“Use These 5 Design Elements to Create the Optimum Blog User Experience” plus 1 more

Use These 5 Design Elements to Create the Optimum Blog User Experience

Posted: 17 Jan 2013 12:02 PM PST

This post is by Mark Acsay III of Webby Thoughts.

One of the main unacknowledged problems with today's websites is that many just follow the favorite design of the month. When Flash was born, we got bombarded by Flash-based sites that took forever to load. When sliding banners came along, almost everybody wanted to have one too.

Many bloggers and business websites today only focus on search engine optimization, trying to make their way to top rankings just to get a chunk of traffic. Yet when they do, they waste a lot of that traffic and lose the confidence of their potential audience through of bad user experience.

Websites must not only be optimized for designs and for search engines but also for "visitors' thought sequences."

We need to understand that every time there's a visitor on our website, we must answer the thought conversations that they have while navigating our sites. Take this thought sequence as an example:

Where am I?
Where should I begin?
Where did they put the ___?
What is the most important thing on this page?
Why did they call it that?

If your site does not answer most of those questions, then you are not giving the best experience for your users. It means that you are not guiding them to accomplish their objectives on your blog. Fortunately, there are five primary web design elements, and we can use them with the intention of guiding the visitors through a clear sequence of thoughts.

What are the five primary web design elements?

Size: Size does matter. We use size to emphasize something. Whether it's the font, image, or shape, we instinctively understand that the bigger it is, the more important it is, and vice versa. Just like when we speak, the louder the sound, the more we emphasize.
Shape: Shapes are among the first things we learn as toddlers and they have an innate connection to all of us. Shapes direct and communicate. They have a big appeal to our emotions and thoughts. Just seeing a heart shape gives many of us an impression of love. It is said that shapes are processed by the brain many times faster than words.
Color: We all know the suggestive power of colors. This is one of the most powerful elements of design. Red is known to induce appetite, which is why it’s used by many restaurants. By using colors to guide the thought sequences of a visitor to accomplish your main objective, you get to increase your conversions and give your users a better experience.
Position: This element is one of the trickiest if it’s not carefully implemented. It is obvious that when you put something above the fold of the website, it's important—but not all the time. Since we usually skim web content instead of reading it, positioning should be based on the eye movement patterns of your visitors. So position your most important messages and navigational cues where the eyes are scanning the page.
Motion: The effective combination of shape, color, size and position to create motion in directing the focus of visitor's attention dramatically impacts the user behavior. A simple .gif arrow moving back and forth and pointing to the "Subscribe Now" form can impact sign ups.

Now that we have an overview of the design elements, let's put them into practice and see how we can use them to, firstly, guide visitors' thought sequences; and secondly, focus the attention of visitors to achieve their—and your—objectives, while giving them the best user experience they could ask for.

As a note, I cherry-picked these example sites from different niches so we can learn how they applied the elements of design to serve a better user experience.

The design elements in practice

1. Emphasize the most important objective

Let's take a look at what UPrinting.com did for their Black Friday campaign. UPrinting is one of the top printing companies in the US.

Let's see how they used the design elements here.

Size

Since it was Black Friday, the designers put the biggest banner in front of the site's visitors. Look at the size of the word “sale”; they also used the number 20% to emphasize their main objective.

Shape

They used a rectangle to identify the banner ad. Notice also the green button, which led visitors to a page where the offers were, and where interested people can learn more about the sale.

Color

I really like the way they used color contrast here. A black background was aligned with the theme, Black Friday. Then they used the contrasting color of white to emphasize the word “sale”. Finally, the use of red behind the words "20% off everything" automatically drives our eyes to this message, and eventually to the green Learn more button.

Why use green instead of the usual red or orange? This might signal to users that clicking the button is safe to do, and that there's more on the next page. Green is also the color of their logo at the upper left hand corner. The subliminal message here—that when I click on that button, I will find things that are about printing and learn more about the promo—is very clever.

Position

Obviously, this ad is above the fold. But the position of the green button does not distract from the other messages in the banner. It's at a spot where, after your eyes have scanned the whole message about the sale, you will naturally end up.

So here's how the thought sequences are answered in this page:

Where am I? The logo at the top-left says you're at UPrinting's site.
Where should I begin? Begin with this large banner that says SALE, 20% off everything.
Where did they put the button? Right beneath the 20% off message.
What is the most important thing in this page? The Black Friday discount sale.
What printing services are discounted by 20%? Click the button to learn more about the offer.

2. Use just the right number of design elements

Let's take a look at what Amazon did for their Cyber Monday promotion. Amazon is the largest online retail store in the world—they could really give us some great lessons in design.

The business emphasized their Kindle Fire sale because it was Cyber Monday.
Despite the volume of products they sell, they limit the elements above the fold to reduce the noise and to focus visitors’ attention on what's important.
By reducing the clutter and highlighting their own product—Kindle Fire—in the top position, they leave you no other option but to first consider it. When you leave your visitors on their own to try to work out what’s most important, it slows down the buying thought sequence, because they have to stop to make meaning of the options.
Giving a lot of options to the potential buyer can actually reduce conversions. If you have to give more than one option, be sure to guide users’ thought patterns to decide on the best one for them.

3. Make effective use of balance

SEOMoz is one of the most prominent organizations in the SEO and inbound marketing community. Let's look at what they do with balance.

SEOMoz's design uses the right contrast and a color combination that’s easy on the eyes.
There is symmetry between the text on the left and the image on the right, except for the hiring ad banner that temporarily interrupts that flow, and grabs the attention.
A strong emphasis was also given to the Free trial button.

4. Communicate the right messages effectively

Let's analyze the how ThinkTraffic.net communicates its key messages about attracting traffic.

Think Traffic presents a consistent brand message: think about your traffic. Obviously, they want to attract users who need more traffic for their sites.
To display the brand’s unique selling proposition, the designers used a box to highlight relevant questions for users. They used shapes and colors in the background to show an upward trend, which reflects the fact that users want to have an upward trend in their traffic.
In the third box, the designers used an arrow to communicate that the solution to the traffic problem is to fill out the form. Users just have to enter their email addresses to get a traffic toolkit.
Then, they used the right color combination, with just right to contrast, to present the call to action, "Let's do it"—a message that conveys, "We can help you. Let's work together."

5. Use the right flow

Recently I updated Adobe Flash Player and after everything was done, I was redirected to an installation success page that contains a banner for Adobe‘s newest Photoshop Elements packages. Let's take a look.

Color: The designers used color saturation to guide my eyes to the button at the right-hand side. My attention was drawn seamlessly right to the button.
Size: They used font size to emphasize the availability of their new Photoshop Elements product.
Balance and the right combination of design elements were carefully mixed to guide visitors' thought sequences, from the moment they see the “Now available” message. This leads them to the Adobe Photoshop Elements II message, then to the leftmost box, then back to the leaping person, which points to the "Learn more" button.

Are you using the design elements on your blog?

When you work on your blog’s design, don't just optimize it for search engines or for a fashionable design. Think of how you can best serve your visitors by giving them the best user experience.

You can do this by guiding them through the sequence of their own thoughts. This approach builds trust in your site and helps you communicate your message clearly, which supports higher conversions.

People buy from people. Talk to your users through these design elements.

Do you have other ideas you can share based on the examples I've mentioned here?

+Mark Acsay III is an online marketing consultant, the owner of Webby Thoughts blog that talks about inbound marketing topics.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Use These 5 Design Elements to Create the Optimum Blog User Experience

My 10-in-1 Content Creation Strategy [Case Study]

Posted: 17 Jan 2013 06:02 AM PST

This guest post is by Wayne Turner of MurrayKilgour.Com.

Content creation calendars and schedules are the bane of most serious bloggers' and content managers' lives, depending on which side of the creative block you’re on.

I straddled this fine line on many occasions until my Eureka moment. Having amalgamated my home radio and video studios I realised that I could double up on content creation with my business-consultant partner, a content reservoir of genius proportions.

Soon we had discovered a 3-in-1, then a 6-in-1, and finally a 10-in-1 content creation strategy.

When I say “radio and video studio” (actually my third bedroom), be assured it’s not exactly state of the art, although I have slowly acquired suitable equipment and created a workable dual studio.

In saying this, anyone with a computer, some sort of USB audio interface/mixer, a reasonable microphone and digital video camera or DSLR can achieve the same results. In this article I assume you are familiar with your gear so I'm not going to go into any detail on how to use each piece of equipment in the process.

Time costs!

One of the most valuable, and rarest assets of a successful business consultant is time. To maximise the genius of my partner, when time is in such short supply, is a hectic operation usually resulting in a minimal flow of great content. This is where my Eureka moment has paid incredible dividends and saved many hours in the generation of multiple pieces of content at once.

Because we use a joint audio and video, green-screen studio, when we sit down and record a session, we create both an audio and a video recording simultaneously. The following ten points outline the quality content that we create from each five-minute recording session.

We now have this down to such a fine art that we can do six, five-minute recordings in 40 minutes. For me as the content creator, this is heaven, as it enables me to work in my genius. (A little side note here: your genius is simply working in your passion and talent, and I believe you need to be doing this for 80% of your working time.)

How it works

So, it all starts with one content creation session—just one!—where we have learned to maximise both time and genius. Of course there is preparation required to make the session go smoothly, and a good knowledge of your field of expertise is essential, but once we’re in studio, this is how the magic happens.

The primary piece of content is a video for uploading to our YouTube channel and if we choose, we upload it to iTunes as a video podcast. We also embed the same video on our blog at MurrayKilgour.com. A well-prepared, quality video is the basis for this whole process. We use either a script or a series of bullet points to make the recording. I personally enjoy using a script with a DIY teleprompter, because of my radio background. Cheesycam.com is an awesome resource for DIY ideas and equipment—a lot of it DIY or reasonably priced new gear.
The recorded audio track becomes a podcast which is embedded on our blog, and most often is uploaded to our Living on Purpose iTunes podcast channel as well. There are many other podcast sites to upload to, but we choose just iTunes. If you are unable to create video, the podcast can become the audio for a Slideshare video presentation, so give the audio the same good preparation as you would a video.
We send the mp3 audio recording to a transcription contractor hired through eLance.com for transcription at $2 per recording. From this transcript, we create a blog post for our site, a guest post for another website, or an article for a site like ezinearticles.com. This invaluable piece of text is also used as a caption or transcript with our videos on Youtube for SEO purposes. Because it’s accurate, we gain the additional traction of having hearing-disabled people able to enjoy your video using the Youtube subtitles feature.
The video we have created, if it’s not placed on our YouTube channel, can now form part of a multi-part video ecourse. We use an Aweber autoresponder to give this away for free and gain subscribers to our blog, but it can be monetized in the form of a paid video ecourse. You can determine the value or purpose of the content here.
We again take the transcribed text and repurpose it into a ten-part ecourse delivered in the same way as the video ecourse: as a bonus for signing up as a subscriber to the blog. This method has been extremely successful—we’ve signed up thousands of subscribers to our blog this way.
The transcribed text now adds real value when it is compiled into a section or chapter of an ebook to be used as a giveaway or sold on the blog as a free download. This is where the value of the method comes in, because many bloggers battle to get into writing an ebook. We edited, added and modified a lot of the text to create an ebook, but what this method did was give us a great quantity of raw material to work with. We had created more than 140 podcasts by the time we woke to the fact that we could compile a quality ebook using that material.
I am in the fortunate position of being a breakfast show producer for a local radio station, so the podcast becomes a regular slot on our community radio station, Radio CCFm, which has 250 000 listeners. But before you say this is a privileged position, I can assure you that, as a producer, I can say most local radio stations are always looking for quality content, especially if it is free. So short podcasts with a good intro and outro may become a regular feature on radio stations and give good traffic to a website.
With the advent of HD video DSLRs it is possible to produce high-quality video footage for TV programs. We repurpose our five-minute content creation session again in the form of a short TV program for a local community TV station, Cape Town Television. If it's quality content and free, TV stations will take your show—especially if it’s relevant to their viewers.
When we repurpose the transcribed text into an ebook, the audio becomes part of an audio book. You might say that this is pushing it, but I use the audio as a companion free audio book to the photography ebook I sell on my website. It's a bonus for the buyer and for me, because I didn't have to do anything extra to create it.
Finally, blog posts, audio, and video make an amazing weekly or monthly newsletter. I do this using Aweber templates, which are free with the subscription. We try to do it on a two-weekly basis, as we don’t always have enough content for weekly mailings. It works perfectly for a monthly newsletter and I would advise this when you’re starting out. The amount of content you generate will determine the frequency.

Ten points sounds good, and I thought that adding an eleventh point might be a bit much, but here’s a bonus idea. What we’ve done is created a boxed DVD set for offline and online sales as training modules. Not all people are excited about online, and some like a physical product in their hands. In our business we use all of the above content in its different forms as part of a DVD boxed series for sale to our coaching clients. They love it and we love it—especially the time it takes to create!

Unlimited content

There are no limits to how you can use your content if you begin with the end in mind, but the emphasis must be on quality content. When you sit down in front of the camera and microphone, think "end product," and design your process to get the most out of the content creation session. I’m sure that most people can easily create seven of these ten pieces of content out of just one five-, ten-, or even 30-minute recording session.

So, think big in your content creation, begin with the end in mind, and maximize your time and effort to produce content that will attract the best traffic and convert those people into buyers. Your success will result from the quality of content you produce. So give it your best!

Wayne Turner is a multimedia strategist specialising in photography, radio and video at MurrayKilgour.Com. If you'd like to go to your next level in life and business by working in your genius you can sign up for our free ebook, Living on Purpose.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

My 10-in-1 Content Creation Strategy [Case Study]