Do you remember the simple websites of the 1990s? Take a look at Amazon through the years, and you’ll see how technology has advanced. One of the latest and most significant advancements is UI and UX design. But, what exactly is it, and why is it so important?
In this guide, we’ll cover UX and UI design, and guide you through the best practices.
What is UX Design?
User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) are both different practices, but they’re equally important. While user experience focuses on how users experience and interact with a website, user interface refers to the more technical design elements such as colours and typography.
In this guide, we’re going to focus on user experience, which refers to:
The experience of purchasing, opening and experiencing a product for the first time
How products work
Learning how to use products
Upgrades
Educating people about the product and customer support
So what is a good UX? It offers ease of use and is a mixture of strong marketing and seamless engineering. UX can only be successful if it’s supported by UI design because without essential elements such as text and typography, the user won’t have a good experience.
Now we’ve covered UX design meaning; we’ll talk more about the process involved and how you can make sure you create a strong user experience.
The UX Design Process
You can split the UX design process into five stages, which are research, design, prototyping, testing and measurement. While there are no set rules about the user experience process, you should follow these steps to ensure you cover all the bases.
Research
Research is the most important aspect of UX design because it enables you to understand your end-users. What are their pain points? Which products do they use already? Some companies can access their current customer base and find the information from them, but others might need to conduct research and create personas.
Buyer Personas
Buyer personas are fictional representations of a real audience, and they can help you to market your products. For example, say you conduct research and find that your product is most suitable for young, professional women. You can create a persona to cover the following points:
What products do they currently use?
What do they look for when they’re purchasing a product?
Where do they shop?
Which social platforms are they most active on?
Once you have one or more buyer personas in place, you know where to access your audience and how to market your product/service effectively.
Design
The second part of the UX process is designing your site. After you collect and evaluate your research, you can start to think about the customer journey and develop your product around that. The customer journey refers to the content and marketing collateral that will convince the buyer to make a purchase and the steps they’ll take when using the product.
A lot of companies use the process of wireframing to plan, structure and organise their product. Wireframes help you and your team to build a blueprint for future designs, and then you can expand on the interface elements by creating a mockup based on that blueprint.
If you’re not sure about how to use wireframing, there are some excellent web design templates to use here.
Using this technique enables a company to focus on providing the best experience for users and make sure elements such as responsiveness and page navigation are effective.
Prototyping
It’s essential that you don’t skip to creating and marketing your product straight away because the prototyping stage allows you to test your product and correct any bugs that occur.
The prototyping stage includes:
Experimenting with various designs until you find one that fits your product/service and your customers’ needs.
Checking for bugs and inconsistencies.
Gaining valuable data and using it to improve your product.
Presenting products to management and investors.
Evaluating the functional aspects of products.
Most designers conduct the prototyping stage before they even think about coding.
Testing
After you create your prototype, you can start to test your product on your audience. You can do this in many ways, including conducting customer research, surveys and using website testing companies.
You can also conduct your own form of A/B Testing and present different versions of your product to test groups. Once you gather your data, you’ll be able to see which product receives the best response. It’s also worthwhile to note that different demographics might prefer a specific version, so you can consider targeting various age groups and genders with their chosen product versions.
The primary purpose of testing is to evaluate how effective your product is and fix any bugs or issues that arise during testing.
Measuring
If you think that once you release your final product, the UX process is over, then you couldn’t be more wrong. UX design is a continual process, and you should continuously evaluate and make adjustments throughout the products lifecycle.
For example, if you operate an e-commerce website, it’s recommended that you implement a live chat feature to offer better levels of customer service. However, technology advances all the time, and as live chat features improve, you should make sure you update your chat to the latest version.
Only with constant evaluation can your product continue to provide a good experience for your user and retain the relevance of your product in a competitive market.
The Bottom Line
UI and UX design are vital tools for every company to utilise, and with time and practice, you can learn to implement both of them across your products. Remember, UX is applicable for websites, products and even services, so if you want to access professional support, talk to a top web design company in the UK.
If you’d like to learn more about UX design, then check out our guide on how to create the best web pages. Also, feel free to add your comments below. We’d love to hear your thoughts on UX and UI.
Online coaching is one of the most popular career choices around. You’ve got skills and expertise in a particular area, and you want to share them with people, right? While online coaching is a rewarding career, and there are plenty of opportunities, it’s also very competitive.
Whether you’re a life coach, a fitness coach or offer business growth services, you need to be able to stand out. The best way to do that is to have a fantastic website.
In this guide, we’re going to look at some incredible examples from real coaches, doing their thing, and highlight what you can learn from them. We’ll also talk about the things you need to include in your coaching website.
The Best Online Coaching Websites
Life coaches need to show that they have the tools and experience to help others, so it’s essential to get their website right. Here are three of our favourite life coach websites to inspire you.
The first thing you see when you visit Mel Noakes is Mel Noakes! Her photo looks welcoming and friendly, which is good because she’s a self-help coach. What makes her site even more powerful, is she offers an immediate benefit which is hard to resist. In three simple actions, you can positively impact your body, mind and life – yes, please.
Mel’s site works because it’s positive, gets straight to the point and manages to retain a dignified yet non-threatening feel. Her down to earth no-nonsense content appeals to women, and it’s easy to see why someone looking to improve their life would trust her.
Shannon Wilkinson is another life coach that doesn’t beat around the bush. Her straight-talking website tells readers immediately that she will help them take action. Shannon focuses on productivity and helps people break down the barriers that stop them from succeeding.
One of the most noticeable things about her website is her photo. It looks professional yet not posed. She seems to be at home, which gives her site a down to earth appeal. The navigational features make readers feel as if they’re already on their coaching journey, and it’s easy to see why her website works.
Patrice Washington’s website packs a real punch. Her tagline says “Chase purpose, not money.” Not only is this a great lesson, but it also shows she genuinely cares about helping women to find their purpose in life.
Her message focuses on supporting women to improve their wellbeing and confidence so they can go after the things they want in life. Patrice makes the point to mention she’s built an international business, which gives her more credibility and highlights the fact that she’s an authoritative figure.
With a range of coaching options including podcasts and earn more money boot camps, Patrice appeals to professional women searching for more in their life.
Dominique Ara is a classic example of showing us that you don’t need to be famous to be a successful business coach. Her visual branding is incredible, and it makes her stand out. Her website states that as a business leader, it can be challenging to see the forest for the trees.
Her website then goes on to say that she helps business leaders gain clarity so they can identify the gaps in their business.
What we like most about this website is the imagery. It doesn’t include the typical numbers and growth symbols you’d associate with business coaches, which makes it stand out more.
Matthew Kimberley takes a less emotive approach and focuses on the facts with his website. It’s full of testimonials from previous clients which shows that he’s a successful business coach and knows what he’s talking about.
What makes his website stand out is the simplistic design. The black background screams elegance and sophistication, which is vital for business coaches. It’s easy to navigate and appeals to professionals that know who they are and what they want but need the tools to get there.
The Things You Should Include in Your Coaching Website
So, what should you include in your coaching website? There are lots of things to consider, but this list should give you an idea of what it takes to be a successful coach.
Your Personality
Have you seen those video adverts on YouTube that show “coaches” driving around in Ferraris and partying with beautiful women? They don’t work! The main selling point of your coaching business is you. Nobody cares if you have a sports car and buckets of money, because it doesn’t tell anyone who you are and why you’re coaching others.
Don’t be afraid to stand out and let people see what makes you unique. One of the biggest reasons coaching businesses fail is because people use boring language and try to sell their services instead of themselves. Tell people who you are, what you can do for them and why you want to help them.
Strong Calls to Action
Never – and I mean never – underestimate the power of a CTA. They’re the difference between people clicking away from your site or staying around to learn more. The most prominent issue people have is not knowing how to use them properly.
As a coach, you can get creative with your calls-to-action. Instead of just asking people to sign up or learn more, tell them what benefits they’ll receive for clicking that button. For example, say you want people to sign up for your mailing list, which of the CTA’s is more appealing?
As you can see, CTA number 2 offers people a clear benefit. Remember, CTA’s should compel people to take action, so make sure yours are easy to read and don’t be afraid to get inventive.
Contact Details
Unless you offer a one of a kind service (or you’re Richard Branson), people aren’t going to stick around unless they have easy access to your contact details. Make sure you use contact forms, as spammers can quickly get hold of your email address.
If you offer local services, make sure people know where you are and the areas you operate in. An excellent way to increase your local presence is through SEO, which can boost your Google My Business views and connect you with people in your area.
Don’t Stock It
Stock images are fine for generic websites and some blog posts, but as an online coach, you should include pictures of yourself. How many websites have you visited and seen the same photo? There’s always a happy business person or a woman looking thoughtful towards her future. If you want to be a reputable online coach, you need to let people see who you are.
Make sure your photo reflects the services you offer, and don’t be afraid to show your personality. If you’re a life coach, then lose the desk and suit. Business coaches should have a professional photo but don’t include your car or a snapshot of your bank balance. If you provide workshops, show pictures of you coaching others and let people see what you offer.
A Good Biography
One downside of the influx of coaching businesses is that anyone thinks they can do it. It means people don’t trust easily, which can impact your company’s success. An excellent biography can set you apart from the competition, and it instantly gives you more credibility.
Focus on your achievements and experience to highlight what you can offer your potential clients. It’s also good if you can back up your claims with any qualifications, publications and client testimonials you’ve received.
Social Sharing Buttons
Imagine you’ve written a great blog post, and people enjoy reading it. If you don’t have social sharing buttons on your website, then your blogs won’t reach other people. Most people won’t make an effort to copy and paste your post, then log in to their social media profile and share it.
Social sharing buttons make it easy for people to share your content at the click of a button. When someone shares your post, it reaches everyone within their network, so imagine how many views and potential leads you could acquire from a few buttons.
Strong Website Design Features
Your content is compelling, your photos are fantastic, but none of that matters if your website is poorly designed. As you can see from these shocking website designs, how your site looks and functions are everything. So, what features and functionalities should you check for?
Navigation
Can people move around your website easily? Nobody wants to search for information, so you should have a clear primary menu that contains sections for your about, contact, services and blog pages. It would help if you also used CTA’s to guide people and internal linking strategies.
Responsiveness
Your site might look great on desktops, but how does it look on mobile devices? Responsiveness is a big issue, especially when you use DIY website builders. However, if you use UK web designers that know what they’re doing, your responsiveness won’t be an issue.
Live Chat
Live chat services for business were once seen as a luxury, but they’re becoming a necessity. People want to be able to reach you quickly, and live chat can speed up your customer service and help you to close deals. Checking your emails can become a tedious task, but integrating live chat into your website is beneficial for both you and your visitors.
The Lesson
Is it more difficult than ever to become a successful life coach? Probably. But with the right determination, skills and website, you can do it. If you’re wondering about how to start a life coaching business online, this helpful guide from Forbes can help you.
Remember, to show people who you are and keep it real. Your success depends on your attitude and commitment to your clients. If you’d like some help building your online coaching website, we offer a range of fully responsive templates that we’ll customise to your requirements.
In the business world, nothing is ever certain. You can have the best ideas, a fantastic website and offer low prices, but without your customers, you’re nothing. Today, businesses are using the benefits of live chat to scale their customer service efforts, but what is live chat?
What Is Live Chat?
Live chat enables customers to receive support in real-time. Instead of sending an email or picking up the phone, they can chat to an operative through websites, apps and Facebook messenger.
Most large companies use live chat, and smaller companies are starting to see the benefits it has. Let’s look at why you need live chat.
More Convenience
Imagine you operate your business in the UK, and a potential lead in Canada visits your website. Research shows that the average person will visit a website nine times before they make a purchase, but live chat can help you reduce the number of visits by offering more convenience.
Few people enjoy picking up the phone, and most businesses reply to email within 48 hours. While that may not seem a long time, if your customer is actively searching for a product/service, they want to find what they need instead of waiting around.
Live chat means you can answer your visitors’ questions in real-time, and provide expert advice.
Better Reputation
Customer service can make or break a business. That’s a fact. HubSpot has a useful list of statistics that shows how vital customer service is to any business, to make sales. But it’s also essential if you want to maintain a good reputation.
There are so many businesses around; it’s challenging to stand against the competition. Live chat can build your reputation with your audience because it shows you’re ready to help them with whatever they need when they visit your website.
Now more small businesses are implementing live chat features, in an attempt to compete with retailers such as Amazon. It’s crucial you don’t get left behind because your company will suffer.
Cost Effective
Live chat services are bigger and better than ever before. Newer software has multi-chat functionality, which means you don’t have to hire multiple operators. You might be able to cut back on your administrative spend if you have experienced operators, so live chat might be a more cost-effective option for your business.
There are some free live chat options available, including Zoho but if you want to generate reports, you’ll have to pay. Apex Chat claims that including live chat in your customer service strategy can increase your conversions by up to 40%. An initial investment in the software could mean a steady increase in your profits.
Higher Conversion Rates
People rarely want to part with their hard-earned cash, so it’s your job to convince them. Live chat is a great way to interact with potential customers because you can build a level of trust. Think about it like this, would you rather search through a website and choose a product you think you want or speak to a real person that can help you to decide?
When you offer sound advice and listen to your customers’ needs, they’re more likely to trust your brand and will make a purchase.
Monitor Employees
It’s common practice to ask customers to fill out a survey if they’ve accessed your telephone support, but how many do it? Not many at all. But with live chat, you have the logs at your disposal to monitor how your team interacts with your visitors.
Customer service is essential for any brand success. Statistics from Customer Thermometer show that 47% of people will switch to a different company if they receive poor support. Evaluating the performance of your operators means you can assess whether they need more training.
The Bottom Line
Now you know the benefits of live chat, it’s time to consider integrating it into your website. The impact of COVID means that companies will have to really up their game to survive, and improving your customer service could be the difference.
If you’d like support with accessing live chat business services, Zapp sites are here to help. We have a range of cost-effective website packages, with fully customizable add-ons. Contact us today to build your business for a better future.
People always ask us what is the most popular social media platform, and we tell them that it depends on their business. One of the biggest misconceptions among companies looking to utilise social media is that they need to find the platform with the most users. You don’t. It’s all about where your target audience is.
In this post, we’ll talk about the most popular social media platforms and uncover which is suitable for your business type. Whether you sell services or products, there’s a platform for you. But before we go into that, let’s look at the benefits of using social media for business.
Social Media Benefits for Businesses
There are many benefits of using social media for your business, including:
Communication – You can use social media to keep in touch with your customers and answer their questions. Facebook also lets businesses create chatbots to automate their service.
Networking – Social media is a great place to connect with others, especially if you’re a B2B company.
Ranking – When people like, comment on or share your posts, it can help to boost your organic rankings.
Reputation – According to Arise.com, 80% of customers expect a response within 24 hours, but using social media means you can often reply to comments and message a lot quicker. Not only does this help you close sales, but it also improves your reputation.
Competition – What exactly are your competitors doing? Well, with social media, you can see their pages, posts and Facebook’s Ads library has a search tool which enables you to view adverts from other companies.
The Most Popular Social Media Platforms
Now you know the benefits of social media for business, it’s time to look at the most popular social media platforms to help your company grow.
Did you know that Facebook is the most popular social networking platform in the world? With over 2 billion users a month, it attracts the most people, and it’s more than likely that most people have a Facebook account.
There’s a lot you can do on Facebook, including setting up a company page, joining groups, boosting your posts and using Ads to direct traffic to your website. If there’s one thing that makes the platform stand out, it’s how diverse both its offerings and users are.
You can find a group for pretty much anything on Facebook, and if there isn’t one? Create your own. The only real drawback of Facebook is it’s a competitive platform, with over 80 million business pages, you have to work hard to stand out.
Everyone knows YouTube is the place to be for video content. It’s one of the largest search engines in the world, coming second only to Google. A common misconception is that YouTube is for watching music videos and comedic videos. While both are popular on the platform, it’s also great for promoting your business.
Video content continues to grow in popularity, so it makes sense for businesses to use it to their advantage. If you type in “how-to” on YouTube, you’ll find an abundance of videos helping people with makeup, marketing, cooking, business and pretty much everything.
YouTube is perfect to use as a teaching tool or to show off your products.
Twitter is a trendy social networking platform, especially with people aged 18-50. The most significant difference between Twitter and Facebook is that your posts must be 280 characters or less. While this might seem bad for businesses, it’s actually useful.
It would be best if you used Twitter to build brand awareness and share important news about your company. If you cater specifically to the Millennial generation, then Twitter can put you at the centre of your audience.
LinkedIn is the place for professionals. The once small social network is now a hub of useful content, businesses and highly-qualified people all searching for their next opportunity. Because of the nature of the platform, LinkedIn is most suited to B2B companies, and service-based companies do exceptionally well.
The biggest thing to remember about LinkedIn is the content you share can make or break you. With so many high-flying professionals using it, the platform can feel a bit like you’ve leapt into a shark tank!
When used correctly, LinkedIn is the best place to find clients for your business, and their unique features such as Sales Navigator can be useful marketing tools.
We couldn’t leave Instagram off our list, because the majority of its users are under 25. This social network doesn’t have the professionalism LinkedIn offers, but it’s ideal for companies catering to a young target audience.
If you have a cosmetics, clothing, or supplement business, then Instagram is the platform you need. The key to success is taking attractive photos and turning them into eye-catching graphics.
While Instagram isn’t the right choice for a service-based business, some have found success by showing their work. For example, a building company could use the platform to show before and after photos of their projects.
Pinterest is the home of visual content, and its unique platform is incredibly popular with women. Posts range from pictures of clothing to business infographics, so there’s an opportunity for all businesses to reach their target audience.
Graphic design skills are critical to your Pinterest success. The whole idea is people click on pins to reveal statistics, websites and blog posts. It’s so essential to make the most of your board and arrange your posts correctly.
Of all the social media platforms, we find Pinterest the most time-consuming. But, with so many users visiting the site, it’s worth it if you have the time and an artistic eye.
Honourable Mentions
Well, those are our top social media platforms for business, but we didn’t want to leave these brilliant platforms out.
Quora – An excellent site for businesses that want to build authority within their industry. Answer questions and users will upvote you if you provide sound advice.
Reddit – Not for advertising, but it’s useful for connecting with other business owners and sharing valuable information.
Things to Consider
Before you make a decision about which social media platforms to use, you should consider the following things.
Who Are You?
Before you even think about investing your time, money and energy in social media marketing, it’s crucial to think about what your business offers and who you offer it to. Is your brand a serious company, or do you take a light-hearted approach?
It’s essential to think about the impression you intend to make because sharing funny Gifs might not impress LinkedIn followers. Still, users on other platforms would appreciate the light-hearted approach.
What Do You Offer?
Are you a service-based business or do you sell products? A company offering IT solutions wouldn’t make an impression on Instagram or Pinterest, but they could find some useful connections on LinkedIn.
Think about how you can use social media to your advantage, and make a decision based on what you can do. Imagine you’re planning a post for your business and ask yourself the following questions:
How detailed do I need my post to be?
Is a graphic design appropriate?
Do I want to catch my follower’s eye or offer them advice?
Where Is Your Audience?
As we discovered earlier, the majority of people over 50 don’t use Instagram. Similarly, as people reach a point in their career that they’re happy with, they don’t feel the need to use LinkedIn.
Your primary goal with your social media page is to connect with your target audience, turn them into followers and convince them to become paying customers/clients. If your audience isn’t there, then you shouldn’t be either.
Do You Need Help?
Social media marketing takes time and commitment. Merely writing a couple of sentences about what you had for lunch won’t do you any favours. People want three things from their social media use:
Entertainment
Information
Connections
Some companies find it’s more cost-effective to use a social media management agency so that they can focus on other areas of their business.
The Bottom Line
Whether you choose to hire a professional agency or go it alone, social media can be highly rewarding for businesses of all sizes. All you need to do is choose from our list of the most popular social media platforms and look forward to growing your business.
Which social media platforms do you find work best for your business? We’d love to hear from you, so leave us a comment. You can also read our ultimate guide to the difference between web design and web development here.
Once you’ve chosen a template and settled on your site’s look and feel, the next step is to start building it up with some fantastic website ideas. Instead of focusing on the big picture, concentrate on building the best web pages for your site.
Here are a few essential tips from Zapp’s design team to help you create stunning, sales-driving, content-rich pages that will keep visitors on your site long after they arrive.
Step 1: Use calls to action.
Prompt site visitors to do something when they arrive that will lead to a sale. If you showcase products on a page, add a Buy Now button. If you sell a professional service or complex products with a longer sales cycle, use a download now button to give them more information (and ideally, capture their contact details so you can follow up.) If you list your customer reviews, add a button that takes them to your product catalogue, or available plans and pricing.
Step 2: Optimise page load speeds.
Making sure your site pages load quickly in user web browsers is vital. There are plugins you can add to your site’s content management system, for example, that will cache recurring image sand background files, so visitors don’t have to load anything from your site more than once.
Step 3: Steer clear of stock photos.
With so much great content out there, cutting corners with bland stock photography is one of the best ways to turn a great site into a boring one. People recognise generic images immediately. It’s best to use a picture taken at your actual premises and of people you employ. High-quality product images are more likely to boost sales, so invest in good ones for the products or services you sell.
Step 4: Connect a payment gateway.
If you’re selling products via your website, then integrating an e-commerce payment gateway is a no-brainer. Zapp can do this for you by implementing e-commerce software or adding a third-party payment processor like Stripe. We’ll make sure your customers have a shopping cart when they need it.
Step 5: Test and test again
Before taking your site live, make sure it works and looks the same on all the major web browsers (, including Chrome, Safari, and MS Edge, and so on). Check that the links send people where you want them to go, that images display correctly, and the overall layout and formatting of the pages is smooth.
Step 6: Switch on web analytics
Another essential feature to incorporate into your website from the very beginning is a program like Google Analytics. Setting it up even before the website launches will help smooth out any issues. Once the site is live, you can monitor traffic patterns and see which pages and content are the most popular and least popular. That will enable you to make changes that drive further improvements.
Step 7: Promote your site on social
Pushing out marketing messages and linking back to your site on social media is a great way to reach new customers and alert old ones about what’s happening at your company. Whenever you add new website content, post it to LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
It would help if you also made your site pages share-able for others by adding social buttons to your pages. These usually go at either the top-right above the menu in the ancillary menu bar or the page footer.
Step 8: Optimise the site for search with SEO
Submitting your site’s URL to all the major search engines will help potential customers find you – as will implementing an effective search engine optimisation (SEO) programme across your site. Technical fixes like ensuring meta-descriptions, tiles, URL naming conventions and uniform resource identifiers are keyword-rich will help keep you up the search engine rankings for the products or services that you’re aiming to sell.
Step 9: Don’t neglect the site after launch
Having a website is more than ‘build, publish, and forget’. You need to update frequently with new content like blog posts, latest news, and exclusive offers, and company news to maintain your visibility in search engine rankings, as well as keep customers interested and coming back.
Step 10: Be crystal clear about what your business does.
Visitors should know what you do within seconds of landing on your home page. The best web pages explain what your business does with a clear, concise statement that’s visible the moment a new user arrives. A handful of bright, well-written pages will drive more sales than twenty poorly written ones.
The Bottom Line
Launching a new website is an essential milestone in the life of your business. Do it right, and you can raise awareness about what you do and sell, establish credibility, and reach a broader base of potential customers than traditional marketing could ever deliver.
Want to know more? Ask us how we can help you build the best web pages that are optimised for SEO and update your site regularly with fresh, compelling content that pulls in new prospects.
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