BlogmyQuery – BMQ

Providing a straightforward, intuitive user experience (UX) is key to the success of your blog, e-commerce site, or online journal. Without a clear sense of direction, users will turn to alternatives and your bounce rate will skyrocket. 

You can improve your UX dramatically by optimizing your website’s navigation standards based on consumer behavior. You can use consumer data to track bounce and trace the customer journey from the landing page to the exit page. 

You may need to complete a UX audit to get a more accurate understanding of consumer behavior. A UX audit will assess factors like accessibility, mobile formatting, and broken links on your site and improve your website’s navigation standards. 

Ethically Obtaining Consumer Data

Data collection is a hot topic in website design. You need accurate data to ensure that your site is operating optimally, but you can’t overreach and infringe on consumers’ privacy. 

In reality, most website designers and administrators end up collecting more data than they need or can reasonably use. This can be an issue if you experience a data breach or if you have a security flaw. Assess your current data collection strategy, and ask yourself the following: 

• Is the data you’ve collected personally identifiable? 
• Would you be liable if the data fell into the wrong hands? 
• Do you have a reasonable need to use the data? 
• Are you transparent about the data you are collecting? 

Answering these questions will give you a sense of whether or not your current data collection strategy is ethical. It may also make your strategy more efficient, as you’ll cut down on unnecessary or unusable data that is slowing down your decision-making process. 

Interpreting Consumer Data

Using the consumer data that you’ve obtained ethically is key to optimizing your website’s navigation standards. However, many marketing departments and website administrators don’t fully understand how to improve navigation based on consumer behavior data. 

You can start website navigation analysis by tracking and recording inbound traffic sources. Starting with traffic sources allows you to estimate the effectiveness of your SEO strategy and will give you an idea of who, exactly, is making it to your website. 

Filter your search results to remove “fake” traffic, and refine your search to learn more about the folks who make it to your site. Being thorough at this stage will save you time in the future, as you’ll know if consumers coming from social sites are bouncing once they see information like prices, or whether there’s an issue in your navigation menus that is preventing pay-per-click users from finding the information they are looking for. 

Once you’ve filtered users and understood your consumers, it’s time to track and navigate the consumer journey through your site. 

Tracing Consumer Journey

You can increase the accuracy of your consumer journey by creating journey maps for your website. A journey map will identify things like: 

• Consumer touchpoints: where do consumers first encounter your brand? 
• Consumer pain points: what stops consumers from converting? 
• Desired actions: how do you want your consumers to navigate your pages? 

A detailed journey map will identify the navigation that your ideal user will take and help you spot moments when users deviate from the course you set them on. 

You can assess your consumer’s actual journey using Google Analytics (GA4). Use GA4 to assess path exploration using the “explore” panel on the GA4 homepage. This will allow you to see the actual pathways that real users have taken to land on your pages. 

Filter these results as many times as you need to assess the effectiveness of your pages. Combine these insights with things like the length of the user’s session and the bounce rate of certain pages. If you find that some pages have high bounce rates or an excessively long “dwell time”, you likely have a problem with your navigation standards. 

If the results of your pathway exploration assessment are concerning, you need to complete a general UX audit. 

General UX Audit

A general UX audit can transform your site structure and optimize your consumer journey. Start by assessing your current UX standards and compare them to the established navigation best practices: 

• Consistent: Can users utilize the same buttons and tabs to find their way through your site? 
• Visible: Are symbols accompanied by text? Can users quickly find the menu page or drop-down? 
• Flexible: Do you account for a reasonable range of consumer preferences? Can users quickly retrace their steps if needed? 
• Concise: Do you utilize too many “mega menus”? Is there a better way to present navigation options? 

An audit of your current navigation principles shouldn’t take too long. You already have the hard data that points toward problem pages, so you can find the issue and experiment with different ways to present navigation options. 

Once you’ve assessed your navigation options, complete an audit of your site structure. Highly hierarchical sites are suboptimal from a UX and SEO perspective. While categorization is useful, strict hierarchies can produce silos and isolate some pages from the rest of your site. Try connecting silos with horizontal linking that helps users find the information they need. 

Accessibility 

Accessibility is essential for website design and maintenance today. Millions of users have some form of disability that changes the way they interact with your website. This means that cherishing accessibility can lead to a higher ROI on your web development spend and improve your brand image.

When auditing your website navigation for accessibility, consider the following: 

• Does anchor text accurately describe the linked content?
• Do you have suitable title tags on each page? 
• Can your entire site be navigated with a keyboard? Do you have “mouse traps”?
• Are your buttons suitably descriptive and screen-reader friendly? 

Creating an accessible website will help improve your navigation metrics and ensure that all users can interact with your content in the way it is designed. 

Mobile Formatting 

Mobile formatting can be a real headache for website designers and administrators. Mobile sites have a limited amount of space to use, and you don’t want navigation menus to take up the entire page. 

Providing an intuitive, user-friendly mobile experience is imperative. When designing a mobile site, try to minimize the amount of scrolling and typing users have to do. Repetitive scrolling can cause mobile users significant pain and lead to inflammation and swelling in users’ thumbs and fingers. 

Give mobile users a better UX by utilizing classic mobile site design options like the “hamburger” menu icon and adding text-with-icon buttons so mobile users can see the information that they want to access. 

Conclusion

You can use consumer data to trace your customer journey and identify issues. Use key insights like bounce rate and dwell time to identify areas of concern. When revamping your site, stick with classic options like the “hamburger” menu icon and ensure all your navigation tools are fully accessible.

The post Optimizing Your Website’s Navigation Standards Based on Consumer Behavior appeared first on noupe.

Website backgrounds are similar to breathing. They are a part of our daily lives, yet we rarely pay attention to them unless something is wrong. And, like every breath you take, website background designs are essential to the success and longevity of your website; they improve the performance of every other aspect of your site.

While there are several methods to employ textures in web design, if you adopt a contemporary approach and follow a few easy guidelines, you’ll get a lot more mileage out of those backgrounds.

Backgrounds are the foundation of good design. This is why:

• Backgrounds are the building blocks of a great composition.
• Background textures and colors add depth and contrast to visuals, helping them to stand out and be seen.
• Well-composed background photos can assist generate room for you to overlay text.
• Backgrounds may add context to a design by offering supporting visual components.
• Because beginning with an empty page might be intimidating. 

What Exactly are Background Textures in Web design?

Structures exist in the realm of web design as texture background pictures. These graphics appear to be a three-dimensional surface, with relief visible through the screen. They provide the eyeballs with a tactile sense. 

As a result, web textures provide dimension to design and draw attention. Furthermore, the resemblance of the texture of the background pictures to real-world items provides the virtual area with a sense of reality.  Along with this naturalism, there are linkages with what is outside the screen. 

Effective Tips For Using Background Textures For A Website

Here are seven pointers to help you use background textures for a website effectively all of which are in line with the latest and greatest design patterns and trends.

1. Keep it Simple and Understated

Many people may need to notice a fantastic background texture. It should be an almost invisible feature that adds depth or visual appeal while contributing to general readability and usefulness.

Background textures that are simple and subtle are ideal for this. Simple background textures can be practically any color and contain tiny or tight repeating patterns. 

The concept is that these background textures aren’t intended to be a focal point, but rather to assist in drawing attention to the rest of the design.

2. Obtain a Gradient

Gradients are fashionable and visually appealing. You may use a gradient as a background texture either alone or in conjunction with a photo. Almost any color combination is acceptable, so utilizing a gradient to create texture and depth is simple. 

The animated animations in the forefront virtually jump off the gradients, and the dark-colored call to action is clear. The gradient texture’s lighter and darker sections aid the user in moving around the design at a glance.

3. Take It Out If It Serves No Purpose

Before you use your strategy on a client’s website, fine-tune it. As with any website you develop, always make sure that your usage of texture is based on a solid plan. If you can’t defend what you’ve done as an improvement, get rid of it.

Overdoing texturing is pointless. The Web’s sole goal is to spread information. How will you do this if your material is unreadable? Furthermore, subtlety and nuance are more effective ways to demonstrate knowledge of a subject.

4. It Should Be Animated

While many of the recommendations have concentrated on static background components, no law states that a background cannot be dynamic.

To get the most out of this style of background texture, keep the movement minimal so it doesn’t distract from the primary picture or statement, including a subdued or delicate color palette.

This animation may incorporate moving, twisting, turning, or video components. Users’ attention may be captured by using motion. Make the most of a moving background texture by ensuring that it does not overpower the design’s foreground.

5. Make Use of an Image

A website background texture does not have to be a repeating pattern downloaded from the internet, instead takes help from a professional website designer. Images that relate to the brand or core theme are some of the most incredible background textures to offer another degree of visual intrigue and engagement.

Tip: 11 Questions to Ask a Web Designer Before You Hire Them

The idea is to fade the image into the background successfully. When you fade a picture, it fades out of the primary visual area and into the distance.

6. Incorporate a Trending Texture

A trending background texture may make your design feel ultra-modern and new. With geometric forms being so popular right now, 

The pattern produces a beautiful texture and depth with a combination of bright-colored geometry on a dark backdrop, which helps the user focus on the huge text and call to action because these components contrast with the background. 

In basic sans serif script, the text appears to float over the green forms. Texture layering also helps the overall impression. Color distinguishes two levels of backgrounds, with darker portions behind lighter areas.

Keep a watch on analytics and user behaviors after adjusting to ensure that your bigger background texture is effective. A significant drop in traffic or conversions indicates that your graphics and users are not connecting.

7. Select Logical Textures

Finally, and arguably as crucial as preserving readability, select textures that are logical for your design. If you’re creating a website for a furniture company, rusty textures aren’t going to work. 

Textures, regardless of whether they appear excellent, are supposed to establish identity rather than mislead visitors. Usability should always come first.

How to Get Your Dream Website Background?

Choosing the proper background texture for your website may transform it from ordinary to amazing. Remember that user experience is vital, so use colors and pictures that appeal to your visitors and make sure that you can read content over a website background image clearly and effortlessly.

To keep contemporary and trendy, use solid background colors, avoid cluttering photos at all costs, and consider introducing a trend like a gradient or geometric form. If you truly want to stand out, try your hand at animation, and always use a background that adapts well to tiny displays.

Most essential, keep in mind that there are no hard and fast rules in design. The finest ideas frequently defy the norms entirely. What is most important is your user’s experience. Use these suggestions as a starting point, and don’t be afraid to trust your artistic instincts.

Conclusion

An excellent background texture may add depth and visual appeal to the overall appearance of your website with the help of professional web designers. While the usage of texture in web design isn’t as prevalent as it once was, there are still some useful techniques for incorporating texture into your designs. 

Instead of employing a large, aggressive, grunge backdrop that would age your design, you may use texture gradually.

The post Top Tips for Using Background Textures in Your Website Design appeared first on noupe.

At first glance, the profession of a graphic designer seems to be the most attractive for creative people. However, the freelancer’s path brings specific challenges you must be prepared for. Today we will discuss the main hardships of freelance graphic designers’ careers.

Graphic designers are among the top most in-demand professions in the internet industry. Designers work with many objects, such as advertisements, websites, apps, book designs, storefronts, press, etc. In addition, graphic designers engage when clients need to design a brand style, logo, and visual concept.

More than talent is needed to build a successful career as a graphic designer. Professional skills and soft skills are equally important. 

Anyone with creative ability can start such a career. However, there are some challenges to overcome and find solutions. 

The path of a designer is winding and thorny, full of uncertainty. Every year the requirements for professionals are increasing. They need to be able to do a lot, understand the product they are creating from beginning to end, and at the same time, have time to find projects for themselves. 

Freelance Graphic Designers’ Operational Challenges 

Time Management

A flexible work schedule is undoubtedly convenient, but only if people can manage their time. Unfortunately, the creative nature of graphic designers can cause them to lose track of time, extending an entire day on tasks that could have taken one hour to complete.

Being creative and passionate about a task is fine, but the clients always want their orders on time. Meeting deadlines is a vital part of a freelancer’s job in any field. Irrational use of time becomes a stumbling block. 

Improper organization of one’s work time results in sacrificing personal needs, boundaries, and physical and mental health. Or on the contrary, the other extreme – is not being able to fulfill the client’s contract in a quality and timely manner. Both options harm their careers.

Tip: Use time management software, and create time limits for your work-time to keep your life and work balanced. Use tools to manage projects and communicate with clients.

Organizing Work

Designers working on their own must understand that they must deal with more than just creative tasks. Freelancers have to advertise and offer themselves, especially in the initial stages. To build a serious career, they must be able to draw up contracts, and documents, make payments, and conduct business activities legally. 

Projects are created in different ways, so every time, freelance designers need to organize and negotiate the time to complete, the cost of services, and the terms of cooperation in detail.

Tip: Study legal business practices in your country, carefully draft specifications and contractor agreements, and study convenient payment and invoicing methods.

Organizing Finance

Designers don’t have to be accountants, but they must understand how payments for services are made and conducted, how to pay taxes, etc. Another challenge in finance is the difficulty in estimating the cost of designing services. How not to inflate the price and scare away the client, but at the same time not to work for a cookie?

First, the salary depends on the graphic designer’s market – the USA, EU, Asia, or CIS countries. Also, the salary level increases in proportion to experience.

Tip: Carefully study the pricing policy of the market and the cost of competitors, exchanges, and stocks. From your experience, compare how much time it takes to complete UI/UX design tasks and how much you can spend on them in the future. Study the models of cooperation “pay per hour,” “pay per result,” etc.

Competition

The competition among graphic designers working from home is very high indeed. The availability of technology for remote work has allowed many professionals to move away from office work to free-floating. In addition, the demand for designers in the traditional industry has decreased. It is much cheaper for companies to hire a designer for a project than to keep him on the staff.

The growth of competition is also conditioned by the appeal of the occupation for young people. On the one hand, they can work creatively without submitting to the strict conventions of the offices, and on the other hand, they can earn decent money. However, as we know, high competition leads to lower fees.

Tip: Work hard to create the best portfolio that shows off your talent and makes you stand out from the competition.

Graphic Designers Career Challenges

Service Promoting

Like any product, graphic designers must promote their services. Often there are difficulties with this since it involves more than just the design of their website, business cards, or contextual advertising. In addition, designers must learn how to communicate with potential clients or collaborate with platforms.

Lifetime Learning

A designer’s career always has room for development and learning. Moreover, keeping up with trends and new technologies is not a privilege but a necessity amidst fierce competition and ever-increasing demand. A designer’s growth can be linear: beginner-experienced-virtuoso, etc. Interestingly, many years of practice do not automatically mean experience growth because one can draw icons for five years or pass from icons to branding. Transitioning to every new level requires increased complexity, knowledge growth, and evolution toward new directions.

Career Uncertainty

Uncertainty follows freelancers along until they establish their permanent client base. Graphic designers often need more stable orders and consistent income. In addition to the lack of stability, career growth is also in question. How to measure it? How to make it move forward? 

To grow professionally as a freelancer, designers need to get a lot of experience, build a steep portfolio, post their work on websites like Behance and Dribbble, follow trends and innovations, learn new tools and software, and jump over the top.

Soft skills should be taught more. And this is almost half of the necessary knowledge. So first, it is important to get the technical background, theory, and observation, then a lot of practice, and then to supplement this luggage with “flexible skills”: plan the work, present a solution, and so on.

Difficulties When Working With Freelance Designers

Low-quality Design

Anyone who has mastered a graphic editor can become a designer. Unfortunately, the conditionally low threshold of entry into the profession leads to many “professionals” on the market not having the best creative, professional, and personal qualities. 

Before choosing a particular designer, research the market thoroughly, review the candidate’s portfolio, and ask for feedback from previous clients.

Unfixed Price Tag

A lousy expert doesn’t know the actual cost of the job because he needs help understanding and estimating the tasks and scope of the job. As a result, he can name one price that seems adequate, but the price tag can increase significantly during the work.

Write the cost and scope of work in the contract, stipulating all the requirements and deadlines.

Lack of Communication

Often freelance designers choose the “take-order-give-order” position. And this can lead to unsatisfactory results. Ideally, the client should seek a system of communication and interim reporting from the performer to ensure the result is consistent with the goal.

Use collaboration tools where you can track the project’s progress and make adjustments in time.

As a designer or as a client of a designer, what problems have you encountered? What solutions have you found? Please share in the comments.

The post Biggest Challenges Of Freelance Graphic Designers appeared first on noupe.

If you’re a creative entrepreneur or content creator for a business, service, or advocacy, you’ve probably experimented with several mediums to get eyes on your social media platforms. It’s a tough job, and competition is fierce. Everyone and their grandmother is taking advantage of the latest content creation tool, whether Instagram filters or AI images, as soon as it drops.

As new tools proliferate, the content from those tools becomes more ubiquitous and homogenized, and then it’s off to find the next magic button out there. This is why it pays to have some hard designer-y skills under your belt. One of the skills that design students or anyone tech savvy with an artistic bent are quickly adopting these days is 3d rendering. Once relatively niche and primarily used in the gaming and VFX industry, working with 3d today is as accessible and inexpensive as picking up Photoshop, thanks to software like Blender 3d, Unreal Engine, and the online community built around these programs. 

3d rendering (or 3d production, to be a little more accurate) takes some effort to learn, but the rewards are worth it. By working in 3d, you can build a vast library of different materials that you can mix, match and place in front of a virtual camera to come up with captivating pieces of content for your socials, and in much less time than you’d think. In this article, we’ll look at the philosophies at play in the medium of digital 3d, and go through the process of creating an exciting piece of content from start to finish. 

Core Advantages of 3d

A Logistical Dream

The primary advantage digital 3d has over other media is that it has all the perks of working in a (simulated) physical space without the constraints you might experience working in the real world. Consider, for example, a post meant to promote a product- a new soda brand, let’s say. You might schedule a photo shoot with your photographer, travel to the studio on the agreed day, wait for post-processing and then finally have your content, only to realize that perhaps an outdoor setup would have been more appealing. With a digital 3d representation of the product, this sudden change of mind would not be as expensive.

An example of the aforementioned fictitious soda brand

With a digital 3d representation of the product, you can act on your creative whim immediately and, within half an hour, have an alternate shot ready!

Proceduralism

Modern 3d programs have proceduralism as a major focus since creatives from any industry benefit from being able to work faster. There are too many features to discuss at any length in this article, but here’s a glimpse of how a 3d project might be drastically altered just by fiddling with sliders or pressing buttons.

Here is another fictitious post for a fictitious courier service. Let’s assume the client isn’t too happy with the figure’s layout and the orange accents on the runner. Fortunately for us, the graphics were made in a 3d program.



On the right of this image is the 3d model’s material, which affects its color and surface properties. The colored rectangles on the panel correspond to the different colored areas in the character’s suit. 

We made the changes in a matter of seconds by simply clicking on these fields and choosing a new color.

Likewise, we could reposition our camera and adjust the lighting streaks by adjusting the sliders on the modifier panel on the right.

This is the essence of proceduralism in digital 3d. You can set up a workflow that frees time to work on the bigger picture instead of getting lost in the minutiae of a larger project when the time comes to respond to feedback. You can automate smaller tasks and focus on things like your composition, colors, and storytelling. Some parts of production in 3d are already procedural, but virtually anything can be set up to work procedurally – even creating models in some cases. 

Abundance of resources/ Community

Well and good, you might think, but not everyone has the luxury of spending a few days learning the ins and outs of digital 3d. For the busy designer or anyone with time constraints, there are many resources to shorten or even bypass the learning curve for some 3d tools:

Asset providers like Kitbash 3d, Sketchfab, and Polyhaven have a large collection of pre-made models you can use in your projects instead of creating everything from scratch.

Developers create plugins or modifier setups that can simplify arduous but necessary tasks. Gumroad is a great repository for such things.

Channels on Youtube or aggregate websites are perfect for keeping your ear on the ground for the latest game-changing tools.

All images thus far contain CC-0 or CC-BY assets, generators, or plugins available online. While some resources are free to use with no restrictions, others are for sale or require you to credit the original creator. As in any form of digital media, it is always wise to read carefully the terms of use for anything you might use in your work.

In-Practice Example

The examples above were for static images, but where 3d can really shine is in animation. Halloween is just around the corner at the time of this writing, so we’ll go over (in very broad strokes) how I created an animated skit for GarageFarm.NET that would suit the occasion.

Concept

GarageFarm.NET is an online render farm that allows 3d artists to meet their deadlines and save time by distributing the render process of a project over a host of high-powered computers. I decided that the skit would be about the Grim Reaper coming to claim a character only to realize that it had been beaten to it by long render times on a single workstation (a common pain point that 3d artists trying to meet short deadlines face). I used Blender 3d – an open-source 3d program available to everyone. 

The final result was completed within a total of 14-16 hours. You can check out the final video here.

Collating Assets

To manage this time constraint, I used a combination of assets that I had saved from previous projects and assets that were shared in online hubs like BlendSwap and Polyhaven – limiting my hand modeling to elements that would take less time to create than to search for online. 

The opening scene layout consists of a few elements from the talented artists who contributed to Polyhaven arranged around planes that would serve as the walls and floor of an interior setting.

The skeleton asset was from an older post I made years ago. I used clothing from a human generator plugin for Blender called HumGen, available on BlenderMarket.

Staging the scenes

Animation

With everything prepared, all that was left to do was animate the characters. I used a pointing animation from Mixamo to animate the Grim Reaper, which left only the cameras, the door, and the skeleton to think about.

Mixamo is a library of motion capture data that allows users to choose animation and quickly transfer that animation to their custom 3d character.

Sound

For the Grim Reaper’s voice, I used Replica, a program that reads text input using a selection from a library of AI voices.

And I used the YouTube Studio sound library for the music and sound effects. 

Conclusion

To go into more detail would require its own article, and I am by no means suggesting that you can pick up 3d software and instantly create something like this. Still, with dedicated study and practice and the modern tools available, I believe any creator can leverage 3d to create diversity and more interest in their social media content within a year or two. 

Whether you’re considering learning 3d or are an experienced user, I hope this article gave you a glimpse of new possibilities and inspired you to try something new. Best of luck, and happy creating!

The post Why 3d Rendering is Perfect for Creating Captivating Social Media Content appeared first on noupe.

When either starting your website from scratch or being online for many years, you have to consider many things when you are developing your website. One of the main problems developers encounter is optimizing for different devices.

Your traffic can come from several sources:

• Desktop
• Smartphone
• Tablet
• Smartwatch
• Etc.

It is cardinal that your website provides the same experience everywhere. Let’s see what cross-device friendliness is all about!

What is Cross-Device Friendliness?

When you are developing your website, you have to make sure that no matter where people come from, they receive the exact same experience (or almost), and that’s what cross-device friendliness is all about.

Of course, you have to take into account many various aspects because each has its own different parameters and functionalities, but if you can adjust your website to these criteria smartly, you can be sure that your site will be a multi-device success.

Factors to consider on different devices

Cross-device optimization has gained more and more significance when we talk about website development. The popularity of mobile devices has skyrocketed in the previous years – there are over 5 billion unique mobile phone users all around the world. But when we are talking about website optimization for both mobile and desktop, many different aspects should be taken into account. That could be:

• Traffic volume
• Screen size
• Cross-platform journeys
• Content placement & interactions
• Page load time

Traffic volume

Through the years, the age of desktop dominance has faded away. Of course, that doesn’t mean people are not searching the web from a PC, but since 2017 more than half of website traffic has come from mobile devices, and it’s constantly increasing.

Nowadays the linear “only desktop optimization” mindset is not enough. If you want to provide the ultimate experience for your visitors, mobile-friendliness is inevitable. On the other hand, you shouldn’t just head into making everything practical for mobile and ignore your desktop web development. Find the balance between these two mediums 

Screen size

When smartphones came into the spotlight, every website was only optimized for desktops and it caused a lot of inconvenience for mobile users – a full-size website was thrown to the mobile user’s tiny screen. Users had to constantly zoom in-zoom out to see the content they want, and because of the shortening attention span and patience, visitors leave way earlier with frustration (and might not return).

Another problem that might occur in these situations is related to images. If you optimize images to desktop monitor screens and mobile visitors load your page, they won’t be able to see the whole picture normally. They might zoom in to see the content normally, but then the whole image might not be visible, and that constant resizing could be really uncomfortable.

Cross-device journeys

Visitors arriving to your website from different sources don’t necessarily mean that they are all new, unique users. People tend to make cross-device journeys before reaching the desired action, e.g. buying a product from your site. They usually browse your site through their smartphone, and if they find something interesting or want to fill out a form, they usually swap to a laptop or desktop for easier completion.

So as you can see, dividing visitors into separate groups might be misleading when it comes to conversion. Synchronizing the different events (e.g. checkout process, newsletter signup) for either singular or cross-device could be a key point to making your website the most suitable for your audience.

Content placement & interactions

The available space differs from device to device, so having a well-structured website is a crucial point. To reflect on our previous “Screen size” point, how people can see what’s on the site is quintessential. For example, you might have an article that is perfectly readable from the desktop’s monitors, but on the phone scrolling, a lot and resizing constantly to make every detail readable could be annoying for users.

Another pain point comes from CTA interactions. If the interactive buttons are too small or it is not clear where to press them, it can be difficult to execute certain actions, like closing a popup or signing up for a newsletter. One more problem that might occur with buttons is placing them right next to each other – if you can’t clearly separate them with e.g. borders, that could result in rage clicks, hence missing out on customers.

Page load time

In today’s rushing world, everyone wants to get access to all kinds of information immediately, and if they have to wait more than a few seconds, they will just leave your website behind. As with many other things, page loading time also differs from device to device.

While desktops have direct internet access via ethernet cables, mobiles only have a remote connection. It is important to have each of your pages on top speed everywhere – you can imagine how slow content loading must be on mobile if it’s already slow on the desktop.

Solution – Optimize User Experience

If you want to achieve the ultimate customer satisfaction on every device, then you should focus on optimizing user experience.

User experience is the overall experience of a user on your website – that could mean how they can navigate through your pages, how they can complete certain events (like visiting a product, then putting the item to their cart and completing a checkout), or how they felt during their session on your site.

All of the previously mentioned points have an impact on the user experience of your site. If visitors don’t find it easy and clear to browse through your website, customers will leak out of your funnel. The good news is that with a few adjustments, you can make wonders on every medium.

Mobile-first perception

Kicking off your web development process with mobile development first could make your life much easier. It would be more time-consuming to figure out and then tailor all the functions that are not compatible with smartphones. Mobile designs usually require a more minimalist approach, so designing for a smaller screen and then filling up a bigger one with content can be a time-saver solution. 

In addition, mobile-friendly solutions usually turn out to be perfect for desktops. Take the famously used hamburger menu as an example – they worked out so well more websites started implementing it to desktop monitors, but minimalism has also started conquering the different types of computer screens too.

Accelerate page loading time

As we mentioned earlier, having a quick-loading page is a top priority factor when it comes to user experience. With a few clever tricks, you can save some extra seconds in your loading time.

Firstly, with CSS media queries you can set in what order your web page’s assets should load. This way, you can save up time by loading the text first so users can start reading the important content while images load later. Secondly, compressing images for mobiles can also save some quality time and you can also keep the same quality of your images. Also, optimizing your HTML-CSS-Javascript codes by tailoring the unnecessary part of your code out can decrease waiting time.

Lastly, keeping your website’s plugins, themes and other add-ons up-to-date is another way to keep up with the pace. These tools are constantly under development to provide a better, more user-friendly experience, so doing a regular update on them can also have a positive impact on your site.

Responsive web design

For the ultimate multi-device success, responsivity is a quintessential factor for your website. Responsive web design means that your website automatically adjusts to different screen sizes and platforms. That involves scaling images and fonts on your site, but you can influence whitespace between contents too.

You can use the earlier mentioned CSS media queries here as well to achieve overall device responsivity. With just a little knowledge, you can easily create a cross-device-friendly website. That not only means that it saves tons of time in your web development because you don’t have to optimize for every different screen one by one, but also keeps your website aesthetic on all platforms. 

Encourage cross-device usage

Sometimes having fewer functions on different devices isn’t necessarily a problem. We usually use different platforms for different purposes. We usually use our phones for browsing and accomplishing bigger tasks on desktops.

Finding how these different mediums can complement each other is the key to success. A well-optimized mobile interface can set up a later purchase when your visitor has more time to fill out the checkout form. Don’t compete for different devices against each other, ally the different forces!

Fitting your content on different devices

To provide nearly the same experience on both mobile and desktop, reorganizing the same content on different devices is a must. On desktops, the column-organized content placement works perfectly. For example, there’s a navigation bar on the top of the page, in the middle you can find the article, and on the right, there are related topics, articles, or other widgets. The main concept is to separate different contents clearly.

For mobiles, it’s a bit tricky because you have much smaller space to work with. Organizing your content to a well-centralized column and placing texts and images alternately rather than putting pictures and fonts next to each other is a much more pleasant view. Interactive buttons, such as the navigation bar or search field can be placed on each side of the screen to prevent misclicks. This way you can provide the nearly-same experience on different mediums.

Forms & popups are in the same shoes. Although they might feel annoying sometimes, optimizing them well causes less trouble for users. Fitting them side-to-side and placing easily accessible CTA-s for different interactions can prevent visitor frustration (like zooming out and looking for the close button) and create a more fluent user experience.

Conclusion

There are many factors to consider when it comes to cross-device development. It is a critical point to optimize your website for every medium – users come to your site from different sources, but a single visitor can find you in many ways. If there are bottlenecks on any of your interfaces, you may not reach one of your platform’s full potential. Stop traffic leakage now and make the best version of your website everywhere!

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