ways and any outrageous claim made on the Internet – especially in a headline – will be met with skepticism. Numbers, on the other hand, elicit another reaction – trust. Any statistician would, at this point, remark that numbers can themselves be manipulated and misleading, but we’re talking about the readers’ gut reaction. Compare the following two headlines: This Pill Will Make You the Most Productive Worker in the World This Pill Will Raise Your Efficiency Factor by 20% or More Note that the second headline, the one that uses numbers, is more attractive than the first one that just looks like an empty promise. According to a study by Conductor that analyzed click traffic on social media, using a number in the headline is the most effective in boosting click-through rate out of all measured factors. Numbers in this study, by the way, don’t just mean statistics – they are headlines like “20 Things to do Before You Die”. 3. Try and Use These Words and Phrases (Where Possible) So which words convert more? Kevan Lee has created an incredible list of words and phrases that are most used in viral headlines by analyzing more than 3,000 headlines from 24 top content sites. He split his findings into two categories: ‘most popular words’ and ‘most popular uncommon words’. Perhaps even more interesting is the 2-word and 3-word phrases that he observed in these viral headlines: Most Popular 2-Word Phrases: ‘this is’, ‘in the’, ‘how to’, ‘is the’, ‘of the’ Most Popular 3-Word Phrases: ‘this is the’, ‘will make you’, ‘when you see’, ’til you see’, ‘what happens when’ Another useful resource is Josh Rhodes’ list of 179 emotional words that make powerful headings and high converting landing pages. According to this study, some of the most popular words in headlines are: ‘focus’, ‘wanted’, ‘free’, ‘sale’, ‘new’ and lowest. In yet another huge study, this time of 1 million headlines, Garret Moon came up with the following list of the most popular words and phrases in highly-shared headlines: ‘list post’, ‘you/your’, ‘free/giveaway’, ‘how to’, ‘diy’. 4. A Headline Should be X Words / Characters LongThe Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency Needless to say, there is much debate as to how long a headline should be. Here are some of the guidelines which I consider as being most useful: 8 words (according to The Guardian) 62 characters (according to Kevan Lee) 81-100 characters (according to HubSpot and Outbrain) 5. Make Your Headline Sound Useful Look again at the example about the efficiency pill. This is a good, clickable headline because of the fact that anyone can ‘try it on’. Wow, I can boost my efficiency by 20%? Now look at spam comments found anywhere on the Internet: “I made $6,000 using this website, etc., etc.” These are engineered to be clickable, and what do they do?: They use numbers The reader can instantly try it on and see what benefit they will get. The point is: if your headline isn’t somehow useful to the reader, it will be dismissed right away, so do try and make it as applicable as possible. To get the ‘usefulness’ effect try addressing the reader. This will mean that “How to Buy a Used Car” should be rewritten into “Things You Should Know Before Buying a Used Car”, or, better yet “10 Things You Should Know Before Buying a Used Car” 6. Choose Your Words Carefully This guideline takes many dimensions. What are the “ideal” words to use in a headline? Citing Stephen King, Jeff Bullas writes that simplicity is a key element. One can have an impressive vocabulary but taking an approach to headline writing that is too intellectual can backfire. Readers will always understand a simple headline. If you want to make it more appealing, then try and arouse their curiosity. According to Barry Feldman, the process of choosing which words to use also involves choosing which words to leave out. 7. Negative Spin Tends to do Better According to a study of 100 tech blogs done by Oribi, using words like “Kill”, “Fear”, “Dark”, “Bleeding” will get more attention, even if the headlines themselves are not violent at all. The same study found that headlines that feature words like “without”, “no” and “stop” end up at the top posts a lot. The takeaway from this is that giving your headline a negative spin is more likely to pique your readers’ interests. So “10 Things to do This Summer” becomes “The 10 Activities Your Summer Will Suck Without.” 8. Pose a Question There’s no way to be more engaging than asking a question. Whether it’s something that the readers have been wondering themselves or something new that they haven’t considered yet, a question will surely get attention. This is what is called a curiosity gap – it’s an itch that demands to be scratched. The proverbial scratching is reading the article. Leave the question headlines to the more important topics, though. It would be easy enough to get tired of a feed filled with question marks. So make sure you save this one for special occasions. 9. Finally, Don’t Lie This is so obvious, it shouldn’t even count as advice, but, unfortunately, it needs to be said – such is the state of things. If you promise someone they can lose weight at a rate of 5 pounds every day, only the most credulous would believe you. And since you’re writing for the cynical world of the Internet, credulity and naïveté is not something you should expect. If you’re counting on a lie getting you massive amounts of clicks, try and think through to the next step: what happens when they do click, and the content doesn’t follow up on the promise? They’ll close the tab and never come back to your site again, that’s what. The Art Of UX In MVP October 5, 2015 by Yona Gidalevitz 2 Comments ux-in-mvp UX is UX is UX – right? Not really. User Experience Designers (UXDs) working on Minimum Viable Product (MVP) builds have it rough. The thought process has to shift ever so slightly in MVP builds, and in such a way that it can disrupt your conception of what “good UX” really is. UX Designers, listen up: MVP builds serve a different purpose than full builds. MVP builds are tasked with learning as much as possible about the features required by users. Rather than producing a fully­-featured product, which addresses the needs of every possible user type, MVP builds are designed to create the absolute minimally viable product—one which creates the smallest feature set that someone would pay for, or even just use. In turn, the UX process has to change, slightly, to reflect this. So, you ask, how does it change? UX In MVP Is About Changing What You Measure UX Designers, at a really high level, are tasked with: Building out features Building them well (to put it bluntly) Ryan Singer of Basecamp has designed a very good way to visualize this. Let’s call it “the blob”. ux-mvp-blob Image Source: Signal v. Noise UX Designers are taught from the get-­go to ask themselves: “Is this user friendly?” — is the blob deep, and does it take up a large surface area? In MVP builds, a new question begins to take precedence: “Would users pay the same price for this feature set?” — does the blob really have to be this huge? The idea here is simple. In MVP builds, the depth of the blob should never change — that is, the quality of execution ought to remain consistent. The surface area, however, is what becomes the subject of significant scrutiny. By diminishing the surface area of the blob, you are able to experiment with the notion that, perhaps users are perfectly okay without the ability to fulfil a particular task that, otherwise, you would have spent precious time perfecting, and time is money. Testing feature-­set viability is the bread and butter of MVP­-driven UX Design. And Becoming More Agile The classic MVP [Build → Measure → Learn] cycle is the source of inspiration for the UX process in MVP builds: [UX → Measure → Learn → Repeat] Such a pattern emphasizes two key qualitative differences between non-­MVP and MVP­-based User Experiences: MVP builds ought to be produced quickly, and they ought to offer the absolute minimum set of features deemed acceptable by users. Your UX senses are tingling here, I know. This goes against what you’ve learned about UX, and feels wrong. You take pride in the quality of your work, and in the depth of features that you account for in your designs. UXDs: MVP builds do not inherently create gaps in the UX, contrary to what you may believe. Speed, here, does not necessarily equate to the absence of quality. Adopting agile methods in your UX Design process will ensure fast, “quality” cycles of work, due to the inherently repetitive model of testing that is used in the Agile process. This does not mean that building an MVP is a straightforward process. In fact, at my place of work we have found it beneficial to create a dedicated page to explain the importance of MVP and assist potential clients with building one. What I suggest is: Trust your UXD judgement, and embrace the MVP process and you will not be led astray. Kinks will be worked out in the multiple rounds of testing, while missing features will be discovered and implemented, during the many [Measure → Learn] portions of the Agile process. Most importantly, don’t forget: MVP builds are an excellent opportunity to learn about your users, and what they want from you. Often, what you give them is much more than they are willing to put up with for the price. And if that sounds too cynical to you, you’re in the wrong business, my friend. (Lead image source: Pulpolux !!!) 6 Powerful Ways Of Improving On-Site User Engagement October 12, 2015 by Ankit Panchal 0 Comments improve-user-engagement So you have an immersive website with the right aesthetic appeal. What is the next practical step? It is to prevent bounces and enhance on-site user engagement. However, most marketers are stuck at fluffing their website and pruning their social media page. A successful conversion model includes everything from on-site optimization to neat navigation and most websites take these in their stride. Despite that they have extremely high bounce rates. Could it be the lack of right information, prices or something intangible altogether? Here we shall discuss effective ways of preventing bounces and enhancing user engagement that leads up to increased conversions. 1. Target the Right Sources for Website VisitorsThe Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency The Freelance Studio Denver, Co. User Experience Agency Each website is unique and so is each visitor. You may generalize your group but know that each type of visitor comes from a specific source. For instance, a 30 y.o. tech nut will be more trusting about peer reviews on social sites. Now if you analyze your website traffic, you will see three distinct steps in conversion: Awareness brought about by search and discovery, Consideration after carefully looking at reviews, research and social media sites, and Action (Purchase or Bounce). Find out the sources from where your visitors come, based on that decide the type of information they are looking for on your website and then give a personalized experience thus enhancing user engagement. If your visitor came from a reference link on a blog on pesticides, don’t make them search amongst hundreds of gardening tools and seeds and plants. Sure they are pretty to look at but it won’t serve the purpose and hence the end result could be a compromised bounce rate. 2. Let Data Show You the Way There are several methods to acquire data of website engagement; Google Analytics is the most popular of all. The data thus acquired is extremely important to understand that whether your website is successfully retaining visitors and giving them something to learn, see of discover. Commonly, inbound links are able to get traffic from all over the world, but only 40-50% of it is relevant traffic. They caveat here is to successfully keep that 40-50% engaged enough on your website, so they take some actionable steps like buy, subscribe, bookmark, share etc. Another important part of data analysis is user behavior. Measure session duration to see if they were just site hopping or were they looking for something seriously. Users will give you 35 seconds before they decide that you are not what they are looking for. Session duration will let you understand if majority of your users think that way. And if the answer is yes, you better start taking reformative steps to enhance user engagement. Page-wise performance data is the third step in the way. It allows you to do A/B testing and decide what works best for your audience. If you have multi-group audience, it allows you to cater for various contents based on the group taste. 3. Create Immersive Experiences for Visitors Immersive experience is more than a buzzword. We don’t wish to burden you with the hackneyed example of Amazon and how they created an immersive experience, so we have found some of the best immersive websites on the internet. Take a cue from them and discover ways you can create an immersive experience for your visitors. From interesting blog posts to videos, the ways and means to keep your audience hooked are surprisingly simple and inexhaustible. Ask 3 questions to yourself if you wish to create an immersive website: Are we offering more than they thought / wanted? Are we giving something new, something irresistible? Have we taken an unbeaten path? Check out how this Auto Service facility created an amazing immersive experience on their website. Surely they didn’t need to do it, but they did it anyways and the path less trodden led them to great success. improve-user-engagement-hmr Image credit: http://hmrservis.cz/ And now see the typical car service website and the likes of which you find in abundance on the internet. improve-user-engagement-york Image credit: http://www.yorkspringandradiator.ca/en/ 4. Carry the Experience Beyond Your Website This is one boat you simply can’t miss. Over these last couple of years, triggered emails or auto-responders have become one of the most important user engagement tactics. However, simple emails with ‘Howdy’ and ‘We Miss Ya’ or persistent emails and reminders won’t do. You have to carry the soul of your website theme and create a similar experience in emails. The same goes for social media and PR. This is one powerful way to garner repeat visits. 5. Watch the Calendar It is very important to gauge user engagement at a certain time of the day, certain days of the week, certain holidays, certain months of the year and so on. You will notice a hike in traffic at a particular period. Get to the root of it: Why was there a hike? What was the bounce rate then? Was it because of a particular offer or an event you organized? … and so on. Again Google Analytics allows you to compare activity in a particular period with activity in another period. 6. Be Like the Giraffe Did you know that in New Age religion, the giraffe is considered as being a symbol for intuition and flexibility? It is extremely easy to find yourself lost in the labyrinths of data and social media, thus forgetting your innate sense of intuition. Most of the times we don’t trust our instincts and see what is laid out right in front of our eyes. Get a bird’s eye view of your website or see it from a solely unattached point-of-view. This will help you to forget all the mind-numbing rules and metrics and discover a simpler and effective way to keep your users engaged. Also, learn from the giraffe to be flexible and ready for change. Take Away Once the user interface and user experience problems are out of your way, the only thing that remains to focus on is user engagement. It is extremely crucial to keep your users engaged and keep coming for more in order to build a loyal audience. These 6 powerful rules to enhance user engagement will help you bring down bounce rates and lead to successful conversion. Humans: The Missing Link In Online Security October 14, 2015 by Gabor Koródi 0 Comments humans-missing-link-security Implementing online security is ultimately a human undertaking. The tools have to be sufficient enough to protect you and your clients, but efficient enough not to get in the way of providing the best user experience possible. While technology will get you part of the way, the inevitable corner-cutting by users will ultimately expose the notion that technology cannot provide total protection against our human nature. The Username/Password Combination For example, historically the username/password combination provided both authorization and authentication in one convenient package. For earlier systems, not open to the public and only providing access from a well-defined physical location, this was a great solution. It quickly became apparent, however, that users are terrible at remembering some random password; they forget to change it every 90 days and would rather write it down. The technology, as always playing catch-up to its users, quickly evolved into password-strength measuring libraries and automated functions to force users into changing their passwords. As a typical example of leading with technology and not considering the human factors, the resistance from end-users was palpable. Many of us remember the passwords on sticky notes on someone’s monitor, or the easy to guess (and pronounce) ones that were shared around the office. Improvements are being made continuously, both technical and behavioral fronts. Users are much more aware of the need for proper security. Businesses with an online presence spend significant amount of resources on protecting their infrastructure and their users from a growing variety of threats. Administrators are much more vigilant on implementing security protocols that are harder to circumvent by both internal and external users. The Use of CAPTCHA Not too long ago, CAPTCHAs were the new favorite technical solutions against hackers trying to break into high-value targets. The wide-spread use of sophisticated UI interfaces over the Internet allowed this visual password system to be used in many circumstances. While it works in most implementations, there are shortcomings – again, based on human factors not anticipated in the initial design. CAPTCHAs do not work for people with certain physical limitations or cultural backgrounds and will not just limit unauthorized access, but will prevent legitimate use as well. Given the global user-base that most businesses are trying to target, these limitations will not be appropriate. The visually impaired or recent immigrants trying to access their first bank account will face enormous difficulties trying to decipher the requirements that this type of gatekeeper demands of them. Relying on Senses as a Means of Security A security implementation that relies on one of the user’s five senses or memory ultimately will hit the limits to which any particular user is able to employ them. Perhaps an online photo album does not need the same level of protection as someone’s access to his or her bank account? Perhaps Facebook and Google need to implement two-factor authentication for all their online properties? These questions can only be answered calmly and methodically by considering the needs of each user that comes in contact with the system. All businesses need to conduct a pre-purchase discovery with these questions in mind. Design professionals need to focus on the interactions that result from a variety of behaviors and pick all the tools that are appropriate – including those for security and protection. Human-centered design thinking is a necessary augmentation to the limits of technology. The awareness of how and why certain interactions are implemented, the understanding of the benefits, has the potential to counteract those hard to control behaviors from which technology alone has no chance of protecting any given system. Human-centered design has the capability for a longer lasting impact than a simple certificate and encryption protocol between a browser and a server. The Use of Two-Factor Authentication An example of a purely technical, or rather mathematical solution is two-factor authentication. Random, single-use tokens combined with strong password requirements are becoming widespread. With current technology, it is impossible, or to be more precise, almost impossible to break. However, it is the lack of consideration for human behavior that is this solution’s flaw. While it fits into the established and understood process implementation of username/password paradigm, it adds more complexity – not necessarily what the average user desires. Using a Reminder Question Another recent approach, still employing the additional complexity to slow down a brute force attacker, is the “reminder question” type of security. In addition to the username/password, some common question is asked, the answer to which the system presumes only the user would know. However, a disgruntled friend or family member or a social media “friend” can easily find out the name of our first pet or the high school we graduated from. Again, this demonstrates the limits of technology and how it cannot cover all the intricacies of human behavior. Security Lessons Learnt From Experience At the company I work for, Story+Structure, we are convinced that the solution to these issues lies in the combination of the strength of currently available technology and the trust building capabilities of a human-centered design approach. One great example, originally from the banking industry, is the Know Your Customer (KYC) process. This interaction, specifically for the benefit of the protection of the customer, is technology agnostic. It requires certain steps from a service provider to take with each of their customers before engaging in any sensitive business. Its benefit is validated by corresponding legal mandates. In the banking sector, training has to be provided and certain requirements have to be met, before any employee can engage with a potential or existing customer. Similar procedures are in place, in combination with technology, when fraud protection departments stop certain large item purchases. In today’s fast-paced retail environments, this could be seen as a mistake. It is the designer’s role to explain why it is worth the frustration and that after the initial confusion, the understanding will lead to a better experience and a stronger relationship. Technology that enables this type of protection cannot adequately address all the human emotions that are in play. Designers, however, can, and a holistic view of the entire interaction ecosystem allows them to incorporate security into their approach toward a solution. In Conclusion In conclusion, the online security process must evolve to consider human components – not just technical safeguards. The human-centered approach, such as formulating a holistic view of the workflow, understanding the customer’s real need and through this discovery helping them notice out-of-the-ordinary activities, helps organizations protect their users by being mindful of who they are, what they need and how they operate. Not just for a better user experience, but as part of a comprehensive protection against errors (malicious or otherwise). UX For Enterprise: Using IoT To Design Integrated Systems For The Workplace October 19, 2015 by Yona Gidalevitz 0 Comments ux-enterprise-iot While beacons have yet to emerge as a mainstream technology, they have not only begun to revolutionize the customer experience model, but also validate predictions regarding the future of the Internet of Things (IoT). Proximity marketing and contextual functionality have contributed to a tailored, custom experience for users of apps that have implemented beacons as a usability enhancement tool. But what can beacons do for usability outside of the context of marketing and user-oriented application development? At the enterprise level, beacons could potentially foster an environment where, for all intents and purposes, the usability of a large office building may rival that of a finely tuned mobile application. Enterprise Efficiency is a Product of Usability Due to the nature of beacon technology, the potential for data-capture is vast–a largely untapped resource. Most of the benefits of integrating beacons around the office come from their inherent ability to collect data (and use it to make decisions). At the enterprise level, there are a number of metrics which can keep businesses operating at maximum efficiency and safety–and therefore maintaining maximum office usability. How, you ask? When designing integrated systems for employees, just as with customer-facing products, there are quantifiable factors which can affect workplace efficiency. 1. Asset Tracking Beacons provide an affordable solution for the tracking of company assets, such as machinery, power tools, and medical equipment. Tracking data can be stored, and analyzed over a time period, in order to isolate potential bottlenecks. In turn, there are two ways that asset tracking can directly affect integrated system usability around the office: Reduced bottlenecks mean reduced interactions. Asset tracking means everything is at your fingertips. I know what you’re thinking. Your UX senses are tingling: “Reduced interactions? Everything is findable? That sounds like good UX Design to me.” Yes, it is, my friend. But don’t forget, there is more to the puzzle than asset tracking. 2. Office Efficiency By implementing beacons throughout the office, enterprises can create connected, intelligent workplaces that make time-saving, and money-saving decisions, without the need for employee engagement, thus limiting the need to micromanage. Whenever you have a system that allows users of the system (in this case, employees) to roam freely across the vast plains of its functionality (using the office without the need to stop and make decisions), we can safely attribute it to good UX Design. 3. Health and Safety Automating the enforcement of an organization’s occupational health and safety policies, by supplementing them with beacon technology, will soon be central to the employee experience, and an innovative way to minimize the necessary interactions between the administration and the workforce. Safety protocols can be enforced by pushing contextual notifications to employees when needed, or by limiting the ability of employees to engage in a particular activity without having met a predetermined set of requirements. For example, a piece of enterprise software which allows its employees to survey industrial equipment may conditionally lock an employee out if, say, they are in a dangerous zone, where they cannot afford to divert attention to the software. 4. Data Collection Beacons can be used to collect data on employee efficiency, and analyze the factors that most greatly contribute to workplace distractions. In turn, conditional automation can be used to combat the factors which diminish the employee experience. For example, factors such as temperature, lighting, employee placement, work hours, computer limitations, and noise level, can have a severe effect on the ability of a worker to perform at their assigned task. Developing integrated systems which address these concerns automatically, based on data collected through beacon implementations, is no longer a science fiction concept, but a very real (and necessary) possibility. Towards a Better Definition of “User” User Experience Design ought to be seen as a tool not only for the betterment of customer experiences, but also in contexts where there may not be any mobile applications to speak of. Such a shift in mindset will require User Experience Designers to reflect on what it means to be a user. It’s about time someone said it. Anyone, using any system, is a user. Thus, any user who uses a system, requires a seamless experience. This is inherently relevant in the context of employee experiences, especially where integrated systems are concerned. At my workplace, we have found it beneficial to create a dedicated page for adding beacon technology into workplaces, and assist potential clients with integrating beacon technology to their already-built software. UX Designers, listen up: if you are working on integrated systems at the enterprise level, you ought to implement beacon technology into your UX designs, in order to help contextualize, and automate, the actions that employees do not necessarily have to, or want to take. UX And Stock Photos: An Interview With A Curator October 21, 2015 by Justin Mifsud 0 Comments ux-stock-photos-interview-curator A couple of weeks ago, a late-night conversation with one of the readers of this blog led to a discussion about the use of stock photos and their contribution (or lack of thereof) towards improving the overall user experience of a site. Much has been said in blogs and online discussions that stock photos and other decorative graphic elements do not add anything significant to the user experience. Although this argument is even backed up by eyetracking studies, I felt the need, more than ever, to reach out to see if there is another side to this argument. So I browsed around in my LinkedIn contacts and found someone who can potentially provide this perspective – Robyn Lange. Enter Robyn Lange – Curator of Stock Photos Robyn is the curator of stock photos at Shutterstock, which as most of you know, is a global technology company that is one of the largest two-sided marketplace for creative professionals to license content. Previously, Robyn served as a photo editor for top national publications. She has worked closely with some of the most talented photographers in the industry; produced elaborate photo shoots across the globe; and cultivated extensive knowledge of image libraries both rare and internationally acclaimed. I reached out to Robyn and asked her a number of questions whose topic ranges from the curation of stock photos to user experience principles. The Interview 1. Hi Robyn, thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Can you start off by telling us about yourself? Hi Justin, thank you for this opportunity. Well, I worked previously for over a decade as a freelance photo editor and producer in magazine publishing. I love both photography and design. I’ve marveled at how much more essential and widespread photography has become in all kinds of places to help businesses look better. 2. So you currently occupy the post of curator of stock photos with a leading supplier of stock photography. How did you fall into this line of work? When I came across the job posting for a curator, I was immediately intrigued. Photo editing and curating have a lot in common. I knew that in this role I could take what I knew already, but apply it in new ways. One of the aspects of the job that got me most excited was the thought of making a suggestion that could be implemented and changed quickly. 3. What does your role involve and how does it differ from the ‘traditional’ position of curator in a museum or art gallery? It’s my job to make the visitor’s experience as pleasant and memorable as possible. That’s true across platforms for all curators. Having 60 million assets (including photos, vectors and illustrations) at my disposal gives me a great resource to pull from. Working for a digital company, it’s incredibly interesting to test different photos and to see what the public clicks on more than others. You learn a lot throughout the process about what attracts an audience and in which context. 4. How would you describe the typical categories of customers? We service 1.3 million customers and the most typical are in the fields of marketing, advertising and media. 5. Acquiring collections is a very important part of curation. How do you reach out to contributors of stock photos in order to raise the quality of the photos that you offer? I don’t reach out personally, but we have a contributor team that reviews every single image and provides immediate and insightful feedback on the work. The team also reaches out to contributors to communicate opportunities based on what clients are asking for in a given season. 6. So what makes a good, high quality stock photo that users would want to buy? Authenticity. Our best contributors have a certain style and vision that gets conveyed through their work. Clients sometimes don’t know what exactly they’re looking for, and a strong image that tells a story itself and conjures up emotions for the viewer can really make an impact. If the client feels something when he or she searches the collection, chances are so will the audience seeing that image inside a larger product. The photographers who perform best think from the beginning about the end use, and how and why this image would valuable to have. 7. In traditional curation, the art gallery curator would select the theme for exhibits. How does this transpire in the digital world of tagging stock photos into categories? Keywords are integral to finding what you look for. It helps organize the imagery. But I’ve found them to be useful in other ways, too. What I’ll do is search an idea or a theme and then look at the similar keywords that turn up with them. A lot of the time the term I searched initially won’t be the term I wind up using to find what I really want. There’s a path to follow. I’m selecting the best images from the bunch, but through doing searches myself, I get a good, strong look at the experience a customer would have as he or she searches. Replicating the user experience, and acting like a customer would, helps me better understand the customer, and how I can assist them. 8. I have read that one of the requirements for becoming a job curator for stock photography is to have a “knack for storytelling”. How does storytelling fit in your role? When I choose imagery for our website, Instagram account, or for other marketing campaigns, I am doing my part to tell the Shutterstock story. At the same time, though, the beauty and authenticity you see can be had by anyone on a budget. We’re leading by example every day. If people who haven’t come across Shutterstock before are introduced to it with something bold and vibrant, then they’re more likely to think highly of the company and our collection. Every campaign or social-media post is a small piece of the overall story. 9. There was also mention that your role involves working closely with the User Experience design team by suggesting how the website should look and feel like. What measures could be taken to improve the user experience of a stock photography website? It’s really important to have clean, uncluttered imagery that reads well on a number of platforms, whether web, mobile, or somewhere else. It should enhance the experience, but it should also stimulate the imagination. I love to experiment with different types of photos and vectors to use as our hero images (the large images at the top of the homepage), and it can be really surprising and exciting to see what content works. And I think the same rules apply to stock sites as to magazine pages – less is more. Lots of little images make less of an impact than a few really gorgeous ones. 10. There is a considerable number of user experience professionals who advise against the use of stock photography of ‘generic people’ because users ignore them. In some cases, this is even backed up by research such as the eye tracking results presented by Dr. Jakob Nielsen in his article “Photos as Web Content”. What is your view on this argument? This is a fascinating read; thank you for sharing. And I couldn’t agree more with the UX pros. Humans are so adept at reading social cues on a subconscious level that it’s very easy to spot the false scenarios. For that reason, it’s difficult for people to relate to such staged imagery. I recently curated our Changing Faces infographic, and the premise of it was to show that customers are searching for faces that better represent our diverse world. It’s a wonderful celebration of the real and authentic people within our collection and a testament that we all still desire to make a natural, human connection with one another. Thank you Robyn accepting my invitation for this interview and for dedicating your time to share with us these great insights. May I take this opportunity to wish you success for your new role.