Tag Archives: web design
Characteristics of high-converting CTA buttons
Here are the six characteristics of high-converting CTA buttons.
- They are buttons. Save your creativity for another occupation, like writing novels. Button up.
- They have compelling copy. Use verbs. And please, for the lost love of conversions, don’t use the word “submit.”
- They have logical placement. Eyes move in paths, not jumps. Put it where it will be seen.
- They use a contrasting color. Although I don’t advance the idea of toying with shades of gray or blue, or green, I happen to know that buttons with color contrast convert better.
- They have close proximity to the previous action. The mind and the pointer have a symbiotic relationship. Your CTA becomes part of that symbiosis as it moves directly into the cognitive and visual flow of the user.
- They don’t compete with other crap. If you want to purposely lose conversions by crowding out your CTA, go ahead. I, for one, advance the idea that the CTA should be king of the page.
More on the six characteristics of high-converting CTA buttons.
Image-Focused Design: Is Bigger Better?
The Nielsen Norman Group has released an article discussing the importance and flaws of using a huge hero image on the home page. I am sharing the important check list that is included in the article. Read the entire article about image usage “Image-Focused Design: Is Bigger Better?” now.
How to Ensure that You Use Images Appropriately
Follow these steps to make sure you have the right balance of elements:
- Identify and prioritize all the goals of the page — both the user goals, and the business goals (including brand goals.) Is the page primarily a marketing vehicle to build your brand? Or are most visitors already familiar with your organization (or at least your industry vertical), and now need specific content or functionality?
- Define how each design element relates to the page goals. Images are usually decorative, and support branding goals. Navigation and structured search relate to specific user tasks.
- Assign visual weight based on goal importance. If a design element supports a high priority goal, it should have more visual emphasis; conversely, design elements related to secondary goals should have less emphasis. (This guideline sounds obvious, but is often completely disregarded, or gets lost along the way to creating a ‘modern’ looking website.)
- Select images that have a strong relationship with brand goals. Remember, the purpose of your site is not just to showcase images (unless you’re Flickr). Instead, the images you select should showcase the purpose of your site.
- Choose striking visuals that capture attention. Once you’ve identified the goals of your images and their relative importance among other design elements, and you’ve determined what types of images relate to these goals — only then should you focus on selecting the most compelling images you can find.
- Be selective about which trends you embrace when ‘updating’ your site. For many redesign projects, creating a site that looks ‘modern’ is an important goal. But there are many ways to accomplish this goal. Typography, layout, and brand colors — just to name a few—can all be effectively used to create a modern look and feel, while still providing appropriate emphasis on critical site functions.
How to do a Content Audit
Is your company thinking of updating their website and you need to figure out what content already exists on your site?
AND what new content they want to include?
AND what old content should be carried over in to the new site?
Then is sounds like you need to do a content audit.
What is a content audit?
According to Wikipedia a content audit is the process of evaluating content elements and information assets on some part or all of a website.
In a related term, content inventory, is a quantitative analysis of a website. It simply logs what is on a website. A content inventory will answer the question: “What is there?” and can be the start of a website review. A content audit will answer the question: “Is it any good?”
Specifically, Slater states that the content audit can answer five questions:
- What content do we already have?
- Who is making this content?
- How do people find it?
- How is it performing?
- Is the content current (accurate) or outdated?
I came across a great, and very in-depth resource to assist you with your content analysis. On The Moz Blog there’s a great article called “How To Do a Content Audit – Step-by-Step” and it chock full of great resources to help you get started.
Here is a breakdown of some of the topics covered:
A step-by-step example of our process
- Step 1: Assess the situation and choose a scenario
- Step 2: Scan the site
- Step 3: Import the URLs and start the tool
- Step 4: Import the tool output into the dashboard
- Step 5: Import GWT data
- Step 6: Perform keyword research
- Step 7: Tying the keyword data together
- Step 8: Time to analyze and make some decisions!
- Step 9: Content gap analysis and other value-adds
- Step 10: Writing up the content audit strategy document
Enjoy and good luck!
New www.jenniferblatzdesign.com website redesign
Since you made it to this blog, it’s very likely that you came here through my home page at www.jenniferblatzdesign.com. But just in case you did not, and came in some special “back door” way, I wanted to emphasize that my portfolio site has a new design.
I opened with my UX portfolio. As you can see, I am accumulating a lot of UX assets and deliverables. One can also view some examples of my visual design work.
Thank you for taking the time to visit my newly-designed site. I would LOVE your feedback if you have any suggestions for improvement.
uxpala.org website is a work in progress
The wonderful Strategic Projects team of UXPALA (User Experience Professionals Association of Los Angeles) spent a good part of Sunday afternoon working on the “not quite ready for primetime” uxpala.org website. Though it is still in it’s very early stages, the team came together to get a lot of work accomplished. We have to pull information form the already existing meetup website, plus create new content that must also be included on our formal website. All if this while working with the Information Architecture and structure of the site. Though there is yet a lot of work to be done, we made some great headway.
Graphic Design USA website award
The first of three award winning designs I would like to share with you is my website www.jenniferblatzdesign.com. This was my first ever web design award, and I won’t it from GDUSA Magazine’s Inhouse Design Awards. I have won several awards from them through the years. But this is the first year I’ve won a web design award from the organization. I am proud and inspired to design more great looking websites. Thanks for the confidence boost. Back to work….
