5 Mobile App Design Trends of 2016 You Need To Know

Mobile devices are invading our life and their enormous popularity has challenged apps designers to come up with attractive and exquisite ideas for the consumers. They have to keep up with the ever-changing design trends so that their final products be enjoyable and not obsolete.

Here are 5 mobile app design trends of 2016 that you should consider when laying another app for mobile devices on the consumption table.

Gestures

Gestures are those tapping, flicking, dragging, pressing, zooming, rotating and other magical tricks that activate the app. They are comfortable for app users and are easy to use on devices of various sizes and shapes. One thing that mobile app designers should keep in mind is that most people tend to hold their smartphones in one hand and deliver these gestures with their thumb. Therefore, they must take into account the space they need to work with to make the app and gesture sync.

Pastel colors

Pastel hues are making their way into the mobile app trends. What makes this trend a good one is that the pastel-colored background allows for the application’s important features stand out and not take the user’s attention away from them.

Typography

Typography is the backbone of mobile app design. It is known that our main means of communication is through text. Therefore, the proper use of typography is essential in improving UX. Text must stand out on the app’s interface and black text on a white background is the best choice in matter of readability for app users.

Animation

Previous mobile applications were more static than they are today. With continuous development of smartphones and their more powerful capacity to support heavy-animated applications, designers are using this opportunity to make the application design more dynamic. Animation is also the element that improves the user’s visual experience.

Playful

The above trends relate to the more technical part of the mobile app design. One thing that makes users come back to your application after their first encounter is the degree they have enjoyed the application. Playfulness of an application is the key for your app design to engage users in the interactive aspect of the application experience. This trend gives mobile designers green light to their imagination and creativity.

Related: Popular Web Design Trends for 2016

Conclusion

If you want your apps design to be distinguishable and catchy don’t neglect these design trends. Whenever you are designing a mobile application you should always think about the user experience and user interaction with the product that you will make available for their consumption. Therefore, in order to be able to gain as many users as you can, your mobile app design must be unique, but at the same time in line with the users’ expectations.

7 Common Misconceptions about Mobile Web Development

We live in times when most of web-active people are in possession of a smartphone which gives them the possibility to surf the net whenever they find a minute to spare to indulge in the online world. Mobile web development is a suitable solution that will enable website owners reach more and more users across the large spectrum of Internet-connected devices.

However, many of the website owners still don’t understand the importance of a mobile web presence for their business. Mobile websites are completely different now from what they used to be several years ago.

Nonetheless, there are still some common misconceptions related to field, that we will address here.

Mobile websites are expensive

This is probably the most common misconception that website owners have before deciding to board on the mobile user-friendly quest. This, however, doesn’t have to be this way. If the web page has a responsive design and has been optimized and customized from the start so that it can be easily accessed by mobile users, then the price is not a problem. The prices are higher when the developer has to design it from scratch.

Responsive or adaptive web platform for mobile shoppers?

When it comes to this topic, one will hear often the terms “responsive” and “adaptive”. It is assumed that responsive design is associated with mobile design and that an adaptive site cannot be responsive. From technical viewpoint, responsive is an approach in creating sites with optimal navigation and interaction experience, while adaptive is an approach that adapts to the detected device.

In order to avoid such confusion, the website owner should ask several questions related to the strategy and goal of developing a mobile friendly platform:

• What is the mobile site’s purpose?
• What experience do you want to convey to your users?
• How much control do you want to have over that experience?

Mobile friendliness of a website is not important

This is not the case. Surveys have identified that mobile users are taking control over traditional PC users. This is also due to the large range of mobile devices available on the market. Young people, devouring new technologies and tech trends are the main consumer segment of mobile browsing.



While this group of mobile users increases, it is pertinent to make their browsing experience intuitive and responsive. Plus, search engines are ranking mobile friendly websites higher in their search results. You should bear this in mind when considering your web development for mobile devices decision, as this may cost you customers and make you lose money.

Mobile web designing is a simple process

This is not quite true. When the web designer is challenged with the task of designing a mobile page for your website he has to ensure that the end user will enjoy the same interactive experience as the one present on the traditional online web page.

Features, content, layout and other mobile web development elements must be catered for the users’ needs and expectations and the business’s objectives. Conceptualization of a high-quality mobile website calls for time and expertise.

A small business does not need a mobile presence

This is another largely spread misconception. If your business is at its inception and you want to make yourself heard and seen by many potential customers, you should definitely consider expanding your online presence so that it can be accessed from as many devices as possible.

Too much white space on the screen

White space on a mobile friendly website is even better. It makes the content more readable and does not fatigue the user’s eyes with crowded text. Ensure that you include only the most relevant information that relates to your business’s goals and objectives.

Once the mobile website is developed, the game is over

As with all websites, it requires ongoing maintenance. Trends are changing and improving at the speed of light and your mobile website must keep the pace. Users are always attracted to modern features and functionality and to keep them engaged and coming back for more you should give them what they are looking for.

Conclusion

The era when mobile web development was one more option to be considered by website owners is gone. Now, businesses can make a bigger statement in the online realm if they put on the tray all that is attractive to people, who prefer the convenience of a mobile device. And if you disregard what your customers need, they will simply go somewhere else to find it.

What other mistakes regarding mobile development would you add to our list? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Basic Website Usability Tips to Keep Customers Returning

In simple words, usability is what makes your website’s design pleasant and convenient for visitors. The more you know about how to improve this aspect, the higher chances to build a website that visitors will love. We put together a list of website usability tips meant to help you build an outstanding user experience, that will turn into higher conversion. How wouldn't want it?

You might know that your website has only 5-7 seconds to capture the attention of the visitors. During this frame time you have to make them stay longer and convince them that they came to the right place in order to find product or service they were looking for.

So how can you ensure that? It’s not that hard, you just need to arrange the content of your page in such way that all the vital information is at hand and the navigation is intuitive.

5 Website Usability Tips to Follow

Keep the most important information at the top of the home page

Since your website opens on homepage, it’s the first thing your visitors see. First of all, it must contain company’s name and logo. If you want your brand to obtain visibility in the digital environment – make sure you have a magnificent logo and clearly seen company’s name.

Content of the page must correspond its title

The last thing you want to do is to confuse your clients. If they came to buy mobile phones – make sure they will find what they are looking for right on the homepage.
Your company’s phone number must be right on top of the page. Thus, in case your potential client sees that you provide services he requires, he can easily find your phone number and call you.

Any promotions, seasonal, weekly, monthly discounts, sales and announcements of the same nature, must be on top of the home page or below the left menu. People like promotions and free things in general, which is why they will be more likely to browse other pages of your website in case they see promotions.

High contrast and pleasant color palette

Smart color scheme using is one of that website usability tips you really have to stick around. There exists an entire field, dedicated to studying color and its effects on human psychology.We perceive green as calming color, red as aggressive and alarming and so on. Combination of the right colors can attract target audience to your website and convince people that your company is the obvious choice. For example, in case your website deals with real estate or finances – it will be unwise to use an entire palette colors. Grey, white, black and dark blue will be more appropriate choices.

Contrast also plays a huge role in improving customer's’ perception of your website. And is one of those site elements that is going to affect your website usability if neglected. Black text on white background is considered ideal. Nevertheless, there can be various situations, where you want to play with the colors. In such case, when in doubt – open Word, write something and apply the colors you want to use. If you find the result irritating for the eye – don’t use it.

Call-to-action buttons must be easily accessible and visible
These elements people need to notice right away. You can use colors to stress them or make their outline brighter than the filling color.

Use familiar shapes

It’s not a secret that people love everything new, exciting and shining, however, some things need to be familiar for users, otherwise they will get irritated and simply leave your website.

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. If you want to create interesting buttons – use the same shape and assign them the usual purpose, but change their color and font of the inscription. Thus, people will not be disappointed, as clicking such buttons will get them where they want to go.

In general, you need to design your website keeping in mind what you would like to see on home page of any website you browse. It will be of great help in estimation of the overall website usability.

Related post:Button Design Techniques to Improve User Experience (UX)

Bottom line

Use these website usability tips to create a use-centered site that invite visitors stay longer and even buy from your website. Make sure all important information is properly displayed and there’s nothing that cause your visitors quitting. Placing vital info on the top, using pleasant color pallet, making call-to-action buttons visible and using familiar shapes are the basics of creating a great web usability.

Let us know if you have other website usability tips you implement to increase user experience in the comments section below.

Improving User Experience, based on Motif

Motif is a cornerstone of success in every IT company, although it is undoubtedly hard to see for someone, unrelated to any field of IT. Due to its big impact on improving user experience we will look into the root of the problem to get the full grasp of idea.

Nowadays, every project accomplishment requires collaboration between people of various professions that work together to create something complex and productive. This task is quite challenging, especially in terms of determining who gets the upper hand in deciding the direction the project must take.

When it comes to improving user experience we need to identify what makes the product/service great. People of every part of the team can come up with an answer. Problem is – every team will have its own opinion, based on the deep knowledge of their own field and inability to fully grasp other's point of view.

But what can a team do to find the unique equation that’ll work for all? It’s simple, really – all they have to do is find motif. A motif is a unique element that unifies all the conflicting sides. It can be something as simple as color or style that everyone perceives the same with little to no difference.

The importance of motif cannot be underestimated in terms of quality, as well as in sense of uniting multidiscipline team. If everyone is on the same page and work towards the same direction, there is a greater chance that people will be discovering something useful and meaningful, adding value and complexity to the project, as well increasing its functionality.

Use motif as a powerful way of improving user experience and delivering amazing product

Motif can also be used to create a unique and unusual digital experience to the point where people are thinking about the feature and associating it or something similar to it with your brand. For example, swiping on iPhones. When iPhones haven’t been available yet, the overwhelming majority of devices required tapping or pressing. Making swipe the first interaction became a genius motif, introduced by Apple that distinguished it from the rest.

So how do you find the motif of your product/service? In order to do that, you need to outline its feature that is so exclusive that customer will be able to find it only in your product/service. Improving this feature and putting some time and effort in its development will unite the team and allow reach common ground and understanding between all team members.

Bottom line

Consider improving user experience by integrating motif into the first-use of the product/service. If you do that, you will be able to naturally make users dependable on this feature, without making them feel like they are being forced to like or appreciate something. Make sure your unique feature is in its best shape and will require little to no tweaking in future. Remember that motif is really a basis for your marketing campaign, so choose wisely what feature to make your motif and how qualitative it must be.

What you do for improving user experience? Have you found what differentiate your website from others? Please share your opinions with us in the comment section.

SEO and UX: How to Optimize Your Website for Both

At the moment the world of digital marketing and web design are colliding, as there has arisen a tremendous necessity of combining ever-changing white SEO tactics of achieving high organic page rankings and positive user experience. However, there is no need to be overwhelmed – there exist strategies of achieving a golden mean between SEO and UX.

In order to be useful, pleasing, popular among users and engines your website must include the following features:

Safety and Speed

You need to install security plugins, because if you don’t – you might end up penalized for the lack of security on your website. Remember that users like to browse safe and fast websites. If yours is not safe of quick enough – you’re risking to lose visitors and ultimately your conversion rate will drastically drop.

In order to avoid that regularly update your plugins and versions of your CMS. Websites with near 0 downtime and congestions are the most popular ones. Moreover, your organic rate will drastically drop in case users will be closing your website almost right away. Quick loading time is tremendously important for both SEO and UX, so work on it to catch two birds with one stone.

Check your website speed

Intuitive Navigation

Despite of what many website owners currently think, search engine bots are not only measuring relevance and quality of content, but also estimate the value of the website from a human perspective.

New algorithms set forth in Google Panda and Google Penguin prevent improvement of organic traffic, obtained by grey hat or black hat SEO techniques. At the moment Google aims at appreciating quality over quantity, which is why navigation must be pleasant, helpful and intuitive. Websites that are hard to navigate are ranked lower. Use intuitive navigation techniques proved to deliver great results from SEO and UX perspectives.

Cool Outlook

We all love with our eyes and it’s not hard to imagine why. Pretty things sell much better than average-looking ones. Users spend just a couple of seconds on your website and you must grab their attention while they are wandering through the pages. Your website design must be shockingly good and multifunctional with all the scripts, deeply hidden beneath the gorgeous outlook.

Responsiveness

The website must be responsive, if it’s not - you are depriving yourself of the influx of mobile users, who are considered to be an exponentially growing minority. Nowadays, responsiveness is not a question of trend – it’s a must. You want your website to be available from all the possible devices, which is why its adaptability must be a given.

Conclusion

Considering the impact a good SEO and UX optimization has on your website, it definitely worth to spend time and resources on making them better. They are almost indispensable and regardless of how much effort you put in developing one of them, you will always be one step back to your competitors. Only making them work together you will achieve both usable and high performing website that drive huge traffic from organic search.

Keep in mind that you can have your website optimized for Google and your visitors simultaneously- all you have to do is to implement SEO and UX optimization tactics that we already shared here.

Facebook Marketing Mistakes to Avoid when Promoting Your Business

It’s not a secret that every well-established company or startup tries to promote itself on Facebook – the biggest social network in the world. It’s quite understandable, since every marketing strategy relies at least a bit on social media. We acknowledge its power, that's why today we want to focus on Facebook marketing mistakes social managers have to avoid.

The content, posted in Facebook posts of such companies can be extremely different, starting with press-releases and brand news and concluding with useful tips, professional pieces of information regarding industry, guides and so on.

Everyone tries to capture the attention of the audience, but methods of doing so can be various – suitable and acceptable or tacky and utterly irritating for the general public or your target audience. When making your post you must be extremely attentive to its every detail. A simple typo can snowball into a huge misunderstanding and significant loss in conversion.

Below we’ll describe seven widespread Facebook marketing mistakes that are most frequently committed by the companies of various size, advertising themselves on this platform.

• Automatic replies to user’s comments

Currently, when it’s all about humanized interaction, using robots on Facebook is very bad for business. By doing so you can run into extremely unpleasant situations, for example if someone praises your service, product, but you’ve set your automatic replies to be apologetic, saying: “We’re awfully sorry for inconvenience. Would you be so kind to provide more info on the problem, by contacting us …” Such approach is going to cost you many followers or potential clients. It’s good and productive to be prepared for negative reviews (it’s inevitable), however, you need to put a real person to this job.

Attentive and soft-spoken customer support representative will write a stellar gratitude message and will be able to deal with negative review in the most productive way, turning bad review into the good publicity.

• Removing comments/posts

Do you want to lose followers and clients? Because that’s how you do it. Removing negative posts or comments from your page is one of the Facebook marketing mistakes that scare your fans. You need to deal with situation instead а closing your eyes and pretending that it never happened.

Such behavior will cause outrage and irritation among your followers and clients. Nevertheless, bad situation can be turned to golden publicity if you choose to approach the problem creatively and positively.

Sure, answering the uncomfortable questions is no picnic, but if you offer a compensation or considerable discount on your services – you will gain more followers and customers, instead of loosing them.

Companies, tested by difficult situations seem to be more reliable than those, who never had any issues. It happens because if your potential clients know that you take good care of your customers – they will be much more likely to convert.

• Importunity is not a good choice

While planning your Facebook content strategy, you need to make sure that the content you're posting is not boring or too pushy. Always place yourself in the shoes of your followers and potential clients – would you like to receive a notification every day or even several times per day? Probably not. Companies that send this many, get unsubscribed from. Don't say you haven't been warned about this Facebook marketing mistake!

Your content must be useful in some way and relevant to the targeted audience. Simple news about the awesomeness of your brand get deleted right away. Be useful and relative – don't be pushy and boastful in the content you're sending to your followers.

• Thoughtfulness is obligatory

Remember that the content you’re sending can be seen by any group of people worldwide.Therefore, be extremely careful and cautious with the things you write. It must not offend people of any race, age, sex, ethnicity and so on.

Even if the target audience is located in one country and you wish to promote your business by posting funny jokes, don’t make them at the expense of other ethnicities or people of different race. It will not reflect well on you. Despite the fact that you will most certainly get a couple of likes from inconsiderate people, the majority will find it repulsive.

• #Hashtag Overuse

The option of using hashtags has appeared on Facebook only recently, but many companies have already exploited this new and exciting opportunity and even went crazy with it.

Don’t do it. Research shows that the best amount of hashtags per post is 1 or 2. Any number of hashtags above that will only decrease user’s interaction with your post. Great number of hashtags will make you look needy and desperate for attention. Who likes desperate? No one – that’s for sure. Use hashtags, but don’t overdo it.

• Making bad jokes

Humor is great when it’s subtle and original, otherwise it can turn into one of the biggest Facebook marketing mistakes. Your brand will be associated with something positive and more users will deem it “cool” or up-to-date. That will be the case if your humor is funny and considerate.

Subtlety must be a priority, because if you’re not subtle somebody will get offended. Getting a mass outrage is not something that you would want to deal with. Bad rep travels with the speed of light across multiple social media.

Last in our Facebook marketing mistakes list, but not last in importance

• Begging for likes

In digital world, begging is even more pathetic than in the real one. If you choose to go this way, consider your business doomed. You might as well stay near the imaginary digital road with a sign “Please, please, please – Like me”.

Earn your likes with strong content, effective marketing strategy, useful information, don’t just ask for it. The last thing you want is for your brand to be considered pathetic and hashtagged #youdoingitwrong

Now that you know all these Facebook marketing mistakes, why not tell us which of these errors you have admitted till now? Or if there are others you have noticed while using Facebook for business, please share with us!

Why and How to Do a Content Audit?

Perhaps you’ve already heard and read on several resources that Content matters and that from time to time you have to do a content audit.

You’ve also must have heard that content must be qualitative. Due to the recently appeared Google Panda and Penguin, black hat and grey hat SEO practices are obsolete now and will yield only penalties for you.

Another topic that is currently hot is the responsiveness of your website. Earlier it was only a trend, but now it’s a must– how else will you reach your audience that uses mobile devices to browse your website?

Making your website responsive is much easier than making a separate mobile version. You won’t have to pay as much for responsiveness and the content of your website will have only one URL, which facilitates sharing and discussing the content.

While all of it is true, no word was mentioned on what to do with the heaps of content that already is on the websites, especially if we are talking about websites of well-established businesses. You may redesign your website for it to be squeaky clean and new, but old and obsolete content may show its ugly head through incompatibility with the new design or in any other way.

That’s the main reason why it’s essential to do a content audit before uploading it to the redesigned website. Thus, you’ll get the chance to get rid of the outdated and unnecessary content, leaving more place for a new one. This problem may appear unexpectedly while designing a mobile version of your website. If you don’t get rid of the old and obsolete content, it may appear on the pages that were never meant for it.

Thus, it may clog the access to your multi-layered content, leaving only 2 out of 4 or 5 layers accessible. Due to this, other layers of content will be accessible only through search and you definitely don’t need that.

Conducting a Website Content Audit is a MUST

There is no way around it – it has to be done, despite the fact that no one is willing to do it because raking through piles of obsolete content is no fun. However, content is the what people interact with on your website, which is why it must correspond to modern trends and be absolutely relevant.

Every company can conduct this content audit for different reason. Some browse through it to find outdated information and remove it. Others want to restructure it and present in a way that is better for understanding.

In any case, managing the content you already have can set realistic expectations of the new website design, as well as help you choose the right direction for it.

How to do a content audit?

The best way to conduct a website content audit is to take every single page separately and review all the elements that it includes. Start with the text, see if it's relevant, contains useful, concise and up-to-date information.

Define its purpose – is it a story, a guide, a featured article or simply a block of information with instructions on using certain sections of your website. Delete and modify it to correspond to the recent changes if such changes took place.

Further on you might want to look on the banners, promotions and button inscriptions. Perhaps you’ll have a great idea for updating it – go ahead, because any new element is more exciting than the one your visitors saw a thousand times already.

Besides, you’ll have a better structure of your page in general if you take time to learn how the type of text that you defined information on your page to be, must look like professionally.

What content audit tools to use?

The very process of reviewing your website’s content has been around for a long time. However, recently there has appeared a wide row of tools that you can use to help you analyze the content. One of the best this Content Analysis Tool (CAT).

This content audit software costs just a couple of dollars, but will provide you with detailed reviews of each page of your website. This is extremely useful, considering that in such way you’ll be able to notice and weed out bad content.

Tough Decisions

Remember that there is no way around it and there is no right way to conduct the content audit. Your purpose is to find what is called a “golden mean” – a structure and meaning of the content that will be convenient and appealing both to users as well as for designers, who’ll be working on updating your website to make it a responsive one with positive UX.

Try to make the content on your website brief and concise – straight to the point. People don’t like to work hard to obtain something and they will definitely won’t be doing any additional reading.

If your website has many pages, overloaded with info – it just won’t be supported in the responsive version. Make it short, interesting and scalable.

Have you recently done a content audit on your website or you are planning one? What you think is the toughest part in the whole content audit process?