The market trend for consumers in recent years has been to turn to eCommerce – which has a current value of around $5.5 trillion and will rise to around $7.4 trillion by 2025. Similar trends have also been seen in the food eCommerce industry, helped in part during the Covid pandemic where these online services became a lifeline, not just for the eating establishment itself, but also for many around the world who could no longer go out to enjoy their favorite food. This is evidenced by the huge jump in meal delivery app users in 2020 and beyond. 

Source: Statista

The advent of this new kind of industry presents businesses with a fantastic opportunity to tap into people’s very homes in a way never seen before. The system has been revolutionized by clever software for food delivery, fundamentally changing smartphones and point of sale systems.

It is now widely accepted that “the brick-and-mortar restaurant is no longer the focal point of consumers’ dining experiences but a single touch point in a much broader, decentralized and digital-first ecosystem” (Quote Source: Paytronix). Yet, many restaurants are still somewhat unwilling to accept that a digital ordering feature that works well is the price to be paid to enter this new market.

In order to squeeze the most juice out of meal delivery apps for your company, which accounted for some 14% of restaurant sales in 2021, let’s look at some of the major features of these apps and how to make them work effectively.

The Basics of Meal Delivery Apps

What makes these apps so successful? For one, sometimes there just isn’t time to cook, or for that matter bother dressing up and going to a restaurant. Convenience is absolutely key. And this often means you save money, not just on petrol, but also on online promotions.

Recent improvements also make everything seem rather effortless and immediate – you can choose anything, right from your sofa, and it usually arrives within 30 minutes. This is often before you even have time to choose what to watch after you finish eating. This is all thanks to hugely complex logistical systems. Using custom software development companies can be a great way to suit your individual needs.

However, this can be an issue in itself. With such an impressive logistical system, and soaring demand, there can sometimes be problems with delivery – and research suggests people have very high expectations of meal delivery apps. They tend to blame both the restaurant and the app itself.

Not only this, but with so much choice around, the market is rather saturated and customers are spoilt for choice. This leaves it up to platform providers to not only help customers make choices, but to encourage engagement through a well designed app. This all starts with providing an excellent customer experience.

Source: Descartes

Why it’s Important to AMP up your Customer Experience

This is the feeling you get after any interaction with a company. How did you make this interaction, through a call center, an app or social media? And were you happy with the treatment you got? If your answer is yes then you got an amazing customer experience, and you are probably likely to use that company again meaning you will begin trusting them and become loyal to that company.

And you really want your customers to come back for more – according to a recent survey it costs up to five times more to acquire new customers than retain old ones. And what about a bad customer experience? Some 64% of consumers say that they have stopped doing business with a company if this happens.

Top Tips to Improve Experience on your Delivery App

In a nutshell, ensuring your meal delivery app’s client experience is amazing offers a fantastic opportunity to see a great return on investment. By following these tips you can crack open this lucrative market.

Great user experience

If you want your app to provide a great user experience, make sure it is eye catching and easy to navigate, which will give any potential customer a great first impression. You also don’t want to over complicate matters by having a convoluted sign-up system – allow new users to connect with their email or social media. Dialpad’s virtual receptionist service could be a great way to offer customer support for individual restaurants who might not have the capacity to offer 24/7 phone service.

Other basics like an efficient search bar, which allows app users to refine their search based on cuisine, distance or cost will make customers feel valued and make them feel like you are focusing on their needs.

Something less obvious might be visual instruction features for the delivery person, like a photo of where to leave the food, and the ability to send messages to them. This could also be connected to a live delivery tracker connected to the restaurant and the courier – such features also encourage engagement as customers keenly watch the cooking stage of their pizza.

Why not try opening your app to more people through shared payment, social sharing and referral initiatives? You can empower your current users to do the job of client acquisition for you.

Using data

By maintaining a consistent client base, you are well on your way to possessing data to help you make further sales, while indirectly affecting the user experience.

Using data can be a fantastic way to make customers feel like you have taken their interests into consideration by personalizing ads, giving inspiration or providing discounts based on their purchasing habits. Such upselling or cross-selling techniques can mean big profits from people making impulse purchases due to receiving personalized ads.

Try thinking about offering your staff data engineer training as this role becomes increasingly important within businesses.

Clear customer query resolution plan

Although we always strive to run like clockwork, the reality is that sometimes things go wrong, and the meal delivery market has its challenges. People are happy to accept mistakes, so long as there is a customer service system in place that is not only efficient but consistent.

For example, does your platform offer in app chat support – both human and AI? Such features ensure customers feel more engaged. Having an effective AI could also help you collect data from your customers in real time. They can also solve up to 75% of FAQs, which saves the customer time, empowers them to take action themselves and encourages them to spend more in the future.

Source: hbr

 If an AI can’t help you, it’s time to think about the human point of contact. By encrypting numbers with drivers, it is possible for customers to communicate with them without the concern of sharing private information. You should also have a function that allows for human-to-human interaction, and a cloud-based contact management system could help you do this around the clock, improving the customer experience, and transcribing calls and even customer sentiment in real time.

Improve engagement

If people don’t return to your app, it could be that they did not feel very engaged with it. Perhaps the user experience was lackluster, or they were offered no opportunity to express their opinions. Think about offering the chance for social sharing on your meal delivery app. This allows your customers to post pictures and reviews about restaurants, making them feel involved and appreciated, while also legitimizing your brand and leveraging more loyalty and support. 

Another way this can be achieved is using forums, which in the past used to require setting one up from scratch but can now be done faster and cheaper, without too many tech skills, using software companies. Make sure you spend time researching the best forum software.

Think about offering the chance for social sharing on your meal delivery app, such as DingDoong: Delivery and Pickup. This allows your customers to post pictures and reviews about restaurants, making them feel involved and appreciated, while also legitimizing your brand and leveraging more loyalty and support.

Customer loyalty program

As already stated, keeping old customers is far easier and cheaper than gaining new ones. In the dynamic and crowded digital meal delivery market, this is incredibly important. Loyal customers are not just more economic, they tend to spend more money and help create and maintain your brand image. Research also suggests that a purchase, especially for a non-essential item, is generally an emotional process – so it is very important that you build that emotional connection with your customer.

Apart from making the customer have a pleasant experience, how can this be achieved? By doing all of the above and beginning to run a customer loyalty programme.

This is an initiative that offers benefits to frequent customers like discounts, rebates and free products. You could do this by offering a point scheme, setting up a membership program, offering rewards for referring a friend, or even a period spend offer to encourage purchasing.

Source: emarsys

Customer retention

This comes hand-in-hand with loyalty. If you reward your customers, you will keep them, and repeat customers increase the profitability of your company. This can be done by having a meal delivery app which works well. However, if your app has a low retention rate and an even lower engagement rate you are doing something wrong.

You can analyze your data; which demographic is happy, which not? Are there particular trends that appear? How engaged are your users, and can you engage them more effectively? Retaining your customers means lower marketing costs and greater profitability – they have returned because they like your product and service.

Start bringing Home the Bacon

As you can see, when meal delivery apps are done well, it can encourage loyalty among customers and keep them coming back for more. Engage them with rewards, personalized ads and a great user experience. Furthermore, empower them to engage with your company through forums and review options to cement trust in your brand. 

Is the recent boost in sales indicative of growing customer trust? Has the recent ad campaign got the expected results? These are the kind of questions over which marketers rack their brains in an attempt to understand business trends and how they may affect them. They often look at data to connect the dots. But data is only helpful when it’s organized and presented in a way that’s easy to visualize and hence the rising demand for informative dashboards.

Define The Purpose of Your Dashboard

Dashboards are great asset to understand the overall performance of a business and pick up on early signs of potential issues. But not all dashboards are created equal. Many dashboards are ineffective simply because they are built on no clear requirements. At the very least, before building a dashboard, one has to get the answers to the following two basic questions:

• Who will use the dashboard?
• What kind of decisions will be made based on the data provided through the dashboard?

If you’re unable to answer these two questions, it’s important you probe for more clarity. Only once the objective of the dashboard is clear in your mind, should you proceed with its development.

Types of Dashboards

There are 4 types of data dashboards for business intelligence (BI) and their selection comes down to the overall goals of your analytics and data monitoring practices.

1. Strategic Dashboard

The strategic dashboard is used to monitor the long-term business strategy through key performance indicators. Its chief aim is to bring departmental performance in alignment with the overall business strategy. They are complex to create and are mainly used by senior-level management.

Strategic dashboards rely a great deal on past performances. A strategic dashboard offers a bird’s eye view of the revenue and the customer overview for the current and last period. The findings from a strategic dashboard can inform the management of the current state of business, its growth rate and how stats stack up against the long-term business goals.

2. Operational Dashboard

Operational dashboards are meant for monitoring and managing the operations within a shorter time-frame. Their administration usually rests with the junior level managers. Since these dashboards are based on real-time data, their main focus is on creating alerts about business exceptions. Operational dashboards facilitate the smooth workflow of departments and help them stay ahead of problems.

It gives crucial operational information for KPIs such as Total Impressions, Total Clicks, Total Acquisitions and Cost Per Acquisition and the total amount spent. This is very useful as any deviation from the desired course can alert the marketing department to adjust its operational activities.

3. Analytical Dashboard

As the name suggests analytical dashboard is meant for analysts to collect vast amounts of data and use that to support executives. Analytical dashboards’ effectiveness is derived from their use of historical data-usage.

Analysts study this data to find out trends and create predictions and targets, which can form part of a business intelligence strategy. The analytical dashboard can be seen as an intersection between the strategic and operational dashboards.

4. Tactical Dashboard

Tactical dashboards are used to trace the performance with the company’s goal and objectives. They help middle-level managers in the decision-making process and see how the market reacts to the company’s actions. The level of detail in tactical dashboards falls between the operational and strategic dashboards.

With a tactical dashboard, it’s vital to use proper technology to support its various functionalities. This will enable drawing deeper insights from analyzed data, identify the problems, find out their root cause and make sound decisions to improve the current scenario.

In the IT project management dashboard, one gets a complete overview of the project. All the different activities and their progress status is easily understood. Moreover, there’s a separate section for risks and the average time consumed in different tasks. Once the project is finished, a comprehensive IT report can be created to evaluate results, and enhance the efficiency of future projects.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) & Their Selection:

KPIs are at the core of any dashboard as it’s these metrics that display a visual representation of the insights drawn from different business processes. Once you’ve identified your target audience and established your ultimate business goal, you’ll be able to select effective and value enhancing key performance indicators for your dashboard.

Measure your KPIs against the following 6 points to validate their selection:

• Aligned – Ensure that the KPIs align with the objectives and strategic goals of your organization.
• Attainable – Whatever indicator you choose to measure should have data that’s easy to obtain.
• Acute – They should bring everyone on the same page and going in the same direction.
• Accurate – The data used for performance indicators should be reliable and accurate.
• Actionable – Each indicator should offer key insights into the business that is actionable.
• Alive – Since the business never stops, so shouldn’t your KPIs. Keep evolving them.

KPIs generally fall into the following five categories:

• Sales – E.g. average order size, gross profit, conversion rate, new customer order vs returning customer orders, shopping cart abandonment rate.
• Marketing – E.g. site traffic, new visitors vs. returning visitors, bounce rate, average session duration, traffic source, newsletter subscribers.
• Customer Service – E.g. customer satisfaction (CSAT) score, hit rate, net promoter score (NPS), first response time, average resolution time, active issues.
• Manufacturing – E.g. cycle time, overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), overall labor effectiveness (OLE), yield, number of non-compliance events or incidents.
• Project Management – E.g. hours worked, budget, return on investment (ROI), cost variance, cost performance index (CPI).

Good Design Accentuates The Details of a Dashboard

The User interface (UI) and User experience (UX) of a dashboard are as much important as its overall functionality. Following are the six best practices for designing appealing dashboards.

1. Know Your Audience and What They Expect From Dashboard

Who is your audience? That’s the first question you need to answer. Create user personas and look to know their behavior and preferences in detail. Once you’re done with that, you’ll know what your audience expects from a dashboard. Focus on no more than 5 key takeaways that your audience will want to see. Then by applying the F and Z reading pattern, structure your page accordingly.

2. Great Dashboards Lead With Key Data

There’s something about dashboards that throw big numbers up front and clean out the clutter. In a way, they communicate confidence and decisiveness. The style of the dashboard should be right up with any modern and clean design. Presentation of this type in dashboards gives instantaneous access to the most important data and saves the end user’s time.

3. Use Information Architecture To Create Stunning Design

When designing the dashboard it’s good practice to refer to the principles of information architecture and hierarchy. They help you decide which card to display and in what position. The F and Z patterns reflect how a user’s eye scans a page. The same logic needs to be applied in structuring and ordering of elements on your dashboard. Start with the key takeaways and let your dashboard flow from there.

4. Different Views Make For a Clean Design

Dashboards that offer many views while keeping the main view as simple as possible are most desirable. The user should be able to easily filter data by date, access information about payments, and so much more while maintaining a simple and elegant look. Presenting all that information on a single screen would create a total mess.

5. Consistent Design and Color Theme

While data might be the most sought after thing on a dashboard, that doesn’t mean it can’t look appealing from the word go. In an ideal dashboard, the web designer manifests a great combination of pleasing colors with light and proportionate amount of data. The outcome is a visible, easy to navigate dashboard with an elegant look.

Conclusion

The effectiveness of a data dashboard lies in offering balance in all things. It should be appealing but visually light, edgy but straightforward, and most of all it should be tailored to help you achieve your business goals and serve your audience.

Mobile app usage increases approximately 6% every year and almost 82% internet users in the United States use mobile devices to make purchases online. With mobile devices becoming the preferred way of exploring products and shopping online, e-commerce sellers are at their wits’ end to find the right marketplace app.

It is estimated that US mobile commerce sales will surpass $420 billion mark by 2021, making it even more crucial for businesses to have a mobile app. Choosing the right kind of app is not a walk in the park and requires thorough research.

You must have an understanding about the functionalities your users need and determine how they want to access the functionality.

Is getting a mobile app worth the effort?

Creating a mobile app for your online marketplace is one of the best decisions you will ever make. It is the first step in the right direction and increases your marketplace’s reach to a completely new demographic. However, once you have made the decision to get a mobile app, the next step is to choose what kind of app you should develop for your marketplace  — Native or Hybrid.

Here is a brief introduction to Native & Hybrid Apps

• Native Apps are software programs developed to cater to a specific platform or device. These apps can provide optimized performance by leveraging latest technology and hardware features.
• Hybrid Apps are applications or web pages developed using HTML, CSS and JavaScript and wrapped in an application for native browsers like WebView for Android.

Before we discuss the two app kinds in detail, here is a quick overview about them:

Let’s Talk About Native Apps Now

Think about any app on your phone, there is a high chance that the ones you recall are native apps because native apps reside on mobile devices. Simply put, native apps are compatible with a particular operating system. An app developed for iOS platform won’t be compatible for an Android device.

For the marketplace owners with an inclination towards understanding technology, iOS apps are developed using Swift or Objective-C languages while Android apps use Java or Kotlin. Coding for iOS is done on Xcode, and Android apps are built on Android Studio.

Here are some pros of Native Apps

Developing a native app brings a wide range of benefits for the marketplace owner. In the following lines we will take a look at some of them:

• Performance: Thanks to the header files that are already present in the operating system, native apps are fast and reliable.
• Permissions & Functionalities: Native apps are installed directly on a mobile device, and thus have direct access to its camera, compass, microphone, swipe gestures and accelerometer, and more. Native apps offer better hardware-software interaction as compared to their counterparts.
• Notifications: Native apps offer an added benefit  — Push Notifications. This means mobile user need not keep the app active all the time. Whenever user action is required, the native app sends a push notification. Thus saving resources.
• Compatibility: You won’t have to compromise on the UI/UX compatibility for different platforms while developing a native app. Since you are focusing on a single platform, you can make your apps’ UI/UX platform-oriented oriented.

Cons of Native Apps

A native app should be great and serve the user’s needs perfectly. But like all great things in life, they are not perfect. Let’s take a look at some cons of native apps:

• Multiple Codebases: Going for the native mobile app development means the online marketplace owner will need to create an app for every platform individually. Since each OS platform runs a different code, you’ll need multiple codebases  — one for every platform you want to target.
• Multiple Developers: You have to create different native apps for different platforms, and to do that you will need more than one mobile app development team to complete the task. This means more investment in terms of time and money.
• Cost: There are no free lunches in life. And building native apps cost more than developing hybrid apps.

Let’s See How Hybrid Apps Work

As the name suggests, hybrid apps are a combination of native and web apps. A hybrid app can be installed like a native app but it’s actually a web app underneath. Hybrid apps run in a simplified browser like Webview and just like their web based counterparts, they are also built using HTML, JavaScript and CSS.

The basic purpose of a hybrid app is very different from a native app. Hybrid apps are an experimental step for ecommerce marketplace owners who are not sure whether their target audience will like their app or not.

E-commerce marketplace owners can get a hybrid app created without investing a lot of time and money. From there, business owners will get a rough idea about their app’s popularity and understand how the app interface is received by the masses. They can analyze the details of the experiment and then proceed to create a full-fledged native app.

Here are some pros of Hybrid Apps

Since hybrid apps are built for multiple platforms, the base code remains the same and you just need a little bit of tweaking to install them on all platforms. Let’s take a look at the key benefits of hybrid apps:

• Easy to Manage: Because of a single codebase, hybrid apps are easy to manage and install.
• Cost-Effective: You need to spend significantly less time and money to create a hybrid app and this makes them cost-effective as compared to native apps.
• Scalability: Unlike native apps, you can scale a hybrid app for any operating system.
• Accessibility: With streamlined programming and advanced technology features, hybrid apps can access phone features.

Cons of Hybrid Apps

While hybrid mobile apps solve a number of issues for new and existing online ecommerce marketplace owners, there are certain limitations. Let’s take a look at the cons:

• Performance Concerns: Unlike native apps, hybrid apps are not performance-oriented. One of the reasons behind it is the use of Webview for accessing an app. Although Webview delivers an experience close to the native apps, it cannot deliver the performance-enhancing features that native apps have.
• More Efforts: Making an app work seamlessly on different platforms is a difficult task. Since they are built using cross-platform solutions, hybrid apps require a lot of work.
• Higher Costs: Native app users are used to operating apps that are solely designed for an operating system making it difficult to please all camps (iOS, Android, Windows). Some app owners try too hard to add a customized feel to the hybrid apps thus adding to the development costs.

What App Should an Ecommerce Marketplace Owner Choose?

To each their own  — the same can be said when choosing the type of app you want to create. Your priorities should be set and you must be clear as to what you are expecting from your mobile app.

Focus on your budget and choose one accordingly. Evaluate the level of surety you have about its popularity and mass acceptance. Hybrid mobile app development is a better option when you are unsure about the initial user response or don’t have a clear idea about how your final app should look like. 

On the other hand, native apps offer a high level of functionality and deliver a seamless user experience. They also perform better than hybrid mobile apps.

Final Thoughts

Take the aforementioned pros and cons for both Native and Hybrid apps into consideration before making a final decision. Additionally, you can also do some research on your target demographic and develop an overall marketing strategy to find out how much investment are you willing to pour into custom mobile app development. Hopefully, you will be able to make an informed decision with all the information at your disposal and we wish you success for your e-commerce venture.

Last Updated: 3rd March, 2021

Sales reps are no longer the first mode of interaction between businesses and consumers. That place has been taken up by the internet, which daily attracts millions of new users. In this circumstance, it is vital for brands to understand how consumers prefer to interact with businesses online.

After analysing consumer behaviour and their interaction with web pages, we have come up with this article. It contains most effective touchpoints to engage users and assist them in completing their desired actions.

Read below to see the touchpoints and how various brands utilize them for customer interaction.

Captivating Touch Point Examples to Improve Interaction and Optimize  Customer Experience

The following touchpoints have been precisely created to increase interaction between the website and visitors. You can implement them in your website to improve the overall design and experience.

1. First Fold of the Homepage

Source: W-Tutors

The 1st fold of the homepage is the first thing your visitors see when they visit your website. It needs to be attractive, user-friendly and clutter-free. Most companies utilize their front fold by providing an “enter email” field to interact with the brand. It is an easy way to connect with customers and improves navigation.

2. Newsletter Subscription Bar

Source: Voyij

Businesses can ask visitors to sign up for email newsletters in a variety of ways. One of the most effective ways is to request the visitor via the newsletter subscription bar. It is easy to fill and does not misguide visitors. They know they’ll be signing up to receive your blogs and promotions in their inbox and can contact your brand with ease anytime they want.

3. On-Page Contact Form

Source: Visitors Guru

The main goal behind on-page contact forms is to collect appropriate details about your customers before they contact your brand. This helps businesses provide more personalized experiences and target high-quality leads. A business can add various types of fields in the contact form.

4. Free Product Demo

Source: FATbit

Consumers prefer receiving free demos of products before making a purchase. It keeps things transparent and assists in increasing conversions and trust. Brands who incur major expenses in providing free demos can limit their number to 1 free demo for each customer.

5. Testimonials from Clients and Partners

Source: Oyo Cater

Client testimonials motivate consumers to interact with the brand. They act as a trust-building element that progress the buyer’s journey towards conversion. There are several client testimonial formats that a website can use. It can also integrate a ‘Contact Us’ button with the testimonials section to use the section as a subconscious CTA.

6. Author Bio

Source: Entrepreneur

A short bio with a link to a landing page can help businesses create a distinct profile. If you plan on investing time and money to establish your presence on a third-party website, then focus on bringing value through content as well. Furthermore, you can use big data and content marketing to reach the right customer.

7. Live Chat for Answers to Questions in Real Time

Source: KoutureStudios

Consumers in every sector expect brands to provide fast and reliable customer service. They don’t want to navigate through the traditional IVR systems and want ease in finding customer support. In such a scenario, providing chat support via your websites is a very helpful option. If you cannot provide real-time support, then several AI-enabled chat integrations are also available.

8. Comments Section

Source: Wiser Community

Consumers consider comments and reviews a genuine source of information about a company or its products. They also use the comment section as a way to approach brands to clear any queries and doubts. This is especially common on blog pages. Also, consumers replying and interacting with other consumers also increases the website engagement.

9. Social Media Sharing

Source: Pendazi

Social media buttons enable visitors to share your products on their social media handles. This does marketing for your brand and helps visitors and influencers get a third-party opinion from their followers. Platforms like Facebook also provide a private message option, which is an upgrade to traditional social media sharing.

10. Pop-ups for Product Demo

Reference: Yo!Yumm

Pop-ups with a light and functional design that are timed well enhance the user experience. They assist in customer retention, and product demo pop-ups even introduce your products to visitors. There are various types of pop-ups that you can integrate into your website, such as exit-intent pop-ups and timed pop-ups.

11. Call-to-action Text – Inside Post

Source: PwC

Depending on the funnel stage a market asset belongs to, businesses can place various types of CTAs inside their blog posts. Contrasting colors, urgency, desire and preciseness in CTAs makes them most convincing and useful for business websites.

12. Push Notifications

Push notifications remind users to visit your store on an intermittent basis. eCommerce businesses have been using push notifications as a means for promotion and interaction for many years. Whether the user will click on the notification or not, it depends on the ad copy you sent. Also, push notifications can be sent on both computer web browsers and mobile phones with the later being more popular. They are a different type of CTAs with a very high chance of users reading them.

13. Email Signature

Source: WiseStamp

Email signatures signify a logical conclusion of your communication, making them noticeable to the users. A well-structured email signature amplifies brand image and can be used to convey important information just like the example shared above. This email signature has the primary contact number of the business along with the email address and the website for the receiver’s reference. Furthermore, links to the company’s social media handles advertises brand footprints and enhances brand awareness.

14. Survey Participation Request Form

Source: Adobe

To use surveys as a touchpoint, businesses can frame questions that are no hassle for their website visitors to answer. In the above example, the form is not shown upfront. Instead, it appears as a popup, asking the visitors if they would like to complete a short survey. A click on “Yes, later” will open a separate window to which the visitors can come back to at a later stage.

15. Landing Page CTAs

Source: Adobe

Many brands have configured a default contact button in the navigation bar of their website. As a touchpoint, a simple ‘contact us’ button is not so convincing and does not deliver value. Instead, brands can ramp up their landing pages by providing in-context CTAs that align with the buyer journey and assist in conversions. 

16. Refer a Friend

Source: Sprint

Rewarding consumers for referring your products to family and friends can also increase website engagement. It is good for business promotions and the reward only needs to be given incase of successful referrals, which means when a referred person actually buys your service or product.

17. Search Bar

Source: Oyo Cater

In a world, where consumers are hungry for experience, search bars should be made to bring convenience. In the above example, the search bar is the most prominent touchpoint, motivating visitors to interact with the brand. Any other type of web element or touchpoint would have taken away the convenience of finding products from consumers and resulted in poor conversions.

18. The Hover Effect

Source: Simplicity

Website design practices like hover effects use animations to improve the user experience of visitors. For example, a change in the color of an element when a visitor moves his mouse over it is an example of the hover effect. Using the combination of various animations and colors, brands can use the hover effect to increase clicks and user engagement.

19. Internal Linking

Source: Visitor Health Insurance

Internal linking has two benefits – enable a website visitor to explore the topic and improve ranking in search results. Ideally, keeping the sales funnel in mind and inserting appropriate internal links can lead visitors to the final purchase decision stage of the buyer’s journey.

20. Call-to-action Text – Side

Source: Uni Diamonds

Concealed CTAs that popup once a visitor takes an action also work as feasible touchpoints for brands. For example, in the given image, Uni Diamonds is using mail and call logos to conceal CTAs. Not only are they improving user experience, but also making the web design clutter-free.

Due to the presence of uncountable websites, consumers today have varied experiences in interacting with online businesses. In these circumstances, clear-cut digital touchpoints assist businesses in providing their consumers a direction to interact with their websites. Moreover, integrating these touchpoints not only improves a brand’s web design but also ameliorates the customer experience and encourages interaction.

Majority of the websites mentioned in this article are developed by using FATbit products. To get a website with similar UI/UX design, you can check out our wide range of products or feel free to contact us for custom development.

How customers perceive your business is important, after all, first impression is the last impression. And given the constant growth of technology & constant migration of offline businesses to the online world,your website has becomes your most important asset to create the first impression on your target customers.

We hardly get second chances in real life, and the virtual world is even more unforgiving. People move away without giving a single thought.

The problem is that it’s hard to figure out how to make a good first impression in the virtual world, and people tend to overdo while trying to get things right the first time. To prevent things from going awry, here’s what you need to focus on to make sure your website leaves a first impression amazing enough that people would want to come again.

Focus on a neat design

We would have said keeping a minimalistic approach is the best idea, but we would be wrong then. Every business has a different target audience. Here, we are not going to tell you what design your website should have. What you need to understand is that your website’s design should be in sync with the nature of your business and your core values. There’s no point of having an upbeat and funky website design if it is not a reflection of the personality of your business.

Your website should be designed to make sure people get what they want, and not solely focus on how cool the design is. That being said, bland looking websites are not a good choice either. Neat design creates a seamless flow and helps website viewers in focusing on the content.

Related Read: Frequently Ignored Web Design Practices – Adopt to Look Great & Convert More

Be more prompt in providing needed information

If you have attended some webinars, you know many speakers keep on beating around the bushes for too long and don’t come to the point. And when they do, they simply ask you to buy some book or pay for a link that has the answers, Bummer.

To make sure this doesn’t happen to your website, be prompt in giving your audience the information you promise to give them. When your target audience is able to find the desired/required information quickly and easily, they’re going to love you.For example, providing order return and/or cancellation policy proactively on the cart or checkout page is a really good practice.

Quick loading pages

Let’s put some facts into perspective first, shall we? If the page’s load time changes from 2 to 3 seconds, the difference of just one second leads to the bounce rate probability to reach a dangerous 90%. This is how important your website’s loading speed is.

The most common problem many web-based business owners face has been heir inability to strike the delicate and equally important design-functionality equilibrium.

Here’s how you can keep a tab on your website’s loading speed:

• Optimize your images and visual content to a web friendly format, easily achievable through Photoshop.
• Cache images so they load quickly.
• Invest in a good server with high technical specs.

Speed may one of the deciding factors for Google and other search engines in terms of ranking But for you, how quickly your webpages load is the most crucial factor that defines the first impression of your website.

Keep fancy words at bay

Unless you are building a dictionary based website or a seasoned writers’ discussion forum, there’s no point in showing off one’s vocabulary on a website. Your viewers want information, and they want it quick. The beauty of communication lies in its simplicity. Write your content to put your message across, not to make your website visitors run for a dictionary. And don’t be verbose.

“F”or “Z”shaped format is the best

There are two ways in which viewers go through a page, either in an F shaped flow or a Z shaped, and that’s what makes bullet points so amazing. Mention important points in this format so that they can easily find out the information they seek.

Image Source: Code Tiburon

Audio/video content is good, but don’t force it on viewers

As we know that people are able to retain more information from audio/visual content instead of textual one, embed YouTube links in your content is a good idea. But never force video content with autoplay visuals. Give them the freedom to choose when and if they want to watch a video. We came across many websites that refresh after a fixed time frame and the video we just paused started playing again. Not good.

Recommended Reading: 21 Creative Tools List for Video Storytelling & Brand Marketing

Niche specific trust signs

Depending on the nature of your web business, it is a good practice to include trust symbols in the web pages. Let’s understand this with a few examples…

• If you are running an ecommerce website, it’s a good idea to tell people you use safe payment gateways and use market specific tools to keep their information safe.
• If you are a blogger and want to affiliate with prominent blog sites, mentioning the prominent names where your blogs are shared and posted is beneficial.
• If you are a security personnel provider, your website should mention the accreditations and prominent companies that avail your service.

Customers have grown used to the convenience and speed with which they can now make their travel bookings online. So, the current times have been calling for something else; something more; something that can deliver a better customer experience and keep your customers coming back for more.

As a matter of fact, many online travel booking business owners have been brainstorming on how to spice things up for their customers. And thankfully, recent technological developments have brought along copious amounts of options with which business owners can overcome this concern.

From AI to VR/AR, technology has equipped businesses with the right set of tools to enhance their offerings. So, it’s about time that OTAs (and online travel booking businesses) start learning how they can use latest technology to deliver better customer experience.

Virtual Reality (VR)

Today, virtual reality needs no introduction. But for the uninitiated, virtual reality, or simply VR, is a computer generated simulation that offers a “real-life” experience to the users. If you know Oculus or Samsung Gear, you know VR.

The above definition (creating real-life like virtual experiences) in itself gives cues on how the technology can be used by travel industry businesses. Travel booking startups can start offering virtual tours of the destinations they are selling packages for. Through these tours, visitors can get an idea of how the real life experience is going to be. A glimpse of what they can expect is a sure way to entice them and want to seal the deal.

The mobile app of your booking startup is ideal to implement this feature (as there is already a multitude of VR devices for mobile). Other than that, you can also offer virtual tours on the desktop website.

Augmented Reality (AR)

If you think AR is great only for Pokémon Go, the world has come past all of it. As a matter of fact, the world of technology has started exploring AR for its more extensive uses, with many applications for travelling & exploring. How? Well, that quite interesting to know.

• Many museums and galleries have already started offering AR experience to their visitors. You should definitely embed such features and provide it as a value added service to your customers. Also, you can (and should) exclusively suggest your customers the places where such AR experience is offered.

AR technology being used at a Museum (Source: Wikipedia)

• Real time AR based navigation, where users can find the directions by simply pointing the mobile camera on the road, not only helps them in finding the desired location easily, but also improve the user experience of your service by miles.

AR based navigation feature (Source: AppleApple.top)

Related Read: Business Model & Essential Website Feature Analysis for Online Travel Booking Platforms

Internet of Things (IoT)

IoT is no new concept, and yet, there are many ways in which its uses are yet to be realized and utilized. IoT is immensely useful for online travel agencies/booking marketplaces to offer their customers a more seamless experience once they have reached the destination.

First off, you can offer virtual keycards that work in tandem with the package bought. This keycard should contain information about what facilities the customer can avail in the package, and thus, the access will only require the customer to scan the code and that’s that. From self-check-in to unlocking the room, IoT can work wonders for customers by making things more streamlined.

Speaking of streamlined experience, IoT also includes using wearable technology such as Pebble Watch, so that customers can get “handy” navigation without having to hold their smartphones/tablets in their hand all the time. And then there comes the problem of luggage handling, this is where Smart Suitcase comes into play.

Pebble wrist watch navigation (Source: Pocketnow)

As a travel booking agency, what you can do is integrate an ecommerce module and sell such merchandise on your website. Besides offering customers a better experience, it will also add an additional revenue channel for your business.

Suggested Read: Maximize Earnings of Your Travel Booking Marketplace with These Proven Revenue Sources

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Traveling brings along lots of questions. And more often than not, most of the travelers share common queries.Online travel agencies can integrate AI technology based Chatbots with their websites, where customers can get their FAQs answered quickly.

These are the questions whose answers don’t change, and you need to answer a lot of people at the same time for the same questions. In this case, you don’t need to employ skilled human resources,thus saving plenty of money. These Chatbots are capable of answering the travel related queries of potential customers.Including the FAQs in chat based queries by using a Multiple Choice Question format will help your potential customers get to the right answers more quickly.

The fact of the matter is, Chatbots are becoming the new norm in the ecommerce sector, and it makes perfect sense for travel booking startups to include this feature among their offerings to provide an enhanced user experience.

Snapchat Heat-map

Last but not the least, being an innovative social media platform, Snapchat has continuously introduced many new cool features (tech-based or otherwise) that can be easily & effectively used by travel industry businesses. One of such features is Snap Map, a heat map that tells you where your friends are, the bigger the heat map, the more action an event is getting.  Online travel agencies can use Snap Map by purchasing location tags of a particular location to get useful customer data and to notify their potential customers the special tourist attractions or the “must visit” places of a particular destination.

Conclusion

Keeping the above discussion in mind, we can’t emphasize enough on the importance of incorporating latest technology with online travel sector – one of the fastest growing ecommerce business models.Online consumers have already moved on from quick websites and quick bookings. The times have changed and they expect you to give them unprecedented experience. Giving them a virtual tour of places they plan to go to, giving them the added touch of augmented reality once they reach there, giving them a seamless experience and making things really easy for them is the way to go.

Why do we go to the same restaurant, same grocery store, and same barber shop time & again? Because of the good experience we get there.

And that good experience isn’t just about the fancy interior or nice ambience, but also about the quality of service/product you get there and how swiftly you get it.

The same is applicable to businesses that operate in the virtual world. Which ecommerce store, blog or online cab service a user chooses over others depends on the user experience (UX) of an online platform (website or app).

Most online business owners take UX design seriously. But the problem is that they interpret ‘providing good user experience’ as ‘coming up with something radically different from what rest of the industry offers’. Though offering something different (if useful) won’t hurt, but basically, good user experience is about providing users what they want in the simplest way possible.

On a more technical side, the user experience of a website or app depends on four key factors – its visual design, navigation, speed, and meeting user’s expectations (or problem resolution).

With these key UX pillars in focus, this post will guide you how to design a good user experience for your business website or app to engage customers better and convert more.

Visual Design

Visual design is often confused with the visual appeal of a system. It’s true that aesthetically pleasing things leave a lasting impression on mind (which is important from the branding point of view); however,

Visual design isn’t just about the prettiness of your web page layout.

Visual design is more about smart use of visual elements (images, typography, colours, white space, etc.) to build a visual hierarchy – meaning, organizing information in the right manner on a web page, highlighting actionable components; thus, helping users achieve the intended goal effortlessly.

In other words, it is communicating with users without words.

Here is a quick example from our website Fatbit.com. See how we have used different visual elements to make it easier for visitors to consume information and guide them to perform certain actions.

Another important thing to keep in mind about visual design is its consistency. Visual design creates a thought pattern in users’ mind, which helps them connect & interact with a website/app easily. So, it is wise to use visual elements in the same manner across your online platform to make it easier to use.

Navigation

Site navigation plays a crucial role in engaging & converting customers; yet, this key UX factor is overlooked or often mis-implemented.

For instance, if you have seen those fancy websites that win design awards, you would know navigating them is often a bit of challenge. These experimental navigations (known as Mystery Meat Navigation) might make perfect sense for designers, but for users, they are usually a hard nut to crack.

Experiments can make your website and app look cool. But as a business, you should put users first, cool later.

The simple formula to keep your site navigation user-friendly is to create well-defined information architecture (defining categories, sub categories, etc.) and implement it by following the navigation design standards.

For small business website design, these standards mean – setting up primary (top navigation bar) & secondary navigation (footer), putting elements that interest users most in primary navigation, and boring elements like Policies, Terms, FAQs, etc. in secondary navigation.

For mobile sites/app, it is usually a hamburger menu*, consisting of primary navigation elements and some other actionable options.

*Hamburger menus for desktop websites are also becoming common these days. So it is okay to implement hamburger menu if it goes along better with the entire look & feel of your website.

Apart from that, some other key things  in regard to site navigation include:

• Keep primary navigation elements between 5-7, otherwise it would be difficult for users to memorize & comprehend your site’s navigation
• Use breadcrumbs on inner pages so that users know exactly where they are on the website
• Label tabs/links appropriately, so that at any point it doesn’t seem misleading to users

Speed

By default, users are impatient. If your website doesn’t load in 2-3 seconds, about 40% visitors will abandon it, and will go – of course to a competitor of yours. If you have a really good product/service to offer, it would be off-putting that your prospects aren’t consuming it just because you are too slow to guide them.

Take World of Swiss airlines’ website for example. Visually the site will fascinate you and no doubt they offer excellent premium services. But when you visit their website, it takes like half a minute to load even at good internet speed, which ultimately will put you off. (I have used the same example in my post on web designing tips, which you might want to check out.)

There are a bunch of techniques you can follow to make your website load faster. For starters, cache the elements that are same on every page (logo, footer, any images, etc.). For a WordPress website, plugins like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache are great, as they also compress file size, making page loading even swifter.

Other than that, optimizing images on your website is an obvious one. Do a Google search for image compression tools, and you will easily find a bunch of handy ones.

For more advanced techniques, I would recommend you to go through this gem of a post on improving page speed: How to Improve Page Speed: Tips & Online Tools from Pro Developers
(make sure you do read it)

In case of a mobile website/app, removing graphics & other web elements, which you think are not necessary for mobile users, will definitely remove some unwanted weight from it and make it load faster.

Meeting User’s Expectations

Let’s say your website has the right visual design, perfect navigation, and it loads at a lightning speed. But how good would be users’ experience if they don’t find what they came looking for on your website?

“A website that does not add value by fulfilling user’s needs will not be able to provide a meaningful user experience.” – FATbit Tech

To provide that meaningful user experience, you need to understand your target customers better, define buyer journey more clearly, find solutions for their problems, and put up the valuable information (and useful actionable options) where & when users might need them.

In a nutshell, it is about setting right expectations & then meeting them.

If you run a blog, share information that is of some use to your readers; if you operate an ecommerce store, be transparent about your policies & make sure users are able to see them easily; and so on.

As an example, if you visit the consultation page of our website, you will see clear messages next to the form telling users what to expect.

Conclusion

As new web designing trends will surface & customers’ demands will increase, there will always be need of refinements in the UX design of your website. But if you stick to the above-mentioned UX fundamentals, enhancements will come easy and will be sound; making it easier for your target audience to find value in your offers and ultimately helping you get the results you want.

Steve Jobs once famously said that “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. The design is how it works.” For a long period of time, websites globally have been built on the same notion.

New technologies came to the forefront and changed the way websites looked and felt.

No matter, how innovative you get with your website design, in the end, it all boils down to those words said by Steve Jobs. It is all about how it works and not just how it looks.

The fact of the matter is that design is just a means of presenting content in the most intuitive and feasible manner. You can put in as much creativity as you want; in the end, if your design does not offer proper information to help your customers reach certain point then it is of no use.

However, certain design patterns are timeless. These UI patterns not only focus on the best design practices but also emphasize on ensuring the information reaches the users seamlessly. In this post, I will explore different real life examples of some successful web layout patterns.

Cards

This type of design pattern is popular among social media websites as it helps in displaying the details for each item without cluttering the whole web page. Additionally, websites with a heavy dose of content can use this pattern to trim the content and display it in a digestible manner.

In such layouts, cards act as a container for clickable information, which means that the cards just highlight the gist of the information and to get detailed information on it, the user can click on that particular card. The best part of this design patterns is that it gels well with the responsive design and is self-sufficient to fit any type of screen size. The most popular examples of such UI patterns is Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.

Tips For Using Cards Layout

• Ensure that the whole card is clickable, rather than just a small portion or link.
• When selecting images keep different screen sizes in mind
• Try to keep it simple as cards only work best when they are not too complex; best with a basic typography and minimal description.

Grids

Like Cards, there is another design pattern called Grids that is popular among content heavy websites. However, unlike Cards, the information shared using Grids highlights the most crucial details identically. This makes browsing seamless and offers better options for styling. Web sites like YouTube and Etsy use this pattern offering a straight-laced feeling.

Tips for using Grids layout

• While using grids always keep white spaces in mind as that would ensure that each item looks presentable.
• Keep the layout consistent and the size of grids identical
• A standard practice is to use a 12-column grid layout for simplicity

Magazine

This design pattern has been prominently used across blog based websites and online news portals. It is useful for those websites that have regularly updated content across several verticals. It not only makes the website intuitive but also breaks the monotony of the website while showing a variety of content. Websites like Wired and Time use this design pattern across their domain.

Tips for using Magazine layout

• Emphasize on images as it is the core of this layout
• Sublet your content into different sections and follow same design across them.
• Have either a horizontal or vertical menu

Container-free

Minimalism came out as a buzzword in web design arena last year. As Apple and Google took the approach towards flat design, most of the websites also ushered in the same strategy while presenting information on their website. The container-free pattern takes that approach to a whole new level, stripping away all the unnecessary illustrations. Up till now, most of the web design have been based on linear and structured layouts, but we are gradually moving away from it, by thinking out of the box. This is a good approach to ensure that the website design does not get boring.

Designing a website without containers puts all the focus on the content and visual hierarchy. Apple and Google both have used this pattern to highlight their product lineups. Even Ablysoft has used this approach in their latest redesign.

Tips for using Container-free layout

• Focus on typography and use it accordingly to divide different sections
• Use contrasting colors to make it easy to differentiate between sections
• Keep the content short and precise. Ensure that your images are able to entice visitors

Single-page Web Apps

As website designing has evolved, it has brought web applications to the center stage. Rather than having a multipage navigation system, users nowadays prefer a single page site better known as web apps. Such designs use AJAX to load content asynchronously while combining multiple actions on a single page. Other than web applications, such pattern is also popular among websites where the homepage serves for different sections of the website. Gmail, Spotify, and Tumblr are some of the websites, which incorporate this design pattern.

Tips for using Single page web apps layout

• Generate unique URLs for each viewpoint or section in order to ensure support for the back button.
• Sticky navigation is a must for single page web apps
• Apply smooth scrolling techniques to make the user experience less jittery.

F Pattern

For a larger part of the last decade, websites especially text-heavy ones have used F pattern design. Studies show that putting a lot of text on the website results in positive response from users; they respond better if the website has an F pattern design. This is because our brains are hardwired to scan in F pattern.

By using this pattern, you can create a pathway for the user’s eyes to go where they tend to go normally. This also gives designers room to highlight content they want users to emphasize upon, and in turn impacts conversions to a great extent. Web sites like The New Yorker and other prominent ecommerce businesses use this design pattern on their websites.

Tips for using F-Pattern layout

• Keep all the CTAs on either left or right side of the page to ensure that users either start reading with a CTA or end reading with a CTA.
• Start each section with a catchy phrase
• Use right side column for relevant but lesser important stuff as it falls outside scanning area.

Also Read: 9 Homepage Design Practices to Improve Usability and UX

Z Pattern

Other than F pattern, our brains also respond well to the Z pattern. In fact this design pattern is highly effective when it comes to incorporating CTAs (call to action) into the website. Most business websites nowadays use this pattern effectively, as this design pattern is better suited for websites with singular goals involving less content.

When you want to direct users to specific points on the website, eventually enticing them into taking an action then Z pattern is the best choice.

TripAdvisor, McDonald’s, KFC etc. all use this design pattern across their websites.

Tips for using Z-Pattern Layout

• Place the CTAs at the right side or along the end of a line, as users tend to pause before moving to next line giving you time to entice them.
• For the most crucial CTAs, use the upper right corner
• Repeat the pattern multiple times on a single page; it will help users get accustomed to the pattern.

Asymmetry

There are more than a billion active websites, and this has made it imperative for designers to think outside the box. In order to ensure that specific content stands out on the website, designers have started to use an asymmetric design pattern. This design pattern allows the website to appear less plain and more energetic. However, one has to be very careful in implementing this style as misplaced asymmetry can often lead to confusion and can distract the user. Some of the great examples of websites that use asymmetric design patterns include Honda and Esquire.

Tips for using asymmetric layout

• Use distinctive colors to break symmetry ensuring that those sections pop out.
• Text alignment is crucial in this layout therefore always keep it left aligned.
• Try different shapes like diamond, a triangle with sharp images rather than square or circle to add more visual weight.

Over the years, we have come across several intuitive website designs, which have stretched our imagination. However, innovative they, some patterns are timeless and have the capability to stand the test of time. The above-mentioned design layouts have been in practice for a long time and will continue to be in the long run.

Discuss Your Web Design Requirements With Experts Before Zeroing in On A Design Style
Consult FATbit

The bottom line is that design is just a manner in which you present content or information. However, the information will have more effect if it is presented in a more intuitive way.

You incorporate best practices across your website to give visitors a user-friendly experience. However, if that experience diminishes upon reaching the contact page, do you think they will remain on your website? The bottom line is if you fail to entice the visitor into clicking that “contact” button, you literally have lost a potential customer forever.

There is a reason why it always adjudicated that a webmaster must never let their guard down when it comes to designing each part of the website. Even a simple contact us form can either result in a potential customer contacting you or just moving to another website. Creating an effective contact page involves a key process and one should abide by some crucial tips in order to ensure that the send button does not sit idle.

1. CLEAR AND CONCISE TITLE

Titles are meant to convey the crux of the matter, so avoid stories and tales. Be clear and precise with your title. The visitor should understand what the form is for, by just looking at the title.

 2. INFORMATIVE DESCRIPTION

Although the title of the contact form should explain the contact form, in case the visitor still has any doubts and misconceptions, the description should come to your rescue. The description should answer- what is the need of the form and what will the visitor get in return of filling the form.

3. NO ONE LIKES LONG FORMS

Do not overdo your form with numerous fields. Use only those fields which are necessary and of utmost importance to your business. Avoid asking same information twice. Eg. Password – Confirm Password. Avoid asking for information, which is personal like Phone numbers, Spouse Name etc. In case you are asking such information, ensure the privacy of the user and communicate it using safety badges.

Given below are two options: Let us see which one do you like

Which one do you think is most likely to be filled by the end user? Surely, the first one is a clear winner; the second option contains unnecessary fields, which can make the visitor hesitant about completing the form.

4. KEEP LABELS LEFT ALIGNED ABOVE THE FEILD

Eye tracking studies have shown that left aligned labels above the field perform better than the right and left aligned labels in line with the field. To make the form compact and short, labels can be placed inside the field.

Left Aligned inside the field: 

Left Aligned above the field:

Left Aligned in line with field:

5. AVOID CONFUSING ACTION BUTTON

Using action buttons like Submit, OK, Continue, Done is the best way to confuse your visitors. So avoid using such buttons. An action button should always be reciprocation for filling the form and communicate what the visitor will get after he presses the action button.

6. PLACE THE FORM ABOVE THE FOLD

Doing this will encourage the visitor to focus more on the form itself and hence improve the rate of conversion. Keeping forms below the fold or spread across two folds of the page creates confusion and distraction.

 7. HELP VISITORS FILL FORM

Provide help text below the fields to guide user’s input. This way you are communicating the information as well as the format you are expecting from the visitor.

Eg: In the Email field you can write – “example@domain.com “

If the fields are complicated Help option can be given to facilitate the user about the required input.

8. ALERT ERRORs CLEARLY

Communicate the errors clearly. Do not just show an error without communicating the reason for error as it can be irritating for the visitor to keep searching where he has gone wrong.

 9. HIGHLIGHT FIELDs

While the visitor is filling a specific field highlight that field, so that in case the visitor gets distracted he can quickly come back and resume from where he left. Also, save time by automatic cursor placement in the first field. 

10. FONT SYLE, SIZE & BACKGROUND COLOUR

Readability of form is very important, so make sure the font style, size, and color do not hinder the reading. Avoid using funky font styles and color schemes, which make reading difficult. For Eg: Light gray background with white text.

11. DEMARCATE BETWEEN THE REQUIRED AND OPTIONAL FIELDS

Best and easiest way to differentiate between the required and optional fields is using the asterisk (*) sign. This will improve the user experience and hence the conversion rate.

12. USE MOBILE FRIENDLY FORMS

With the number of mobile users going up, it is very important to design a form, which provides a good user experience to mobile users. So invest in optimizing your fields for mobile use.

13. AVOID CROWDED DROP DOWN MENU OPTIONS

A drop down menu loaded with numerous options can confuse the visitor and they can end up saying Good Bye to your page. So use drop down menu wisely. In case you have a large number of options, using an Auto Complete will be a better option.

14. PERSONALIZE MESSAGE AFTER FORM IS SENT

Let your visitors know what will happen after the form is sent. Display a personalized message, which would include the name entered by the visitor telling helpful details like how long will it take for someone to follow-up or any other relevant info.

15. USE SIMPLE CAPTCHA

Although Captcha is an anti-spam measure but can prove extremely annoying if the visitor is unable to get captcha right the first time and you end up scaring off visitor from your page. To overcome this necessary evil, use simple captcha and give the option of changing the code.

Eg: Use something like this, just simple checkbox:

CONCLUSION

In the end, when it comes to designing a contact form, it all boils down to creating a form that is precise, relevant, personalized and easy to fill. Rather than having a loud form with its focus on high-quality graphics, the contact form ought to usher in the fastest way to contact you. In addition to that, you should also keep the form engaging, so that the visitor does not abandon it midway. Do you have some good examples of such contact forms? Feel free to start a conversation in the comments below.

Okay, so you are a good writer, can weave words to produce something interesting, and your posts are packed with all the useful information related to the given topic.

But, is the structure of your blog and elements present in it helping readers to go through your posts smoothly?

Here are the best practices to improve the UX of your blog to allow readers to go through your posts easily; therefore, to improve its engagement rate and get more social shares.

Blog homepage – Provide a helpful signage

Most of the time readers land on your post following its link shared over the web. But a few readers arrive on it only after first coming to your website or blog homepage. It is crucial that you don’t overlook this factor, and work on improving the homepage of your blog.

The blog homepage must have an intuitive layout & navigation, and should be designed in such a manner that effortlessly directs visitors to the post page. Few techniques that most successful blogger practice to engage visitors on their blog include:

1. A featured image depicting the topic of the post in a clear & concise manner, and is also visually appealing
2. Counter for number of views & comments to highlight the engagement on the post
3. Create a unique excerpt summarizing your post to engage visitors so that they can have a better idea what the post is about

Although the above-mentioned practices are widely accepted in the blogger community, it is okay to come up with something new, but only if you are sure that it has a chance to work.

For example, marketing blog QuickSprout’s homepage displays post in a slightly different way. They use the introductory part of the post as the excerpt so that users get engaged with the post even before reaching the post page.

Separate and sticky top navigation

Plan a separate navigation bar for your blog to make visitors feel that they are on an entirely different section of your page. A dedicated navigation bar will also allow users to navigate through your blog easily, therefore, improve its engagement rate.

If your blog has many categories, put on the most popular ones on the navigation bar. Make a provision to keep the navigation bar always on the top as users scroll down the page. In technical language, make it a sticky navigation bar.

Additionally, also place a link back to the main website on your blog so that visitors don’t need to manually enter the URL to visit back your website.

Smaller visual span – Make it easy for eyes

Keep the view span of your blog somewhere between 650-750px to minimize the eye movement.

Don’t break the neck of your readers by making them move from one end to another to read every line on your blog. Keep the post span between the aforementioned limits, so that readers can read lines with the minimal eyeball movement. This, in long terms, will also improve your blog’s average stay time per visitor.

Keep paragraphs short and crisp

It takes a lot of effort to read big paragraphs even if they are very informative. Long paragraphs give readers a feeling that the post is a never-ending read; therefore, it becomes probable that they might lose interest somewhere in the middle of the post.

Ideally, a paragraph should consist of only 3 to 4 lines. Anything longer than this would require a lot of concentration from the readers’ end.

Don’t force readers to try too hard just to read your post. Keep paragraphs short, give readers pit stops to visualize things, and allow them to connect well with the post content.

Quick tip: Using bullet points to explain the process, benefits, features, etc. can do wonders.

Always go black-on-white

When it comes to the background color of your post, never-ever do any experiments. It should be white, always white. And the font color should be black (or a darker shade of gray) as it appears very clear on the white background, therefore, improve the readability of your blog.

Also, avoid using fancy fonts or too small font size for that matter, as it can adversely affect readability.

Don’t date a post

If you write posts on tips and how-to topics to educate your readers, then in most cases, that piece of content is meant to be evergreen. Adding date to it will make your post look outdated even if you update your posts on regular basis.

Two ways out of the date thing:

1. Do not allow the date to show with the post and in the URL.

2. Or if you think adding a date is important, try not to highlight it much. And if you regularly update your blog, keep a counter that automatically updates the date to the last time you updated its content.

This will tell readers that you regularly update your posts, therefore, chances are good that readers will come time & again to your blog.

Spread it with social sharing icons

A good post deserves to be spread across different social networks. And to make sure that it happens, you need to place social media sharing icons with your post.

Choose social media networks, where you want your post to be shared, wisely, and according to your audience.

Social media sharing icons should always remain visible to readers, so that your post can be shared whenever a reader feels like.

Tell your programmer that icons should stick to a place when scrolling down; also make sure that it doesn’t obstruct the post content view.

Let’s sprinkle some icing sugar on the cake:

1. Make a provision to show the total number of shares for the post like ConversionXL do. This will act as a social proof for the readers.

2. Make sure when someone tweets your post, your Twitter handle is displayed along with it. This will help you to easily track re-tweets and will also ensure that you get credit for your work.

Discuss this with your programmers and suggest that changes are required in settings of the plugin used for social sharing.

3. Let readers tweet a quote or a line from your post.

Also Read: How Much Do You Focus on User Experience Design While Building a Website?

Don’t let the interest die

To keep the post engaging throughout its length, you should always maintain the balance between text and visual content. If you are giving tips, explaining a topic, giving your thoughts on a strategy, then it is possible that the post may go up to 1800-2000 words.

Keeping readers engaged on a long post requires including of following types of visual content:

• Screenshots
• Vines
• Memes
• Gifs
• Infographics
• Videos
• Quotes
• Tweets
• Stats
• Graphs

Do not try to add all of the above mentioned visuals in your post as it may affect the loading speed of your page. Here are a couple of tips in this regard:

• Always add optimized images and other visuals without compromising on quality.
• Always measure your page load speed using this tool.

Add estimated reading time

Your headline triggers the interest of your readers. Telling them right away the estimated reading time of your post can improve its engagement factor considerably.

Adding estimated reading time also improves the bounce rate. Always keep in mind that your readers’ time is important, therefore, make it a habit to always add time at the top of your post. Also, remember that adding estimated reading time only makes sense when it is for text only, not for post with lots of visual content.

Note: Add estimated reading time only if you think your post will take about 6-8 minutes to read. If the post will take more than that, mentioning time may have the opposite impact and discourage readers to read your post in the first place.

Insert CTAs smartly

Ask yourself: ‘Why do I have a blog?’

Answer might be: ‘To educate people.’

But that’s not true all the times. When you have a company blog, besides educating people, you also need to generate leads and convert them into clients.

Therefore, it is also important to allow readers to learn about your services & products. To make it happen, practice following:

• Do internal linking in your posts
• Insert CTA-AB (Call-to-action –Action button) i.e. a statement that recognizes the pain-point or need of readers, plus the action button that takes visitors to a service/product/contact page.

Some CTA tips and etiquettes:

• Do not over stuff your post with CTAs and internal links
• Make sure you are adding relevant CTAs to the post and placing them at appropriate places

• Utilize your side panel and add a sticky graphical CTA which always remains visible to readers
• Add an exclusive CTA with benefits, social proofs, and offers at the end of the post

Don’t leave reader on a dead end

You did an extensive research and came up with an informative article; but don’t do the mistake of neglecting the end, otherwise, all your effort to engage readers may go in vain.

Deploy the following tactics towards the end:

Add a conclusion
A great article starts with a great title and ends with a great conclusion. No matter how engaging your entire article is, if you fail to add a conclusion in the end, it would be a purposeless piece of content; and your readers will go away without doing any further activity on your blog.

The conclusion should be short and a sum-up of all the main points of the post. Not only will it improve the engagement rate of your blog but will also motivate readers to take further actions.

Ask a question
Ending conclusion with a question is also a great way to motivate readers to take part in commenting.

Your post ends here…

Let’s talk about some more engagement tactics which are not the part of your post but play a great role in engaging readers.

Comments section

Now it’s time for the readers to ask their questions or answer the questions asked (by author) at the end of the post.

After going through a post, readers may have some queries which they want to ask. So, it is reader’s turn first. Comment form should appear on the top of the comments section.

On few blogs, comment submission form comes after all the comments. On a blog which receives hundreds of comments, such a practice is discouraging for readers, as they will have to scroll down a lot just to find the comment form.

Additionally, try to respond to all the comments from your readers. This will enable you to build a relationship with your readers, as well as encourage readers to comment on your future posts.

Send readers to other posts

Your readers are hungry for information, so feed them with more content. Here are few techniques you can try out:

• Highlight related posts (or previous & next post) below the comment section

• Place quick links for recent/trending/ popular posts in the right panel of the blog
• Highlight relevant categories and tags in the right panel to allow users to find related content easily

Conclusion – Provide better experience to improve engagement and trustworthiness

If you succeed to provide a better user experience and engage readers on your blog, you will automatically succeed in improving your brand value. And an improved brand value will help you achieve overall business success.

Let’s go through above-mentioned practices for improving the UX and engagement on your blog once again:

• Improve blog homepage to drive readers to post page
• Plan a separate and sticky top navigation for your blog
• Keep smaller visual span on post page
• Keep paragraphs short and crisp
• Always go for black font on white background
• Avoid placing date with a post (or place them smartly)
• Place sticky social media sharing icons
• Add visual content to keep interest alive
• Add estimated reading time (Not for blogs with extra-long posts)
• Insert call-to-actions to keep readers to allow readers to take further steps
• Don’t leave readers on a dead end

Are there any other ways to improve the UX and engagement on a blog? Please suggest in the comments.