Why You Watch: User-Friendly Website Design Tips

• Menu navigation: Make it effortless for users to find what they need through well-organized, easy-to-understand menus on your website.
• Content placement: Optimize your layout to guide visitors with ease to content that they are looking for.
• User journey: Ensure every interaction is intuitive, and there are not too many steps to find content of relevance.

Learn how to create a website that keeps your audience coming back. A user-friendly website is key to creating a simple and intuitive user experience. Don’t miss this opportunity to elevate your digital presence!

Free Resource: Get a free review of the user experience (UX) of your website by requesting a free marketing and UX analysis from CueCamp today. You will receive a report with recommendations for your website.

About the Speaker: Michel Ann Sharritt

Cue Camp, Founder and Vice President

Michel Sharritt, a leader in playability and usability, has over a decade of experience helping Fortune 100/500 companies like Microsoft, Disney, and Sony create engaging, accessible, and successful products. An expert in game design and user experience, Michel has presented globally and published extensively on usability, accessibility, and design methodologies.

The post User-Friendly Website Design Tips (Webinar) appeared first on CueCamp.

1. Find Your Best-Selling Products

First, conduct a bit of research on your business to find out what sells the best. You may already know this intuitively, but research into actual sales figures and profit margins will be of use. In certain cases, great-selling products or services may not generate income for your business due to slim profit margins. Alternatively, you may wish to prioritize other products / services with less traffic, but higher margins.

Additionally, consult your website and social media analytics to see what actually interests your audience. Particular landing pages or social media posts may receive more traffic than you realize, which is worth noting. You might start by examining a subset of products or services, focusing efforts to generate powerful landing pages that convert. Certain businesses (such as an e-commerce clothing store) may have hundreds of products with a different type of sales cycle. Understanding how and why your customers buy from you will help in the design of good landing pages. For example, an online clothing store with $20 items will have a shorter sales cycle than stores selling $1000+ items.

Finally, to help refine your list, a business SWOT analysis can highlight both successful and problematic areas to change. A SWOT analysis looks at Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats: serving as a lens to examine your business. A brief analysis of these four categories reveals products or services that need attention and a marketing redesign. In addition, opportunities for growth are typically revealed that can help improve your digital marketing efforts.

2. Design Attention-Grabbing Landing Pages

Following the analysis done in step 1, you can focus on designing landing pages that grab the attention of your customers. The SWOT analysis (from step 1) will clarify the unique value proposition of your business. Leveraging what sets you apart from your competitors will dramatically improve your marketing. Drawing the attention of your clients to these unique properties will show why they should buy your product or service. Focusing on what it can do for clients (from their perspective) supplies a compelling reason to make a purchase. Be sure to present a powerful, unique value proposition.

For example, when Apple, Inc. releases a new product, they market it clearly with their users in mind. Rather than listing out technical specs first, Apple makes use of vibrant imagery from actual product usage, showing us what the product can do. For instance, iPhone marketing will headline how it is capable of low-light photography, and show crisp images taken in low-light. These may include someone blowing out birthday candles in the dark or sitting around a campfire at night. These contextual examples help people imagine what owning the new product might be like. Concrete examples show users what they can do themselves with the product.

Other phone manufacturers may try to tout superior hardware in their product (such as the camera’s F-stop or shutter speed; or more powerful hardware specifications). However, Apple creates a compelling reason to buy through examples of use, using storytelling and vibrant imagery. Finally, a clear call-to-action is presented: a button to ‘buy’ the product. This enables users to enjoy the described benefits of ownership, as conveyed by their marketing and storytelling.

3. Create a Powerful Call-to-Action for Lead Generation

A good strategy for designing landing pages is to place yourself in the shoes of a typical customer. Make sure that marketing content speaks to your customer’s goals and desires. Do not communicate from your own perspective. Tell a story or show an example of a client using the product or service to communicate from their perspective. Rather than starting with what you offer, addresses how you meet their wants and needs first. This helps prospective clients imagine themselves using your product or service while raising social capital.

Once you’ve created compelling landing pages for your top products or services, what can you do to raise conversion rates? Analyzing your marketing for clear calls to action will shed light on whether you are compelling your audience to take further action. Frequently, we want customers to make a purchase. However, most business models and sales cycles are not this straightforward. Often, businesses want their prospects to ‘take the next step’ and reach out. This may be requesting users to send a message or call the business. If this is the case, the call-to-action should be as straightforward and simple as possible.

What is the End Goal for Lead Generation?

For each landing page, decide on the best ‘next step’ for your sales cycle and for lead generation. Then, focus on making that process as simple as possible. In other words, analyze the landing page at a macro and micro level to be sure the process is easy. Want users to reach out? If so, a short form at the bottom of the page may be best for lead generation. Asking users to fill out a long form will probably cause many of them to fall off the bandwagon. Too many form fields can cause users to question why so much of their personal information is needed. Or it may simply annoy them by having to spend too much time filling out the form.

To conclude, this step should focus on compelling your prospects to act and making that action as easy as possible. Analyzing the user experience (UX) of the landing page is an excellent way to see what needs improvement. Streamlining your landing page UX and fixing issues will result in better lead generation. Business processes might be considered as well, including how transactions are managed. If users fill out a form, who gets it? Integrating forms with a CRM tool (software for customer-relationship management) could be a smart decision. A good place to start might be with a free UX audit from CueCamp.

4. Analyze & Create Resources of Interest

Take a multi-pronged approach to your digital marketing and create interest by offering resources to potential customers. Using the list generated in step 1, think about any resources that might help your customers engage with your business. For instance, a marketing company might realize that their audience often wants to learn about email marketing basics. In this example, creating a short guide as a downloadable PDF will capture prospects. Asking users to fill out a short form (name, company, email address) will capture leads for future prospecting.

Downloadable guides, e-books, blog posts, interactive workshops, and how-to videos are a handful of resources that you can use to generate interest. These efforts support a digital marketing strategy that makes an effective use of your website as a lead generation machine.

5. Newsletters and Social Media Posts

A monthly newsletter with valuable information or discounts may be a way to stay connected with customers, without overwhelming them with too many messages. A proper balance of touchpoints, with high quality information, is key. Email newsletters can offer resources of interest, upcoming sales, or industry news. In cases, segmenting your email marketing list will allow more personalized, customized email marketing to your audience. For instance, if you own an online clothing store, emails might be personalized based on gender, shopping habits, or other interests. As shown above, emails can be sent to customers that did not complete their purchase with an incentive to do so. An analysis of your marketing strategy and business objectives will clarify the type of resources you can offer for the highest impact.

Similarly, social media can be an effective way to draw people to engage with your brand. Like newsletters, a suitable amount of content for your business will help generate quality conversions. Posting low-quality content daily can overwhelm those following your brand, causing users to unfollow you on social media. Alternatively, posting too infrequently can cause a loss of interest. Analyzing your business objectives and designing a social media strategy to create a buzz for your business will draw prospective clients to your website. Additionally, hashtag research can separate your audience by interest, demographics, and location: enabling you to deliver personalized content to their social media feed.

6. Use Paid Ads & SEO for Lead Generation

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is concerned with optimizing landing pages (and websites) to rank highly on Google search. According to Google, the first five organic search results capture over 67% of all clicks. If your website ranks below the first page or search results, SEO can help improve your search rank to capture more traffic, which leads to more sales. Further, SEO drives 1000%+ more traffic than organic social media, according to BrightEdge. Optimizing your website for keywords of high relevancy has a drastic impact on the traffic driven to your business website from search engines like Google.

The steps outlined above support an overall content marketing strategy, which aims to drive quality traffic to your website and drive business growth. Besides organic search rank, you can place ads on Google to get to the top of search results. Likewise, social media ads on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn will generate prospects and drive traffic to your website. Enabling retargeting / remarketing on your paid ads will push ads to users that previously interacted with your brand. Retargeting users is based on their analytics data. These users are more likely to convert based on their earlier interest in your brand.

Summary

Digital marketing efforts are driven by both quantity and quality. Focusing on both the quality (your website / landing page user-experience) and quantity of leads (your inbound marketing efforts) will generate success. To make your website a lead generation machine, the six steps described in this article will help you reach that goal.

Incorporating a multi-pronged marketing approach across social media, search engines, and paid ads will drive new prospects to your website. What happens once they reach your landing page is up to you, and the user experience provided on your website. For a user experience analysis of your website, you can request a free audit from CueCamp.

Depending on your business, a range of marketing touch points are needed before a prospect becomes a qualified sales lead. When possible, personalized content of high relevancy is more likely to convert a prospect. High-quality content, delivered on a regular cadence, results in a website that will engage your prospects. Crafting a content marketing strategy to achieve this goal will turn your website into a lead generation machine.

Written by: Matt Sharritt, Ph.D., Founder, CueCamp

The post 6 Easy Steps That Will Make Your Website a Lead Generation Machine appeared first on CueCamp.

A considerable amount of that success derives from the ongoing effort of Airbnb’s design team to create a user experience for its booking platform which surpasses that of other similar services.

Airbnb’s Landing Page design (above the fold) as I am typing this

As a designer, I was always astonished of how Airbnb approaches their product design challenges and delivers a product that converts, for years now. So in this article, I’ll try to identify what makes their landing page design different and why it is successful.

Visual Clarity and Minimalism

I strive for two things in design: simplicity and clarity. Great design is born of those things.” — Lindon Leader

Using colour contrast and shadows, the user interface is basically structured as two layers: The card, which contains the explanatory text and the Call-to-Action (CTA) button, forms the upper layer, while the rest of the page is perceived as the background layer.

Perceived layers of user interface

With little to no cognitive effort, users can identify the upper layer (card) as the area with which they can interact. The page as a whole does not overload the users with information, hence framing a clear interaction path for users who land on it.

Reducing the cognitive load the user needs for achieving his goals is of the utmost importance when designing for humans.

Let’s see how it compares to Booking’s landing page design, in terms of visual clarity, by using predictive technology:

Measuring optical clarity of the landing pages (above the fold) for Booking.com and Airbnb via VisualEyes plugin

More clarity contributes to easier and driven scanning of information. Two metrics that can determine how an interface is efficiently designed for human interaction is Visual Complexity and Prototypicality. The conjunction of those two metrics affects the aesthetics processing of the user significantly and, thus, defines how he will interact with the interface.

More complexity requires more cognitive load. More cognitive load means less user engagement and, sequentially, less conversion and profitability.

Key Takeaway:

Airbnb has set an interaction focal point; therefore users have already determined where they will have to “lay their eyes” in order to forage information.

The Double Z-Pattern

The Z-Pattern (for people that read from left to right)

Humans have a natural reading pattern, which is applied when visual stimuli are present. Following the natural flow of eye-scanning a layout, the Z-Pattern complements better single-purpose webpages that contain only one CTA.

This specific pattern “traces” eye movement of the users, thus allowing for strategic placement of visual elements.

So, Airbnb used the Z-Pattern.

Twice.

Airbnb is setting focal points for their users, using the Z-Pattern

By utilising this layout, Airbnb’s designers achieved to establish a concise visual hierarchy. Areas of interest that convey some kind of message are pinpointed and brought up to the user’s attention. Below you can view how Airbnb’s Z-layout translates into attention heatmaps:

Attention Heatmaps generated in Figma, using the VisualEyes plugin.

Attention heatmaps suggest that the selected areas are drawing the most of the user’s attention in this particular instance.

As it is shown on the right image, the Area of Interest, in which the Card is placed, stands out three times more than the focal point of the hero image, while the CTA Button on the bottom right of the white card is almost three times more prominent than the card itself.

Key Takeaway

Airbnb augments, even more, the pre-established interaction path, by driving most of the attention to the single action -clicking the button- needed in order to “dive deeper” into their product.

Read more on the Z-Pattern here.

Priming

“Priming is a technique whereby exposure to one stimulus influences a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention.”

In other words, priming takes place when taking one’s memories or mental associations and using them to influence his future behaviour towards an upcoming matter.

The first image (Hero) someone views when interacting with Airbnb’s website

Almost all websites/products apply the “priming” effect to their audience in some way. In our case, the Airbnb landing page design, visitors are subject to associative priming with the use of imagery. The design team is doing an excellent job in finding images that fit the company’s target group perfectly, so they can ensure that the desired emotions will be triggered.

Different target audiences, different hero images.

Which words pop in your mind when viewing the house on the left image? Maybe something like soothing, peaceful, refreshing, unique, care-free or even vacation-material?

Key Takeaway:

By “priming” their target audience, Airbnb’s designers use carefully-picked images to spark the emotions that could be associated with the subsequent expected experience: Staying in an awesome place for their vacation.

Read more on Priming from NN/g here.

Simple, strong and effective language

The text serves two purposes:

1. Validate the reason a user visited the website in the first place — “I’m where I was supposed to.”
2. Set a user goal — “Now I should search for places I want to visit.”

Using simple and clear language when communicating messages is essential in web design, as it establishes that your audience will not misinterpret your offering. Remember that communication is a “two-way street”:

“How well we communicate is determined not by how well we say things, but how well we are understood.” — Andrew Grove

Airbnb avoids unnecessary jargon, while choosing a set of words that their target audience will comfortably understand.

Key Takeaway:

Text content was carefully selected to disclose a specific message and the value of the product as quickly as possible, with few words in the play. All that without endangering that their audience will not understand the offering.

Conclusion

Insightful design is human-oriented and drives human actions and emotions. Airbnb’s design team found a very subtle -almost transparent- way to direct users’ actions on their website. The framing of the experience was so delicately designed that it accelerates interaction while keeping the primary user goal in mind.

Thanks for tuning in!

Written by: Thanos Dimitriou (via Medium)
Posted by: CueCamp

The post How Airbnb drives users’ actions with their landing page design — a UX analysis appeared first on CueCamp.

CueCamp has put a list together of the top five items a powerful homepage design should have in order to retain users.

#1 Include Sharp Imagery

The images that you use on your homepage should be crisp, clear, and showcase your company in a way that embodies your brand’s vision. The images should inspire your website visitors to learn more about your company. One should remember that a website is a highly visual experience. People react to graphics and visuals differently than they do to words.

TIP: It’s also important to avoid using obvious stock photos. While sometimes useful, generic images are a dead give away that your company didn’t spend time on design.

#2 Choosing Fonts

You might not realize it, but the font you choose for your homepage has a psychological effect on your visitors and greatly influences how they feel towards your brand. Understanding your product or service is key to figuring out what font to choose for your website. Always choose a font that is simple, easy to read, and reflects the personality of your business culture.

TIP: Avoid using too many different fonts on your homepage; you want the homepage to have a feel of cohesion and uniformity.

#3 Use of Color

In the same way that your fonts have a psychological effect on your users, your color scheme affects how users interpret and engage with your website. Not only can a poor choice of color send users away, it affects how you communicate your brand to the public. Incorporating too many colors will confuse your branding, while the wrong colors will make the wrong impression.

TIP: Always choose colors for your website that are welcoming and true to your brand. It is always best to start with the colors that are used within your company logo. It helps to keep branding consistent throughout the website.

#4 Keep it Simple

Whenever our team designs a homepage we always look at the design like we are the user coming to the website for the first time. What impression do you want to give? What items need to be front and center?

The mistake that many designers make is adding tons of widgets, calls-to-action, links and other clutter that can distract or overwhelm the user. Ultimately the user is going to get confused and leave the website.

Here are a few design tips for keeping your homepage simple:

• Use easy-to-read text
• Provide plenty of white space
• Clearly label the different sections of your website (don’t make users hunt for info)
• Do not clutter up your homepage with ads, links, calls-to-action, or pop-up chat boxes

#5 Establish Your Identity

You want your website to make a statement about what your company is all about. This is probably the #1 most important part of your homepage design. Too many times, your homepage is designed with too many goals in mind. Creating a unique design, including an interesting logo and memorable look for your homepage, is important in retaining users and encouraging them to return to your site in the future.

Your homepage should:

• Introduce your company to your website’s visitors
• Provide them with clear paths to other pages on your site
• Give them a strong sense of your company’s brand and identity

Your homepage design is undoubtedly an important part of both your website and your company’s success. From immediately appealing to your visitors, to providing them with a user-friendly navigation experience, your homepage is the portal through which they can discover your company and ultimately, your brand.

We hope that this article helped to inspire your company to re-examine your company homepage. In the meantime, if you would like your website reviewed, please visit CueCamp and request your free marketing analysis video. You will receive a 5-10 minute video that analyzes the usability and marketing effectiveness of your website, delivered within 48 hours.

#cuecamptips

Written by: Michel Sharritt
Posted by: CueCamp

The post How to Create a Powerful Homepage for Your Website appeared first on CueCamp.

You need more than top rankings on Google. People have to be able to navigate to the product they want and trust you enough to buy. Your website’s user experience (UX) should focus on building your visitor’s confidence by helping them complete their goals. 

Home Page UX Tips That Build Trust On A Quick Glance

Your home page gets the most traffic. Make it obvious that you sell products. Think of your home page as the window to your store. Think Macy’s on Magnificent Mile. Dress your home page with your best products and images. One thing you never see at Macy’s is different dresses swooping by one by one in the window. I’m talking about sliders here. If you have to use them, make sure they are user friendly.

Hero Area Best Practices

Your hero area (also called featured area) is the most prominent real-estate on your home page. You only have 50 milliseconds to leave a good impression, here is how to make it count.

Hero Area Do’s

1. Use simple, uncluttered design. Use as few words as possible.
2. Eliminate everything that does not make an impact. For example, your recent blog posts.
3. Use visual queues like color or arrows to focus attention on a single call to action.
4. Make it easy for people to self identify. Do you sell pricy jackets for women?

Hero Area Dont’s

1. Decorate. Swirls, sparkles, and other meaningless symbols add to the cognitive load and distract your customers.
2. Have outdated content like promotions from last week or even last month. You will instantly lose credibility.
3. Clutter the area with too many messages or promotions.
4. Have an automatically advancing slider or carousel.
5. Emphasize a product that is not representative of your overall mix.

Home Page Navigation

When people visit your site, you want to help them find what they came for. According to conversion expert, Tim Ash, the main focus of your home page is to provide category level navigation. Follow these pointers to help visitors find what they are looking for.

Home Page Navigation Do’s

1. Give visitors a “30,000 foot view” of what your site sells so they can drill down to specific categories.
2. Add your most used tools or buying guides.
3. Provide links to return policy, customer service, shipping and privacy pages.

Home Page Navigation Dont’s

1. Assume you know what people are looking for.
2. Jam every category and subcategory on your home page.
3. Push product level promotions. If you only have a few products, you can ignore this.
4. Use generic stock photos. This screams inauthenticity.

Solid Ecommerce User Experience Boils Down To Simple Primary Navigation

Navigation is critical when you have a lot of categories, variable products or products with many options. Nothing is more frustrating than a cumbersome menu. The quicker people can find what they want, the quicker you can move them through to the checkout process.

The purpose of a navigation menu is to get people where they want to go. Here is a breakdown of what you should address:

Primary Navigation Menu Do’s

1. Limit top menu to 7 choices.
2. Use a secondary navigation at the top right for items like “Contact Us”
3. Use a multi column menu that organizes categories and sub categories.
4. Show high quality images of your product.
5. Make your navigation menu prominent with contrasting colors.
6. Cross reference products into multiple categories. Someone looking for a USB drive may look under Laptop, Accessories, or Computers.

Primary Navigation Menu Dont’s

1. Have a single drop down that takes up a long column.
2. Show link empty category pages to main nav.
3. Over-classify products. If there is only one product in a (sub)category, remove the category and reclassify the product.
4. Don’t use vague options like “more.”

Cart Menus

A cart menu is likely the last button a user will click before taking out the credit card. Don’t over look this tiny icon.

Cart Menu Do’s

1. Show total price and number of items in cart.
2. Link to the cart page where they can see details of their contents

Cart Menu Dont’s

1. Substitute a “mini cart” for a full cart. Your ecommerce site, needs a cart page, not just a cart widget.
2. Link directly to a checkout page that doesn’t show every detail of the products in the cart.

Search

Many users skip the navigation menu altogether and rely on search/faceted search to drill down further. Faceted search can get complicated quickly. From a development and cost perspective, but also a user perspective.  Follow these guidelines to keep things simple and helpful.

Search Do’s

1. Use an open text field box at the top of every page.
2. Use faceted search when there are over 20 products within a category.
3. Filter by price, color, size are basic faceted search options.

Search Dont’s

1. Use filler text on search input. Leave it blank, or say “Search.”
2. Use subjective filtering options such as “heavy-duty” or “light-duty.”

Ecommerce UX Tips For Product Pages

Full product details are critical. For SEO and for user experience. Internal links boost SEO and help the user navigate back to the product listings page. A user friendly layout will have essential product information above the fold.

Product pages are the meat of your site, they need to convert. If  your customer has to select an option before adding to cart, display an error message when the “Add to Cart” button is clicked.

Product Page Content Layering

Your product page can quickly suffer from information overload. You want the right level of product information for people that already know what they want to buy, but also cater to shoppers that need every last product detail. By layering your information, you can cater to both types of buyers.

Product Page Content Layering Do’s

1. Provide a short product summary at the top of the page or next to the photo.
2. Add a border or shaded background to your “action area” – where people select options and click your button.
3. Present the ordering options near the top in the action area
4. Have breadcrumbs on the product pages.
5. Put product details, reviews, data, etc. below the product image and CTA area.

Product Page Content Layering Dont’s

1. Put a large block of copy near or above the CTA button.
2. Hide your add to cart button until someone makes a selection.
3. Make availability information an extra click away.
4. Have a subtle change when someone clicks your add to cart button. People will miss your “Successfully added” message.

A common mistake with many WordPress ecommerce themes was hidden “Add To Cart” buttons.

Product Page Images

Large photos and zoom is about the closest your buyer can get without physically touching the product. Fuzzy, poor quality images make the products look poor quality too. Check out this case study, where bigger, better product images increased conversions by over 300%.

Product Page Images Do’s

1. Use large, high res photos on a white background.
2. Use zoom features to let users see details for themselves.
3. Allow users to scroll to back and forth between images.
4. Provide clear instructions that additional images or zoom features are enabled.

Product Page Images Dont’s

1. Show “lifestyle” images or your product. Show just the product.
2. Don’t muddy up your photos with logos, watermarks or backgrounds.
3. Force an image pop-up to see more details or additional photos.

Build Trust With Buyer Friendly Checkout Process

Your checkout process needs to be simple, logical and distraction free. Don’t complicate it. Macy’s cart page hits many of the main points. The cart shows product details with images, pricing, tax and links back to individual product pages.

Cart Page

The first page in your checkout process is your cart page. You never want to send a user past this page. This page reaffirms what they have purchased in detail. This helps them build confidence and trust in your store.

Cart Page Do’s

1. Confirm everything. Product, size, color, quantity, availability, ship date, estimated delivery.
2. Allow users to navigate directly back to products in their cart.
3. Make it easy to change quantity or delete products. Let users change qty to 0 to remove products or click a “remove” button.
4. Show a picture of the product, in the color it was ordered in. If your customer orders a black jacket and sees a blue one at checkout, they lose confidence.
5. Make the continue checkout button prominent, but allow people to continue shopping.
6. Show the total out the door price.

Cart Page Presentation Dont’s

1. Prematurely ask for a credit card or email address. Let people confirm what they are buying.
2. Don’t use an “Update” button to remove products.

Checkout Page

After buyers feel confident that they are ordering the right product from the right company (yours), it is time to get the party started.

Once users start the checkout process, they want to complete the purchase as quick as possible. Help them help you. Remove distractions and make the process as easy as possible. Don’t make them re-enter their address or guess how to complete the form.

Checkout Page Do’s

1. Ask for only the minimal required information.
2. Replace the main navigation with a “contact” navigation.
3. Keep your checkout process short and your steps clear and logical.
4. Show progress during the checkout process.

Checkout Page Dont’s

1. Present new information or choices.
2. Force people to “join” or “become a member.”
3. Make people re-enter the same information twice.
4. Let users use billing address as shipping address with a single click.

How Does Your Site Stack Up?

You don’t have to have a million dollars to create a positive user experience. Nail these basics and you will get Google and customers to love your site and buy from you.

Interested in learning more about mobile shopping guidelines? Join our webinar on February 10, on “Mobile Shopping: Key Features Users Want” hosted by Michel Sharritt, VP of CueCamp and Situated Research.

Written by: Darren Dematas, Intertwine
Posted by: CueCamp

The post User Experience Tips: How to Seduce Ecommerce Visitors to Buy appeared first on CueCamp.

Inbound Marketing begins with establishing social media profiles on various platforms that will work for your type of business – in order to start engagement with potential customers.

What happens after you make contact with a new potential customer? Typically your social media initiatives will help drive new traffic to your website. All of the traffic that you drum up from your social media platforms will hopefully drive people to learn more about your company, offerings, and services.

Once you have established traffic to your site you can then start making direct contact with your potential customers and then create a sale.

A useful way to use the sales funnel concept is to figure out which social media platform sites will work best for your type of business. As a general guideline for our clients, we start out with a Facebook company fan page. Facebook is a powerful tool to increase visibility in your target market and engage in a relationship with your customers. With over 1.23 billion active users, Facebook is a great place to begin.

There are many different ways to start engaging potential customers by using Facebook. Our team at CueCamp helps businesses to figure out what to post, and when to post, in order to help attract new customers. Every business is different, which is why we tailor every marketing plan to fit clients’ specific needs. A solid Facebook company fan page is an excellent way to begin.

CueCamp is now offering free custom Facebook fan pages. Our marketing team will help generate more potential customers talking about your business with a custom designed and professionally marketed Facebook page. Our social media experts do it all for you by creating a page that best represents your business and its offerings, and then builds your fan base to get the conversation going.

If you don’t have a Facebook fan page or are not happy with what you have now, our team will build a page that gets you a following. Next, we will professionally market your new Facebook page to get you likes, targeting people who will be interested in your business. Finally, we will keep these new fans interested and talking about your business by frequently updating your content and creating new marketing campaigns.

If you are interested in a free custom Facebook fan page, contact us.

How can you retain traffic and turn those visitors into paying customers? Check back next week to learn about the next step in the sales funnel: your website.

Written / posted by: CueCamp

The post Inbound Marketing with Social Media appeared first on CueCamp.

When we review main menu navigation on websites, the first thing we examine is the menu location. Users want to see the main menu navigation at the top of the page versus the page footer as observed on the Standard Market website. Why? Users are used to seeing the menu navigation on most websites at the top of the page. Additionally, users do not want to have to scroll through a site to find what they are looking for, or to start a search query.

The next thing we look at is labeling. We asked users to find out what beer was on tap at the Naperville Standard Market location. Users first looked at the top of the site to find the main menu navigation, and when they didn’t find it, they scrolled down. Many users said they will leave a website and give up on their search when navigation is missing, or they simply find the contact information and give them a call to ask their question.

Next our users were confused with the labeling of the menu options that they found. Under DEPARTMENTS they found a label named Beer. But then under the label THE CUBE, they found wine/beer/cheese bar. This is an example of poor labeling, as ‘Beer’ is located under two different menus. This confuses users and makes them unsure of what to click on to find the information they want. It also makes the search process longer and more difficult for the user.

It took users several minutes to navigate through the website to find the information they wanted, which caused frustration, confusion, and lowered the likelihood that they would return to the site in the future.

CueCamp helps clients alleviate these kind of frustrations users by carefully organizing web content and creating clear, distinct labels for good website navigation. CueCamp offers a free usability report that reviews 20 different areas of usability in your website, including menu navigation. The report is straightforward and easy to follow, and includes a one-on-one review to ensure any follow-up questions are fully answered.

To request your free usability report, visit www.cuecamp.com and simply fill out the short form. You will have your report within 48 hours. If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to leave them in the comments below.

Written / Posted by: CueCamp

The post Is Your Website Navigation Easy to Use? appeared first on CueCamp.

The scarcity principle is a well-documented social-psychology phenomenon that causes people to assign high value to things they perceive as being less available. In real life, Black Friday is a good example of scarcity: a sale that occurs on only one day of the year (the day after Thanksgiving in the United States) and consists of a limited number of products offered at discounted prices. In the case of Black Friday, the mobs of eager customers are most often a good thing for retailers…until the mob turns violent.

Scarcity Interface Pattern Examples

Limited Time and Quantity

Limited Inclusion

Limited Information

Background of the Scarcity Principle

The Scarcity Principle is 1 of 6 influencing principles coined by Dr. Robert Cialdini, a professor at Arizona State University famous for his 1984 book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.” Cialdini’s book is a study of the psychology of compliance. As a psychology professor, he and his students conducted numerous research studies to identify and prove the 6 influencing principles discussed in his book.

Scarcity is largely effective because of a cognitive bias known as loss aversion, first demonstrated in research conducted by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Kahneman and Tversky determined that people put more subjective value on loss than on gain and thus strongly prefer to avoid losses instead of acquiring gains. In other words, the pain of losing $100 is perceived as bigger (in fact, twice as big according to Kahneman and Tversky) than the satisfaction of gaining $100.

The strong tendency to avoid losses explains why scarcity is so effective: we feel that if we don’t act upon the scarce product or information, we lose it. For example, if a person is shopping for airline tickets and finds a flight that meets her criteria, but the description indicates this is the last ticket at that price, the person might buy the ticket for fear of losing out even if she wasn’t quite ready to book yet. (The agony of losing the current $100 discount will only be overcome if the user could save $200 on some future deal, and that’s sufficiently unlikely to happen that many users prefer to act to lock in the savings.)

Scarcity is a particularly effective persuasion tool because what, specifically, is scarce can take several forms: quantity, time, or information. Knishinsky ran an experiment that proved the additive effects of these factors upon persuasion. In his study, salesmen were able to double order sizes when they told wholesale beef buyers that the supply would be scarce in upcoming months. The most incredible finding of this study is that they were able to increase order sizes 6 times when they altered their pitch to not only indicate scarcity of supply, but that this information was a secret and only being divulged to the buyer. The double-scarcity pitch (low supply, secret information) was 3 times more compelling than the single-scarcity pitch (low supply)!

When to Use the Technique on the Web

Expediting Desirable Actions: If you find that most people who convert on your site visit your site more times than you think should be necessary before converting, you might try using scarcity to reduce that time lag

Increasing Perceived Value: Indicating that an item has low availability or using photographs that show limited quantity can impact end-users valuation of the object. For example, in fine dining, small portions on large plates can imply that the ingredients are rare and, therefore, should be more expensive.

Testing the Scarcity Principle

The most significant risk with using scarcity is decreased trust and credibility. If your users suspect that the presented scarcity isn’t real, they could go elsewhere. That’s why it’s important to test scarcity as a motivational device before fully embracing it. Here are some questions that you should aim to answer, together with techniques that you can use to do so:

Conclusion

Scarcity, used in moderation and with true information, can encourage users to move more swiftly toward converting on your site. However, the technique has been adopted by so many sites, that its impact may be decreasing. Therefore, we do encourage design teams to test pages and flows with and without scarcity-based elements to determine how the technique impacts conversions, perceptions, and long-term business goals.

References

Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: Science and Practice. Pearson Education Inc., 2009.

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. Loss Aversion in Riskless Choice: A Reference-Dependent Model. The Quarterly Journal of Economics. Vol. 106, No. 4 (Nov., 1991), pp. 1039-1061.

Knishinsky, A. The effects of scarcity of material and exclusivity of information on industrial buyer perceived risk in provoking a purchase decision. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Arizona State University, Tempe, 1982.

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2011.

Written by: Jennifer Cardello, Nielsen-Norman Group
Posted by: CueCamp

The post Scarcity Principle: Making Users Click RIGHT NOW or Lose Out appeared first on CueCamp.

So it was really great to read Paul Olyslager’s recent post on the “9 Common misconceptions about users.”  One or two of them are common knowledge, but they are all spot on.  I want to share a few of the really good ones and perhaps add a few cents of value of my own.

His first one is perhaps the best.  Users want choices.  One of the primary motivations that drive human behavior is the need for perceived autonomy (see my gamification posts for more on that). We crave feeling in control of our lives and our decisions. Having options is a salient signal to ourselves that we are in control.  In fact a recent TED talk by Alex Wissner-Gross makes the (a little too far reaching) claim that the best measure of intelligence is the ability to keep your options open.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there.  Designers make a huge mistake by taking this as a maxim and giving users tons of choices.  This leads to many negative outcomes.  Because users also hate cognitive load.  If making a decision among all of these options feels like a lot of work we absolutely hate it.  That is not perceived autonomy, that is perceived helplessness.  Sheena Iyengar (about whom I have blogged before) calls this choice paralysis.

There is also the strong likelihood of loss aversion.  While making decisions we worry that we might make the wrong decision.  And we HATE that because it reduces perceived competence (another one of those fundamental motivations).  Then after decisions we are susceptible to post-decision regret, also known as buyer’s remorse.  The only thing worse than being forced into an option is being forced to live with that outcome afterwards, always wondering (or knowing for sure) that another option would have been better.  Some of us have this more than others (who Barry Schwartz calls “maximizers” in the fantastic book (and TEDtalk of the same name) the Paradox of Choice), but most of us have it to some extent.

And all of this just in his first misconception.  Thanks for the great post Paul.

Written by: Marc Resnick, Human Factors
Posted by: CueCamp

The post Users Like Options, But Hate Making Decisions appeared first on CueCamp.

Moreover, “highly prototypical” sites – those with layouts commonly associated with sites of it’s category – with simple visual design were rated as the most beautiful across the board.

In other words, the study found the simpler the design, the better.

But why?

In this article, we’ll examine why things like cognitive fluency and visual information processing theory can play a critical role in simplifying your web design & how a simpler design could lead to more conversions.

We’ll also look at a few case studies of sites that simplified their design, and how it improved their conversion rate, as well as give a few pointers to simplify your own design.

What is a Prototypical Website?

If I said “furniture” what image pops up in your mind?  If you’re like 95% of people, you think of a chair. If I ask what color represents “boy” you think “blue”, girl = pink, car = sedan, bird = robin, etc.

Prototypicality is the basic mental image your brain creates to categorize everything you interact with. From furniture to websites, your brain has created a template for how things should look and feel.

Online, prototypicality breaks down into smaller categories. You have a different, but specific mental image for social networks, e-commerce sites, and blogs – and if any of those particular websites are missing something from your mental image,  you reject the site on conscious and subconscious levels.

If I said “Online clothing store for trendy 20-somethings” you might envision something like this:

image credit

This follows the “online clothing store” prototype so closely, that it shares many attributes with the wireframe for an online clothing store that sells hip-hop clothing.

image credit

Neither  lacks originality, and it’s unlikely they “stole” from each other. Instead they’re playing into what your basic expectations are of what an e-commerce site should be.

What do you Mean By Cognitive Fluency?

The basic idea behind cognitive fluency is that the brain prefers to think about things that are easy to think about.

That’s why you prefer visiting sites where you instinctively know where everything is at, and you know what actions you’re supposed to take.

“Fluency guides our thinking in situations where we have no idea that it is at work, and it affects us in any situation where we weigh information.” – Uxmatters.com

Cognitive fluency is an stems from another area of behavior known as The Mere Exposure Effect, which basically states that the more times you’re exposed to a stimulus, the more you prefer it.

image source

Again, the rules are the same online.

It’s “familiar” for blogs to have opt-ins on the right sidebar, or e-commerce sites to feature a large hi-resolution image with an attention grabbing headline & the company logo on the top left hand side of the screen.

If your visitors are conditioned to certain characteristics being the standard for a particular category of site, deviating from that could subconsciously put you in the “less beautiful” category.

Here are a handful of e-commerce sites. See if you notice any similarities.

Warning: Whatever you do, for the love of GOD, don’t take what I’m saying as “do what everyone else is doing.”  If you’re not careful, you could really hurt yourself that way.

It’s important to know what design choices are prototypical for a site in your category, but it’s more important to find evidence that supports those design choices resulting in some sort of lift.

A lot of designers make bad choices. Without doing the research, you could make them too.  For example, many e-commerce sites use automatic image sliders to display products, but study after study shows that automatic sliders tank conversions.

What Happens When You Meet Basic Expectations? – A Case Study

In the three images above, everything you’d expect from an ecommerce site is exactly where it’s supposed to be. Even if you’ve never been to the site, there’s inherent “credibility” to the design.

With a high level of fluency, a site will feel familiar enough that visitors don’t need spend mental effort scrutinizing and can instead focus on why they’re on your site in the first place.

When the experience is dis-fluent however, you feel it immediately. Take online tie retailer, Skinnyties.com, who didn’t really look like an e-commerce site until their redesign in October 2012.

Before:

After:

A few key changes that lead to huge results:

• Follows prototypical e-commerce layout themes
• Much more “open” with whitespace.
• Images feature a single product with high-resolution pictures & contrasting colors.

Check out the full case study on this particular redesign, as it shows what is truly possible when updating a site to “fit in” with current prototypical standards.

These are the results of the redesign are staggering for only 2.5 weeks after the launch:

The redesign itself, while pretty, isn’t doing anything groundbreaking. It plays exactly into the expectations of what a modern online clothing retailer should be. It’s “open”, responsive, and has a consistent design language across all of the product pages.

But when contrasted with the old site, it’s very clear that the lack of these common elements were preventing buyers from making purchases on the site.

What Visual Information Processing Has To Do With Site Complexity

In this joint study by Harvard, University of Michigan, and University of Colorado, researchers found strong mathematical correlations for “aesthetically pleasing” between different demographics – For example, participants with PhD’s did not like high colorful websites – but there were no guidelines that emerged for universal appeal.

The only thing that was universal was that the more visually complex a website was, the lower it’s visual appeal.

(Sidebar: if you wish to take the test, you can do it here)

Why Simple is Scientifically Easier To Process

The reason less “visually complex” websites are considered more beautiful is partly because low complexity websites don’t require the eyes and brain to physically work as hard to decode, store and process the information.

Watch this quick video about how the eye sends information to the brain for that to make more sense.

Basically, your retina converts visual information from the real world into electrical impulses. Those impulses are then routed through the appropriate photoreceptor cells to transmit the color and light information to the brain.

The more color and light variations on the page (visual complexity) the more work the eye has to do to send information to the brain.

“…the eye receives visual information and codes information into electric neural activity which is fed back to the brain where it is “stored” and “coded”. This information can be used by other parts of the brain relating to mental activities such as memory, perception and attention.” – Simplypsychology.org

Every Element Communicates Subtle Information

image source

This is why it’s important when designing a website to remember every element –typeography, logo, and color selection – communicates subtle information about the brand.

When these elements don’t do their job, the webmaster often compensates by adding unnecessary copy and/or images, thus adding to the visual complexity of the website, and detracting from the overall aesthetic.

Optimizing a page for visual information processing – specifically simplifying information’s journey from eye to brain – is about communicating as much as you can in as few elements as possible.

While that’s an article all on it’s own, consider MailChimp’s logo redesign as food for thought.

When they decided make the brand grow up, they didn’t add the usual “we’ve been doing email since 2001, 3 million people trust us, here’s why we’re awesome, blah blah blah”

Instead, they tightened up the writing, simplified the website – the top headline simply reads “Send Better Email” – and added an even simpler explainer animation of the core product.

Even though this was part of a bigger growth strategy, the results are still impressive, over a million new users have been added since June, when the new logo was first debuted.

 ”Working Memory” & The Holy Grail of Conversion

What all this simplicity is leading to is what happens once visual information finds it’s way to the brain.

According to the famous research of psychologist George A Miller of Princeton, the average adult brain is able to store between 5-9 “chunks” of information within in the short term, working memory.

Working memory is the part of your brain that temporarily stores and processes information in the course of a few seconds. It’s what allows you to focus attention, resist distractions, and most importantly, guides your decision making.

image source

Everything we’ve been talking about up to this point is to reduce the amount of “noise” that makes it’s way into the working memory.

On a “low complexity, highly prototypical website”, the 5-9 “chunks”  the working memory tries to process are things like guarantees, product descriptions, prices or offers. When the working memory can stay focused on fixing the problem, it will try and solve the problem as quickly as possible.

Deviation Causes Disengagement

When you deviate from a person’s  expectations – the price was higher than expected, the color scheme and symmetry were off, the site didn’t load fast enough, the photos weren’t high enough resolution – the working memory processes those disfluent “chunks” instead of what matters.

That’s because the working memory calls the long term memory to use what it already knows to perform the task. When the long term memory can’t aid in processing the information, flow is broken & the working memory disengages and moves on.

That’s why it’s vital you understand your visitor’s level of exposure – not just for sites in your category, but to websites in general -If you want to “hack” their working memory with design.

The blogs they read, the sites they shop on, their browser, age, gender & physical location, all hint at how  will impact their level of familiarity on first impression.

Conclusion

If the visitor can’t rely on their previous experience, they’re not thinking about how innovative your site is. They’re just left wondering why things aren’t where it’s “supposed to be.” Not the best frame of mind if you want them to buy stuff.

Bonus: 7 Things To Do When Planning A Simpler Site.

1. Research your audience and the sites they visit the most. Look for case studies on design changes from said sites & how those resulted in improvement is key areas.
2. Create a mashup of all those “working” components for your own site.
3. Obey the rules of cognitive fluency when you lay out your design. Put things where your visitors have grown accustomed to finding them.
4. Rely on your own colors, logo, and typeface to communicate clearly and subtly. Don’t add copy and/or images unless it communicates something your visitor actually cares about.
5. Keep it as simple as possible – one large image vs a bunch of little ones, one column, instead of three – utilize as much white space as possible.
6. Double check to make sure your site fits the public expectation in pricing, aesthetics, speed, etc.
7. Remember that “prototypical” doesn’t mean that every aspect of your site should fit that mold.

Don’t think of your site as some unique snowflake piece of art. Instead make it a composite of all the best stuff.

Your visitors will love you for it.

Written by: Tommy Walker, ConversionXL
Posted by: CueCamp

The post Why “Simple” Websites Are Scientifically Better appeared first on CueCamp.