UI/UX

10 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Small Business Website

Mary Kyamko — Sun, 26 Feb 2023 19:16:50 +0000

Will your business idea succeed? Take our quiz - completely confidential and free! Running a small business website is challenging. You must have a good design, create engaging content, optimize and maintain it, and more. But driving traffic is the most important aspect of your website’s success. It can be difficult, especially if you don’t have the budget to run large marketing campaigns. And it’s natural to expect a good return on investment from your website. After all, you have spent resources to establish it to make your business more successful. Thankfully, the web is a vast land of possibilities. If you know how to navigate it, create and find opportunities, and leverage available resources, you can drive organic traffic to your website. Over the past fifteen years, our team has helped thousands of entrepreneurs and small businesses build and optimize their small business websites. We’ve keynoted numerous conferences and webinars on optimization and frequently write and talk about optimization and conversion strategies on our blog and at conferences. This guide shares the actionable insights, tips, best practices, and expertise we’ve developed after helping over one hundred thousand brands. 1. Create quality content Offer more than just your products or services – invest in creating high-quality content that adds value to people’s lives. Engaging content helps you rank higher on search engines like Google and Bing. You don’t want to be just any other small business looking to make a sale. You need to give people another reason to keep returning to your website. One way is to offer resources that can educate, such as: Blogs Newsletters Webinars Case studies Quality images and engaging videos Whitepaper and more Providing engaging content also allows you to show off your expertise on subjects belonging to your niche. This can help you build credibility and foster long-term relationships with your audience. Essential Branding Toolkit for EntrepreneursBuild a stronger brand with our free guides. Get actionable insights to define your brand’s unique voice, understand your market, and stand out to customers. The guides are concise, actionable, practical, and tailored for the busy entrepreneur. The Ultimate Branding Checklist Crafting Your Unique Value Proposition Build Your Brand Pillars Worksheet Market Research Kit

Psychology in eCommerce Web Design: How to Increase Sales

Katie Lundin — Tue, 02 Nov 2021 17:28:08 +0000

Have you optimized your eCommerce website for psychology? Use these three powerful psychological principles to increase sales.

5 Important Website Design Features Your eCommerce Site Must Have To Succeed

Katie Lundin — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 19:19:11 +0000

Ecommerce websites need to play by a different set of rules than your average website. So, if you want to fully realize your ecommerce business's potential, focus on these 5 web design features.

6 Ways User Interface and User Experience Design Can Help Your Business

Amanda Bowman — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 05:15:04 +0000

A smooth, visually appealing experience with your business’s website or mobile app is important in creating happy, loyal customers. Big businesses may have an advantage because of their existing brand awareness and larger marketing budgets, but that doesn’t mean small businesses and startups can’t compete with them. In some ways, smaller companies have an unfair advantage when it comes to design because their sites and apps don’t have to be so bloated. Provide your customers with a straightforward, intuitive, attractive experience on your website, and they’ll be happy to become repeat customers. A website or app’s ability to bring in repeat business relies on whether people understand and appreciate it. “Am I getting value from this? Is it user-friendly? Is it fun?” These questions form the basis of a prospective customer’s decision whether they will become regular users of that site or app or never return. That’s where User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) design come into play. User Experience is how a person interacts with and uses a product, system, or service. User Interface is closer to what we consider visual design. If you think of UI design as the tool you consume a bowl of cereal with – a spoon – UX design is the overall experience of pouring the cereal into a bowl and using your well-designed spoon to eat it. You can create a web and app experience that is useful, pleasing, and impactful – but you have to understand how UX and UI can help you and optimize each to improve the experience for your customers and prospects. Rahul Varshney, Co-creator of Foster.fm says: User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) are some of the most confused and misused terms in our field. A UI without UX is like a painter slapping paint onto canvas without thought; while UX without UI is like the frame of a sculpture with no paper mache on it. A great product experience starts with UX followed by UI. Both are essential for the product’s success. Knowing the difference between UX and UI design and how to use each best creates a significant competitive advantage for your business, and just like good customer service, is thoughtful, effective, and hugely impactful on the lasting success of your brand. Want a free brand review?Answer 5 short questions and we will send a custom report with actionable insights and specific actions you can take to build a stronger brand. We just emailed the info to you. Email Address UX design According to Time News, 55% of web users spend fewer than 15 seconds on a website. You have 15 seconds to get a person’s attention, clearly demonstrate your services, and illustrate why your company is worth their time. As we’ve previously pointed out: the attention span of a human adult, according to BBC News, is 9 seconds (the Associated Press reports that in 2012, the average attention span for a human was 8 seconds). Nearly one fifth of all page views in 2012 lasted fewer..

Small Business Web & App Design: Five Common UX Mistakes to Avoid

Ross Kimbarovsky — Tue, 03 Jan 2017 06:11:05 +0000

You’re ready to build. Maybe it’s a website, an app, a landing page, or an email template. Now you just need to figure out the design. And it’s here, in this pivotal moment, before anyone has put pen to paper or pixels to screen, where you’ll either get it right or wrong. Here are the top 5 mistakes commonly made in UX design – and how to avoid them. Mistake #1: Prioritizing your own aesthetic tastes We have preferences regarding the digital media with which we interact. Some people like interactive sites with lots of videos. Some people like a bare-bones site with simple, intuitive navigation and straightforward text explanations. Some people like a modern look. Some people are still big on gradients. It just depends. And those personal tastes are all perfectly valid, but personal is the key word in this discussion. You are not the entirety of your customers and prospects. You do not represent your whole audience. And while it’s certainly within your rights to have an opinion on how a design looks, if you rely solely on your own tastes, your end result will be about you instead of the people you’re hoping to engage. This will not only create low-conversion pages (or apps), but will also impact your search results. Quick Tip: If something about a design is rubbing you the wrong way, frame your response as a question instead of a dismissal, and use the answer to check your concerns. Ask, “Is there a particular reason we would want to use this size image?” or “What was the rationale behind your color choices here?” If the response is grounded in evidence, research, and experience, be sure to keep that in consideration before you make a final decision. Want a free brand review?Answer 5 short questions and we will send a custom report with actionable insights and specific actions you can take to build a stronger brand. We just emailed the info to you. Email Address Mistake #2: Relying heavily on fads Every year, and especially towards the end of one year and the beginning of a new year, you’ll find many articles detailing all the design fads to watch over the coming months. Some of these are less radical than others. Some represent a significant break from convention, usually popularized by a handful of trailblazers. But much like our wardrobes, what is fashionable in one season can become passe in the blink of an eye. And this is where trying hard to make your digital media fit with current design trends can backfire, especially when designing digital media intended to be durable. It’s one thing to tailor an email template to the hottest design look of the season, but when you’re spending good money on a website or app, you need to think beyond frills. Quick Tip: Don’t hesitate to ask your customers what they like. If you’re just getting started, researching the design choices of your competition is a good way to kick things off. Once you have a working idea,..

Psychographics: The Key to Effective UX Design

Lauren Nelson — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 13:30:25 +0000

Demographics might do a good job of answering "who" your customers are, but psychographics hold the key to "why."