Five Fundamentals you need to check in your UX design as it may affect your Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

 Believe it or not, there are still people who think that the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) process is all about adding relevant texts, links, keywords, and tags. A decade back, this is enough to get your site featured in the top results of Google. But now, the User Interface (UI), User Experience (UX) of your website play a vital role in the process. Nowadays, apart from reading the texts, Google deconstructs the real user behavior. How they approach your website and play inside it become key factors in ranking your site. A UI UX Development Agency keeps these factors in mind while churning out designs for your new website. Here are five fundamental points you need to consider before finalizing your UX design as this may affect your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) process.

How does UX Design fit into Search Engine Optimization?

The usability and UI UX of a website became an integral part of SEO. Since Google is prioritizing User Experience, a UI UX design company should take its service a notch higher to adapt, revitalize and bring results. User engagement variables like bounce rate, time on site, and pages visited have all become critical rating parameters for your website. Gone are the days where a site needs to be nested with links to various pages containing raw information which may or may not be relevant to your business model. A website with tightly packed pages with impactful keywords and expert navigation control is the need of the hour. Your old complicated website may be SEO friendly, but if it creates a negative impact or disrupt the user experience, then the ranking gets affected. Integrating both the UX design and SEO strategically will do wonders. This is where a UI UX design company pops in.

Finding a middle ground between aesthetics and search-friendly nature

While designing based on aesthetics, we may give shorter headings, crispy paragraphs and concentrate more on the visual language of the site. To put it bluntly, we may incline towards the usage of more images, infographics, etc., rather than presenting the content in a dry text format. However, a marriage between aesthetics and SEO can be attained, if you simply concentrate on getting to the point in your content. Rich content with all the necessary information can be small, as it all depends on the presentation. One such trick up the sleeve is providing the content in a listicle format. This will help your site to be known through featured snippets on the Google Search Results page.

A page should contain a Header 1 tag and it should reveal what the page is all about. Then the importance should be given to the primary keywords that need to be targeted through that page. Build your page as blocks and allocate a few of them exclusively to videos and images. This trick will do wonders for your SEO process.

Get more action from the users – The impact of Rank Brain!

Use several interactive elements to generate action from the users. For example, lengthy content should be readable, and the user should be ready to click the ‘Read more…’ button on your page. Add Call To Action (CTA) buttons that may generate potential leads to your business. Related content and callout links aid in creating more interactions in your website and this automatically helps in the SEO process.

Rank Brain is a ranking factor that informs Google about your website’s user behavior metrics like overall bounce rate, Click Through Rate (CTR), pages per session, Site on time, seamless navigations, etc. Generating more number of returning visitors is also a huge metric that creates an impact on your SEO process positively.

Optimize the website, don’t complicate!

Another important factor in optimizing the created website. When a page takes time to load due to its heavy multimedia content, automatically the bounce rate of that particular page increases drastically. Tools like GTmetrix, Google Page Speed Insights, and ‘Web. Dev’ help you in providing vital information about your website. For technical UX purposes, there are several tools, and keeping the health of those parameters in check can weave magic in your SEO process. All the UI UX design service providers know to optimize for caching, images, and redirects. Among the above-mentioned parameters, site loading speed is also a prominent factor. For that, this optimization process will help.

Ensuring Responsiveness

Mobile response or user gadget-based response became a mandatory thing as it affects both the usability and aesthetics of your UI UX designs. Optimized UI UX Design for Mobile is not just simply creating a mini version of your website. It is all about incorporating all the features, contents, and aesthetics into a different container. The container size and shape may vary, but the aesthetics of the page shouldn’t be compromised at any point. A notable UI UX Web Application or Website serves as the lamp that summons out the genie called search engine optimization, which in turn brings what all the businesses desire, more leads!

Understanding how the UX Design fits into Search Engine Optimization and the changes it brings along with that is the key factor in creating a site that actually works for your business. Call us to learn more about this from our experts!

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What has (and hasn’t) changed in digital marketing in 2021?

Realities of life in 2021 have impacted digital marketing in a big way. The crisis during 2020 was enough to turn the spotlight on the tools and techniques that had played a secondary role for far too long. Moreover, this short period also witnessed the rise of more technologically advanced and innovative marketing approaches. The following tools are finding their way in marketing approaches shaping up 2021:

What has changed:

Video marketing: Once primarily used as a medium for increasing user understanding, videos are now used to improve search ranking and increase engagement. Video marketing has overtaken the text-based content marketing staple. With both B2C and B2B customers preferring videos over other content types, businesses are changing their tactics and are including more videos in their campaigns.

User-generated content and live streaming: People trust user-generated content because they cut through the noise, are credible and are an ecosystem in itself. The lockdowns have up-shifted the gear for Livestream videos, which are convenient and easy to produce, and have multichannel accessibility.

Google Merchant Centre: Shopping ads on Google function as storefronts and as stores, improving visibility and performance. This provides a perfect platform to improve your online presence and reach out to those people who do shopping-related searches on Google’s both paid and unpaid channels.

Visual and voice search: This, when clubbed with a robust search marketing strategy, will boost website traffic. And if you are an e-commerce brand, then this is the best medium to use. The arrival of visual search and voice assistants has made searching faster than the traditional method of querying. In fact, it is quicker to use a voice search than to go on to a website or use an app. It is also a more accurate and interactive way of performing a search.

The above ways of marketing looked unconventional not long ago, but they are now the digital mainstay for innovative businesses. Including these in your strategy is a given in these times, and it is something that you should confer with your digital marketing company. However, the following continue to rule the roost in the world of digital marketing:

What hasn’t changed:

SEO: With more people spending time online, SEO continues to be indispensable for marketers. It is still one of the most important activities for businesses to invest their money and time.

Content: Content marketing gets creative with each passing day. With numerous platforms to choose from and different forms available, the content remains the key ingredient for getting people to discover your online presence. Today, businesses are focussing on strategies to utilize content to recover from the pandemic.

Instagram for B2C & Linkedin for B2B: With more than one billion active users, Instagram remains a viable platform for marketers and businesses alike. What’s more, more than 70 percent of shoppers use it to find new products. It has also become the go-to platform for influencer marketing in 2019 and continues to retain its prime position. In the same way, Linkedin continues to influence the B2B decision-making & career opportunities through professional networking.

Website: Website remains the prime focus in digital marketing efforts & the heart of content for brands & businesses. The experience of users going through a website is considered paramount & strategies are evolving to make the website sticky & aiding in conversions. Text/voice chats along with powerful tracking cum CRM tools are aiding in the website becoming an indispensable marketing engine.

Every business wants to succeed online—and fast! However, they need to have a clear digital marketing strategy to survive in the competitive online marketplace. Having a digital marketing agency with expertise across channels will help brands ride through the digital landscape.

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How Our Multi-tiered Digital Campaign Increased Store Walk-ins of a Fashion Brand?

 Overview

The client is a home-grown premium menswear brand with a high brand saliency across age groups. It has about 45 stores in the state of Tamil Nadu, with an expanding footprint in other southern states as well. The brand is known for its innovative campaigns, advertising, and positioning that helped to carve a niche for itself.

The Scenario

The client wanted to connect to a wider audience through digital platforms and draw them to visit their stores during the upcoming festive season. However, public concerns on hygiene, social distancing, and other restrictions kept the visitor footfall to the store down. There was an urgent need to dispel prevailing fears and engage with the public, by showcasing the store’s many initiatives in ensuring customer safety and hygiene. The client approached Pixel Studios – Digital Marketing Company for ways to connect with people and bring about a changeover in the public consciousness for shopping in-store.

The Solution

As the brand’s digital marketing agency our mandate was simple: Connect with the target audience and make them shop in-store. We decided to keep the brand’s communication simple and straight. Communication was three-tiered: Hygiene, Festive Collection, and Unrestricted Shopping.

Hygiene: We showcased how the outlets maintained and complied with the hygiene routine among the staff and with customers. The outlets were affixed with a Safe & Secure badge to improve public confidence.

Festive Collection: We executed a two-fold campaign that involved running discovery ads and conversion ads. In the first stage, we built an awareness campaign with video look books, photo carousals, collection ads, and static ads.

Unrestricted Shopping: Communication on convenience targeted shoppers emerging from the lockdowns. The store had made it easy for shoppers to pick their shopping hours, which enabled them to avoid rush hours and crowding; they were even encouraged to make a trip to the store for late night shopping with a prior appointment.

The Result

Our approach in communication and our campaign strategies increased in-store visits and built brand awareness during the festival season, a period of 60 days (Oct – Nov 2020), with the following results:

150% increase in sales

3X increase in footfalls

2X lower cost per visit compared to other platforms

55M impressions

10M unique reach

2%+ CTR

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Why You Should Hire a Custom Website Design Company to Get More Conversions?

Today it is possible to create a website on the go, but it takes an expert designer to strategically think and create the designs suiting your brand’s aspirations. Developing the design that works for your brand and business is important. Why? Because your website has less than five seconds to impress visitors to spend more time, explore, interact and convert. Of course, content plays a major role in all of this; design plays an equally important part too.

Here are some reasons why you should hire a custom website design company

75% say that website aesthetics determine your credibility: Your website is your brand. Brand colors and creative communication play a major role in setting the right perception to the right target audience. Brands have a rationale and knowledge about their target audience type and their preferences. So if you are planning to revive your website, get in touch with an expert to go about the color scheme and the stylesheet to use.

Content and communication strategy: Your communication strategy works towards fulfilling your positioning and business goals. A uniform tone and voice need to be maintained across the media landscape. A professional digital design agency will help you align content needs to your communication strategy and disseminate the right information, which will evoke the right action from the target audience.

There is the magic behind typography: Remember the time when advertising executives claimed that they can set a page on fire? Today, it is the turn of website designers to set the Internet on fire. Very few brands understand the importance of typography in website design. Typography is an art element that establishes the connection between the spaces and other elements. Only a designer with a creative mind would be able to bring out the magic.

Bringing out the story: Every brand has a story to tell. Buyers are ready to listen to the brand’s story if it is communicated to them in a way that excites their curiosity. The narrative should be authentic, unforced, and subtle. There are times when a simple line illustration can tell a story. Website designers can crack the judicious path to follow.

Streamlined navigation: Any good designer will tell you that it is important to connect browsing behavior to website navigation. The effort required to reach a page should be reduced to a minimum. Remember that most users get to your website from a search; they will not necessarily start on the home page.

Getting the elements to work with each other: Usability in design schemes is something that only a designer knows how works. Design elements work with each other, so a certain level of mixing and matching is a given. However, it is only a designer who knows which rules can be broken and how it can be amended.

It is essential that you run your business in the right way when it comes to online. Remember that a majority of visitors will drop off if your website fails to communicate and convince. If you are looking to turnaround your website performance, then get in touch with the experts.

Pixel Studios has helped many B2B and B2C businesses to win on the digital front with amazing website designs.

Please check our web design process @ pixel studios, and get in touch with us for a professionally designed website with content that can work for you…

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5 Trends that Matter to Your Website’s UX Design in 2021

About 90% of visitors will return to a website if they had a great experience. To ensure that they do return to the site, agencies and businesses are willing to try all tricks of the trade to get their act right. However, to keep your website in sync with the current trends, you would need to consider a lot of variables rather than adhering to a checklist of things to do. For instance, there are always changes taking place in user research, data analysis, design strategy, interaction design, and usability testing—all of which play a crucial role in determining your website’s UX design.

Here are some UX trends already shaping 2021:

1) Easy logging in: One of the major transitions this year has been the move to logging in without using passwords. Very soon there will no longer be the need to reset or remember passwords. Using one-time passwords (OTP) is the norm now, and its usage will eclipse logging in using Google or social media accounts. The login feature has seen constant revamping over the years with additional layers of security involved. From being the last line of defense against fraudsters, OTP is now brought to the forefront; CAPTCHA has already given way to this authentication method. One may, however, need to wait and watch the role fingerprint-enabled ID authentication is going to play in the future.

2) Copy content gets shorter: No longer will you find long-form copy text on the website. Short two or three words that connect with customers are used on the pages. Customers find this approach more personable. For the designers, it gives them more room to be creative. This short-form content is called ‘microcopy.’ Trends have shown that microcopy can boost conversions if the content is aligned to the audience persona.  Such content encourages users to explore and navigate through digital experiences. For instance, the dating site Tinder’s “Start something new” messaging is a great way to nudge people to explore.

3) User element text has changed too: Button text or interface text or CTAs on the website will no longer have that straightforward legend. They will have more personalized options that adhere to the website’s tone and character. With shoppers and visitors associating better UX design with better customer service, interface elements are undergoing a sea change in how they are perceived and displayed. This aspect of UX design service is evolving slowly, but we are getting there.

4) Focus on micro behavioral research: Although website research has covered much ground, new observation techniques and creative thinking techniques have evolved. This has made designers to focus more on personality layers rather than conceptual models when embarking on a design strategy.

5) The bet is on the intent: Journey mapping will continue to dominate website structure and navigation. The focus on user intent has brought in an additional layer: engagement on and off the mobile. Brands have to decide on which is the best bet for users when they try to attract customers and generate interest with compelling experiences. They will have to focus on those ‘mobile moments’ and build a content ecosystem for user engagement and interaction.

Pixel Studios provides UI/UX design and development services that work for your brand or organization. To ace, your website’s performance, do get in touch with us. 

Top 10 reasons why your website is not converting consumers

 A website will enable you to reach more consumers. With most consumers looking for information online, your website has a role to play in providing the right information to the right types of target audiences and making them coming back to the site. There are many website development platforms that provide readymade sites and pages for different industrial domains. Relying on such platforms can work either way: create opportunities or supplant your business. A professional website development agency can help in creating your site on par with the current trends, leveraging content, design, and tech. They focus on the user journey and the path to conversion, to ensure that no opportunities are missed.

Here are the top 10 reasons why your website may be missing out on the opportunities to convert consumers:

1. Phone – Click to call:

‘Click to Call’ is a feature on a website that can make it easier for customers to call you from their mobile phones. Businesses are mobile now, and it would be a shame if you do not include this feature to enable customers to connect with you. A ‘click to call’ is by far one of the most important ‘Call to Action’ (CTA) buttons on a site. 

2. WhatsApp Integration

As a communication channel, WhatsApp has capabilities with a significant impact on customer satisfaction. In the past couple of years, it has overtaken even email and SMS as a prime communication channel for business. Like ‘Click to Call’ above, it provides a personalized, simple, and direct communication channel.

3. Errors with Forms

It is now increasingly becoming common to find website forms with incorrect autofill details, fields, input constraints, and validation errors. No thought is given on when to use a multi-step form, hint text, or even a field label. A form with erroneous structure and validation will affect the brand’s credibility and the user’s trust.

4. Captcha

Not including a Captcha will cast doubts on the minds of users. Websites use Captcha to protect against attacks by bots. In fact, a Captcha is the first line of defense for websites against malicious programs. Some websites have advanced to have a triggered Captcha test if they suspect user behavior on the site.

5. SSL Integration

Look at the address bar and check if the URL starts with HTTP://…  Having a secure socket layer (SSL) provides security to devices when communicating with a site. SSL plays an important role in securing payment transactions, logins, and communications too.  Its integration increases the credibility of the site and, therefore, has become a basic requirement for any website.

6. Social media links

Adding social media links on the site makes it easier for people to share your content, thereby increasing your brand reach. It drives audience engagement with content, builds community, fosters brand salience, and generates leads.

7. Duplicate content

Content duplication may reek of plagiarism or inconsistency, either of which affects your site’s search rankings. It is important for websites to have updated, crisp, and easily ‘consumable’ content.  Such content types are often objective and action-oriented, guiding the user to the next step or stage.

8. GMB listing

Google My Business (GMB) listing helps your business to be found across all devices and also stands out on Google+.  Yes, it helps you immensely on the SEO front too. It boosts your online presence by sharing accurate information about your business with user reviews, ratings, pictures, etc.

9. Broken links

It is common for web pages to have been moved or removed, but remember that broken links affect your search rankings too. Broken links may give rise to increased bounce rates and reduced visitor landings.

10. Mobile responsive

Having a mobile responsive website is a given in today’s world of commerce.  With a responsive design, your website is adapted to suit the requirements of users on different devices. A responsive site has higher SEO rankings and gets more traffic. If you wish to reach your customers, then your site should be mobile responsive. Period.

As a website development agency, we understand the importance of continuous engagement.  In fact, our engagement with customers does not end once the website is hosted, it begins there. Your website is your marketing asset. To help you get started, contact Pixel Studios.

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