BlogmyQuery – BMQ

Increasing positive reviews is a byproduct of a great solution, so having a great app that solves a clear problem for your users should be enough, right? Well, not really.

Users are more likely to leave bad reviews than positive ones. In other words, if you’re not actively asking for feedback, you could be missing out on hearing from your satisfied users.

And before you start adding random popups and prompts, in a lot of cases they can do more harm than good by annoying your users and potentially scaring them away from your app.

Instead, you’ll want to focus on these seven non-intrusive strategies that are guaranteed to increase the number and quality of reviews your app gets:

1. Run a Review-Writing Contest for Your App

An old but still effective strategy to get more reviews for your app is to run a review contest. This will incentivize and gamify the process for your users – or even score new ones in the process.

To run a successful contest, you’ll need a clear and organized process that makes it easier for your users to participate and easier for you to manage it. Some of the components you’ll need to think about are:

• What’s the prize?
• How will you pick the winner?
• Where will you promote the contest?
• What’s the messaging of the contest’s social media posts?

For example, you could create a social media post with all the information about the contest and ask users to comment on the post with their app username after leaving a review on the App Store or Google Play.

You can also use forums or Reddit threads related to your industry or app if there’s already a community around it.

2. Request a Review After Your User Achieves a Milestone or Success

Like sending sales messages, timing is one of the most critical aspects of the review campaign process. In our experience, many apps tend to ask for a review as soon as the user signs in. However, that could easily be one of the worst moments to ask.

Why? Because of intention. When users log into your app, they have a clear purpose, and a popup window is getting in their way. Take advantage of successes and milestones instead.

For an eCommerce app, this can look something like a product being delivered on time or ahead of time, or a user spending a certain amount of money. These scenarios are clear indications that users are getting great results and are happy with your app, in turn setting you up for a better review.

Think about your user’s intention and what a successful session on your app looks like. Is it time spent on the app or a certain number of actions? If you can figure out the best moment to ask for feedback, you’ll increase the number and quality of your reviews.

3. Leverage Your Customer Support Team Everywhere

User experience doesn’t stop at the app’s performance and design. Your customer support team also plays a vital role in your app’s success.

There will be problems no matter how well built your app is, and you’ll need a great team to solve those issues – especially when they come from third parties like delivery companies or API providers. But what does it have to do with app reviews? It’s a great way to turn bad experiences into good experiences, thus making it a great time to ask for reviews!

After issues are taken care of, and a positive outcome is achieved, users experience significant stress relief. You can take this as a little victory and, more often than not, a great moment to ask for positive feedback.

If this works for you, try replicating the process through all your contact channels like social media and forums.

Of course, not all scenarios are a good fit. Be sure to train your team to recognize opportunities for feedback, and when it’s better to let the user go on their way until the next milestone or success. In the meantime, you can then focus on building trust.

4. Optimize Your App Listing to Rank for Keywords Your Users Use

Another way to gain reviews is by getting your app discovered by a larger audience organically. Having more users will give you more opportunities to increase your reviews.

Although many factors contribute to your visibility on the App Store and Google Play, optimizing your app listing can help you bridge the gap, especially if your app is new.

Just like search engine optimization (SEO), the goal of app store optimization (ASO) is to help your app rank higher in search results when a potential user enters a query in the search bar. A Forrester study showed that 63% of all app downloads start with a search in the App Store or Google Play, so diversifying the keywords you rank for (as long as they are relevant to your app) will increase your user base.

App Radar created this comprehensive ASO guide if you consider implementing this strategy. Another great place to start is reading how your users describe your app or how they’re using it. This can give you some ideas of which keywords to include, for example, in the title or description.

5. Ask for Reviews and Feedback in Your Release Notes

Release notes were designed to tell your users about new features or bug fixes implemented in the latest version of your app. However, they can also be a great place to ask for feedback.

As a communication channel, release notes can help you connect with your users if you use the correct language. After all, these notes are meant to help users notice and use new features, making it natural to just ask for their feedback.

Yes, not all your users will read them, but you should still think about your app release notes as an extension of your brand. For those reading your notes, it can make a huge difference.

6. Gamify the Review Process

Gamification increases user engagement by bringing game elements to ordinary tasks. In fact, we already used gamification when discussing running a review contest.

To take gamification a bit further, you can use tools like Yotpo to add gaming elements, like progress bars and hints, to the review writing process and entice users not just to leave reviews, but to write better ones.

Yotpol’s smart prompts use AI to find the most common and relevant keywords used by other users and suggest them to new reviewers writing their app reviews. Every time they use one of these keywords, the progress bar fills in until it shows as a complete achievement.

Apps allow us to use gamification in many different ways, so be creative and open-minded, and you’ll grow your review count in no time.

7. Deal with Negative Reviews to Turn Them Around

As a business owner, you want to gain many reviews to reach a larger audience and to have the social proof that’ll make new users download your app.

However, focusing solely on their acquisition can blind you to the other side of the coin: bad reviews.

You don’t just want to get more of any kind of reviews, you want to increase the number of positive (five-star if possible) reviews. The best place to start is by addressing the bad reviews.

Reviews are nothing but direct feedback. Apple and Google have realized this, providing businesses with the ability to respond to reviews. Make a list of negative reviews, address their concerns, and reach out to users after implementing the changes.

Although it won’t work every single time, turning one-star reviews into five-star reviews can help you win back users and change their minds. It also tells new users that you’re actively improving the app and listening to what they have to say.

Ready to Get Started?

These seven strategies have proven to be effective time after time, but there’s a catch: you’ll need to be consistent and proactive. Consider your feedback campaign as part of your marketing strategy, because it is!

Organic, high-quality reviews are your app’s best sales tools. They will help you improve your app’s visibility in the App Store and Google Play’s search results and improve the download rates.

By thinking out of the box and providing the best user experience in both your app and feedback campaigns, you’ll enjoy steady and sustainable growth without annoying popups or unwanted forms.

The post How to Get More App Reviews (Without Annoying Your Users) appeared first on noupe.

Did you know that there are more than 500 hours of videos uploaded on YouTube every single minute worldwide? For every content creator or video marketer, this means one thing: it’s a battle for eyeballs out there. 

Coming up with brilliant video content is one thing, making it visible to your target viewers is another. No matter how original and intriguing your video content is when no one finds it– let alone watches it, then what’s the point?

When we talk about making videos that stand out, we talk about video optimization. Most video marketing checklist includes optimization to make sure that all those efforts you’ve spent in the production are paid off.

SEO is a practice for text-based content, multimedia content like video needs to be optimized for search too. In this case, video SEO is strongly linked with YouTube videos– as the platform is the biggest, most popular video-sharing platform, even the largest search engine worldwide. But, of course, you can make videos on other platforms (social media platforms, landing pages, ads) more SEO friendly.

The essence of video SEO itself is not much different from regular SEO. But, since the content format is pretty much different, there are some SEO best practices that you need to consider doing for the more dynamic content format.

Now, the burning question is, “How’s to make my videos more visible on search engines?” Let’s find out!

Video SEO Tip #1. Choose Keyword-Based Video Titles and Descriptions

Search engine crawlers are smart. They understand the language of your content and try to match the keywords properly. Just like regular SEO practices, keywords matter in video SEO practices. Choosing keyword-based video titles and adding the keyword to the video description help search engines understand what the video is all bout– making it much easier for them to decide your video ranking.

A great video title doesn’t only include a keyword, it also:

• Describes your video accurately.
• Use the words and phrases that users enter in search engines to find content like yours.

The handiest way to find the right keyword for your video is through YouTube suggestions. Type a word or phrase relevant to your industry in the search bar and see the suggestions that YouTube offers. Keyword research tools like vidIQ, Tubics, Tuberanker can also help you find potential keywords for the video.

Video SEO Tip #2. Create Customized Thumbnail Images

Along with your video titles, thumbnails are the first thing that your target viewers will see when they find a video. YouTube will present random 3 screenshots to choose from– it also allows you to select a shot of a different moment in the video or upload your own image.

Coming up with your own image can make your videos more engaging to click. This, in return, will increase click-through rates that can tell the algorithm that your video is valuable and worth watching. You can use image-editing software like Canva or Pixlr to create your customized thumbnail.

Here are some quick tips for creating clickable customized video thumbnails.

• Use high-quality images with contrasting colors to capture attention.
• Use a 16:9 aspect ratio.
• Use a consistent design/layout.
• Include a shorter version of your video title.

Video SEO Tip #3. Insert Video Transcripts

Transcripts are usually found in articles and blog posts. They are basically the words that appear below or next to the images. Since search engine bots cannot watch videos, they rely on accompanying text data to index them properly. 

By adding a video transcript, you make it much easier for search engines crawler to “read” what your video is all about. Not to mention you also make the video more accessible for viewers with hearing problems.

You can add transcripts in your videos using different software like TTNMaker or Rev. All you need to do is add the text inside the video’s description and tags and assign the transcript to that text.

Video SEO Tip #4. Make Videos Mobile-Friendly

According to the statistics, videos are 1.5 times watched on mobile devices. Also, 92% of videos watched via mobile are shared with other users. Not to mention that more than 70% of YouTube watch time comes from mobile devices. These staggering numbers show that making videos mobile-friendly is essential.

Mobile-friendly videos are videos that can be accessed by mobile users without any hassle; they have no problem with visuals, they can understand the audio, and they can see any texts that are included. It’s pretty much about making your videos fit in the smaller screen size of the given device.

Here are two of the most important tips to make your videos more accessible for mobile users:

• Include closed captions (CC) to keep the viewer engaged regardless of their access to audio.
• Use large text so that viewers can clearly read your message. 

Video SEO Tip #5. Pay Attention to the Video File Name

It’s very important that you choose the right file name for your videos. The file name is the name that appears in your computer/device’s directory structure. Some of us are getting so used to naming the video with random titles, like “video 001-edit” or even longer, more “specific” ones like “video_project_35_revised_2.” How does it have something to do with video optimization, though?

A descriptive video file name helps boost the relevance signal that a video is relevant to the user’s query. It helps the search engine to determine that the video is an appropriate match for a given search query. 

Therefore, it’s better to name your videos with words that describe the image. For example, if you create a cryptocurrency video, try to rename your file to something like “best_cryptocurrency_to_invest_in.” You can also use the keyword for the name of the video file.

Video SEO Tip #6. Make the Video Shareable

Remember when you were told that the most important thing for a video is its reach? If a user can’t watch your video on a platform or device that it’s available on, then it’s basically useless for them. 

That’s why you need to make sure that your video is accessible on all major platforms. The more you share the video across different platforms, the higher your chances to expand your reach and boosting click-through rates. 

The most common platforms that your videos are going to be played on are YouTube, Facebook, and Dailymotion.

Wrapping Up

Video SEO might sound like a backbreaking job, but it’s a powerful way to make your video content stand out from the sea of content. Well-optimized videos do not only bring you a good ranking– and your company gains not only visibility but also the authority in your business segment.

The post Video SEO: Maximizing Your Visibility On Search appeared first on noupe.

You might have heard a lot about these two terms- B2B and SaaS. With the SaaS industry already exploding, 80% of businesses plan to switch completely to SaaS by 2025.

While the definition of these two terms may be known individually, less we know is the power of B2B SaaS.

B2B SaaS as evident is a business that offers software like applications, add-ons and plugins to other companies as a service. This form of service has been in existence for more than a decade now and companies like IBM, Microsoft, Google and Adobe are the big players.

But, what do these companies have in common? The short answer is-  Amazing Content!

Irrespective of the company size or the services they provide, these prominent B2B saas providers have a dedicated blog page, tutorials, helpdesks and web content online.

Hence, a B2B SaaS business necessarily needs content marketing to thrive in a competitive space and build its presence online.

In this blog, we will be sharing everything you need to know about B2B SaaS content marketing and its benefits along with the steps to build an effective B2B SaaS content marketing strategy.

What is B2B SaaS Content Marketing?

B2B SaaS content marketing is a form of inbound marketing that the business would need to solve problems, answer the reader’s questions and provide every nitty-gritty detail about its product or services. 

Thus, B2B content marketing would deliver the right content to the right audience at the right time.

Content in any form such as blog posts, ebooks, emails, whitepapers or web content will surely serve your audience but only at the right time.

Throughout your sales funnel, you would need to educate your audience with enticing content that serves the purpose of each stage. 

The thing with SaaS content marketing is that it is highly competitive. It is all about creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to not only gain a new audience but also retain the existing ones for a long time.

That’s what Nectafy did with one of its clients. This content marketing strategy saw a staggering 647% growth for one of its clients by merely using the content marketing efforts.

Hence, a well-devised B2B SaaS content marketing strategy is a lucrative tool in gaining the right audience and achieving better conversions.

Importance of B2B SaaS Content Marketing Strategy

When it comes to B2B, 91% of B2B marketers use content marketing in their strategy.

Content is King and it always will be.

Imagine yourself as a business that is willing to buy a product from a B2B SaaS provider.

What would you rather prefer- a forced selling pitch right from the beginning or educating your client about the benefits and problems it solves?

That’s what a B2B SaaS content marketing strategy guides you into. This strategic approach is of utter importance in targeting the right audience.

Here is how a content marketing strategy can help B2B SaaS providers:

Authority Building

You can’t survive in a competitive industry until you have built trust or authority over your customers.

And when it comes to B2B, the buyers are even more selective about the brands they are working with. This can only be achieved with the help of content marketing.

Building authority for your brand may require some time and most importantly, a well-executed content marketing plan.

Brand Awareness 

Content marketing is key to driving brand awareness. Let’s say, you own a content platform for SaaS with a non-branded domain name.

Now, how would you drive organic traffic to your website?

Using the mindful Google search queries such as ‘SaaS content platform’ or ‘Best Content platform for SaaS businesses’ may drive the right type of audience to your blog.

Plus, you get to recall your brand. The more you get noticed, the more people will remember your brand.

Educate your audience

The Top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) always involves educating your audiences and solving their pain points. Even down the funnel, you would need to consistently educate your audiences about the product features and benefits.

That said, content marketing plays a huge role right from the research stage till the decision stage.

In fact, 49% of buyers consider content as paramount during their purchase decision.

Drive traffic to your website

The more you create content that revolves around your industry, the more you can generate traffic that is trusted and relevant. 

Content marketing is a major contributor to your website traffic. By posting the relevant content along with the mindful SEO techniques, you can attract readers who are readily looking for the answers.

Now that you have seen the importance of a B2B content marketing strategy, a lot of planning and research goes into creating this.

How to build a B2B SaaS Content Marketing Strategy 

To meet your SaaS content marketing goals and to hook your audience, you need a robust content marketing strategy.

Obviously, it may take some time to hit the nail but with a strategy in place, you can be sure that you are going in the right direction.

To keep it short and concise, we have divided the process into five simple steps:

• Decide Your Goals
• Know Your Targeted Audience
• Create Content for Each phase of Buyer Journey
• Develop a Promotional Strategy
• Track and Optimize

The guide below explains each of the above steps in detail and the best practices to achieve exemplary results.

Decide your goals 

The first and foremost thing is goal setting. What do you want to achieve using content marketing?

The problem is that there are a lot of content marketing objectives to achieve and targeting all of them at once can be overwhelming.

From acquiring new customers to email subscribers or a free trial registration to customer retention, content marketing goals may vary for different businesses and at different times.

Goal setting gives your content marketing strategy a kickstart and a direction to plan ahead. Breaking down your end goals into small and achievable goals ensures that the content efforts are in the right direction.

Most content marketers consider the macro-goals as:

• Create brand awareness
• Educate your customers
• Build credibility and trust
• Lead generation

Know your target audience

Everything starts from the audience. Since your purpose is to sell it to the customers, you need content that empathizes with your audience.

The starting point for identifying your target audience is creating a checklist of questions like:

• What problems can you solve for the SaaS provider?
• What industry are they in?
• Which social media platform are they most active on?
• What trade shows do they follow?
• What type of content would they prefer?
• How large is their customer base?

By adding more questions to the checklist, you can come closer to identifying your buyer persona.

While you can use the market research tools for conducting audience research, search engines like Google or social media can be a free resource for identifying the target audience.

In some cases, you might have more than one type of buyer persona. Hence, the best practice is to create a unique profile for each of your ideal buyers.

Create Content for Each Phase of Buyer Journey

To get more qualified leads and better traffic, you need to create different content at different stages of the buyer journey.

Refer to the below infographic by Digital Insights.

While this may not be always imperative, a marketing funnel should necessarily be injected with content at all stages of the buyer journey.

One of the major perks of creating content at each stage of the buyer’s journey is that it helps in identifying qualified leads. If your target audience can relate to what you offer, they can proceed further.

On the other hand, if they find that what you offer isn’t a good fit, they can leave at the early stage. This is actually a good thing as you may only have qualified leads in your basket.

Most marketers divide the buyer’s journey into three phases:

• Awareness Stage: In this stage, the audience needs to be educated more about their pain points and aware of the potential consequences.
• Consideration Stage: In this stage of the buyer’s journey, the prospect might have more than one option to consider. They haven’t made a buying decision yet but are looking for the best possible solutions to solve their problems.
• Decision Stage: This is the buying stage. To turn your prospect into a customer, you need to build more trust and tell them why choosing your brand would be a win. Use social proof, customer testimonials and video reviews to build trust and close the sales.

Develop a Promotional Strategy

While Search Engine Optimization may get you a lot of traffic, you will still miss a large portion of traffic or resultant leads if you are turning a blind eye to other promotional strategies.

Besides the organic traffic, you can leverage social media, email marketing and paid advertising to boost content promotion and attract more qualified leads.

According to Hootsuite, 80% of leads that are generated from social media come from Linkedin. Thus, LinkedIn is a goldmine for grabbing your customer’s eyeballs.

To get even more personal with your customers, you can leverage the power of email marketing. Though traditional, 93% of B2B email marketers still use email to distribute their content.

Thus, a cross-platform publishing strategy can be significant in boosting engagement and driving qualified traffic.

Track and Optimize 

The last step is where you revisit the goals that you have created. Right from the beginning to the end, you need measurable data on what content works best and what are your potential target audiences.

By analyzing the performance of your content marketing efforts, you can evaluate and optimize the buyer journey wherever necessary.

The best way is to set up a report using an analytics platform. By doing this,  you can set up the desired KPIs and review the results of your campaigns.

A web analytics platform can track various metrics like page views, conversions, bounce rate, time on page and others.

Finally, you can also find the best performing content and what distribution channels work best.

Conclusion

Content marketing is undeniably one of the cornerstones for B2B SaaS providers. Use content marketing as a messaging platform to distribute and deliver the content to those that need it the most.

 By following the above-listed B2B SaaS content marketing strategies, you can fill in the potential gap between your audience and your brand. Additionally, content marketing contributes to increased brand loyalty, maximized lead acquisition and higher conversions.

Hope you have liked our actionable step by step guide to build an effective B2B SaaS content marketing strategy.

The post B2B SaaS Content Marketing appeared first on noupe.

Industries have one focus alone- to deliver intuitive user experiences. This is why it becomes crucial to focus on enhancing the visual appearance, bringing the work of the UX designer into prime consideration. They work towards designing the interface in the best way possible.

Here we are not going to discuss the roles and responsibilities of a UX designer though! Despite these being quite important, here the bigger focus would be on understanding if UX design is limited to apps that are digital products?

To understand this read further.

Is UX UI Design Services Limited to Digital Products Only?

The answer is no. Despite the sole focus of UX UI design services being the digital realm itself, they also lay prominence on voice gesture, light, etc.

Hence, as a business finds a designer, they also look at their portfolio. This includes their past projects across multiple domains and industries.

All this helps the business to understand if user experience outside the online is considered during UI UX design and development.

Now we know what the business wishes to understand. It is equally important to understand the thought process of a designer when they embrace UX UI design services for their non-digital products.

Tactics Adopted during UX Development to Build Non-Digital Products

Have a look at this image below:

In the image, you can observe three elements of a product design which include-

• Process Design
• System Design
• Interface Design

It is in fact extremely important to understand these elements before you go on to ideate the strategies. This aids in delivering a unique experience to users, especially while interacting with an app.

System Design

System design refers to creating a balance between the business and customer needs. This supports in gaining an insight into the price to be set for the product.

Process Design

This refers to ideating the steps that would go into fulfilling a particular order or achieving a goal while using your website. This involves considering and placing focus on the customers’ as well as the business needs, side by side.

Interface Design

Last, this process involves creating a usable, and engaging interface. This will help customers remain engaged.

So now that you have understood the basic tactics adopted during product design; understand the steps to help your non-digital product stand out, particularly when implementing UX design services.

The above image gives an insight into what goes behind the creation of a product, especially during the design stage.

To understand this, it is recommended to follow these steps:

Steps to Follow During Product Creation in Design Stage

Conducting End-to-End Assessment

In this stage, the entire customer journey is placed in focus. This will help the designer gain insight into the overall end-to-end experience that users would feel while interacting with the product, so to speak.

This includes gaining clarity around these areas as well-

• Your end product.
• Reason/reasons why you want to build the product/products.
• Identifying the audience for whom you want to build the product/products.
• Understanding how successful your product would be.

These steps would make your solution stand out among competitors in the long run.

Create a Unison between Design and Business Goals

This is the next step. Here, it becomes critical to ensure that the goals you want to achieve through your design are in sync with your business objectives.

Try Understanding Real-World Insights

Understand the areas of concern for users. This will help you to build a solution that can seamlessly address them. Therefore, draw on data. This will provide you with real-world insights and understanding of whether or not you are successful in doing what you want to or not.

Along with these steps, keep these points in mind while performing UX design services for non-digital products. This includes avoiding some mistakes.

Here are the same listed below:

Prevent Feedback Deficit

Remember, feedback counts. It is extremely crucial to the survival of a business, especially if you are a designer. Hence, remember to give prominence to this area. In other words, remember to look at what users have to share about the product and its design. This will help you succeed in the best manner possible.

Keep Check on Errors – Place Focus on Checkout Page

Would you use a product whose design is poor? No, right? I thought so. Hence, make sure to keep the focus on errors as and when they happen. This is particularly within the checkout page. Doing so will ensure that you are aware of what is working, and what is not. Thereafter, it will help you locate the strategies that would make the design more appealing.

CTA – Careful Please

Though you may have multiple CTAs or Call to Action, remember to keep clarity. In other words, keep the hierarchy as transparent as possible. This will help users to take the necessary actions that they want. Therefore, place focus on the color and size of the design so that CTA becomes easy to achieve.

Simultaneously you need to remember some other points as well. This includes-

• Ensure the design can make task performance extremely simple.
• Work towards making the design such that it enhances productivity.
• Make communication transmission simple through your design.

On successful completion of these steps, you will be able to create a product that is in sync with the best UX practices. This will drive value for your non-digital product and streamline success in the best manner possible. Simultaneously, it will build a good customer base too.

Ending Words – Focus on Design in Your Non-Digital Product and See the Magic

Design is everything. This is if you want the user experience to be pleasant. Therefore, it becomes necessary to ensure you keep a minimalist design focusing on adding minimal content. This will help you capture the maximum number of users for your product and maximize ROI.

Hence, while ideating a strategy for your non-digital product, focus on the meaning of product design first, and understand the strategies to help the design stand out and the product gain a wider target audience.
Especially when you embrace mobile app development, if you know the techniques to deliver the best-quality UX design services for non-digital products, you can include the same strategies in your app building strategies to build a high-quality app that is intuitive and visually appealing both at the same time.

The post Implement UX Design Services for Non-Digital Products – How to Do It? appeared first on noupe.

Since the UK left the European Union (EU) on the 31st of January 2020, there have been a number of changes. Most notably, the rights and routes for international workers seeking to live and work in the UK.

After a period of uncertainty for overseas workers, the introduction of the Global Business Mobility Visa in Spring 2022 is set to offer opportunities to a number of professionals, including website designers. This is also great news for businesses in the UK looking for diverse workers with a range of talent coming from abroad.

Let’s look at more detail…

How Brexit Affected Foreign Workers in the UK

As Brexit negotiations dragged on, a lot of overseas workers, particularly those from EU countries, faced great uncertainty. When it came to their permission to live and work in the UK, everything was thrown into the air.  

As a result, many skilled and valuable workers chose to leave the UK, even before the Brexit agreement was signed in January 2020.  A lot of these workers subsequently chose to settle in other countries and have since showed reluctance to return to the UK. 

The Global Business Mobility Visa is designed to solve a number of problems, including making it easier for foreign nationals to return to the UK. This is needed in order to help fill job gaps as well as boosting commerce in the country.  

Skilled and experienced website designers will find that they are extremely well placed to take advantage of these new schemes as the minimum salary requirements for the visas will fall well within what they can expect to earn in a website design role in the UK. So, what does this new scheme entail? 

What is the Global Business Mobility Visa?

The Global Business Mobility Visa, which opened to applicants on the 11th of April 2022, is designed to provide sponsored routes for overseas businesses to operate within the United Kingdom.  

The scheme also offers the opportunity for staff to be transferred to the UK for the purposes of establishing a business. 

Under this one scheme, there are five visa types that allow you to do business in the UK and, these are: 

1. Senior / Specialist Worker Visa

This temporary visa, which closed to new applicants on the 11th of April, allows specialist workers and senior managers to gain permission to complete a professional assignment in the UK.  

Under this visa, workers are required to have a valid sponsorship certificate and, will need to have secured work which pays a minimum of £42,000 per annum. While sponsorship and salary are obligatory terms, there is no English language requirement with this kind of visa. 

2. Graduate Trainee Visa

This kind of visa is open to graduates who are currently working for a company overseas which has links to the United Kingdom and is a work placement scheme. Hopeful applicants will need to have sponsorship with a UK business and will need to have secured employment which pays a salary of £23,100 per annum or above. 

As with the Specialist Worker Visa, applicants will not need to prove that they have English language skills in order to be successful. 

3. UK Expansion Worker Visa

The UK Expansion Worker Visa is created to allow senior and specialist employees to temporarily live and work in the United Kingdom in order to expand an existing overseas business (see, it’s not just a clever name!).  

The criteria for this type of visa involves having current employment with an overseas company which has links to the UK, a certificate of sponsorship and a salary of at least £42,000 per year.  

This visa, which grants a stay of up to two years, does not require applicants to fulfil an English language requirement. 

4. Secondment Worker Visa

Overseas employees who wish to be seconded to the UK on a temporary basis will be granted this visa on presentation of a certificate of sponsorship as well as being able to demonstrate a minimum level of skill.  

Applicants are not, however, subject to any English language requirement. 

5. Service Supplier Visa

This final type of visa is one which offers temporary access to the UK in order to provide contractual services. It can also include self-employed professionals. 

This visa may be granted on the basis that the individual works for an overseas company which does, or will, provide services to a UK company or sponsor.  

Applicants must have a contract with an overseas service provider and a valid sponsorship certificate. Although candidates will need to satisfy a requirement of nationality, no such limits apply on earnings or English language. 

How Do This New Scheme Apply to Web Designers?

Website designers are highly skilled individuals who are tasked with building websites for businesses or individuals. There are different aspects of this that include graphic design, user interface design, coding, user experience and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).  

When the pandemic sent everybody home in 2020, the UK experienced a surge in demand for the services of website developers and designers and the industry struggled to cope due to a lack of skilled professionals.

The Global Business Mobility Visa will present an opportunity for overseas website designers to move to the UK to fill this gap. 

Overseas website designers may take advantage of the new scheme in a couple of ways including: 

Post Study Work Opportunities in the UK 

This route would allow an overseas website designer to work in the UK for a limited time as long as they:

• Are a university graduate
• Are currently working for a company overseas which has links to the UK 
• Has secure UK employment with a salary of £23,100 or above.  

This allows the designer to gain experience of working in the UK for up to five years (though the intra-company route). Web design professionals who choose this route may, if successful, would be able at the end of the five years, to apply for an extension or even permanent residency. 

Eligibility for the Senior or Specialist Worker Visa 

In some instances, foreign web designers may be eligible for a senior or specialist worker visa. However, this will only be possible if they are able to secure a certificate of sponsorship, along with work which pays at least £42,000 per year (the average salary for a website design in the UK is £33,647).  

Anybody looking to enter the UK on a senior or specialist worker visa needs to be aware that they will not be allowed to work in jobs which are lower skilled or carry out supplementary work, as they would have been able to do under the new regime. 

Time to Establish a Business in the UK

While the Global Business Mobility Visa scheme is one which imposes a timeframe (usually up to five years), it opens up opportunities for businesses and individuals.  

Due to the nature of the work, web design work can be performed remotely from anywhere in the world. A short amount of time to complete an expansion or to establish a business in the UK can benefit the company and help create a UK presence without having to stay permanently.  

Availability to Additional New Scale-Up Visa

An additional scheme available to overseas web designers may be that of the New Scale-Up Visa. This option is available to fast growing startup businesses and allows the UK access to top overseas talent.  

UK businesses which have 10 or more employees, and which has seen a growth in employment rate of at least 20% over the last three years as well as being registered with HMRC.  

Visa applicants are subject to a number of conditions including skills and experience, English language skills and a job offer which pays at least £33,000 per annum. This could prove to be a great solution for overseas website designers looking to spend time in the UK. 

Global Business Mobility Visa set to welcome new possibilities…

While it’s important to note that the visa schemes mentioned in this article will not guarantee settlement or permanent residence in the UK, it does open up a number of possibilities.  

For example, an individual who is living and working in the UK under the Graduate Trainee Visa may, at the end of his or her term, apply to switch to a difference visa scheme such as the Senior or Specialist Worker Visa.  

This may allow them to stay in the UK for a further one to five years depending on their eligibility.  

Now that applications for these visa schemes have closed, the Home Office is working hard to process them. If the scheme is successful, the hope is that new applications will be opened for 2023

Please be advised that this article is for general informational purposes only, and should not be used as a substitute for advice from a trained immigration professional. Be sure to consult an immigration professional or solicitor if you’re seeking advice about moving abroad. We are not liable for risks or issues associated with using or acting upon the information on this site.

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