Tag: Ways

16 Oct

4 Ways To Creatively Use Icons In Your Mobile Apps

by TBSCategories: News

There’s nothing novel about using icons within mobile apps. From the home screen icon to the navigation menu, they’re pretty much a standard part of the apps that designers build.

They come with big benefits too:

  • Minimized distractions,
  • More attractive UIs,
  • Empowerment of users to easily engage with the app,
  • Elimination of language barriers,
  • Improvement of brand recognizability.

But are we using icons as best as we can or are there ways to improve the mobile UX even further with iconography? Today, I want to look at a number of ways you can creatively add icons or icon-like elements to your apps and bring more life (and engagement) to them in the process.

Making The Most Out Of Icons

Icons are super useful design elements for mobile interfaces. While we do have to be careful with icons (like making sure navigational icons are always paired with text as well as not using so many that the interface becomes like a puzzle to be solved), there are some additional use cases I want you to consider:

1. Show Hints Of Branded Icons Throughout The App

Users will first get a glimpse of an app’s branded logo icon from the app store. Once installed, this icon will become a persistent presence on the user’s smart device, which will foster greater awareness of the app.

What I’ve noticed with many apps, though, is that the brand icon doesn’t often appear past that point. In some cases, it makes total sense. An app isn’t like a website that needs that steady logo anchor so users can always quickly get “Home”. But…

I can’t help but feel like small branded elements throughout could add a unique touch to the experience. They wouldn’t detract from the experience. Instead, they’d show up in bite-sized chunks that add something extra to the experience.

One example I really like is the CheapOair app. This is the logo that appears when a user first opens it. It’s the same one that appears at the top of the corresponding website:

Now, if you were to look at the app store page for CheapOair or how it appears on a user’s home screen, you’d see that the full logo isn’t used. Instead, users see the luggage-shaped “O” icon:

It’s unique. It’s memorable. And it works well in tiny spaces, like as the desktop favicon or on smaller mobile screens.

Now, for an app like CheapOair that aggregates travel listings from different airlines, hotels, car rental agencies and so on, it’s only natural to expect some lag time as users move through the app. And while the designers could’ve used a more traditional loading icon (like the spinning wheel or progress bar), it uses its branded icon instead:

The stamps are in the shape of a moon. It’s not officially part of Hotels.com’s branding, but it’s a very recognizable icon for its rewards members.

Because of this recognizability, its placement within hotel search results pages is helpful as it allows users to quickly scroll through and see which hotels they can earn another stamp with:

There are many different factors that users consider when booking a hotel room, including price, distance, average user rating and so on. But rather than bog down the main listing with this extra detail that’s only relevant to rewards members, the use of the icon and its placement in the bottom-left corner of the image for eligible hotels is a good choice.

So, even if you don’t feel like using the actual brand logo within the app (or find no reason to), this example proves that there are other ways to use brand-adjacent iconography to improve the experience.

2. Use Icons To Encourage More Gestures And Actions

One of the keys to retaining more app users is to give them a reason to regularly engage with it. And if your users can’t remember which gestures to use when they’re inside the app or they find the act of interacting with it to be boring, that may be enough reason for them to go looking for apps that do a better job of capturing their attention.

Even if your users don’t have any problem with how the engaging elements are presented to them, what happens if someone they know suggests an app that they like better? And they see how much more they like the presentation of different elements?

Either way, you don’t want to give them a reason to lose interest or look for greener pastures. And I think that icons added to gestures and clickable targets can help with this.

This, for instance, is the Boomerang for Gmail app:

I needed a way to “pause” my Gmail inbox during the workday (to prevent distractions) as well as in my off hours (to keep myself from working). While there are a number of distraction-blocking tools available, I loved the simplicity and elegance of this one. I especially appreciated this sorting gesture.

There’s no need to open the message and use the options bar to select the right option. When messages appear in my inbox, it takes no more than a second to swipe left and take action because of how clearly labeled they are. And because I use this app every day, my finger automatically knows which icon to flick the message to: archive, mark as read, Boomerang (for another day/time), move or delete.

Again, if you can make engaging with an app go more smoothly — which, in this case, I attribute to the complex gesture simplified by recognizable icons — you’ll find users are more likely to use it.

Your app doesn’t need to have swiping gestures in order to play around with engaging icon design. Duolingo, for example, has brought its language modules to life thanks to these animated icons:

Have you ever read something online that was so good (or maybe even so bad) that you had to know who wrote it? For the most part, online publications just put a byline at the top and a short bio under the post. BuzzFeed, however, gives its author more than just name recognition. It pairs their byline with an iconized headshot.

This is a great touch. It tells readers from the get-go that they have real writers behind this piece and lets them connect to the writer on a more personal level.

It’s also just too easy for this detail to get lost on a page because of the title, subtitle, read-minutes and other metadata that publications put at the top. I’d say in terms of making an article more attractive and welcoming, even this small of an icon helps set the stage for an enjoyable reading experience.

Food service apps could probably benefit from this as well. Only, in this case, it would be food items and products that become iconized. Like what the SONIC Drive-in app does:

There was a study done by Durham University on the connection between images and satisfaction with a food order. The study looked at a number of variables, but this one is particularly relevant to what we’re looking at in the SONIC app:

“Our research revealed that if a restaurant wants to make use of imagery and visual prompts on their menu, this needs to be combined with commonly used and ‘accurate’ food names to increase marketing power. While it may seem a basic approach, photos can act as a positive reinforcement for customers who have made a visual connection that reflects the name of that dish.”

This is exactly what SONIC does in the above example. Rather than show one of their cups filled with the soft drink or show no photo at all, it displays the brand logos as icons beside each.

These brands are so deeply ingrained in the consumer consciousness that it will make the ordering process go much easier. It should also lead to greater satisfaction overall as there’s no surprise about what they’re getting.

Then, there’s the use case for marketplaces, like Rakuten:

This ebates app helps users make money off of their online purchases.

Now imagine if this app were just a text-only list of deals. Sure, it would still be usable and useful… but users would likely resort to the search bar to find deals as opposed to actually reading through what’s available. And if your users can only find what they want through search, there’s something wrong — especially if you’re presenting them with the hottest offers or products of the day.

I looked around and couldn’t find any ecommerce marketplace that does something like this — pairing a product or deal with a brand icon — which I find surprising. While I realize users can sort through listings by brand name, wouldn’t an iconized brand logo help users more easily locate items they want to buy from search results?

I guess the big argument against this would be for marketplaces pushing their own products (like Amazon does). By displaying a brand icon either in search results or on a product’s page, it might deter users from buying the item if it’s from a lesser-known and unrecognizable brand.

For concepts like Rakuten, however, it totally works and I’d urge you to use it when you can.

Wrapping Up

As you can tell by these examples, you’re not going to completely revamp the look and feel of your mobile app with icons. Instead, by adding very subtle touches here and there — that users are bound to take notice of — you’ll impress them with your attention to detail while making the overall experience more enjoyable. This, in turn, can lead to greater levels of engagement and higher rates of user retention.

Further Reading on SmashingMag:

Articles on Smashing Magazine — For Web Designers And Developers

16 Oct

4 Ways To Creatively Use Icons In Your Mobile Apps

by TBSCategories: News

There’s nothing novel about using icons within mobile apps. From the home screen icon to the navigation menu, they’re pretty much a standard part of the apps that designers build.

They come with big benefits too:

  • Minimized distractions,
  • More attractive UIs,
  • Empowerment of users to easily engage with the app,
  • Elimination of language barriers,
  • Improvement of brand recognizability.

But are we using icons as best as we can or are there ways to improve the mobile UX even further with iconography? Today, I want to look at a number of ways you can creatively add icons or icon-like elements to your apps and bring more life (and engagement) to them in the process.

Making The Most Out Of Icons

Icons are super useful design elements for mobile interfaces. While we do have to be careful with icons (like making sure navigational icons are always paired with text as well as not using so many that the interface becomes like a puzzle to be solved), there are some additional use cases I want you to consider:

1. Show Hints Of Branded Icons Throughout The App

Users will first get a glimpse of an app’s branded logo icon from the app store. Once installed, this icon will become a persistent presence on the user’s smart device, which will foster greater awareness of the app.

What I’ve noticed with many apps, though, is that the brand icon doesn’t often appear past that point. In some cases, it makes total sense. An app isn’t like a website that needs that steady logo anchor so users can always quickly get “Home”. But…

I can’t help but feel like small branded elements throughout could add a unique touch to the experience. They wouldn’t detract from the experience. Instead, they’d show up in bite-sized chunks that add something extra to the experience.

One example I really like is the CheapOair app. This is the logo that appears when a user first opens it. It’s the same one that appears at the top of the corresponding website:

Now, if you were to look at the app store page for CheapOair or how it appears on a user’s home screen, you’d see that the full logo isn’t used. Instead, users see the luggage-shaped “O” icon:

It’s unique. It’s memorable. And it works well in tiny spaces, like as the desktop favicon or on smaller mobile screens.

Now, for an app like CheapOair that aggregates travel listings from different airlines, hotels, car rental agencies and so on, it’s only natural to expect some lag time as users move through the app. And while the designers could’ve used a more traditional loading icon (like the spinning wheel or progress bar), it uses its branded icon instead:

The stamps are in the shape of a moon. It’s not officially part of Hotels.com’s branding, but it’s a very recognizable icon for its rewards members.

Because of this recognizability, its placement within hotel search results pages is helpful as it allows users to quickly scroll through and see which hotels they can earn another stamp with:

There are many different factors that users consider when booking a hotel room, including price, distance, average user rating and so on. But rather than bog down the main listing with this extra detail that’s only relevant to rewards members, the use of the icon and its placement in the bottom-left corner of the image for eligible hotels is a good choice.

So, even if you don’t feel like using the actual brand logo within the app (or find no reason to), this example proves that there are other ways to use brand-adjacent iconography to improve the experience.

2. Use Icons To Encourage More Gestures And Actions

One of the keys to retaining more app users is to give them a reason to regularly engage with it. And if your users can’t remember which gestures to use when they’re inside the app or they find the act of interacting with it to be boring, that may be enough reason for them to go looking for apps that do a better job of capturing their attention.

Even if your users don’t have any problem with how the engaging elements are presented to them, what happens if someone they know suggests an app that they like better? And they see how much more they like the presentation of different elements?

Either way, you don’t want to give them a reason to lose interest or look for greener pastures. And I think that icons added to gestures and clickable targets can help with this.

This, for instance, is the Boomerang for Gmail app:

I needed a way to “pause” my Gmail inbox during the workday (to prevent distractions) as well as in my off hours (to keep myself from working). While there are a number of distraction-blocking tools available, I loved the simplicity and elegance of this one. I especially appreciated this sorting gesture.

There’s no need to open the message and use the options bar to select the right option. When messages appear in my inbox, it takes no more than a second to swipe left and take action because of how clearly labeled they are. And because I use this app every day, my finger automatically knows which icon to flick the message to: archive, mark as read, Boomerang (for another day/time), move or delete.

Again, if you can make engaging with an app go more smoothly — which, in this case, I attribute to the complex gesture simplified by recognizable icons — you’ll find users are more likely to use it.

Your app doesn’t need to have swiping gestures in order to play around with engaging icon design. Duolingo, for example, has brought its language modules to life thanks to these animated icons:

Have you ever read something online that was so good (or maybe even so bad) that you had to know who wrote it? For the most part, online publications just put a byline at the top and a short bio under the post. BuzzFeed, however, gives its author more than just name recognition. It pairs their byline with an iconized headshot.

This is a great touch. It tells readers from the get-go that they have real writers behind this piece and lets them connect to the writer on a more personal level.

It’s also just too easy for this detail to get lost on a page because of the title, subtitle, read-minutes and other metadata that publications put at the top. I’d say in terms of making an article more attractive and welcoming, even this small of an icon helps set the stage for an enjoyable reading experience.

Food service apps could probably benefit from this as well. Only, in this case, it would be food items and products that become iconized. Like what the SONIC Drive-in app does:

There was a study done by Durham University on the connection between images and satisfaction with a food order. The study looked at a number of variables, but this one is particularly relevant to what we’re looking at in the SONIC app:

“Our research revealed that if a restaurant wants to make use of imagery and visual prompts on their menu, this needs to be combined with commonly used and ‘accurate’ food names to increase marketing power. While it may seem a basic approach, photos can act as a positive reinforcement for customers who have made a visual connection that reflects the name of that dish.”

This is exactly what SONIC does in the above example. Rather than show one of their cups filled with the soft drink or show no photo at all, it displays the brand logos as icons beside each.

These brands are so deeply ingrained in the consumer consciousness that it will make the ordering process go much easier. It should also lead to greater satisfaction overall as there’s no surprise about what they’re getting.

Then, there’s the use case for marketplaces, like Rakuten:

This ebates app helps users make money off of their online purchases.

Now imagine if this app were just a text-only list of deals. Sure, it would still be usable and useful… but users would likely resort to the search bar to find deals as opposed to actually reading through what’s available. And if your users can only find what they want through search, there’s something wrong — especially if you’re presenting them with the hottest offers or products of the day.

I looked around and couldn’t find any ecommerce marketplace that does something like this — pairing a product or deal with a brand icon — which I find surprising. While I realize users can sort through listings by brand name, wouldn’t an iconized brand logo help users more easily locate items they want to buy from search results?

I guess the big argument against this would be for marketplaces pushing their own products (like Amazon does). By displaying a brand icon either in search results or on a product’s page, it might deter users from buying the item if it’s from a lesser-known and unrecognizable brand.

For concepts like Rakuten, however, it totally works and I’d urge you to use it when you can.

Wrapping Up

As you can tell by these examples, you’re not going to completely revamp the look and feel of your mobile app with icons. Instead, by adding very subtle touches here and there — that users are bound to take notice of — you’ll impress them with your attention to detail while making the overall experience more enjoyable. This, in turn, can lead to greater levels of engagement and higher rates of user retention.

Further Reading on SmashingMag:

Articles on Smashing Magazine — For Web Designers And Developers

04-user-interview-questions
09 Jun

12 Ways To Improve User Interview Questions

by TBSCategories: News

12 Ways To Improve User Interview Questions

12 Ways To Improve User Interview Questions

Slava Shestopalov

An experienced interviewer takes care of many things: builds hypotheses, selects interviewees, composes invitations, schedules appointments, sets the stage, and, of course, writes an interview script. Any of these preparations can go wrong, but the script failure means all the effort is in vain. So, if you haven’t interviewed people a lot before or you have to delegate it to non-designers, I’d recommend paying attention to high-quality questions, in the first place. Then, there is a chance they’ll smooth out other potential shortcomings.

We’ll talk about 12 kinds of questions explained with examples. The first part includes six frequent mistakes and how to fix them. The second part presents six ways to improve decent questions and take control of difficult situations.

Pitfall #1: Hypothetical Questions

“I don’t care if people will use the new features,” said no budget owner ever. Investing in design and development, people want to make sure money will return. And direct asking, unfortunately, is not an effective way to check it, although it may intuitively seem a great idea. “Let’s go out of the office and ask ‘em!” In my practice, there were a lot of cases when people said they liked a feature but were reluctant to pay for it. So, is there any method to make sure that something not functioning yet will be needed when implemented?

Examples of hypothetical questions and how to transform them into experience-based ones.
Hypothetical questions put an interviewee into the position of a dreamer, thus don’t provide reliable answers. (Large preview)

I cannot recall anything more relevant than referring to people’s past experiences and behavior in similar situations. If users don’t have a habit of saving articles for later on all the news sites, what is the chance they’ll start doing it on your website? As Jakob Nielsen said, “Users spend most of their time on other sites.”

Pitfall #2: Closed Questions

Closed questions appear from a natural human wish to be approved and gain support. However, in the interviews, they aren’t useful enough. A yes-or-no question doesn’t provoke reserved people to talk and doesn’t help much to reveal their motives and way of thinking.

Examples of closed questions and how to turn them into open questions
Open questions help to gather more information than the closed ones. (Large preview)

To be fair, closed questions are not evil. For example, they can serve a handy facilitation technique to make a talkative interviewee stop and turn back to the point. Also, they can help to double-check the information previously received through open questions. But if your goal is to gather as much information as possible, open questions will work better.

Pitfall #3: Leading Questions

The things considered polite in everyday conversations may be harmful to the efficiency of a user interview. Trying to help an interviewee with the options can guide them in saying what they don’t really think. A user interview is not the most comfortable situation for the majority of people, and they try to pass it as quickly as possible and at minimum effort. As a result, people tend to agree with anything more or less close to the truth or with a socially-expected choice instead of composing their answer from scratch.

Examples of questions that include answer options and how to fix them
Questions that suggest answer options lead to biased answers. (Large preview)

That’s why it’s better to move one step at a time and build the next question upon the answer to the previous one.

Pitfall #4: Selfish Questions

Idea authors sometimes act like proud parents — they want everyone to admire their child. The downside of such an attitude in user interviews is the unconscious usage of the pronouns “we” or “our.” As a result, users feel as if they are taking an exam and should either adore what they see or maintain neutrality, disguising real complaints.

Examples of selfish questions with possessive pronouns and how to formulate them in a neutral manner
Possessive pronouns like “our” provoke people to praise the subject of talk instead of sharing honest feedback. (Large preview)

In your interview script, replace possessive pronouns with neutral words like “this site” and “that application” or just call a subject of conversation by the name.

Pro tip: as an interviewer, you can try hiding or understating your job title and relation to the topic.

Pitfall #5: Stacked Questions

There are many reasons why we ask stacked questions. It can be a human desire to be heard, the fear of being interrupted, or worrying that you might forget the next question while listening to the current answer. However, for the interview efficiency, stacked questions are not an option. Interviewees often select the one they are more comfortable to answer to or the one they managed to memorize from the stack. Remembering questions shouldn’t become the interviewee’s burden, so it’s better to ask them one by one. (And maybe the answers are so comprehensive that you won’t need some of the planned questions anymore.)

An example of piled up questions and how they should optimally go one by one in the interview
A stack of questions leads to a messy answer, whereas a sequence of separate questions works much better. (Large preview)

Pitfall #6: Explanation Instead Of A Question

Teams that work together for some time often establish their own language and tend to bring it into the product they are building. But will users understand such words as “dashboard,” “smart update,” “inclusion,” or “trigger”? Explanatory questions put an interviewee into the position of a lexicographer and help to check what sense (if any) they put into brand concepts and expert terminology. For a designer, it gives insights into how the future product — a website, app, or self-service terminal — should speak to people.

Examples of questions that already contain an explanation and how to turn them into neutral open questions
Instead of inserting the explanation into the question it’s better to openly ask interviewees what they think this is. (Large preview)

The opposite side of this approach is explaining it yourself and leading people before they have a chance to share their opinions. Think about this: in the interview, you are superior and can put pressure on users making them get your point. But will you always be there for thousands of users to explain how the product works? Probably no. So, it’s more efficient to discover people’s thinking styles and then create self-explanatory solutions rather than create something and push it in interviews.

We’ve just covered six major interviewing mistakes. The next portion of advice will be about making fairly good questions even more powerful and dealing with difficult interview situations.

Pitfall #7: Question Clutter

Open questions are great until you realize there are too many details to figure out. The best method in such a situation is storytelling — describing a recent or the most prominent experience. As a result, an interviewee talks about a real situation and is less inclined to compose a socially desired answer or summarize various cases.

Examples of good open questions and how they can be turned into even more helpful storytelling questions
When a topic is broad, it’s better to ask for a full story instead of a series of open questions. (Large preview)

Besides, storytelling gives the freedom to speak about aspects a person considers necessary. Usually, people start with or talk longer about the most crucial experiences.

Pitfall #8: Too General Questions

When you’ve figured out regularity or general attitude, it’s the right moment to ask the interviewee about an example. Recent-experience questions can fill in the gaps, which might have appeared while answering general questions. For an interviewer, it’s another powerful method to check if users aren’t accidentally exaggerating or dropping significant details.

Examples of good general open questions and even better questions referring to the user’s recent experience
Past-experience questions give more insight into users’ behavior than general questions. (Large preview)

Pitfall #9: Talking About What You Can Observe

When you are lucky enough and interview people in their “natural habitat,” it’s a perfect chance to see their work process with your own eyes. So, if there is an opportunity to ask a user to demonstrate typical actions — offline or online — you’ll gather tons of insights. It’s a chance to learn about users’ habits (including shortcuts and favorite programs), level of computer skills, software environment, and the way of thinking (mental model).

Examples of experience-based questions and even more efficient requests to demonstrate behavior instead of talking about it
Sometimes it’s better to witness user’s behavior than to listen to its verbal description. (Large preview)

Pitfall #10: Tolerating Vagueness

Abstract nouns and adjectives, for example, “comfort,” “accessibility,” “support,” “smart,” or “user-friendly,” are probably the trickiest words in the language because everyone interprets them differently. When you hear abstract names, that’s not enough to document them as they are. These words require “unboxing” and only then can support design decision-making.

Examples of questions that help to 'unbox' abstract nouns and subjective characteristics
Abstract concepts need unboxing; otherwise, they cannot back up design decision-making. (Large preview)

“Nothing is clear enough” has become my second favorite slogan after the classical UX phrase “It depends.” “Nothing is clear enough” means that you cannot be certain about the meaning if you hardly visualize a scenario from your interviewee’s life. The best way to unbox abstract concepts is by turning them into verbs.

Pitfall #11: Missing Numbers

Generalizations like “all,” “never,” “always,” “nobody,” “often,” or“frequently” are as unclear as abstract nouns and adjectives. But the way to “unbox” generalizations is different — through quantifying. Basically, you ask questions about approximate numbers or proportions. An interviewee, of course, might not provide you statistics, but at least you’ll understand whether the user’s “very frequent” is about “more than a half” or “nearly 20%.” Another example: the same phrase “a lot” can mean “50 per day” for work emails, but it’ll be only “5 per year” for cybersecurity alerts.

Examples of questions that quantify vague words like 'all' or 'often'
Exaggerated or vague characteristics deserve to be quantified in the interview. (Large preview)

Pitfall #12: Undervalued WH-Questions

As a non-native speaker, I remember these questions from the English classes at school. The teacher often asked us to make WH-questions (What? Where? When? Who? How?) so that we could start a conversation and break the awkward silence. Nothing had changed from school times. Now, as a designer, I often use WH-questions as the main interviewing instrument.

Examples of open questions that start with WH: why, where, who, how, etc.
WH-questions are great for figuring out time, locations, participants, consequences, and other details. (Large preview)

My favorite question is “why.” For the sake of politeness and a more friendly atmosphere, I conceal it behind the following phrases, “What are you trying to achieve when you…?” or “Can you please explain the reason/value of…?” This is how in pursuit of a root cause you can ask several “whys” in a row without annoying your interviewee.

Summary

The question techniques above are pretty straightforward and might not take into account the nuances of a particular conversation or interviewee. Of course, even the best questions won’t make all the answers automatically objective, but they can make information more reliable and actionable. All in all, it’s always on an interviewer to adjust according to the situation. Here are the three core principles if you are in doubt about particular questions.

Experience holds more truth than a hypothesis.

“

That’s why it’s recommended to ask about cases from the past and similar examples from other areas of a user’s life.

Let them tell their story; your ideas can wait

The goal of an interview is to explore the truth, not to sell or demonstrate something. If you force an interviewee to support you, it might mean the rest of the people won’t agree either. Also, give preference to clarifying the unknown versus checking hypotheses — for hypotheses, a better method is prototyping and testing.

If you cannot imagine it, you don’t get it

In a series of 1–2-hour user interviews, it’s so easy to get lazy and pretend you understand what you hear. Try challenging interviewee’s statements in your mind, “Did he say the truth? Do I know why she says that? What exactly do they mean telling me about it?”

Recommended Reading

Smashing Editorial (cc, yk, il)


Articles on Smashing Magazine — For Web Designers And Developers

copy-paste-gdoc-800w
08 Nov

Exploring New Ways To Manage Content In WordPress

by TBSCategories: News

Exploring New Ways To Manage Content In WordPress

Exploring New Ways To Manage Content In WordPress

Leonardo Losoviz

The combination of WordPress’ versatility for managing data (since its database model supports the creation of different content models, easily extensible through meta attributes) and Gutenberg’s rich user interactions provide a powerful mechanism to create, edit and manage content.

In this article, I want to shine some light on these upgraded capabilities, exploring the new tools at our disposition and presenting several new ones to be released sometime in the future.

Existing Features

The following features are already part of Gutenberg-powered WordPress.

Create Once, Publish Everywhere

As I have described in my recent article “Create Once, Publish Everywhere” with WordPress, the block-based nature of Gutenberg enables it to enhance how content is organized/architected on the database, making it available on a granular basis (block by block) to any application running on any medium or platform (web, email, iOS/Android apps, VR/AR, home assistants, and so on). Content managed through Gutenberg can then become the single source of truth for all of our applications, allowing us to reduce the cost associated with re-formatting content to make it suitable for each required platform.

Copy/paste from Google Docs with (almost) perfect formatting

Whenever we need to collaborate with other people to create content, we will quite likely use online tools such as Google Docs, Dropbox Paper, Coda or others. These tools make it easy for different people to edit the content in a document concurrently and provide and incorporate feedback. If we are going to choose a Content Management System to store our content, we need to make sure that it works well with these tools.

Gutenberg does the job fairly well: When copying the content from a Google Doc and then pasting it into a Gutenberg blog post, the formatting is preserved, bullet lists are properly transformed to the list block, and images are inserted where they should. There may be a few inconsistencies (for instance different spacing across blocks and in the original document) however, for the most part, the process is fit for use.

Copy/pasting from GDoc to Gutenberg
Copy/pasting from GDoc preserves the format of the document. (Large preview)

Crafting art direction

Several Gutenberg blocks support creating distinctive and engaging layouts and assisting the art direction of the site, to give it more personality and emphasize its identity. This way, even though we may base the site on a standard, plain-looking WordPress theme, we can customize the content’s appearance to make it stick out from the sea of sameness out there on the web. Let’s explore some of these blocks.

The Shape divider block allows to insert dividers in between two blocks. We can choose one among several basic shapes and customize its width, proportions and colors and then, with a bit of resourcefulness, create more intrinsic patterns from it. For instance, the divider below was created by first creating and customizing a divider, then flipping it both vertically and horizontally to mirror itself, then grouping these 2 halves so we can use it as a single unit (the grouping functionality will be available in core through the release of WordPress 5.3 next week, and is currently available through the Gutenberg plugin), and finally saving the grouped block as a reusable block so it can be used everywhere across the whole site:

Shape divider block
The shape divider block connects, or breaks apart, components. (Large preview)

The Advanced columns and Row layout blocks allow to create row-based layouts, inside of which we can place nested blocks (i.e. any other Gutenberg block). They are highly configurable: They offer to define how many columns the row must have, with what padding, margin and proportion of width for each column, setting an image or custom color in the background, and several other attributes.

Row layout block
The row layout block allows to easily configure the proportion of width among columns. (Large preview)

We can also create grid-based layouts with predefined content. For instance, through the Post grid, Post carousel and Post masonry blocks we can display a list of posts in different ways, defining what attributes from each post to show (title, date, excerpt, author, and so on), and through the Advanced gallery block we can create beautiful image galleries.

Advanced gallery block
Masonry gallery created with Advanced gallery block. (Large preview)

Some other blocks, such as Feature grid, allow to create grid layouts with predefined templates filled with custom content.

Feature grid block
The feature grid block enables to add custom content inside of a grid layout. (Large preview)

These are just a sample of those blocks which can help us fill the content with visually attractive layouts and craft the art direction of our sites. To keep exploring possibilities, we can head to the directory of plugins offering blocks and check these out.

Assisting the user while editing content

Gutenberg assists the user when creating content through the following features:

Real-Time Preview

The Gutenberg editor gives a relatively accurate preview of how the content will look like in the website.

Error Warnings

Gutenberg makes the content creator be aware of accessibility concerns. For instance, if our content structure jumps from an <h2> header to an <h4> one without adding an <h3> tag in between, Gutenberg provides a warning message about this potential error. Similarly, when setting up the color of some text against its background color, if the contrast between the two colors is not clear enough then Gutenberg provides a warning message and helps fix the problem.

Suggesting/Executing Improvements

Blocks can connect to third-party services to analyze content and enhance it. For instance, a service could suggest how to improve the grammar of the content, provide alternative titles and tags for a better SEO, and even automatically translate the content to another language, as done by this plugin which automatically translates from English to Hindi as the user types.

New Features Under Implementation

The following features will hopefully/eventually be coming to Gutenberg in the future.

Snap to grid when resizing images

Contributors are already working on adding a grid system to Gutenberg which will, among other things, enable to resize images in an assisted manner by snapping it to the grid:

Installing a block from within Gutenberg
Snapping an image to grid (image from the GitHub issue). (Large preview)

Inline installation of blocks

Sometimes, while we are writing a blog post, we find out that we need some functionality that we don’t have yet installed. Hence, we need to switch to the Plugins screen, search and install the corresponding plugin, and then go back to the blog post. This process adds friction to our content-writing workflow.

Wouldn’t it be nicer if we could install the required functionality right from within the editor itself, whenever we need to use it? Well, this proposal is already being implemented through this pull request (it first depends on blocks being installed on their own, i.e. without depending on being shipped through a plugin). Once merged, our content-writing workflow will not be impaired anymore, as visible in the mockup below.

Installing a block from within Gutenberg
Installing a block from within Gutenberg (image from the GitHub pull request). (Large preview)

Installing blocks directly from the editor could lead to unintended bloat, from making it too easy for the user to install blocks. To address this issue, after installing and using it, the block could be removed! This was not possible before Gutenberg, because if the plugin providing a shortcode (which was the way to render dynamic content inside the blog post before Gutenberg) was disabled, then the invocation of the shortcode would be rendered in the blog post (instead of the shortcode’s output), messing up our content. However, Gutenberg works differently: Blocks only save HTML content inside of the blog post (including HTML comments to store configuration attributes), so, if the block is disabled, its intended HTML output is still part of the blog post’s content. (Even though there may be problems if the block needs to load CSS assets which are not loaded anymore once the block is disabled. I am not aware how this issue will be handled.)

Page/Site builder

Currently Gutenberg can only be used for the creation of content inside a blog post or a page, however it will soon support the creation of any part of the website: Content-block areas can define the header, sidebars, footer or any section needed for our layouts. Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com) is already working on a plugin to add full site editing capabilities to its WordPress.com product, which should eventually be extensible to the open source WordPress software too.

Creating a new page with full site editing enabled
Creating a new page with full site editing allows to select a page template. (Large preview)

Real-time collaboration

Google Docs is incredibly useful to teams because it enables their members to work on the same document at the same time. Sometime in the future, Gutenberg will also incorporate a mechanism for real-time collaboration, allowing different people to work on the same blog post at the same time. This mechanism will (at least initially) be based on giving editing-locks to users on a block-by-block basis, as shown in the mockup image below.

Real-time collaboration through Gutenberg
Real-time collaboration through Gutenberg (image from the GitHub issue). (Large preview)

This feature will be particularly useful to online magazines (such as the New York Times and the like) since they may already have teams collaborating on a story (for instance, designers dealing with images, journalists, proofreaders and editors dealing with content, and others). Having real-time collaboration tools will enable these magazines to speed up their content-creation workflows and publish their articles faster.

Translation

WordPress core has never added support to translate content (it only supports translation of strings inside of core, plugin and theme files), but instead left this responsibility to plugins. Through Gutenberg, WordPress will finally add native support for this feature.

Translation is not a priority yet, so it has been targeted for Gutenberg phase 4, expected in the year 2020+. Since it is a long way off, there are yet no technical considerations of its implementation or mockups of its intended user experience. So we can only guess how it will be. Since it will be implemented after the real-time collaboration feature (described above), I would expect it will enable different people to translate the same blog post to different languages at the same time, block by block.

Inline media editing

Through the Media Library, WordPress already provides some image editing capabilities: resizing, cropping, rotating and flipping. These capabilities are very basic, and they are applied on to the image on a different screen, which creates some friction to the process of fitting the image into the blog post.

Through Gutenberg, the media-editing experience could be greatly enhanced: One one side, it could support editing the image in more advanced ways, such as applying effects or filters, altering the contrast, replacing colors, adding text as watermark, adding transparent regions, converting it to different formats, and others (for instance, Cloudinary provides an API to apply many transformations to an image, which could be perfectly accessed by a block). On the other side, the editing could happen inline, right where the image is placed inside the blog post. Then, for instance, if the image was added as an overlay against some background, and we add transparent regions to the image, we can visualize in real-time how the composite result looks like.

(I haven’t found any proposal to tackle this issue in Gutenberg’s GitHub repo, but I learned about this idea talking to some core contributors, who expected to be able to work on it some time in the future.)

Conclusion

Already being the most popular CMS (close to 35% of the web), WordPress has also the chance to offer the most compelling tools to manipulate content. This is because Gutenberg offers an appealing mechanism to create, edit and manage content: A single interface, simple to use, fairly powerful and versatile. With its new content management capabilities, WordPress can become the single source of truth of all our content, to power all our applications (websites, newsletters, apps, and so on) through APIs. Kudos to that!

Smashing Editorial (yk, il)


Articles on Smashing Magazine — For Web Designers And Developers

02 Dec

32 Practical Ways to Increase Your Website Traffic

by TBSCategories: News

You’ve probably realized driving traffic to your website requires more than just a pretty design. And once you’ve gotten people to click in, you’ll have a full-time job on your hands trying to keep them coming back for more.

Driving traffic is like directing an orchestra. Referrals from other sites, search engines, social media networks, paid advertising, forums, and direct traffic are just a few of the instruments that have to work in harmony with each other. Thankfully, you can learn how to conduct all those elements to get the results you want.

By combining traffic-boosting methods, I’ve grown my own blog to more than 100,000 unique visitors every month. I’ve vetted these 32 tips from successful designers; their valuable insight is sure to help you increase your traffic.

What, when, and how to publish

Create seductive content

Seductive content starts with a good title. Users scroll through search results and social media faster than a Maserati on a test track, so you’ve got to catch their eye before they speed away to the next thing. (Good subtitles can also give readers an extra nudge to click on your page.)

Here’s where many sites go wrong. They’ve mastered the art of titling, but their lousy content decreases their traffic. On the other hand, content that’s actually valuable and interesting will increase traffic—because that’s what makes readers want to share it.

Provide valuable information for free

To make your blog shareable, it’s important consider what you’re going to publish there. In this video blog on increasing traffic, designer Chris Spooner explains the value of regularly publishing interesting, useful content. Readers don’t care about your self-promotion, but they do care about your answer to a question they have.

That said, valuable content shouldn’t come with a price tag. People who are unfamiliar with your site won’t want to pay for your information because they don’t know if it’s good or bad. Offering free content shows a genuine interest in being helpful rather than lining your own pockets—which makes people more comfortable engaging with you.

Communicate honestly

Most web users can smell a phony blog or site a mile away, and they’ll avoid it like the plague. Honest writing draws readers in and invites them to share an idea. When they see you make the effort to create authentic content, they’ll be much more likely to share their own stories and comments with you.

When they do that, be sure to respond with a helpful answer to their question or a thank you note for their thoughts. This lets your readers know you appreciate their engagement. And the more valued they feel, the more they’ll contribute to your site.

Conduct website surveys

If you’re not sure what type of content your users want, ask them. Conducting surveys is a great way to learn about your visitors’ values, personalities, likes, and dislikes. (Of course, surveys should be relevant to collect accurate data.)

Surveys can ask serious questions that make people think, but they’re also a great way to add some entertainment to your site with humorous quizzes. Publishing the results gives users a reason to come back and lets both of you see whether they’re your typical visitor or not.

Use visual content correctly

Everybody knows visual content gets and holds visitors’ attention—which is why so many sites post images like a teenager posts Instagram selfies. But there’s a difference between just having visual content and having visual content that’s effective.

You can make your visual content more relevant by:

  • Creating original images with a specific style
  • Posting images across multiple platforms
  • Captioning them with 1 or 2 hashtags
  • Basing visual content on your branding
  • Using moving images or videos to tell a story

Give clear calls to action

Imagine driving in a new city with no GPS, just an old map. A map shows you streets and landmarks, but it doesn’t actually tell you to do anything. It’s easy to get lost without that voice saying, “Turn left on Fourth Street.”

Likewise, visitors may get lost or give up unless there’s a clear voice telling them what to do. A good call to action should appear on every page and at the end of every blog post, instructing them how to proceed.

You’ll want to ask your content team for help optimizing your calls to action; they’ll know the right words to convert visitors to clients.

Publish on high traffic days

Creating great content is half the battle—the other half is knowing when to publish it. You can learn how to track your traffic using Google Analytics’ Visits report. Once you discover the most popular days and times are for people to visit your site, start posting on those days. Publish your blogs, announce events, or begin and end contests on those days.

One more helpful tip: if you’re going to make architecture or functionality updates, do so on your low traffic days so it’s less disruptive.

Promote your blog

It’s not enough to just publish a blog post and let it ride; promoting your blog generates far more traffic. How you do this depends your target audience and budget.

You’ll want to consider your audience first. Think of where they interact online—then look for the most cost-effective way to reach them there. Social media is a popular tactic but can get expensive if you’re not careful. Other ways to promote your site include guest blogging for related sites, hosting competitions, or even letting others guest blog for you.

Titles, tags, and tools

Choose a strategic domain name

Before you title blog posts, you have to name the site itself. Choosing a domain name can be maddening. Just when you think you’ve got it perfect—something short, catchy, and memorable—you discover it’s unavailable or out of your price range.

You can avoid a lot of these headaches by answering two questions upfront. First, decide on a budget; then choose whether you want your domain name to be discoverable or brandable.

Visitors can stumble on a discoverable brand just by typing related words into search engines (think slideshow.com). A brandable domain name, like Google, establishes a very recognizable identity not based on common words. Once you’ve chosen to be discoverable or brandable, you can narrow down your list of domain names and find one that suits your style.

Write stunning headlines

When it comes to picking up site traffic, your headline is like your wingman. It tells potential visitors about you: If it makes them laugh, they’ll think you’re funny. If it makes them think, they’ll think you’re deep.

There are several ways to create a good post title. Numbers are popularly included, because they’re easy for our minds to process and they pair well with list posts. Of course, anybody can toss in a number. The best way to create effective titles is to know what your audience likes and dislikes—then create very specific titles based on those interests.

Tag your posts

Tagging only takes a couple of seconds yet improves your blog’s performance in search engines—making it a quick, easy way to boost traffic.

Even better, it improves your user experience. Instead of searching for content in a disorganized collection of old posts, tags let your users narrow their search to find the piece they’re looking for—and be introduced to other relevant posts along the way.

One word of caution: plan your tags in advance. Using too many tags or a bunch of random keywords won’t help anyone. It’s better to strategize with a lower number of highly relevant tags.

Get WordPress plugins

If you’ve been in business for any length of time, you know how expensive it can get trying to drive traffic to your site. Even WordPress, which has a reputation as a helpful platforms for marketing, can rack up costs pretty quickly—unless you use plugins.

WordPress offers hundreds of free plugins that you can use to track your site’s stats and drive traffic. You’ll want to look into the five categories of marketing plugins to see how you can better reach your target audience.

Build traffic with blogging tools

Trying to increase your web traffic without blogging tools is like trying to build a house without power tools—it’s slow going. And just like building tools, the blogging variety are designed for specific purposes.

You can find tools to help you improve your social media game or your writing. Creating images, SEO, staying productive—even outsourcing—are all easier with the proper blogging tools. The key is to think about what your site needs most, then research to find the best solutions for you. There are dozens of blogging tools out there, so don’t be afraid to shop around.

What to remove

Get rid of published dates

Most web users are looking for fresh, fun content—not something that’s been stagnating on your site for five years. That’s why removing published dates can help increase your traffic; when people don’t notice a post is older, they can enjoy its benefits instead of writing it off.

Of course, removing dates is not a shortcut to avoid updating posts or checking factual accuracy. It’s a way to help older—but accurate—posts get a fair shake.

Disavow links

Quality matters when it comes to backlinks. While you should request removal of shoddy links, sometimes they’re out of your control and can’t be undone. That’s where Google Search Console comes in. It has a feature that lets you disavow links, or tell Google to ignore certain links to your site.

This disassociates your site from spam or other negative signals that could be harming your ranking, so Google will see a higher concentration of authoritative, respectable links to your site.

How to optimize your blog for keywords

Plan and place keywords appropriately

Sadly, some people’s SEO strategy still seems to consist of tossing random words they think are keywords—but may not actually matter—into their posts and hoping something sticks in Google.

That strategy stinks, because it doesn’t consider keyword relevancy or the amount of competition for those words. Instead, plan your keywords using Google’s aptly named Keyword Planner to make sure you’re picking relevant words that accurately represent your content and have high search volume.

Your keywords’ location can also make your blog more SEO-friendly. Meta tags, meta descriptions, post titles, and post URLs are all good places to put keywords. Don’t go overboard within the post; instead, you should strive to create real, valuable content.

Start keyword research on your site

People often look to see which keywords others are using, then adjust their content accordingly. But they’re leaving out an important step. Uncovering the right keywords for your site starts right there—on your site.

You may already be doing some things right. By learning which keywords you’re already ranking for, you can play them up instead of completely changing your content. One simple change is to modify keywords from nouns into adjectives or verbs; this helps you match natural language and rank higher.

Another piece of advice: learn which keyword tools to use. Google’s Keyword Planner is one of the most popular, but you may find other tools just as helpful.

Optimize images

When people think of optimizing their site for SEO, they typically think of adding keywords to body text and headlines. If you stop there, you’ll miss out on the benefits of image optimization.

Here are a few ways to get the most traffic out of your images:

  • Use short, detailed file names.
  • Pick specific alt text, but don’t stuff it with keywords.
  • Store files in a single directory.
  • Choose a common file format.
  • Supply an image sitemap file.

Connect with the right communities

Join blogging communities

Joining relevant blogging communities lets you connect with people who share common interests and drive them back to your site. Read, comment on others’ blogs, and make your own blog accessible via commenting systems like Disqus, Lifefyre, or Facebook.

You can also retweet popular bloggers in your community; their followers will see your account and connect with you, helping you grow. Adding social sharing and commenting capabilities on your site lets others reciprocate by sharing your content.

Follow relevant people

Ultimately, the goal in connecting with an online community is to drive traffic back to your own site. To do that, you’ll need to follow and form relationships with relevant people. These relationships help you earn the attention of other bloggers and thought leaders—without awkwardly stalking them or spamming their inbox.

The key is to invest in a real relationship with the people you follow. Engage with their content, learn from the things they’re doing well, and don’t hound them for help immediately. Only once you’ve established a real connection is it okay to ask for their help leveraging your content.

Read and comment on others’ blogs

Connecting with other bloggers is a bit like dating. You can’t sit at home on your couch waiting for the perfect person to show up on your doorstep. You have to get out there and interact with people so they know you’re interested.

The same concept applies to blogging. You’ll want to jump into the conversation on the blogs you read regularly (if you don’t read regularly, start).

That doesn’t mean spamming their comments section with links to your page—that’s like handing your number out to every weirdo at the club. Just participate in the conversation, let them know you’re there, and make friends. They’ll eventually get curious and check out your site, too.

Comment wisely

Before you run amok commenting on every blog in your industry, pause. Commenting does have potential to increase your traffic—if you say the right things. Be strategic and plan what to say before you do it.

Here are some ways to make your comments more effective:

  • Be relevant to the topic.
  • Express a specific, strong opinion.
  • Leave the conversation open for others to join.
  • Comment on recent blogs, especially those currently being promoted.

Participate in your site’s comment section

Imagine you’re at a party, standing in a circle of people you’ve just met. The host asks what you do for a living—but as you start to reply, they turn and talk to someone else.

Being unresponsive to your readers’ comments is the same thing—you’re ignoring a conversation you started. Those bad manners will alienate online users every bit as much as they would ruin an in-person interaction.

However, you can also accomplish the opposite. If you’re a “good listener,” your users will reward you with increased traffic. A few ways to encourage comments are to:

  • Leave an open post ending so people can comment with their own conclusion
  • Ask for opinions on controversial topics (but hold back your own thoughts)
  • Encourage commenters to interact with each other
  • Pay extra attention to active commenters

Use newsletters, mailing lists, and newsgroups

Besides interacting with current readers, you’ll want to invite others to join the conversation. The best ways to reach out to many people at once are newsletters, newsgroups, and mailing lists.

Newsletters and mailing lists let you contact people directly. But where a mailing list reaches out to new people, a newsletter reminds past connections your site still exists. On the other hand, newsgroups are forums—as when you comment on or write for other blogs, they let you join a conversation and drive traffic based on connections you make there.

Guest blogging

Contribute to popular industry sites

Reading and commenting on others’ blogs gets your foot in the door to start writing guest blogs, which are one of the most powerful ways to increase your traffic.

Guest blogging for someone else gives you exposure to their visitors and connections. The more exposure you have, the more credibility you gain because your audience sees industry leaders sharing your content. And the more credibility you have, the more sites will want you to guest blog for them, resulting in more topical backlinks.

It’s like being introduced at a party—people base their opinion of you on what they know about the person you write for. And if they like what they see, they’ll follow the link back to your site.

Of course, these associations can work the other way. If you guest blog for a low-quality site, people may think your site isn’t so hot, either. You’ll be more likely to avoid this mistake if you learn how to write an effective guest blog and seek good opportunities, because high-quality sites are looking for high-quality content.

Social Media

Perform a social media audit

Blindly posting on social media in an effort to increase traffic is not the best use of your time—but it’s what most websites do. Chances are, you’ve already joined the social stampede with underwhelming results.

The best way to recover is to do a social media audit to analyze your brand’s social media presence. Ask yourself which platforms you use and how active you are. What do you post? Do people engage with your content? What are other companies in your industry doing?

You’ll soon start to see what industry standards are, where you can improve, and hopefully where you excel. But just having that information isn’t enough. Use it to set goals for your engagement and social branding. Once you reach those goals, do another audit to see what else you can improve.

Make a social media plan

Most people make the mistake of creating numerous social profiles without doing any research. The idea is to drive traffic to your site—but you can’t drive traffic if you don’t have a map, or a plan showing how social media will work for you.

If you create accounts without a second thought, you’ll likely see poor results and stop updating those profiles—which means there’s a dead site out there with your name on it. Researching, testing, and investing in social media content are ultimately what will sustain your accounts and bring in traffic from social sites.

Create a domino effect

You’ve seen someone knock over a rows of dominoes to watch the chain reaction. But you may not know you can use social media to create a domino effect for your web traffic.

The social media chain reaction doesn’t start with big sites like Facebook or Pinterest. Instead, it begins on “second tier social media sites,” which are smaller sites specific to a particular interest.

The popularity you achieve on these smaller sites can then carry that traffic over to larger social sites—which are likely to share users with small sites while still opening up a broader audience. You’ll find your traffic increasing and gain a foothold in larger sites much faster, rather than trying to fabricate popularity from scratch on a major social network.

Learn from the best in your industry

There’s so much pressure to stand out from your competition that it’s easy to adopt a “lone wolf” mentality. The problem is, you’re far more likely to make mistakes when you try to do everything on your own.

On top of that, yours is not the only business in your industry. So until you’re running a monopoly, it’s important to see what top competitors are up to on social media. You’ll learn industry trends, gain tools to compete against bigger, higher revenue sites, and discover new ways to increase your social traffic. Be sure to:

  • Monitor which competitors’ most popular posts
  • Determine why those posts are successful
  • Search your industry on social media to see which articles get shared
  • Improve on your competitors’ content

Network on Facebook

One of the most popular social sites, Facebook, has huge potential for bringing traffic to your site through paid advertising. Its powerful targeting capabilities let you select your audience’s interests, location, career, and other factors—putting your post in front of the most receptive audience possible for maximum results.

Facebook is also a great way to build your network. You can use the social site to create a mailing list of new prospects, or you can connect with past clients (and their friends) by asking them to like your page.

Play up your Pinterest

Remember our tip about having awesome visual content? Pinterest drives traffic to your site by playing up all your cool images. Sharing on Pinterest also forces you to improve that visual content, because your images have to be fantastic to stand out on this site.

If you create the right types of images, your audience will reward you quickly. Pinterest’s sharing capabilities make it easy for images to spread like wildfire while simultaneously helping users feel connected to your site.

Conclusion

As you start trying to increase the traffic on your site, remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day—and neither is a good site. Instead of changing everything at once, choose a few tactics you think will be best for your site.

Once you’ve given them some time to work, you can start building up your traffic in other ways. You’ll see results before you know it.


Onextrapixel – Web Design and Development Online Magazine

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29 Aug

Ways To Reduce Content Shifting On Page Load

by TBSCategories: News

   

Have you ever opened a website, started reading and, after some time had passed and all assets had finished loading, you found that you’ve lost your scroll position? I undergo this every day, especially when surfing on my mobile device on a slow connection — a frustrating and distracting experience.

Ways To Reduce Content Shifting On Page Load

Every time the browser has to recalculate the positions and geometries of elements in the document, a reflow happens. This happens when new DOM elements are added to the page, images load or dimensions of elements change. In this article, we will share techniques to minimize this content shifting.

The post Ways To Reduce Content Shifting On Page Load appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Smashing Magazine

Promote-Your-Blog-1
12 Jul

10 Effective and Powerful Ways to Promote Your Blog

by TBSCategories: News

Do you know how to start a blog? Creating a blog on a site like Wix is easy, but how do bloggers get people to visit it? There is a lot of behind-the-scenes work that goes into promoting a blog that often is hard for a new blogger to spot.

To get the scoop on how to get the word out to generate organic traffic from other areas around the web, check out these top 10 creative ways to promote a blog online.

10 Ways to Leverage the Internet for Blog Promotion

Blogs are a special marketing tool that helps to generate a fan base for Internet offerings. However, in order to get readers to come back again and again, some thought has to be put into the content, the publishing schedule, and how to cross-promote into other profitable areas around the web.

To leverage the unique power of the Internet to reach specific traffic segments, try some of these 10 tips and tricks:

1. Get Google’s Attention

How do people get to a site if it’s not through a search engine? Google is the largest search engine and getting their attention means a blog will naturally get more traffic.

To get Google’s attention first, a blog should be optimized around specific content that appeals to the site’s ideal visitor demographic. Learn about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and include keywords and content themes that might help in ranking higher in the Google Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

2. Have a Regular Publishing Schedule

People are creatures of habit and if they know that a blog updates its content regularly, they will be more apt to check it more often. Publish content two or three times a week, preferably on the same days of the week at the same time.

3. Network With Other Bloggers

Who is more likely to promote a blog post willingly than other bloggers in the same niche? It’s a “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” approach. Use social networks to friend or follow experts in the same niche and then comment on their blogs and build a relationship with them.

When a person comments on a post in another blog, it often asks the author to give the URL to a website. People who want to know more about the author of the comment will be led back to your blog.

4. Make It Easy for Others To Promote the Blog

There are a variety of ways to get others to do some promotional work for you. One, is to simply ask the audience to share the content of the blog freely. Another, is to add social networking share buttons at the end of every post to make it easy for them to do a “one-click” share.

10 Effective and Powerful Ways to Promote Your Blog

5. Make Your Blog a Multimedia Experience

Blogs with pictures and embedded videos are more likely to be shared than those with just text. Wix is a blog platform that makes it easy to add these types of non-textual elements to a post without having to learn how to code HTML. The simple drag and drop features allow even the most basic user to create a visually-rich site instantly.

6. Create a Facebook or LinkedIn Group

Not everyone will come to a blog from a search engine query. Other readers can be found on social networking sites like Facebook. To create a tribe, make sure to have a presence on Facebook and post status updates regularly. The links will take them back to the website.

7. Run a Contest or Giveaway

Whether it’s a blogging contest or a giveaway, the requirements should specify that to participate and win a reader must like and share a blog post. Blogging contests can also request specific topics and a link.

8. Have an Email Marketing Plan

Once someone visits your site, you want to convert that anonymous person into an email lead. Build up an email contact list and use features like Wix Shoutout to contact them regularly via professionally design newsletters from beautifully designed Wix templates. This will help you establish an online relationship and prime the pump to close future sales.

10 Effective and Powerful Ways to Promote Your Blog

9. Install Traffic-Boosting Apps

Wix offers a number of apps to help you get listed in directories and sites that will boost your traffic or create an advertising campaign to generate traffic from around the web. Check out Site Booster to help you get listed in Google and Bing as well as other directories. Use GetTraffic to create an advertising campaign in Wix.

10. Be Active On Social Networks

It isn’t just about Facebook and LinkedIn. Check out the demographics of different social networks and start engaging people on the platform that matches up with your ideal customer base.

That might be anything from Twitter to SnapChat to Pinterest. Meet with people where they already are and then create an expert presence that inspires them to go back and check out your offerings.

Plan to Succeed

As it can be seen, starting a blog takes some planning and strategizing to make sure it draws a crowd. However, there is plenty of good information out there to get you started down the right road (like this cool YouTube video.

The work you do behind the scenes is just as important as the content you decide to publish. What works for one blog may not work for another blog’s audience.

Take your time exploring and experimenting with the many options available to know what works for a particular site to get it right.


Onextrapixel – Web Design and Development Online Magazine

website-bounce-rate
20 Oct

7 Ways to Get Your Website Bounce Rate Down and Why You Must Take Action

by TBSCategories: News

This post was contributed by Tomer Harel.

Website Bounce Rate Down

In the online world, the bounce rate is the percentage of users who visit a site and exit before clicking anything. There could be many reasons for the bounce: load time is too slow, pop-ups are too annoying, the call-to-action was obscure, or they simply couldn’t easily find what they were looking for.

Whatever the reason, the result is the same: a lost visitor who didn’t convert, likely left with a bad impression of the brand, and quite possibly hurt the site’s search engine ranking.

Luckily, there are 7 proven ways to decrease a site’s bounce rate:

1. Remove pop-ups

Remove all of them. Even the well-designed ones. Even the ones that are advertising internal content offers. Visitors hate pop-ups of all kinds and happily bounce off sites that have them.

2. Use landing pages

When running campaigns for specific offers or to specific targets, use landing pages that are optimized for the campaign. Use the same messaging in the campaign’s ads, posts, and emails as you use on your landing page. If you run a supermarket and advertise “got milk?” the linked page had better be about milk. If it is about steak or vegetables, the bounce rate will increase.

3. Optimize Calls-to-Action

Make calls-to-action easy to find and enticing to click. CTA buttons should stand out on the page. Test variations of buttons with contrasting colors and sizes. Word the CTA text as actionable and inviting; instead of a boring “Free Trial” button, test wording like “Test it out for Free” or “Start My Free Trial.” Position CTA buttons logically and strategically above the fold.

4. Promote relevant content

On pages targeting a specific industry, for example, promote content that is relevant to that industry. For example, if you sell office furniture and have a specific page with information about furniture for medical offices, offer links to other articles, videos, and product information just for medical personnel. Offer the kind of content that the target visitor wants to consume, and they will most likely convert into a lead instead of bouncing.

5. Be searchable

Including a search box encourages users to stay on the site even if they didn’t find exactly what they were looking for on their first page. Google Custom Search offers a free, effective tool. It’s used on Just Creative.

6. Be quick

Load times are very important and must be optimized to be as low as possible. Reduce image sizes, cache any information that bottlenecks performance, remove any broken links, reduce file sizes when possible, use clean CSS, and ensure server speeds are optimized.

7. Offer responsive design

Increasingly, websites are accessed on mobile devices. Ensure that the site’s design and navigation are responsive and optimized for all screen sizes and browsers to avoid mobile bounces.

8. Give users what they want

The main reason for a website to have high bounce rate has to do with the fact the users were expecting to find something else when they arrived on the site. The most effective way to avoid this is to make sure the homepage or landing page is optimized for the user intent, or, in other words, the correct search terms.

Bounce rates down; success rates up!

By using these tips to reduce a website’s bounce rate, several great things are bound to happen:

  • More visitors consume the site’s content
  • Brand recognition improves
  • Conversion rates increase
  • Search engine rankings improve
  • Sales surge
  • Customer satisfaction rises

As always, remember to A/B test every change made to a website to determine its success. For changes like these bounce rate reducers, heatmaps and mouse tracking may also be helpful. But, in general, these seven tips are sure-fire winners.

Tomer Harel is Founder and CEO of KeyScouts, and Co-Founder of Spectoos.com. He has been practicing Internet marketing for over a decade, helping hundreds of businesses to thrive online. Despite his extensive knowledge and years of hands-on experience, Tomer is always looking to learn more and be a little bit better every day at what he does.

JUST™ Creative

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