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7 More Useful Tips To Help Your Site Convert

Last week we presented 8 Useful Tips To Help Your Website Convert – we discussed various rules and guidelines from marketing, such as subliminal suggestion, prevention of choice paralysis, AIDA-principle, attention guide and the Gutenberg rule. The main idea was to help designers and developers create a design that would help the site to grow and become a success the financial point of view.

This article presents further principles and rules that will help your site convert. Among other things, we cover A/B testing, footnotes, testimonials, feature lists, the sign-up process and typography. You may be interesting in the following related posts:

• 10 Principles Of Effective Web Design
• 5 More Principles Of Effective Design
• 9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design
• 10 Useful Web Application Interface Techniques

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5 Universal Principles For Successful eCommerce-Sites

When was the last time you called customer support because you were having problems checking out online? Probably never! Cart abandonment rate is at around 60%, and most of it happens before the user even begins the checkout process. Sometimes, convincing your customers to trust you is your biggest challenge.

There is no “Consumer Trust for Dummies,” but as eCommerce designers, we need to focus on some fundamentals. The following topics may seem as obvious as walking into a seven-foot Wookie, but rest assured you will find plenty of websites with a mouth full of fur.

If your core demographic is women between the ages 35 and 65 who have an annual income of $60,000+, you would treat them different than the 18- to 25-year-old male demographic. First and foremost in e-tail: forcing your visitor to think is a bad idea. When creativity stops being subjective and can be measured by a dollar amount, making sure you're designing for the customer is a no-brainer.

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Clear And Effective Communication In Web Design

Communication is one of the foundational elements of a good website. It is essential for a positive user experience and for a successful website that truly benefits its owners. All types of websites are affected by the need for good communication in one way or another. Regardless of whether the website in question is an e-commerce website, a blog, a portfolio website, an information website for a service company, a government website or any other type of website, there is a significant need to communicate effectively with visitors.

Because of the significance of communication with visitors, it is an essential consideration for every designer and website owner and the responsibility of both. Unfortunately, communication is sometimes overlooked and takes a backseat to the visual attractiveness of a website. Ideally, the design and other elements that do the communicating work together to create a clear, unified message to visitors.

In this article, we'll take a broad look at the subject of clear communication in Web design. We'll start with a discussion of the primary methods of communication for websites and typical challenges that designers face. From there, we'll move on to look at what specifically should be communicated to visitors and tips for implementing this in your own work. At the end, we'll look at some of the goals that should be established in terms of communication when developing websites, as well as some of the results of having a website that communicates effectively.

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7 Ingredients Of Good Corporate Design

It’s hard to define design. We have a broad range of definitions to choose from: design refers not only to graphic design, but to design strategy, too. It is used in a variety of industries, such as engineering, architecture and Web design.

This means that design is not just graphical in nature (which is a form of visual artistic representation), but also the planning of processes to achieve certain goals. Large corporations clearly understand this and incorporate every form of design into their strategy to achieve success.

For a good corporate design, we need to be aware of two main elements, which can be further broken down into a total of seven “ingredients”: design, as in artistic representation (logo, typography, colors), and design strategy (brand, quality, community, culture).

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7 Essential Guidelines For Functional Design

Look at what you've made. Beautiful, isn't it? But does it work? For whom does it work? Of course you can use it, but can anyone else? In short, is it functional?

At the heart of every piece of practical design, whether it be a website, product package, office building, manufacturing system, piece of furniture, software interface, book cover, tool, or anything else, there is a function, a task the item is expected to perform. Most functions can be achieved in a variety of ways, but there are some basic elements a designer needs to take into account to create a product that best fulfills its intended function.

These are the elements of functional design, the process of responding to the needs or desires of the people who will use an item in a way that allows their needs or desires to be met. Functional design is both an outcome and a process. As an outcome, it describes products that work well to perform their assigned tasks; as a process, functional design is a set of practices guided by the principles that produce that positive outcome. (Functional design is also a computer modeling technique, but that's not what we're discussing here.)

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How To Communicate Design Decisions To Clients?

You may have noticed that in certain business and marketing circles there exists a "backlash" against the design community. Despite the rise of attractive, user-friendly solutions, in such cirlces unattractive designs have somehow managed to remain at the verge of acceptance. You'll hear ideas being thrown around like "design is a waste of time — we have a really ugly site which outsells our competitors 3 to 1" or "we are not worried about the design, we'll outsource it or use a free Wordpress theme, let us focus more on the product".

You can almost sense a little bit of pride in how ugly their web-site is, or that they are treating design like a commodity. However off base these types of thoughts might be, there is clearly a lack of respect for designers in the business community at times. I'd like to address how you can shatter this barrier and talk to business folk in a language they understand.

This article provides you with 5 guidelines you can use as a designer to "speak business" — even if it's just to get your foot in the door or land a big project.

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Five More Principles Of Effective Web Design

Web design has significantly improved over the last years. It's more user-friendly and more appealing today — and there is a good reason behind it: over the years we've found out that design with focus on usability and user experience is just more effective. Modern cut-edge design isn't filled with loud happy talk and blinking advertisements. We've learnt to initiate the dialogue with visitors, involve them into discussions and gain their trust by addressing their needs and speaking with them honestly and directly.

Few weeks ago we've presented 10 Principles Of Effective Web Design — a comprehensive article about effective web design and provided you with insights about how users actually think as well as with some examples of how effective designs can be achieved.

This article highlights 5 further principles, heuristics and approaches for effective web design — approaches which, used properly, can lead to more sophisticated design decisions and simplify the process of perceiving presented information.

Please notice that you might be interested in the following usability-related articles:

• 10 Usability Nightmares showcases usability nightmares you should avoid when designing functional and usable web-sites,
• 30 Usability Issues explains important usability issues, terms, rules and principles which are usually forgotten, ignored or misunderstood.

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5 Principles And Ideas Of Setting Type On The Web

There are some basic approaches, guidelines and goals to consider when working with type on the Web. Overall, the medium of Web typography involves readability, accessibility, usability, and brandability. On the Web, these aspects function together to accomplish design's goals of communication and user interaction.

There are many ways to approach Web typography in order to create effective and expressive results. Let's take a closer look at some principles, rules and ideas for approaching Web typography decisions — you can use them as a starting point for learning how to achieve effective type setting on the Web.

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Creating A Successful Online Portfolio

Your portfolio is the showcase of your work, your skills and your potential for your future employers. The more time and effort you dedicate for a usable and nice-looking design, the higher are your chances for getting better account balance in the end of the month. So how can you make sure your portfolio is better than the portfolios of your competitors? How can you point employer's attention to your works?

Creating a successful portfolio is easier than you think. Focus on simplicity, ease of use, hitting your objectives, professionally managing the project, and you'll end up with a successful portfolio. In this article we'll review 5 pitfalls that commonly plague portfolio design. Then we'll cover Portfolio Tips that if carefully considered and well executed will deliver quality results for your portfolio.

There are some common mistakes designers make in their portfolios. Let's review these common pitfalls first to make sure you don't fall into one of these traps.

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