So, you've put your brand's name on a shiny new app!
It's visually enticing and it works “as smooth as butter”, too. And where do you add that its navigation is more than intuitive, as well.
It sure looks like you've checked all the major “must-haves” off your app's list. And yet...
It takes just a “Hello there!” or recommending to your app visitors products with absolutely no connection, whatsoever, to their previously bought items, and your “visually-arresting”, smoothly functioning app itself will risk to “become history”.
Personalization is key in mobile marketing!
A tailor-made customer approach is what makes the difference between “just another” great-looking, fast-loading app and a great-looking, fast-loading app that keeps users hooked on and wanting to come back for more. We, too, the team in this web development company in Toronto, are great fans of this approach.
Now, don't rush in to “recycle” your previous targeting experience, either! It may be still relevant for your desktop marketing strategy, but not for mobile.
A new medium comes with a different user behavior and requires a different type of strategy, as well.
Without further ado, let us highlight for you some things to keep in mind when you put together your personalized mobile marketing plan:
Get To Know Your Users
You couldn't possibly personalize your users' journeys inside your app if you continue to see them as “audience”.
Start perceiving them as “individuals” first, then individualize their experiences.
Especially since nowadays you have valuable analytics at your fingertip practically: this gives you an accurate (real-time) insight into your users':
demoraphics
age
sex
on what sections from your app they visit more often
when was the last time they used it
even what they're doing in your app RIGHT NOW
And this is gold information!
Why not use all this data about your “guests” for crafting contextual offers for them, for boosting your app with tailor-made engagement features (instead of the “one-size-fits-all” type of in-app messages): coupons, video tutorials, notifications, you name it?
“Say Their Names” As You Welcome Them On Board
Yes, you've got it right: this means so much more than just going for a “Hello + Your User' First Name” greeting formula.
This is just basic personalization, but it's a start.
Still, take a few steps further: use the details that your users provide you with, as they sign up into your app, for customizing their experiences right from the start.
For ensuring your app will leave the very best first impression on your users!
By the time they start exploring your app, you'll have their names, their dates of birth, you will then know something about their preferences, so you can come up with your first tailor-made product suggestions for them.
Why not trying to guide them towards the exact pages of your app that they're interested in?
Instead of letting them “without any guidance whatsoever”, wandering about your app?
Tailor Your Content To Your Users' Behaviors
Once you've made them feel welcomed and “handled as individuals” in your app, go ahead and tailor all your content to your guests' click behavior.
Recommend them products/services similar to those that they've already shown interest for!
Moreover, if you want to collect data for personalizing their next visits, make sure to implement in your app features such as “auto suggest” and “product recommendations”.
This way, they'll feel that you truly care about the experience they had using your products/services. Not that you're collecting information in order to “prepare” your content for their future visits in your app!
Your users will "tell" you how to personalize the content you deliver them in your app. You just need to invest some time in “listening to them”, then some more in turning the “clues” they'll give you into “mobile marketing gold”. It's “well invested time”, and we, the team of developers in this digital agency in Toronto, can confirm it from experience.
Personalize Your Push Notifications
This is not a matter of “just” reaching out to your users and “closing a sale”, but a matter of infusing your push notifications with personalization. Of focusing on the wrapping, as well, not just on the message within!
Offer something to those customers who will have abandoned the cart, but make sure that “something” is perfectly tailored to their preferences, to their action history!
Implement In-App Features To Boost Interaction
Browsing through piles of pictures, watching videos, “digesting” plenty of text, keeping up with all the notifications, scanning through all the fields of your menu can get quite overwhelming for your app users after a while.
You are aware of this, aren't you?
Now, for easing their exploration and for enhancing interaction, consider boosting your app with some personalized in-app features.
Here are just two examples:
personalized in-app referrals: give your users reasons to “pay you another visit”
in-app chat: your users can get over the “paradox of choice” if they can stay connected with their family and friends and thus ask for their opinions on the purchases they indent to make
Engage in Ongoing Conversation With Your App Users
… instead of simply popping up “messages”, whether they're general or personalized in-app messages.
The approach to success is the one of “individualized feedback”!
Depending on what screens from your app your users has accessed, on what actions they did or did not perform, you can adapt your in-app messages and level them up to “ongoing conversations”.
Here are 2 possible scenarios for you:
a user has given you a good review, he/she's just filled in your customer satisfaction survey: you could then invite him/her to rate your app in the app store
another user has given you a negative feedback: you could then ask him/her for more info so that you can fix the signaled issue(s) and improve his/her future experience in your app or you could tempt him/her with a tailor-made offer.
Final Thoughts
Your app users expect not to just to enjoy some “memorable experiences” while in your app: they demand “personalized experiences”.
So, instead of investing all your resources in functionality, it's time to focus on implementing those elements of personalization which drive users to convert into shoppers and to come back for more.
Also, another final thought for you: test it once, test it twice and experiment som more! Test different visuals, content, layouts, you name it. Look for ways to constantly improve your users' journey in your app, to constantly add new levels of personalization to their experience.
What are your thoughts about personalized mobile marketing? To what extent do you personalize your mobile apps? Use the comments section below to drop in a few words about your own experiences as an app developer!
Adrian Ababei / Jan 20'2017
The power of a business’ website is not to be underestimated; it is the storefront to ecommerce companies, the credibility for professional services, a first impression regarding branding and marketing for website visitors and it’s the epicenter of the decision making process for consumers. A great website can drive the visitor to research more about your product or services and find confidence that your company is head and shoulders above the competition. At OPTASY, we put our expertise, creativity and talent into the outstanding websites that we design for our customers and are excited to learn that we have been chosen as one of Canada’s top web development companies by technology research company Clutch.
Based in Washington, D.C., Clutch creates a reputable business directory that exceeds most technology review lists that you may have come across. With intricate questionnaires and verified client reviews, Clutch ensures that only the best of the best make it to their prestigious reviews index. In this competitive industry of technology and web development, it is a high honour to be acknowledged on this list of exceptional companies.
There were many factors which brought OPTASY to the top of the list; great communication, increased customer traffic and revenue being some of the most common qualities listed. According to a client in the medical field in which OPTASY upgraded their website, "I’ve had to have discussions with OPTASY during the last part of our project, making sure that the website was SEO-ready. Our traffic increased after the upgrade, as well as our revenues… OPTASY was very responsive, fast, and offered great communication."
What is equally impressive is that many clients of OPTASY have been with us for years and plan on using us for updates to their Drupal web services. One development agency commented, "OPTASY has provided development services for our company, mainly Drupal, JavaScript, and PHP-related. We rely on OPTASY’s principal for both development and architecture in certain cases … We have an ongoing relationship with OPTASY and started working together in 2012."
We are extremely proud of our team and the amazing work that they do which has earned us recognition among our peers and others in the technological industry. Our mission involves having the best experts who strive towards designing premiere Drupal web services while creating incomparable customer experience. We are fortunate to have clients that acknowledge and appreciate our dedication and we look forward to the future as we continue to provide the tools for great online business.
Adrian Ababei / Jan 19'2017
“Experience”, “user experience”, “search experience”, “mobile experience”, “web experience”...
This highly popular family of words now has a (not so) new “member”: “analytics experience”.
Or, if you prefer a more suggestive name for it: “tailored analytics experience”!
It can only mean that, as a business owner, you shouldn't limit yourself to providing just your users with the best experiences, but your employees, too.
And here we're talking about crafting visually-appealing, optimized, nonetheless interactive (and don't forget customizable) self-service analytics experiences for your agile team!
Giving their data-handling experiences the due consideration you're, in fact, ensuring your business's relevance in your competitive niche.
Basically, as you streamline their entire work-flow, by embedding analytics in the apps (as opposed to standalone business intelligence tools) they use at work, as you guarantee them seamless analytics experiences, you actually empower your team to strategically turn all the accessed data into “fuel” for your company's success.
And all that in a timely manner!
Let's see, in detail, how precisely incorporating analytics in your team's workflow will impact your business:
1. It Enables Your Team to Make Accurate Predictions
Stop wasting time, stop wasting money!
Here's a “common” work scenario to ponder over: "Let's say you still rely on a standalone BI tool (or on several BI tools) in your company, that you import your software-driven data into this tool; what you're getting, in fact, what you'll be examining later on, is nothing but “past tense” data.
And where do you add that you're practically losing valuable time waiting for this “historical information” to get imported before you start analyzing it, before you draw your own pertinent reports and way before you even decide to take action.
Can you really afford to lose all this time and energy?
Instead, by embedding analytics in your company's software you, and your team, will have real-time valuable data right at your fingertips, anywhere, any time!
2. It Puts Data In The Context of Your Team's Workflow
Embedded analytics means “contextualized analytics”.
And that's a big booster for your employees' workflow!
Put self-service analytics at your teams' disposal and they'll practically gain access to the particular information they need for carrying out the tasks in their departments. That, instead of “overloading” them with unnecessary data for their specific roles and skills.
Moreover (and this is another huge benefit): with this data available all the time, anywhere, not only that you stir their curiosity and encourage them to “exploit” the available data during their daily activities: you also help them gain their autonomy.
Instead of constantly calling the IT department, now they get to find find the answers to their questions themselves.
Instead of putting into practice risky tactics, they can now do the proper research first, themselves.
Using the analytics delivered to them by the apps they're using, they can turn their hypothesis and dilemmas into data-driven decisions.
3. It Streamlines and Tailors Reporting Within Your Team/s
Now this is another particularity of any agile team: its members' habit to share the collected information, their reports, to their co-workers. Spreading key data, cooperation and teamwork are some of “agile teams''” basic particularities.
But how does embedded analytics set itself apart form third party software from this standpoint alone?
It enables your employees to send out “tailored” reports!
So each department will get its own report and data: the sales one its own dedicated chart, the web design and the IT departments their own share of data relevant for their specific tasks and so on.
Get it? Relying on telemetry, embedded analytics points out what charts and data to be sent out to specific teams/people from your company.
So you won't be wasting anyone's time; so you won't be wasting company money.
Increasing efficiency is the major goal you'll reach using embedded analytics!
4. It Turns The Analytics Experience Into Visual Storytelling
“Storytelling”! Here is another powerful word, as powerful as “experience”.
So, why shouldn't you provide your employees, to, with visual storytelling? And not just your customers?
Embedded, self-service analytics creates the perfect context for such interactive, visually-appealing experiences for your employees.
And were do you add that they're ideally customizable, as well?
Your team can:
drill down
click through
put together reports based on how they want the needed data to be delivered to them (and not on how a third-party software vendor would decide to display it to them)
5. It Fuses Together Data Coming From Various Sources
The heading says it all: you'd be saving loads of valuable time (that you'd be spending on taking action instead) by installing embedded analytics on your company devices.
Take this time and energy-consuming scenario into account:
“You need to run a mixed report, so your team of Toronto developers sets out on an never-ending “marathon”. They start collecting data from the cloud, the apps and other “storage” devices, then they draft multiple reports, then they examine all the data, take out the relevant one, keep the key one and it's only then they start to actually put together the mixed report that you need to gain insight and take action.”
Why should you “exploit” your team that way, especially since it's so time-inefficient?
Especially when you can simply embed analytics, which will pull in data from multiple sources, run reports and deliver you the all-in-one chart?
In real time!
Encourage Your Team To Embrace The Analytics Culture
Maybe we should have started our post with this part instead.
Why? Because you will never benefit from the above-mentioned advantages that embedded-analytics comes with unless you first “stir” an appetite for data in our employees.
Unless you don't promote data-driven decision making first.
An how do manage to build this whole analytics mindset?
Let us give you 3 scenarios you could use in your data-centered "demos":
you show your co-workers how precisely a server error could impact your online store
you use conclusive data for influencing the way they'll spend the company's money in various work-related situations
you use real-time data for setting targets to be reached within certain time frames
How about you? Have your efforts for promoting an analytics culture within your team paid off? Have you already streamlined your entire work-flow with embedded analytics?
If not, what stops you? We're curious to hear your thoughts about this topic!
Adrian Ababei / Jan 19'2017
“Engagement”, THE trend shaping today's web design and development landscape, would be “powerless” if it wasn't teamed up with: an open, honest and customer-centric approach.
And you can efficiently approach your customers and get them to engage with your brand only if you “hand them the microphone”: if you allow them to “publicly” praise or criticize your brand.
How? By creating the context for them to express themselves in!
It takes courage (for not all those reviews will put your brand in a good light) and it takes vision.
Why vision? For it proves that you are aware of all the benefits that your business will get from such type of user-generated content: both added value for your brand and SEO benefits.
Now let's see how precisely customer reviews impact your business:
SEO BENEFITS:
Customer Reviews Boost Your SERP Ranking
It's pretty logical if you just think about it for a few seconds: the content that these reviews “enrich” your website with will appear in text format in the HTML code, thus easing search engines' job to reach it and scan it.
This type of content is easily “accessible”, one of Google's top favorite words these days, remember? So, think “indexation”, think “text format”, think “accessibly” and: do the math yourself!
Customer Reviews Help You Identify The Right Long-Tail Keywords
No need to stress the long-tail keywords' “superiority” over the general, overly competitive keywords, right?
But how do you pick the “key” long-tail keywords? This is the question!
Well, you take some time to read your customer reviews! As easy as that!
They're usually “loaded” with specific phrases that your customers use for expressing their admiration or dissatisfaction with your products/services.
Invest some time in analyzing the words and phrases that your customers use in their reviews and you'll identify the right long-tail keywords to “fuel” your whole SEO strategy with.
Customer Reviews Help You Gain Your Authoritative Voice
It's a whole “combo” of reviews-centered factors that turns your brand into an authority in your niche:
the interaction going on your website
all the buzz from your social media accounts
your customers' high level of confidence in your brand
To cut it short: Google won't remain indifferent to all this “talking about your brand” going on online and will soon start perceiving your website as an authority.
Customer Reviews Fuel Your Site With Valuable Content
Content is king and constantly churning out fresh, unique content can turn into a major challenge now and then, don't you agree?
We sure can empathize with you: we too, are constantly striving to craft new, high-quality content for our Toronto web design company's clients.
Well, how about that: by enabling customer reviews on your site you actually “authorize” your customers to lend you a hand with your content marketing efforts!
As they write down their unique reviews they'll actually take some of the “quality content-producing burden” off your shoulders!
Say hello to a new “wave” of organic traffic!
Customer Reviews Fuel Your Site With “Unique” Content
You do know how much Google hates it when same content is used and overused on multiple websites, don't you?
In this respect, the content included in the customer reviews on your website is utterly valuable due to its uniqueness, as well. You won't find two customers describing their experiences with your brand the same way.
“In a similar way”, maybe, but never “the same way”.
Customer Reviews Boost Your Local SEO Efforts
And it's no magic: since both the name of your business and its location will obviously get mentioned in your customers' reviews, these reviews will automatically turn into the most reliable factors for Google to rely on when “localizing your website”.
Guess who'll be improving his/her website's local ranking this way?
Now let's move on to the next benefit!
BUSINESS BENEFITS:
Customer Reviews Help You Build Trust
Let your existing customers attract new customers!
This is probably one of the most straightforward ways of generating business: you set the proper context for your existing customers to go public about their experiences after using your products and they'll practically send out an “invitation” to other customers to “join their community”.
It's human nature that people trust other people rather than companies, so let your customers build trust around you brand and attract prospects through their own reviews.
Allow them to do that by incorporating customer reviews into your website!
Customer Reviews Increase Your Website's CTR
Reviews have been influencing websites' CTR in SERP ever since Google allowed developers to include review data in their ad copy.
So, it's easily predictable that users will click on those site links, appearing in their search entries, that display reviews, too.
Customer Reviews Signal The Issues You Need To Focus On
Bad reviews, too, make a great resource for you to "exploit".
How come?
They help you identify your products'/services' weak points. They point out to you the issues that you need to improve or change for meeting your customers' expectations.
Instead of ignoring negative feedback, turn it into an advantage: see how you can fix the signaled issues, whether they're products or customer services-related.
Instead of covering up bad reviews, “dazzle away” your customers with honesty: display this non-appreciative feedback on your Drupal website!
While you rush in to fix the highlighted issues, you'll be also reinforcing trust in your customers: no one's that naive to trust a brand showing up exclusively highly-appreciative reviews, don't you agree?
SMO BENEFITS:
Customer Reviews Enrich Your Site With Content With Viral Potential
Here is how you can boost this user-generated content's viral potential: you just link your website to your social media account.
Then, the good reviews uploaded on your Drupal site will stand all the chances to go viral!
Customer Reviews Lead to Confidence, Leading to Social Acceptance
Once your website's content starts to go viral on your social media accounts, it will be just a matter of time till you're granted “social acceptance” from your customers/followers.
Reviews lead to sharing, to liking and to confidence. And it's your customers' confidence that will help you build your own community on social media.
And loyal communities sure are brands' most valuable “assets”, right?
And here we are, at the end of our list of benefits that your business can reap from enabling customer reviews on your Drupal website. We consider them to be more than “tempting”, but how about you?
We look forward to hearing/reading your own thoughts about allowing customers to upload their reviews, good or bad, on one's site!
Adrian Ababei / Jan 18'2017
“Ignorance is bliss!”
And yet, it's enough for you to ignore a vulnerability in your security system and you'll face chaos!
You will have turned your worse nightmare into reality: your business's digital identity has been compromised for good, cyber criminals have infiltrated your system, your customers' sensitive data has been exposed and your brand's reputation irreparably damaged.
It's enough for you to ignore the necessity of a patch in a given context and you lose everything.
And “everything” has the same significance for you whether you're running an “enterprise-level business” or a small one, wouldn't you agree?
Now, don't you find “reducing the likelihood that such a scenario should become reality“ a far healthier business mentality than: “rely-lying exclusively on good fortune”?
In this respect, here are 8 crucial cyber security tips you should start implementing ASAP for “your good night sleep”:
1. Point Out The Safety Protocols For Social Networking
First of all, you need to face it and accept it: it's your employees that actually turn your vision, as a business owner, into reality. And it's them, as well, that could “put you out of business”.
And more often than not they “manage” to do this unintentionally!
By simply not following some basic safety protocols whenever they access social networking sites on company devices.
Here are some elementary precautions that you should remind them (on a regular basis) to take whenever they access these websites at work (or at home, but from company devices):
never post identifiable information on your social account or, even worse, information breaking the company's confidential policies and procedures
never trust the “friends only” option available on your social account: absolutely everything you post there could get public
there's no turning back once you've posted something on your social account; “deleting” that particular link/image won't guarantee you that all the copies of the information will get deleted
think twice before you post any kind of information about somebody else from work
never trust “new people” that you socialize with on such networking sites: you never know to whom you might unintentionally give away confidential information
2. Consider Encryption: Protect Your Clients' Sensitive Data
Especially if it's credit card details or patient records that you're storing on your Drupal website.
You should handle this sensitive data as if you were handling delicate (and nonetheless expensive) china!
And encryption technology is the best way to protect such confidential data. We, the team of developers working in this Toronto digital agency, strongly believe this!
You already know how it works: the used technology relies on specific algorithms which make that sensitive information readable only to those having the correct keys.
Still, you should go from just “knowing” (how it works) to actually “implementing” it! Your clients' data is definitely not a subject of debate: “to use or not to use encryption”!
3. Train Your Team on Specific Cyber Security Protocols
Do not expect your employees to guess the specific precautions they should take for avoiding to unintentionally cause security breaches within your company.
Also, do not rely exclusively on good faith, thinking that they'll stick to the protocols that you will have developed for them either. Keep reinforcing these good practices, keep giving them trainings aimed at reminding them which are the risky cyber security habits that they shouldn't adopt and the specific security protocols they should incorporate in their work from day one to the very last days in your company.
4. Keep Your Business WI-FI Network Safe
Running your business on an unsecured WI-Fi network is almost like: riding a bike blindfolded!
It's a one-way road, you'll keep it on your cycle track, and you know you've been riding bicycles on this particular road ever since you were a kid. Chances that anything bad should happen go down to zero.
And yet, why should you run any risks at all?
When you could simply take some additional steps for properly securing your WI-FI network?
hide your network name
go for an ultra-strong password
use a firewall
Better safe than sorry! Better “with the eyes wide shut” than “blindfolded”, right?
5. Strengthen Your Passwords
And this doesn't mean that you should rush in now to double or to triple the number of characters included in your passwords.
It's not just the number of characters (ideally at last 12) that makes a password “solid”.
There are other criteria, too, you know:
first of all: it shouldn't be a word included in the dictionary
secondly: it should include symbols, uppercase and lowercase letter and numbers, as well
And that's how you get yourself some “hard to crack”, “superhero” passwords!
Note: whenever recalling all these superhero passwords gets increasingly challenging, go for a “password manager”. Do a little research yourself, find the one that best suits you business security needs and commit to sticking to it along 2017!
Make a pledge!
6. Set Up Multi-Factor Authentication
Once you've implemented tip no. 5, accept and adapt to this proven fact: there's no such thing as "unbreakable" password!
How about that?
You should always back up your otherwise solid passwords with a two (or a multi)-factor technology!
One that requires an extra step in the login process: an extra element that the one involved should provide before logging into his/her account.
Think Paypal, for instance, or think (pretty much) any bank: their login processes do not limit to the steps of typing in a user name and a password. There is an extra security information that you need to type in before you access your account.
Again, we need to stress this idea: especially if it's sensitive data that you're storing on your Drupal website you shouldn't tighten the purse-strings when it comes to the no. of data protecting technologies that you're using.
Better safe than “unworthy of your client's trust”!
7. Backup, Backup, Then Backup Some More
Your data is your business! It's the very DNA of your business!
So, you can't afford to run any risk of losing it, just like that, after a sudden cyber attack.
After all, the whole idea behind implementing all these cyber security good practices is not just to avoid putting your business at risk, but to be “up and running” immediately after such an event does occur (if)!
Preparation is key!
So, while keeping your business' digital identity at bay from any cyber security vulnerabilities that could be exploited, make sure to be properly prepared if “the unwanted” sill occurs!
By setting up a backup plan you actually make sure that an eventual attack won't cost you too much “recovery time”. And time is, indeed, money!
It doesn't have to be a tedious process, but rather a consistent one, made of regular data backup up steps that you need to take throughout the whole life of your business!
It's a “commitment for life”!
8. Constantly Update Your Software and Browsers
We could, as well, have called this last tip: update, update, then update some more!
We know how annoying those notices can get when you're running out of time and you still have so many tasks to handle. We've been there, too, while working on our web projects in our digital agency in Toronto.
And yet, do yourself a favor: do not ignore them!
Moreover, follow your software or operating system's advice and run these updates or use the patches they're ready to strengthen your business with.
It's time consuming, we know, but do not think it in terms of “time is money” (not this time), but rather as “time invested in your business's long future”.
Since cyber criminals are constantly “refining” their breaching methods, software companies, too, need to keep up with them and to constantly update their security systems.
So, overlooking their recommendations to update is like saying: “No, thanks! I'm way too busy going out of business”.
Two more tips and we would have had a “cyber security Decalogue” for you!
What other 2 more “tips”, to make a list of 10, would you have added? Feel free to share them with us in the comments below!
Adrian Ababei / Jan 17'2017
It's not a matter of “better or worse”, but one of “appropriate or inappropriate given context”. This is what our experience as Toronto developers has taught us.
And that given context is given by your website's specificity itself!
So, you should start weighting up the two UI styles, the two ways of displaying content on your website, from this perspective: each one provides the best UX for a particular type of website that you're owing/developing.
It's your Drupal website's particularities that shape your own purposes and your users' main goal, too, once they land on your website, and which determine the best type of web design to use, as well.
In this respect: what kind of website do you have in mind?
Now, how about pushing these 2 “leading actors” into the spotlight?
How about shading some light on each one's advantages and limitations and pointing out the best contexts when they can help you provide the best UX to your visitors?
What's a List (or Grid) Design?
A more or less basic definition of a list would go something like this: a list is a page featuring several entries or candidate items meant to match the user's search criteria.
Lists are ideal for newspaper websites!
They ease users' “job” of quickly scanning over the headlines in order to gain an overview of the latest news before they decide which article's worthy for being further explored.
Till they decide which is the piece of news worthy, interesting enough for them to “click on for more information”, they need to quickly “overfly” all the headlines.
And a list design, being more compact, is by far the best means for organizing content, for steamlining this scanning process after all.
Did anyone said that: facilitation is a synonym for “better user experience”?
What's a Card in Web Design?
An “entry point”, a “container of related information” or a “brief summary of information”. These are but three possible vague definitions of a card in web design.
Now, let's detail a bit, shall we?
Imagine a card as some sort of an “informational teaser”: it's a container that gives users just an entry point to some more detailed information.
“More detailed information” that the user can access, for further exploration, once they've clicked the card-shaped entry point.
It's no news for anyone that Pinterest's been THE card-based UI's trend setter.
Its popularity, among users, convinced Google, Jelly, Tinder, Weotta, and other giant “players” on the online arena to adopt this UI design.
Although a product of flat design, a card is rather a Flat Design 2.0, since it features light 3D effects (such as drop shadow) pointing out to users that they should click for “unlocking” the rest of the information prepared for them.
What else could we briefly (for now) say about cards?
They work best on archive pages, where you, as a web developer in Toronto/Drupal website owner want to just “tease” your users with brief summaries of the additional content available for them for further exploration.
When Should You Go For a Card-Based UI?
1. For Grouping Various Types of Content
If lists make the best choice when it comes to organizing and displaying similar content, cards, on the other hand, work wonders for helping users easily navigate through several types of content.
Just rely on borders for marking the differences among various elements on your website, among the various pieces of content. Thus, you'll provide a visual boundary for your users to rely on for easily navigating through your “puzzle” made of several distinct items.
2. For Enhancing Information Browsing
Think of Pinterest (again)!
You don't visit Pinterest to search for a particular piece of information.
Instead, you have a content category in mind and some spare time to invest in exploring whatever collections of stunning images you'll might get surprised with.
So, basically you go on Pinterest for scanning through pins, through all those stunning images.
And there you have it!
You've just named precisely the type of user goal that the card-based web design best responds to: “scrolling through”/”scanning through”/”browsing through” or however you wish to call it.
It's not for searching for specific information that you should use this type of UI, but for encouraging and enhancing the act of browsing through a whole collection of bits of information.
You impose your users no content hierarchy whatsoever (like you do when using a list-style design).
Instead, you grab their attention with visually-arresting images encapsulated in those cards and, moreover, you layer bits of information on their surfaces, making teasing textline + eye-catching images work together hand-in-hand.
And since it's browsing that you're encouraging and not the act of quickly accessing a particular type of information, the card-based UI turns all the “scanning through” into a delightful, effortless and fun scroll down card-shaped results.
Whenever your users spot something that surprised/intrigued/stirred their curiosity, they get to click the specific card(s) and indulge in further exploring the additional content.
And there you have it: instant gratification!
When Should You Go For a List-Style Design?
1. For Ensuring Quick Access To The Needed Information
As already mentioned: the list-style web design is perfect for newspaper and newspaper-like websites.
How come?
Just think about it: on this type of site users usually land for eye scanning the given content and for quickly spotting precisely the information/article that they're interested in.
It's not for passing time browsing through a visually-appealing collection of card-based results that they'll access your website.
No sir! In fact they'd hate spending too much of their priceless time looking at amazing pictures, for they're on the look for specific information and they want to gain access to it as quickly and as effortlessly as possible.
So, quickly scanning through a vertical list (far more easily to eye scan than a dashboard of cards featuring no helpful hierarchy) increases their chances to find what they're looking for quick and easy, with no unnecessary distractions whatsoever.
2. For Smaller Screens
It's obvious why lists make a better choice for smaller screens than cards: they take up less space on the screen.
Therefore, users aren't constrained to keep scrolling down, when using their mobile devices, if they want to access more content and they're not forced to rely on their short-memory either.
And this can only lead to better UX!
It's no rocket science why: list-style design enables you to display more choices, in short rows down the length of your web page.
Thus, you take out the (otherwise imminent) possibility of the discouraging “never-ending” scrolling of the equation!
In Conclusion
Cards are informational “teasers” linked to the content to be explored deeper into the website navigation.
They make the ideal choice when it's information browsing (instead of searching) that you'd like your users to do on your website and when you're displaying several types of content that they need to easily navigate through.
Lists are pages displaying search results matching the search items that your users will have typed in.
Being far more compressed and allowing you to establish a visual-guiding hierarchy, too, they enable users to quickly access particular information as they scan through similar types of enlisted content.
With these contexts, specific to each one of the 2 dominating UI styles, in mind, you should now be able to choose one over the other and thus to organize your content for ensuring the best user experience on your website.
Adrian Ababei / Jan 16'2017
How well did you keep up with Google's frequent updates in 2016? Didn't you feel, at some point, that striving to keep the ever changing “rhythm” that Google imposed was like “striving to keep yourself steady on quicksand”?
Preparation is key, right?
So, if you want to keep a steady balance while “walking on wire” this year (whether as a marketer, as a web developer in Toronto or as an online business owner) you need to anticipate the upcoming shifts in the SEO landscape.
In order to lend you a hand with that we have analyzed Google's most significant changes in 2016, read the forecasts of some the most influencing experts' in the field and we're here today, in front of you, ready to empower you with a list of 6 updates in Google's algorithms that you should expect to impact your business this year.
And here they are! Each one could easily win its own star on Google's “walk of fame”, the one grouping its most impactful updates along the years:
1. Google's Index Goes Mobile-First
In this respect, we couldn't be happier here, at our web development company in Toronto, with Drupal 8's mobile-first features!
Now this Google update is huge! It will most likely shake the entire SEO landscape and will challenge you to reconfigure all your digital marketing initiatives, plans and strategies.
If you have already implemented all the right measures for optimizing your website for mobile, for turning it into a welcoming place for your mobile users to land on, good for you.
Don't rest on your oars! Keep up the good work: 2017 means higher search ranking for you!
If, for various reasons, you've missed the train, and you stubbornly put all your faith (and therefore your brand's whole future) in your desktop website, “take a cold shower” and then get to work!
ASAP!
The wind of change will blow from Google's direction and might just sweep off your online presence if it lacks a strong foundation!
And that foundation, my friend, is made of mobile optimization-oriented measures.
Just think about it: not only that mobile-friendly will become a ranking signal, but it will be the primary source of ranking!
Google will push forward, right into the spotlight, mobile-optimized websites, while the desktop ones will remain behind, “in the dark”.
Moreover, it's not just a whole new way of marketing online that you should adopt, but a whole different mindset, too: you need to think mobile, not just to “act” mobile!
We witness the end of an era when marketers geared all their efforts towards making Google happy.
The modern day marketer should first and foremost make his user happy: by crafting the best mobile user experiences!
Here's how:
crafting unique content adjusted to the mobile's particularity (long gone are the days of keyworda and links-stuffed content and of those when you would transfer content from your desktop site to its mobile version in such a rudimentary manner)
ensuring them an intuitive navigation
guaranteeing them fast-loading web pages
And Google will always favor those who pay attention to and rush in to meet their (mobile) users' expectations.
2. Google Will Start an Intrusive Pop-Up Ads “Hunt”
Or better said “Google has started...”, for the announced change came into effect on the 10th of January.
How will this impact your website?
Well, the proper question would be: are you using interstitials on your mobile pages?
How much screen space do they take up?
You should know that Google has started to rank lower precisely those mobile website which keep annoying users with interstitials covering most of the content they want access.
Here are just a few of interstitial-related signals that will make Google wave its red flag:
a pop-up ad that the user has to close before he's given full access to the main content
a pop-up add that covers almost entirely the content the user is reading, the he has to dismiss before (re)gaining access to the main content
the usage of a specific layout where the above-the-fold section of the web page is an interstitial, while the main content is moved underneath the fold and thus is hardly accessible to the user
If the above practices sound too familiar to you, you should definitely consider revising your mobile marketing strategies!
Google is sure to strengthen its efforts for tracking down and penalizing those websites that will continue to annoy their users with pesky interstitials contributing to a bad user experience.
Accessibility, in the sense of easing users' access to that valuable content prepared for them on your mobile site, which goes had-in-hand with a good user experience, is what Google favors.
And intrusive ads are definitely not a means for achieving it!
3. Google Assistant Will Outshine the SERP Search
It's true that Google has a lot to catch up for being able to “rival” Siri and Cortana, voice assistants who've had the time to constantly improving their technologies, but we've gathered some really strong signals from this direction.
Can you imagine an SERPless future?
Google's Voice search technology would then efficiently guide users towards the information they're looking up for!
And, given the long-tail keywords, their whole search experience will get significantly improved: Google will bring the risk of irrelevant search results close to zero.
How prepared are you to reconfigure all the ads on your website, your overall online advertising strategy?
4. Google Will Expand Its Use of Rich Cards in Search
In the name of an optimized search experience Google's complimented its snippets with rich cards. It did this last year in May, so no news here.
The news is that Google's strengthening its efforts for adding even more industries to its list of verticals included in its rich card results. And this might impact your business, too, more precisely: the way your brand gets listed in searches, before your future visitors' eyes.
Therefore, even if you're not operating in the movie industry, you don't organize online courses or run a restaurant, mind you don't leave this Google trend out of your sight!
These days Google might add your industry, too, to its list and then you'll be challenged to adapt, quickly!
Get yourself prepared by experimenting various pieces of content presenting your brand and “luring” users in, content that would go in the richer previews enabled by Google.
5. Google Will Favor Those Participating in Its AMP Project
Here's another strong signal that Google's moving at high speed towards mobile indexing!
We've already talked abut Google's Accelerated Mobile Page on this blog, but we'd still like to stress this project's importance.
It's Google's way of encouraging website owners/web developers to focus their efforts on perfecting the mobile web experience for their users.
Expect this open source initiative to become even more impactful in 2017!
And here is how you could benefit from getting involved in this “mobile-friendly environment creating” initiative that the AMP project aims at:
you improve your users' overall experiences on your mobile website (and this is definitely a benefit for you too: happy users= higher search ranking in Google)
improved loading speed for your web pages, which, again leads to a better exposure in search results
6. Google Will Start Penalizing Unsecured Websites
It looks like it's “raining Google penalties” this month!
In addition to the pesky interstitials-related one, scheduled to come into effect on the 10th of January, Google will start to penalize websites that do not run on HTTPS secure browser connections.
Of course, not any sites, but those requiring all kinds of private details from their users: passwords, credit card details etc.
If your website falls into this category, here are the 2 major measures you should take lest you should start 2017 with a Google penalty:
install a certificate from a trusted vendor on your website
migrate all the traffic on your website from HTTP to HTTPS
Now that you've taken a peek into the future of SEO, that Google's drafting for you right now, it's up to you to incorporate all these impactful updates into your future digital marketing initiatives.
Adrian Ababei / Jan 13'2017
"But we're highly visual beings!" you might say.
It's true and yet, in modern design, which reaches out to users with shortened attention span, users that have the latest technology at their fingertips, technology enabling them to access the needed information instantly: content prevails.
And design is (just) the means for highlighting it with, for making it easy to find.
Now imagine this other possible scenario: "You pick the wrapping paper (and you're quite proud of your color choice, you so love its pattern, too) and then a cute gift box, a lovely ribbon, as well, and then: you go shopping for the present itself!"
It should fit in that box that you've already so carefully picked!
If it doesn't, you should go for another gift (even if it's your second best choice) or strive to make it fit in, somehow.
And this is what the "design first" strategy, the one that we, too, use in our digital agency in Toronto, does: it either forces you to craft a brand new content or to make it jam in the “package”/design.
In result: you either waste priceless time or you risk to “ruin” your content.
Now let's cut the chase and see exactly how a content-first strategy will streamline your website building/redesigning process:
1. Put Content First: Save Time and Money
Ready for some more visualization exercises?
Let's say you're almost there, so close to releasing your Drupal website (or your client's) into the wild and to “crushing” your competition from the very first day you launch it.
And, all of a sudden, someone waves the red flag:
certain pieces of the content still need stakeholders' approval (and this might require more time than estimated)
it's just now that you realize that there's more content needed to be written from scratch or revised and, surprise, surprise: you don't have all the needed resources to deliver it on time
the designer comes in with his/her own input, too: he's just realized that, well, his work and the copywriter's work are not exactly a “match made in heaven”
Can you guess where all the above scenarios lead to?
To project delay, to a major waste of energy from the part of your team, a lot of stress and last but surely not least: to a big hole in the budget allocated for this web project, too.
And you don't want this to happen.
If only you could have invested some time for strategically planning and structuring your content beforehand!
If so, now you would have just thrown it into the mocks, focusing on the last on the last details and polishes.
Planned ahead content:
would have helped your team lay the very foundation stones of the whole UX of your website (where exactly the user would find the needed information at various stages of his/her journey on your site)
would have helped them draft the whole site's architecture
would have also driven the right contextual design decisions, too.
Instead, now you're facing panic and the risk of not being able to efficiently repair the major gaps detected in your site's UX...
2. Organize Content First and Prioritize Users' Needs
It's content that users come for on your website!
You should keep this in mind throughout the whole Drupal site building/redesigning process!
Everything else revolves around content:
how to make it easy to find
how to add meaningfulness to it
how to compliment it with stunning visuals etc.
Now, by focusing on content first, on organizing and structuring it, you basically put your future users' needs first.
Get it?
And now speaking of organizing content first and foremost, it's vital for you to realize the importance of investing time in a solid content strategy:
it helps you outline the whole site's architecture
it's the step where you put together your site maps
it's now that you structure the whole content hierarchy on your future website
Basically, it's at this part of the process that you take major content-related decisions on how to meet your audience's needs and how to reach your marketing goals through the content you'll provide on your website.
Who is your target audience?
What type of content will they be looking for on your Drupal website?
Where exactly, on which pages on your website will you be placing different parts of your content, each one standing for a different stage in your users' journey on your site?
Once you have some clear answers to all the above content creation-related questions:
go ahead and run a content audit (if it's a site redesigning project that you're involved in)
establish every single step of the whole content production process with all the stakeholders.
Its vital, at this step, to know what budget and other types of resources the whole content creation process implies. This way you'll avoid all the unfortunate situations where certain content-related tasks included in the “master plan” cannot be carried out due to lack of resources.
3. Harmonize Content With Design From The Very Start
Design used to come first! And it was like putting the cart before the horse.
Just think about it: the design team would challenge their “muses” to help them create a truly stunning design for the final website with no guidelines, whatsoever (or very vague ones) regarding the content that will go on the website.
The content, the main reason why users would land on your website in the first place, remember, used to come second.
Where did this work-flow lead to?
Well, it lead to an imminent clash between design and content!
Content had to get “squeezed in” or “enlarged” just to fit the given design, in other words: it was the “package” that determined the item inside!
Be better than that!
Go for a content-first strategy and thus put the basis to a healthy and fruitful collaboration between the copywriters and designers, right from the start.
This way, they can harmonize their work. They can smooth out any wrinkle in design or fill in any gap in the user experience from the very start.
4. It Enhances Understanding From Start to Post-Launch
As already pointed out in this post: once the whole team, designers here included, get the chance to work with real content, instead of lorem ipsum, they get to put everything in a context and make the best design decisions right from the prototyping phase.
With real content at hand, crafting an intuitive navigation path and an engaging web design gets a lot easier.
Well planned content, crafted so that it should go hand-in-hand with design, will enhance users' understanding, as well. Your main goal, after all, either as a web developer in Toronto or a website owner.
And this is the idea that we wanted to get to in the first place!
Users won't have to rely exclusively on directional cues, arrows and tabs in order to navigate through your website: content, too, comes in the equation, making it far easier for them to scan though and explore your site. To get to the content they're interested in.
5. Planned Ahead Content Enhances Communication
Design is communication! Nothing to argue about here.
“A picture is worth a thousand words”, indeed, but not in modern design: think about mobile users looking for answers or information, looking to buy something or in need for a certain service etc.
In such cases words come first, no matter how suggestive or stunning the picture may be!
Get it?
The very first step is to think through what is it that you'll communicate to your users. Otherwise you'll communicate them just the “channel” used for conveying the message instead of the message itself.
The “What” (what message will you convey to your end users?) should come first, followed, closely by the "How": how could you present that content in a meaningful way? How can you craft the most intuitive interface for your user?
Your turn now:
What other reasons would you add to our list if you've already adopted the content-first strategy in your web projects?
Or what objections do yo have if you still consider that content should follow design instead? Feel free to express yourself in the comments below!
Adrian Ababei / Jan 12'2017
"Barrier-free access” is carved within the very “DNA” of Internet itself. Therefore, your site, too, should be accessible first and foremost!
Before you even start to make it visually-arresting and useful. Before you even consider how you could add value to your website visitors' lives!
What started as an accessibility-focused initiative in Drupal 7, or better said "as an attempt” to comply with World Wide Web Consortium guidelines, has gradually evolved into a powerful set of accessibility-oriented features in Drupal 8.
Bugs have been addressed, “old” features improved, new enhancements and new features added in Drupal 8 to boost its accessibility in core.
Now let's stop “beating around the bush” and put the facts on the table!
Let us enlist and detail to you these particular accessibility-enhancing features in Drupal 8 that will make your job (building an accessible website) easier than never before:
1. Improved Contrasts
Empathize with those future visitors suffering from colorblindness, then try simulating a context where users would access your website (from their mobile devices) in bright sunlight.
Optimal contrast will “send” an invitation to the users in the above real-life scenarios to keep clicking/scrolling and thus prolonging their visits on your Drupal site.
The great news is that Drupal 8's accessibility maintainers have tackled the contrasts' issue and made the necessary improvements.
2. Controlled Tab Order
It was just yesterday, in our previews post, that we talked about the importance of “blazing your users' path” to the information they're searching for on your website. About easing their “search” with the right UX elements.
Well, this accessibility-boosting feature, in Drupal 8, serves the same purpose.
The Tabbing Manager Javascrip feature is that “flashlight” which will point out the main elements on your website to your visually-impaired or non-mouse visitors.
And this enhancement will make all the difference for them!
Just think about the time and energy that these visitors save by quickly scanning through your tabs instead of striving to navigate through a complex, crowded user interface relying entirely on screen readers!
Zero confusion leads to zero frustrations and to a better user experience for your website's visitors. And this is gold in the age of user experience, right?
3. Inline Form Errors
And this is a truly notable enhancement, which proves that we have come a long way from Drupal 7 when it comes to the support for accessibility available in Drupal 8's core modules.
If in Drupal 7 errors made when users filled in a web form appeared on top of that specific form, while fields got colored in red, as a “warning” sign (not exactly the most effective solution for the visually impaired users), Drupal 8 comes to your rescue with its form inline errors.
In this version of Drupal errors icons get displayed next to the specific fields of the form.
A much needed improvement, wouldn't you agree?
Note: still, the Form Inline Error is an optional Core module, therefore it needs enabling first.
4. Fieldsets for Radios and Checkboxes
When it comes to the Form Api, here's another great enhancement that Drupal's accessibility maintainers “spoil” you with: fieldsets for checkboxex and radios.
Just imagine how this improvement will ease screen readers' (and implicitly non-visual users relying on them) otherwise not at all easy “job” to parse complex forms.
Since related elements get grouped together in Drupal 8, it now becomes a lot easier for you (or your team of Toronto developers) to enhance forms in Drupal.
5. Alternative Texts for Images
Visually-arresting photography and stunning imagery cannot “wow” your visually impaired visitors.
Still, Drupal 8 lends you a hand for helping your users “visualize” and thus “bend before your talent” (or your web designers' talent).
How? With its alternative text for image feature.
It's now a required field in Drupal 8, by default: you type in short descriptive text so that all users, without any discrimination, can imagine those visually-arresting images that you'll upload on your website.
6. More Semantics
Semantics! The ultimate impediment that any initiative aimed at enhancing accessibility on your site needs to overcome.
No wonder that one of the ultimate goals of Drupal 8 core maintainers was to “add more meaning to the code”. To enrich Drupal with more semantic HTML elements for the assistive technology to be able to interpret.
And here are the achievements of all the sustained efforts in this direction:
WAI-ARIA landmarks in core (a major step forward)
live regions
roles & properties
Now to name just one example of what “more semantics” in Drupal 8 means, when it comes to accessibility: now screen readers can easily interpret pieces of code such as <footer>, <header> or <form>.
7. Tables and Views
Speaking of improved semantics, note that the views tables markup is more semantic in Drupal 8.
Let's shed some light on this feature:
it enables you to explain the purpose of a particular table on your website through a <caption> element
it enables you to add a quick “summary” explaining which is the best way to navigate the table and how the data included there is structured; and all this by using the <summary> element
it enables you to use “id” and “headers” attributes and thus associate data cells with header cells
it enables you to “play with” the “scope” attribute, thus to mark your tables' column and row headings
8. Aural Alerts
Animations, color changes, specific text and so on: how do you make visual updates accessible for all users? Even to those relying exclusively on screen readers as intermediates for accessing content on your website?
You rely on Drupal 8's Drupal.announce().
This JavaScript method creates an “aria-live” element on the page enabling instructions to be read to these specific visitors on your site either as assertive or as polite.
9. Hidden Elements
An alternative to CSS styling “display:none” was greatly needed, since this one makes elements invisible both to visual and non-visual users.
And hiding them from everyone is no web developer's (or website owner's) intention!
Therefore, the team “responsible” for Drupal 8's accessibility decided to enable future Drupal users to rely on 3 different classes for hiding certain elements:
“hidden”: for hiding an element from all the visitors on your site
“visually-hidden”: for hiding an element from your website's visitors, but keeping it “visible” for screen readers
“invisible”: for hiding an element both from the visitors and from screen readers, without influencing your site's layout
10. CKEditor WYSIWYG Accessibility
CKEditor, too, has been greatly improved in Drupal 8 in the name of empowering users, like you, to generate accessible content on their Drupal websites!
Here are its significant improvements:
the WYSIWYG editor's been upgraded with keyboard shortcuts (for which all those keyboard-only users and power users on your site will “thank you” for)
more semantic elements have been added: for instance HTML 5 tags which enable you to add captions to images
a language toolbar button has been added, enabling screen readers to select the appropriate language for each content
an accessibility checker plugin is now available for CKEditor
And this is precisely how Drupal 8 empowers you to build barrier-free websites that say “welcome” to all visitors, both visual and non-visual!
What do you think of these improvements and new features in Drupal 8?
To what extent do you consider that they'll ease (or have they already?) your job as a Drupal web developer/Drupal website owner?
Adrian Ababei / Jan 11'2017