The chances are that you will have heard the term “wireframing” when working with web designers in the past. However, many people are still unsure about what this means for their company and web presence.

What is a wireframe?

The process of wireframing refers to the design period in which clients and web experts come together to determine the informational hierarchy of a webpage, so that it’s easier to plan the arrangement of content, and user experience. Wireframes are simple, low fidelity layouts that outline the placement and rough size of specific page elements, from conversion areas, to site features. Wireframes ensure that each page has a purpose, achieves the goals set out in the client brief and define a logical navigation for your website.

Wireframes are devoid of any artistic choices regarding font, logos, or colour, because they focus entirely on the structural elements of the website. In a way, the wireframe allows you to work on the foundation of your website, before you add all the aesthetic appeal. Making structural changes to a low fidelity wireframe is much faster than making structural changes to a fully designed page concept.

What Makes Wireframing so Useful?

So, why do designers set out creating the skeleton for their new website project with wireframing? Why don’t they simply jump into the fun stuff by creating beautiful and detailed designs from scratch? Many clients can get carried away with the excitement of creating a website, and forget that without a strong foundation, the surrounding website could be inefficient.

During a wireframe project, web designers have the chance to focus on user experience only – the factor that matters most to everything from conversion, to customer loyalty. Without the distraction of fonts, colours and imagery, wireframes can allow designers to work on the underlying elements of a website, and eliminate the need for expensive changes in the long-run.

Here are five key reasons why you should consider wireframing as a key element of any web design project.

1. Developing Layout and Structure

Most companies begin developing a website with a long list of ideas in mind about features and content that they would like to include. Wireframes help a designer to determine which elements should be included in each page, and the functionality requirements that need to be set in place for those elements.

Simply put, a wireframe allows designer and client to work together in creating a solid page structure before the design is fully implemented.

2. Creating an Informational Hierarchy

Another important benefit of wireframing is that it allows companies to forget about styles and colours so that they can focus on the essential elements of navigation and information. Creators can ask themselves what they want their users to do when they visit their website, and establish the information that needs to be provided to move the user along to the correct pages, and find the information they need.

When a wireframe is created, designers and clients can see which page elements are more important than others, and the black-and-white or low fidelity nature of the frame allows each person to easily see how the information on each page falls neatly into place.

3. Focusing on User Experience

As we mentioned above, wireframes have the unique ability to draw unparalleled attention to the basic structure and function of a website – the elements that will have an impact on user experience. Designers who skip the wireframing phase can easily get caught up in the elements of making a site look good, and forget about things much more important than design – such as usability, functionality and user experience.

By eliminating imagery, colour, and other details, a designer is able to think more about the functionality of each element on a page, placing a strong focus on developing the best possible user experience.

4. Clarifying Features

Wireframing helps you to determine which features are wanted on a website, and which elements are needed. In the early stages of development, clients and web designers can work together to try out different potential applications and tools that might offer better usability to their visitors, to aid conversions.

Sometimes, you may choose to remove a feature once it has been wireframed because you can see that it simply doesn’t help towards the goals of your website. Seeing features without creative influence can help you to focus on clarifying which elements really matter.

5. Saving Time

FInally, one of the biggest benefits of any wireframing project is that it saves time in the long-run. While it may seem like more effort to dedicate a few days to producing a full set of of wireframes, it actually saves time throughout the project lifecycle.

Designers lucky enough to have a UX team behind them will receive the approved wireframes from which to design to. This makes their phase of the process much simpler, as they no longer have to spend the time (which comes with the added pressure) of ensuring that each page has a flow and a purpose. They can simply do what they do best; make a low fidelity wireframe look pretty by turning it into a full design concept.

 A Process for Specifying your Website

Perhaps the most important thing to remember when considering the usefulness of wireframes in web design, is that wireframing allows you to think through problems carefully and determine the performance of your website. Like other aspects of a development process however, wireframing can have pitfalls if shortcuts are taken.

Remember, when creating the perfect responsive wireframe, you should avoid:

1. Placing an emphasis on design and colour: Working in greyscale helps to maintain the focus on the functional process of designing a website. The idea is to finalise structure, layout and purpose of the page; not the design.

2. Adding too much detail: You can always apply extra detail to show to your clients and team in the latter stages of a project, but starting with too much detail can lead to confusion. Try to keep wireframes low-fidelity to make the process as simple and as straightforward as possible. Think grey rectangle for image blocks and Lorem Ipsum for body copy.

3. Creating a wireframe for every possibility: Wireframing is a great way to try out different ideas, but you need to settle on a concept eventually. Stick to only what is important for your business or client, and avoid getting carried away with a range of different features and structures. e.g. Create one ‘Default Pagetype’ wireframe as opposed to creating a Terms and Conditions wireframe, a Privacy Policy wireframe etc. since these types of pages will follow the same default structure in most cases.

Featured image credit: Aurimas via Flickr. Licensed under CC 2.0

The post 5 Key Reasons Why Wireframing is Important in Web Design appeared first on Tone Agency.

Today is election day so as we trudge through the rain, dodge the exit pollsters and make our own personal decision on the future of our country we thought it would be appropriate to take a look at other metrics.

In particular, who wins if the election was decided on social media popularity alone?  We have put together an infographic to tell you just that.  It looks as though Labour has the edge on social media, but what really counts is your vote so make sure you have your say, whoever you decide deserves your ‘X’.

And here’s the official UK Election results…

You will find more statistics at Statista

Header image credit gary yim / Shutterstock.com

The post Election 2017 – Who wins if we count social media popularity alone? appeared first on Tone Agency.

A compelling ‘About Us’ page on your website is a great way to gain credibility and demonstrate a strong, clear and recognisable brand.

You could have the best products or services but without that ‘hook’ or a clear connection to your visitors you may struggle to convert – a small necessity that many businesses overlook.

A 2015 web usability report found that 52 per cent of website visitors wanted to see the ‘About Us’ information immediately after visiting a company’s homepage. So, what essential ingredients should you include for potential customers to trust and buy from your business?

1. Tell your story

Storytelling is an incredibly powerful medium when it comes to conversing with customers online. Not only does a narrative entertain and engage, it can also enable audiences to relate to what you are saying. An inspiring or emotional story humanises the brand too, helping you steer clear of cold, corporate feeling language.

Start with who you are (as a business) where it all began and what that means to the audience. This will provide context and meaning for your products or services. Even if the brand doesn’t have an interesting story, try to focus on what makes you human or highlight the journey of noteworthy customers. Another way to boost your appeal is with photos, which can demonstrate how far the business has come since inception.

The most important thing is giving audiences something they can identify with, as this naturally leads them to place more trust in your brand.

Here’s a good example by Invisible Creature of how they made their brand more personable via the About Us page (click the play button).

2. Showcase your team

Although storytelling can help humanise the brand, the addition of profiles and photos for your team is proven way to add an even deeper layer of approachability. The seemingly open and honest transparency allows the client to get an at-a-glance view of exactly who is behind the business and who they might dealing with should they decide to work with you. An introduction before the introduction almost.

Here’s an example of a recent “Meet the team” section designed by us here at Tone for Forest Fuels. Due to the client’s sheer number of employees, we opted for a carousel to showcase the customer-facing team upfront and centre and accompanied that with a “Meet the team” button incase users wanted to view all staff which takes users to a page displaying all employees split by department.

If possible, hire a professional photographer and you can produce team photos like this, as we did for our client Moorepay.

It isn’t a requirement to upload professional head shots of every employee, or write in-depth biographies, simply giving a little insight into the characteristics and qualities of your team is all it needs. You could include their likes and dislikes, what they enjoy most about working for the company, and any pet hates or party tricks.

For one of our clients, who provide software for nurseries, we opted for illustrations instead of real life head shots. This cartoon-like approach for another Tone client Connect Childcare really resonates with their target market.

3. Show off your credentials

Trust elements can noticeably boost conversions, as 70 per cent of purchase cancellations online are made because due to a lack of trust, while only 58 per cent of web users believe online information is credible.

Obviously those stats may be related to eCommerce purchases but even in B2B environments it’s well worth showcasing that trust and credibility aspect.

With this in mind, consider including:

• Any awards or accolades
• Accreditations or certifications from industry associations
• Online trust badges/seals
• Customer/client reviews and testimonials
• A list of suppliers and partners you work with (possibly including their logos)
• Links to social media accounts

Here’s another example of how we showcased our client’s high-end customer base on their About Us page, insurmountably increasing their perceived credibility.

And here’s an example of we displayed a list of accreditations for yet another client:

4. Be visual

We have seen a lot of About Us pages that have nothing more than a few paragraphs of text, which does little to inspire or excite potential customers, causing disinterest quickly. What’s more, the brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than it does to decode text, while the average human attention span is now less than eight seconds!

For this reason, use visuals such as photos, videos, icons, graphics or even animations and transitions where possible.

Take the About Us page from EHAGroup as an example, where a clean and concise page with smooth transitions and high quality photography really takes things up a notch (click the play button).

However, it is equally important to use authentic visuals and not just stock images. Along with being extremely obvious, the inclusion of readily available stock imagery can actually negatively impact your credibility.

5. Include CTAs

A CTA or ‘call to action’ is a button or link which points out to various other pages within your site.

When including CTAs into your page, the first thing you need to be mindful of is what NOT to do. In the quest for conversions, clients often fall into what we call “The Conversion Trap”. You will have heard the comments:

“Put 5 star ratings here, and here… and here”
“Everything needs to be above the fold”
“The more CTAs the better”

…you might as well be saying “Forget the user experience, as long as they convert we’re happy” which is never the correct way to introduce you and your team. In fact, you’re only succeeding to reduce your conversion rate as the user becomes overwhelmed with CTAs.

So try not to litter the About Us page with CTAs as it could potentially undermine any trust or credibility you have worked so hard to establish. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t include them at all, because if you manage to get the balance right it is a superb way of helping potential customers on their journeys.

Be mindful that on an About Us page, you primary goal should be to gain credibility and trust, your secondary goal should be to guide the user to the right section of the site for them, especially if they are at the start of the sales funnel. It’s generally bad practice (and rather intrusive) to try to encourage them to buy from you right now, at the point of introducing yourself to them.

However, for those who are already sure of their issue and looking for that final piece of credibility before making a buying decision, you may want to subtly encourage visitors to see what you have to offer and make it easy for them to get in touch with a phone number, email address or online enquiry form like similar to the example we designed below:

So, be aware of the range of users you will be welcoming and provide a combination of internal links and CTAs that cater for everyone.

In Closing

As you can see it pays to go beyond 300 words of plain text. Don’t just settle for an okay About Us page, really put your shoulder behind it as it is the most likely candidate of all the pages on your website to turn otherwise passive visitors into paying customers – utilise that to your advantage.

It really is the difference between a world class site and a message that really resonates and one that drops squarely into the ‘ordinary’ bucket.

The post 5 Essential Ingredients of an About Us Page that Converts appeared first on Tone Agency.

Boxing legend Floyd Mayweather Jr and UFC phenomenon Conor McGregor will go toe-to-toe in Las Vegas this coming Saturday, in a fight that is set to smash the $4.6 million pay-per-view sales record set by the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight in May 2015.

But let’s be honest, this will likely be much more of a money-making spectacle than a competitive battle.

So for a bit of fun we decided to compare the two fighters in an infographic to highlight actually how different they are as fighters. Hopefully this gives gives you some food-for-thought from a different angle as you decide who has the edge going into the fight.

Who is your money on?

The post Mayweather vs. McGregor: Toe-to-Toe Comparison Infographic appeared first on Tone Agency.

With over 2 billion monthly active Facebook users, the potential reach businesses could achieve on the world’s biggest social media network is obvious.

But with over 70 million businesses also using Facebook to market their goods and services, how can you stand out from this congested crowd and get your brand’s voice heard?

Well, here are 6 simple Facebook marketing ideas for your business to help you do just that!

1. Choose the right cover photo (or video)

First impressions are everything online, which means you need to get Facebook users onside as soon as they arrive on your page. Thankfully, Facebook has made this rather easy to do with cover photos.

Aside from being high quality, on brand and relevant to your business, your Facebook cover photo can be used as a free advertising space to promote pretty much anything. Some ideas include:

• Generate leads – Design an image to drive leads with a relevant CTA
• Publicise an event – Anything from a conference to a social media competition
• Feature UGC – User Generated Content can help build loyalty
• Feature staff – To humanise the brand
• Showcase a product or service – Especially a new release or recent update

Going one step further than static imagery, earlier this year Facebook introduced cover videos:

“By making cover video available, we want to help you create more engaging interactions and drive more rich experience for your audience by letting you spotlight your creative content in one of the most prominent spaces: your page cover.”

Video gives you that extra creativity freedom so go ahead and give it a try!

Useful links:
How do I add or change my Page’s cover video?

6 Tips for Designing Highly Effective Facebook Cover Photos

2. Take advantage of Facebook Live

Every marketer recognises the need to capitalise on the increasing influence of video, especially on social media. However, Facebook Live is arguably even more significant, largely because its news feed algorithm controls and prioritises the reach of these broadcasts.

Despite the fact it is relatively easy to start a Facebook Live broadcast, you should bear these five tips in mind to maximise its benefits.

• Promote your broadcast – With excellent targeting options, you should make the effort to promote your broadcast ahead of time.
• Practice makes perfect – Along with practicing what you’re going to say and do, make sure any variable factors have been taken into consideration
• Make it personable – Get yourself comfortable, encourage viewers to leave comments or feedback, and always remember to smile
• Don’t forget to optimise – Videos are archived after the live stream, so add post-show comments, edit the metadata, and change the thumbnail
• Analyse the results – Look at metrics like audience retention to inform future live stream efforts

Video source: Clemson Football, Facebook

Useful links:
Tips & Tricks from Facebook

How to Use Facebook Live: A Bookmarkable Guide

3. Go behind the scenes

When it comes to making buying decisions, consumers are quite literally spoilt for choice, both online and in the real world. To attract more customers, some businesses lower their prices, while others will try to improve their product or service.

But in the world of social media, consumers will always favour the brands that make an effort to be more relatable and in touch with their audience. One of the ways you can achieve this is by going behind the scenes at your own organisation.

Ideas include posting photos and videos of a typical day, a special event, your employees hard at work, or your products or services being enjoyed by the customers themselves. You could even go one step further with Facebook live!

Here’s a great example from our beloved Burnley FC.

4. Get your fans talking

Word of mouth remains hugely effective online and can be the difference between achieving a conversion or not. The only problem is encouraging Facebook followers to say good things about your business, as it could easily come across as forced or desperate.

Therefore, think of some ways to engage with your audience that gets them talking but also shows the brand in a positive light. Some ideas include:

• Create fun or light-hearted content, e.g. memes
• Post inspirational or entertaining quotes
• Create contests that require some sort of interaction
• Crowdsource feedback – Surveys
• Ask questions
• Publish interesting polls

Whatever route you decide to go down, make sure your brand has a personality on Facebook, where every post adds value to the audience’s experience. Users will remember businesses that connect with them on a personal level and offer something different during their online journeys.

Useful links
26 Tips for Better Facebook Page Engagement

5. Utilise Facebook Offers

As Sarah Perez from TechCrunch explains:

“Facebook Offers launched back in 2012 as a way for Facebook advertisers to reach customers through campaigns designed to tap into the social network’s viral effect – that is, Offers could potentially be exposed to a broader audience than targeted, thanks to people sharing the deal with their friends.”

However, a recent update now makes it easier for advertisers to reach customers on mobile and can therefore be used online or at point-of-sale. They appear in the News Feed and can be customised too. What’s more, Facebook notifies users to remind them of Offers they’ve claimed when they are about to expire. If people claim an Offer on mobile while they’re on the go, they’ll be reminded about it once they log-in to Facebook on desktop.

Here’s how to really make your Offer stand out:

• Make substantial discounts
• Keep it simple with a clear and concise image
• Use natural language
• Set a reasonable expiration date
• Boost your offer

Image source: Facebook

Useful links
Offer Ads – Facebook

Facebook Offers gets revamped for mobile, now lets you track saved coupons in a dedicated section

6. Re-engage with Facebook Remarketing

Facebook remarketing is an often overlooked tactic for several brands, even though it is incredibly effective at re-engaging with previous prospects. What’s more, there are a number of different cold leads you can follow up on, such as:

• Landing page visitors – Use landing page-specific Facebook ads to target this warm audience
• Blog readers – Facebook boosted posts can give new audiences high-quality content
• Past purchasers – Opportunities to upsell are extensive with past purchasers
• Free trial users – Try to get Facebook users engaged with your product by highlighting its benefits
• Newsletter subscribers – Focus on active readers with sales-orientated offers
• Almost purchasers – Convince users to complete their almost purchases with discounts and limited-time offers

Useful links
Facebook Retargeting:157-Point Guide & 12 Ideas For Sweet Results

In Summary

Facebook gives businesses plenty of options to market their products or services, yet many businesses fail to utilise them. Hopefully this post will give those who need it, some new ideas.

And when it comes to Facebook marketing, don’t take yourself too seriously. Adding some fun into your posts will grab people’s attention from all the other clutter in their news feeds!

What Facebook tools or techniques have you found most effective? Let us know in the comments below!

The post 6 Simple Facebook Marketing Ideas Your Business Should Be Using Right Now appeared first on Tone Agency.

It is somewhat surprising that despite the same advice being repeated for the past 20 years or so, several websites still don’t have a clear and coherent layout.

Way back in 1997, usability guru Jakob Nielsen revealed that 79 per cent of people read the web in chunks, whereas 16 per cent focused on every word. In a day and age where our attention spans have fallen through the floor, there is a strong chance that website “scanners” are now even more dominant.

Therefore, it is increasingly important that your website appears organised and orderly rather than messy and muddled. Not only because this is how most internet users prefer to browse the web, but also due to the impact it can have on user journeys and conversion rates.

Why a clean and de-cluttered site is so important

• It can improve user experiences – With most online experiences starting at a search engine, it is easy for users to simply go back to the results page if they don’t like the look of your site. But by greeting them with a clean and crisp page, you are more likely to make a good first impression and keep visitors on your site.
• It can reach more customers – Seeing as over 50 per cent of online searches now come from mobile, you need a website that looks good across every device, especially on smaller screens where space is at a premium. Design your site with clarity in mind and you will be able to reach a number of different audiences.
• It can increase conversion rates – At the end of the day, converting customers will be the difference between success and failure online. Therefore, your site should be designed in a way that encourages each user to take action. Without any unnecessary distractions, you can lead potential customers to where they need to go.
• It just looks better – Form and functionality is all well and good, but websites also need flair and finesse. This can be achieved with a minimalist approach, which ensures every minute detail is aesthetically imperative.

How to clean and de-clutter your website

As we have already written about extensively, the importance of wireframing cannot be underestimated. In addition to making it easier to plan where specific page elements will go, wireframing can also help with the arrangement of content.

This makes it even easier to clean and de-clutter your site. Wireframing will focus your attention on the fundamental foundations from which to build on. From there, you can slowly add more aesthetic and engaging elements without going over the top.

Wireframing also creates an informational hierarchy where the user’s experience is brought to the fore. You will be able to determine which features are absolutely necessary and how content should be presented on each page for a more seamless browsing experience.

For these reasons, it might make sense to start from scratch with wireframing rather than trying to tidy up an already disorderly site.

6 principles of web design you should always abide by

Even though every website designer wants their creation to be unique and stand out, they will always abide by the same principles for the sake of the user. Some of the most important include:

1. Following Hick’s Law – Essentially, by increasing the user’s choices, you also increase their decision time. If you want customers to convert, give them less distractions and more obvious CTAs.

2. Using the law of thirds – This popular photography principle can also be applied to web design. Split the page into nine equal squares and place your most important elements at the four middle intersections.

Image credit: interaction-design.org

3. Being aware of the “fold” – The top of any page remains crucial to catching the eye, but it is not the be all and end all of web design, as content further down deserves equal attention too.

4. Leveraging negative space (whitespace) – Negative space is a positive thing in terms of web design. Without it, your website would be a colourful mess. There’s a reason Google use an abundance of whitespace; to naturally focus your eyes to the centre of the page where the magic happens. Whitespace is one of the most simple methods of guiding the eyes of your audience.

5. Not forgetting to K.I.S.S – In other words, “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” Always ask yourself whether your website could do without certain elements that could be distracting rather than helpful.

6. Remembering the 8-second rule – With only 8 seconds to keep your audience’s attention, remember to use arresting images, large headlines, powerful words, and captivating multimedia.

All of these aforementioned principles are geared towards smart and sharp web design, which does away with needless distractions and focuses on essential elements.

If you do the same, your website visitors are much more likely to enjoy their experience and be more likely to convert into something useful.

The post Cluttered Website? Why it’s Time to Clean up Your Act appeared first on Tone Agency.

Usability is the most important aspect of any website design; for it is the key to achieving conversion goals.

If your website isn’t converting at the rate you’d expect it to be, then there are probably usability issues somewhere within your user flow – causing friction for your visitors.

While we’d always recommend a thorough website usability audit (recommended reading here) to discover and remedy usability issues, we understand that time and resource constraints can often make this difficult.

So in this post we’ve highlighted five key areas of a website that are often overlooked in terms of usability.

Our advice here would be to consume the content of this post and absorb the best-practice techniques before going away and scrutinising these areas of your own website.

The goal is to identify some quick win opportunities, implement some easy tweaks and ultimately boost those conversions!

1. Simplify Menu Navigation

We recommend keeping menus short and concise so that they serve the user’s needs. The temptation to include the latest funky trend and over-complication should be avoided at all costs. After all, your customers are on your website to do something, so the navigation should help them do that thing as quickly and as pain-free as possible.

Here’s some tips for simplifying your navigation menu:

Use clear, short words

Look to reduce the word count while retaining the core focus. Use words your users are familiar with; short and to-the-point terminology that’s easy to digest. For example:

Original: “Make a donation”               New: “Donate”

Why this works: 

• Users tend to scan content looking for keywords that point them toward what they actually need;
• “Donate” is a verb – describes an action and conveys meaning;
• Single words free up space helping to declutter the menu.

Visualise the navigation

Sometimes, it makes sense to use icons in a website navigation, as it adds another layer of clarity for user when figuring out which navigation link is most correct for their needs. Be cautious though, using icons for the sake of using icons can clutter up the navigation and impact on aesthetics: Use them sparingly and only if you are sure that they will assist in navigating users from A to B.

Apple is a great example of a company that uses visual navigation to its advantage.

Include a search form

We always recommend including a search field on your website, especially for websites with lots of content such as eCommerce stores and informational websites. Being able to do a quick site-wide search is a real time saver for the user and will undoubtedly improve usability instantly in those scenarios.

Easy accessible site search by HiB. Site designed by Tone

Consolidate menu items

Just UX Design recommends grouping similar topics into single categories to reduce the number of items in your visible menu. Consolidating in this way will not only reduce the number of items in the top tier of your website’s navigation, but will allow you to add more important pages to the main navigation and will help to shield the user from content that isn’t relevant to their particular needs while ushering them into the section of the site most suitable to them.

2. Let your website breathe – use white space

White space, or ‘negative space’ as it is sometimes referred to, is the portion of a web page that is left purposely empty. It is the space between the content, forms, modules, graphics, margins and other elements on a web page. It exists to ensure that the information on a web page is nicely structured and easily consumed.

Using white space effectively will allow your website to breathe. What’s more, research suggests that white space in web design is a key factor to building online trust with your users.

Use of white space example by Google.

Effective use of white space is all about enhancing the content on your web pages. You can use white space to improve the legibility of content, to promote user interaction, to highlight your call-to-actions (CTAs) and to create balance in your website’s design.

3. Make your CTAs stand out

A CTA exists to facilitate engagement from users. They are there to encourage an otherwise-passive visitor to perform a meaningful action.

However, CTAs also assist in improving usability on the site. If a website visitor arrives on the site with the sole intention of making an enquiry or getting in touch, it would make sense to offer them an easy way of achieving that goal; via a “Get in Touch” CTA.

The methodology behind a CTA is simple: Clearly call out an action for the user to undertake, and the user will be more inclined to perform said action.

To ensure your CTAs stand out as much as possible (to maximise usability), here are some quick design tips:

• Placement is key: Above the fold CTA’s work for some designs, but not all. Test out different CTA positions and find one that works for the layout of the website. This article on CXL Institute provides a sound introduction to CTA placement.
• Excite with words: The words you choose for your CTA text/buttons has a direct influence on user engagement. Choosing the right words will incite action; conversely, choosing the wrong words will discourage users from performing the action.
• Utilise colour: Colour has the power to unlock the true potential of a CTA. Test different CTA button colours as certain colours can evoke a variety of subconscious feelings. Think about the message that you want to portray to the user (trust, experience, intelligence) and complement those with carefully selected colour palettes.

Clear CTA example. Designed by Tone. 

4. Streamline web forms

The ultimate friction of any website is its web forms. If you have any aspirations of encouraging website visitors to fill in your website forms, you need to ensure they are as pain-free as possible. Filling out forms is laborious for the user, so help them out – doing so will improve user experience and negate frustration.

Here are some tips for improving the usability of web forms:

• Reduce fields: The simplest way to streamline forms is to reduce the number of required fields that the user must input. Condensing the number of form fields reduces effort on behalf of the user and ultimately shortens the time required to fill out the form. Every time a field is removed (within reason), the form’s conversion rate will increase.
• Pre-fill information: Another simple way to make forms more user-friendly is to dynamically pre-fill field values. An example of this is the location field – pre-populating the field with location information collected from the user’s smartphone makes a typically tricky form field effortless to fill in.
• Labels should sit outside of form fields: Labels prompt users to supply the correct information; without them the user would be unsure on how they should enter the information. Our advice here is to resist the temptation to focus purely on form design, as often in doing so, web masters will remove the ever-present visible label from the outside of the field and add it as a placeholder on the inside of the field instead. Although better visually, usability takes a hit in this instance, as the label is removed when a user begins to fill in the field. If a user then forgets what the label was, they are forced to delete their input to reveal the label before going ahead and re-filling the information. We recommend that hints and instructions should also be permanently visible and placed outside of the field.

5. Improve page load speed

Did you know that 30% of mobile web customers expect a one second or less page load, while 18% of customers expect instant page load? These statistics collected by Google show that website speed matters.

Image source: think with Google

Page speed is often reported as being directly related to conversions. Here are two stats to consider:

1. 79% of shoppers would be less likely to purchase from a website again if they were dissatisfied with that website’s performance (Kissmetrics)
2. A one second delay in web page loading time means a 7% reduction in conversions and an 11% reduction in page views (Hubspot blog)

Making your website faster is a sure-fire way to improve it. A fast website delivers a better user experience than a slow one. Here are three quick-wins to improve page speed:

Reduce the number of images on a page – and/or compress them

Images are the biggest bandwidth sinks on a server. Images should be resized and compressed. Saving a photograph as a JPEG rather than a PNG can cut its file size by more than half. Meanwhile saving a flat graphic/illustration as a PNG rather than a JPEG can cut its file size by over 90%.

Image source: think with Google.

Clean up your elements and reduce HTTP requests

80% of a website’s load time is determined by HTTP requests. The more HTTP requests that are needed, the slower that website will be. Streamline the number of elements on your page by combining style sheets, reducing scripts and using CSS.

Leverage browser caching

Browser caching stores webpage resource files on a local computer so that they can be loaded without the limitations of a server. Put simply, the web browser stores elements of a web page, such as the logo and CSS files locally, and loads them instantaneously.

The bottom line…

The importance of delivering a good user experience on your website cannot be understated, since your user experience will literally define how your website performs.

If implemented correctly, the quick fixes in this post will improve your website’s overall usability and improve conversion rates considerably.

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