The Secret to Site Traffic, and 7 Ways to Make it Happen

Whenever someone asks, “How can I increase traffic to my website?” the answer is invariably, “Regularly post new content.” You could be alone in the forest where the proverbial tree fell when you ask this question, and you’d probably get the same answer from a passing bear. The bear might even offer you a course on making website content for only $49.95 USD, involving three easy web seminars.

People keep saying that your company blog needs to be more than press releases, and they’re right. They’re often kind of short on details, though. So, here, with no need for seminars or payment from you, I’m here to let you in on the super secret recipe for blogging success that I mostly learned by reading other blogs. Oh, and there was some personal experience, I guess.

No, but seriously, some of these tips for maintaining a stream of regular content have worked quite well for me. Other ideas on this list worked really well for other people. If you’re just starting to put together a blog for your company, there’s a lot here that you’ll probably find useful.

1. Keep Notes

New writers and creators might have lots of ideas of things they’d like to try. and that’s great! Start with that. But once that initial pool of ideas is exhausted, you will most likely find that coming up with new ideas is one of the harder bits of being creative.

Now some people like me can only come up with new ideas when we sit down and force ourselves into a certain idea-finding mindset. Others, however, come up with ideas all the time, and then forget them. Don’t let that happen to you. Grab a note-taking app on your phone, for example, and write that stuff down! Keep all of your content ideas in one place, so you can pick and choose from them when it’s time to sit down and work.

2. Look for Contributors

This option requires a bit of a budget, if you want to do it right. But, if your company is large enough, you might consider investing in hiring a writer/creator part-time, or on a freelance basis.

This is not as easy as it sounds, though. You want a writer who knows at least enough about your field or industry that they don’t sound like complete amateurs. You want a contributor who can meet deadlines. You want one that can take suggestions. And ideally, you want one that has their own voice, a distinct style to create a personal connection with your readers/listeners/viewers that they’ll keep coming back for. And then you want one that’s within your price range.

As they say: cheap, fast, and good. Pick two.

3. Start a Series

One of the easiest ways to keep regular content going is to start a series. I don’t mean a series of articles that has two-to-five articles and that’s it. Those can provide some content, but they have an ending point by nature. I’m talking about a series that can be continued nearly ad-infinitum if you make a new installment every week, every two weeks, or every month.

Easy ideas for this kind of content include:

• Reviews
• State of the industry articles
• Interviews
• Compilations of resources (ie the 25 best tools for X)

4. Start a Podcast

Don’t let anybody tell you that you have to spend a ton of money to start a podcast. There are some decent ones out there that have been recorded (and even filmed) on higher-end mobile phones. Just grab some friends and colleagues in your field, sit down, and talk about your industry.

It helps to have a short outline of topics you’d like to discuss, but otherwise, keep it fairly casual, and don’t make it too long. Then just put up an episode on your blog regularly. Once a month is fine to start with, if you’re quite busy.

If the podcast in particular really takes off, then you might consider investing more in equipment.

5. Contribute to the Conversation

In every industry, the people who blog about it tend to follow some trends. Whenever a big story comes up, read what others have to say on it, and write a response. Well, you could try to be first to get your opinion out there, but that’s a rough game that would require some sleepless nights.

Responses can take a few forms. You can politely point out things you disagree with other people on to provide a different perspective. You can respond to people you agree with, but try to build on the points they made, and look for things they might have missed. Lastly, you can just point your own readers to content that you can’t find any fault with. Yes, that’s an option.

6. Editorial Calendar

Put together an editorial calendar. It’s like an outline for your blog, but you put in a calendar format. Simply put, an editorial calendar does for your blogging what any calendar does for the rest of your life. Once you have your regular posts and already-written posts on the calendar, you can immediately see where you might be missing anything.

You can make one with a tool as simple as Google Calendar, and keep it synced with everyone who contributes to your company blog. If you use a CMS like WordPress, there are plugins like the appropriately-named Editorial Calendar to give you an easy calendar overview of posts that are actually in your CMS. From there, you can move posts around as you see fit.

7. Build Your Writing Confidence

One of the things that was most difficult for me as I started writing was the simple yet panic-inducing fear of failure. Nothing kills a writing/creative habit like just being sure that you’re is going to suck anyway, so why try?

Practice is one of the more obvious answers to this conundrum, and it’s absolutely essential. However, you can get some confidence by just preparing yourself correctly. Prepare yourself by reading, a lot. I’ve mentioned CopyBlogger maybe a thousand times, and I’ll reference a thousand times more. They offer good writing advice.

Prepare to write by making sure you have a solid outline that covers everything you want to mention. Get some good music going, or find a quiet place to work. Just make sure you’re calm and feeling good. It makes it a lot easier to just focus on making something that will keep your users coming back.

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from Webdesigner Depot https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/01/the-secret-to-site-traffic-and-7-ways-to-make-it-happen/

How Dark UX Patterns Target The Most Vulnerable

A dark user experience pattern is loosely defined as a way to trick users into performing certain actions. These actions always benefit the company employing these techniques, and often leave user out of pocket in at least one way. Sometimes this is monetary; other times it’s at the cost of privacy, time, or even user rights.

Some of the most common dark patterns include disguising advertisements, sneaking additional items into a user’s basket, making it difficult to cancel a subscription, and tricking users to share information they did not intend to. The list goes on, and it’s becoming a more prominent issue.

There’s a line between clever marketing and trickery

As larger sites like Amazon and Facebook employ various dark user experience patterns, other competitors and websites follow on, pushing them to become the norm. There’s a line between clever marketing and trickery. These practices fall within the latter, and are solely focused on profiting from the user in shameful ways.

Just to consider how widely employed these techniques are, consider the following examples.

The first is from Amazon. It’s just one of a number of screens they show to users who are not currently Amazon Prime members. The primary call-to-action is front and center. Rather than it being a ‘Next’ or ‘Continue’ button as the user would expect, it instead charges £7.99 to your card immediately. The option to continue is instead hidden with a text link that blends in with  both the footer and the confusing text copy.

For the most vulnerable, such as elderly, those less proficient with the language used, or users with a disability, these types of practices can provide a great deal of confusion and distress.

Even as a designer who is aware of these tricks, it’s still incredibly easy to fall victim to them. Not to mention, they are an annoyance and create a distrust between company and consumer.

As long as practices like this are legal and continue to convert at such high rates, companies will continue to employ them

In a perfect world, Amazon would outline the benefits in a simple to read format with the primary call-to-action allowing the user to skip and continue. In reality, they hide the details in small print: print too small to read for just over 5% of the world’s population. They present the information in an oddly structured format with a confusing variety of bold text weights, different colors, and so much text it deters the user from reading through it all. As long as practices like this are legal and continue to convert at such high rates, companies will continue to employ them.

While Amazon targets the pockets of vulnerable consumers, Facebook is more interested in the user sharing as much information about themselves as possible—even if they are not intending to do so. While Facebook have made progress on privacy issues compared to earlier versions, they continue to use subtle but persuasive and confusing design techniques and copy like below.

Despite going through every privacy setting and selecting ‘Only Me’, sections which contain very personal and detailed information are still defaulted to be shared publicly. Not only is this an issue with privacy, but also with security. The ease at which hackers can subsequently obtain information to answer the likes of security questions is astonishing. The dropdown is subtle and demands nowhere near as much attention as the primary call-to-action. Similar modals also use microcopy to trick users. Consider this example:

At first glance, nothing seems too untoward. At a closer look, it becomes clear that Facebook is pushing users into sharing their bio to the News Feed. It’s doing this by implying that by clicking ‘Cancel’, you are cancelling changes made to your bio. In reality, ‘Cancel’ means ‘No’. Again, it’s the type of practice that can trick even the most privacy-conscious. For the rest of users, it’s an example of just how far Facebook will push the limits if it means users will share more, interact more, and ultimately have a positive impact on their advertising revenue figures.

In the product and web design industries, aesthetics, sales techniques, and profits are all often placed above accessibility and the wellbeing of users. Shopify, LinkedIn, Instagram, CloudFlare, and GoDaddy are just a few names who go to such measures to impact their bottom line.

It might just be making an email unsubscribe link smaller to blend in. Or making it impossible to close your account. Or something even more subtle like making you submit your name, email and full address before giving a shipping cost estimation. But it’s these dark patterns that impact the usability and accessibility of the web in really quite severe ways.

For most of us, it’s simply an annoyance. For the people who are most vulnerable, it can make things near impossible to use or understand. They may not be able to find that hidden unsubscribe link. They may not notice that something has been added to their basket during checkout. And they may become entirely disillusioned and confused with privacy settings, disguised ads and friend spam.

The web has become a place where you have to be extremely conscious and learned of areas like security, privacy, and trickery—even by the biggest reputable companies in the world. For everyone, this quite simply isn’t possible. And these patterns don’t even begin to touch upon larger issues with accessibility such as readability and color practices.

it’s the responsibility of everyone within product and marketing teams to ensure [dark patterns are] safeguarded against

Designers and teams need to be aware of their responsibility not just to clients, employers, and shareholders, but to everyday users too. Accessibility issues and dark patterns hit the vulnerable the hardest, and it’s the responsibility of everyone within product and marketing teams to ensure this is safeguarded against.

Until better laws and regulations are introduced to protect against this, it’s the duty of teams to design responsibly and garner a balance between profit maximizing and providing the optimum usability and accessibility for all users.

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from Webdesigner Depot https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/01/how-dark-ux-patterns-target-the-most-vulnerable/

3 Essential Design Trends, February 2018

Sometimes design trends are tough to see, even when you are looking for them. This month is no exception with trends that include use of circles in design, split screen layouts, and dark backgrounds with light text.

These elements might seem like common design tools but when used in similar ways across the board, distinct trends start to emerge.

Here’s what’s trending in design this month:

1. Circles

The implied meanings and associations of circles in design can have a lot to do with their usage. Circles imply a sense of completeness and harmony. They are used to represent love, energy and power. (It’s somewhat surprising that more designers don’t use circles regularly.)

While the most common uses of circles recently has been in the form of buttons or calls to action thanks to Google’s Material Design, circles are taking on stronger design roles.

The thing that can be difficult about circles is the canvas and shape of websites—either distinctly horizontal (desktop screens) or vertical (mobile screens). So the design has to use circles in space so that the shape doesn’t get lost in the responsive format. Each of the examples below do a good job or maintaining the circular flow without losing the shape as the canvas shifts.

KymberleeJay uses a big pink circle to bring attention to the main copy on the screen. The eye moves directly from the woman’s face to the strong round shape.

Buddha Pizza implies a circle with text and ingredients surrounding a slice. Part of what makes the circle appear is the idea that a pizza is often round. Even with the triangular image in the middle of the screen, the circle is obvious.

Hotel Poispois uses floating circles to create visual interest, but they also serve as giant buttons that take users to different parts of the website.

2. Split Screens

Split screen designs are one of those trends that grows in popularity and then disappears, but it always seems to circle back. The latest iteration of the trend includes both super bold split screens and more subtle pairings.

The great thing about split screen designs is that they work with the responsive format beautifully. You get double content on desktop and stacked content on mobile screens. Regardless of device, the user doesn’t feel like he or she missed out on anything by changing device type.

Split screen design also provides a solution for having dual pieces of content with almost equal importance. You can showcase multiple elements and offer two distinct courses of action (and associated calls to action) on the screen at one time.

This concept puts users in control of the design, allowing them to feel like there is a choice in how to interact with the content.

Taco Bill’s website is a prime example of this. The design immediately poses a question to users: Do you want to order food to go or do you want a reservation to eat in. The split screen design does more than just make the design easier to use, it actually shows users that they have multiple options visually.

Nikos Pandazaras takes another approach with the photography portfolio website design. The site showcases two vertical photos side by side with the navigation in the middle. It’s a different approach for a portfolio style design but effective in that users get to see more images immediately. The split screen style implies that both images carry equal weight and one is no more important than the other.

D’Aucy uses a more subtle split screen aesthetic. One side includes an image on a textured background paired with the same color background without any texture and a headline. The design is a good way to help draw the eye across the screen so that all the content is viewed.

3. Dark Backgrounds, White Text

Dark backgrounds and white text are a classic combination. But this trend is emerging with a twist—there’s video or animation in the dark background.

Whether the movement is subtle, such as Top Estates, or fast and furious, such as Bullying and Behavior, the action in the background is what helps draw users even. The lack of color adds an element of mystery and makes the scene a little more enticing.

White type adds to the starkness of the design. While it is easy to read—that’s a good thing—the text isn’t overwhelming the design. These projects are a bit more stark by nature. The driving visual element is movement in the dark space of the background. All of the designs below feature looping animations that help create a feel for the projects.

The darker the background with these designs, the more mystery they create. Darker backgrounds also increase readability because of the amount of contrast with white text. The speed of animations can create a sense of calm or frenzy.

It’s pretty spectacular how much information can come from what at first glance looks like such simple designs.

Conclusion

The nice thing about this collection of trends is that they are all things you can implement in almost any design project. Use of circles, split screens and dark backgrounds aren’t limited to a certain style of design. You can use these ideas to freshen us a site that’s feeling a little stale or incorporate them into a new project.

As with any trend, think about the content and context before you get started. Does the visual plan help you achieve your overall goal with the design?

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from Webdesigner Depot https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/01/3-essential-design-trends-february-2018/

Popular Design News of the Week: January 22, 2018 – January 28, 2018

Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers. 

The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.

Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that were posted, so don’t miss out and subscribe to our newsletter and follow the site daily for all the news.

Facebook Just Invented a New Unit of Time

 

UI Design Inspiration – Jan 2018

 

Finding Dead CSS

 

Web Typography Quiz by Better Web Type

 

Gradient Topography Animation

 

35+ Best Free Script Fonts for Designers

 

Instagram’s Latest ‘Feature’ Proves it’s not Listening

 

Year in Pixels

 

Bolt ECommerce

 

Lean UX Principles to Keep your Users Happy

 

Nerv – A Blazing Fast React Alternative

 

Drag and Drop for Design Systems

 

22 Awesome Websites with Stunning Free Stock Images

 

Eight Microinteractions to Help Improve UX

 

How a Single Line of Computer Code Put Thousands of Innocent Turks in Jail

 

Iris – Protect your Eyes from your Computer’s LCD

 

This is the World’s First Graphical AI Interface

 

Stripe: Ending Bitcoin Support

 

10 Best Free Monospaced Fonts for Code Snippets

 

Secret Heroes of UX Design

 

The Art of Storyboarding

 

Build a Better Homepage

 

How I Got Hired by GitHub

 

Stop Asking if Users Want Notifications from your Site

 

The Language of UX

 

Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.

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from Webdesigner Depot https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/01/popular-design-news-of-the-week-january-22-2018-january-28-2018/

Comics of the Week #425

Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD.

The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers.

These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world today.

So for a few moments, take a break from your daily routine, have a laugh and enjoy these funny cartoons.

Feel free to leave your comments and suggestions below as well as any related stories of your own…

Timesaving chair

Comic Sans crime

 

Photoshop fitness

Can you relate to these situations? Please share your funny stories and comments below…

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from Webdesigner Depot https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/01/comics-of-the-week-425/