The importance of a customer journey map for web design
Your website design should understand your customers to ensure your digital marketing is successful. Here’s how a customer journey map can help.
In the world of digital marketing, there’s nothing more important than knowing who your customers are.
After all, if you don’t know who you’re talking to, how do you know how to sell what you’re offering? How do you know how to modify your web design so it has visitors’ needs in mind? And how do you ensure your customers’ needs are being fulfilled at every stage of their path to purchase?
There’s an answer: Creating a customer journey map.
Why create a customer journey map for your website?
Creating a customer journey map for your business will help you visualise the path your customers take to purchase from you, the various touch points they have with you, and help identify instances where you could be doing things differently.
Here’s how to make one.
We can help create a customer journey map that helps you refine your digital marketing efforts.
Let’s have a conversation.
Providing business owners with real-time visibility of their financial position and performance, Xero is a global leader of online accounting software. Born in the cloud, Xero provides accessible client account for small business worldwide. The company has 1.4 million subscribers and integrates with more than 600 apps.
After growing in popularity and becoming the choice software for cloud-based accounting, Xero realised that they needed an updated internal communication platform for their employees. In an attempt to tidy up their internal tools, Xero selected digital agency NZ Digital and WP Engine to help bring their intranet vision to life.
WP Engine is the leading WordPress digital experience platform.
WP Engine is new breed of technology company at the intersection of software innovation and service. Their WordPress hosting platform provides businesses the solutions they need to create remarkable sites and apps on WordPress that drive their business forward faster.
What is managed WordPress hosting?
Simply put, managed WordPress hosting is there to handle the complexity of hosting for you, while delivering the best digital experiences to your business and your customers.
Simply put, managed WordPress hosting is there to handle the complexity of hosting for you, while delivering the best digital experiences to your business and your customers.
Let’s talk about how our expert team can help you achieve your goals.
With 2018 done and dusted, we’re looking to the year ahead and what the future holds in the digital marketing industry. From clean, simple website design inspired by a certain Netflix show to an increase in the use of artificial intelligence (AI), here are our predictions for where the industry is headed in 2019.
1. The KonMari method will infiltrate the web
“Kiwis have gone crazy for Japanese tidying expert Marie Kondo’s method of decluttering. We reckon the craze for minimalism in the home will extend to the world of digital marketing. There’ll be a move away from “cluttered” websites that try to do too much with too many elements. Instead, we’ll see more websites that “spark joy” for visitors due to their fast load times and responsive designs.Collaboration between designers and developers is essential to producing websites that encourage visitor engagement.”
“Rather than hiring a separate person or team to focus on each, opt for an agency whose team members collaborate closely and are on the same page when it comes to the goals for your website”
– Scott
2. We’ll see much more of conversational AI and chatbots
“Last year we saw many Kiwi businesses embrace conversational AI. An AI Forum report released in 2018 revealed more than 140 organisations are already working with or investing in AI in New Zealand and that the technology has the potential to increase GDP by up to $54 billion by 2035. As the technology advances, we’ve also seen chatbots becoming less robotic and more personalised – taking on human names and forms and engaging with customers using friendly greetings and a conversational tone. You only need to visit the websites of companies like Air New Zealand, Simplicity and Vector to notice that chatbots are on the rise.”
“We’re likely to see consistent improvements to the user-friendliness of this technology throughout the year. More New Zealand businesses will also factor it into their website development and design.”
– Adam
3. Personalisation will continue to drive interaction
“Personalisation was a big trend in digital marketing in 2018, with many companies making a concerted effort to connect with their customers in genuine ways. With automation on the rise, brands are realising it’s more important than ever to show prospective clients they care. A focus on good user experience and delivering tailored, personalised content will continue to drive business and customer interactions throughout 2019.”
“Personalisation will be built into more digital marketing strategies from the outset, and everything from chatbots to email marketing campaigns will incorporate more personalisation as companies try to interact with people in a more human way. This encompasses everything from greeting prospective customers by their first name to segmenting your email databases to deliver content that’s uniquely tailored to a person’s situation, interests or demographic.”
– Keegan
4. Digital marketing will cement itself as a core component of marketing strategy
Slowly but steadily, marketing through website content, email and social media has become a more normal way of “doing” marketing for many New Zealand businesses. 2019 is the year digital marketing will come into its own and cement itself as a core component of the marketing strategies of Kiwi companies dedicated to growth and success.
Why? It all comes down to the effectiveness of digital channels in delivering highly effective inbound marketing strategies. Inbound marketing is all about getting your customers to come to you, while outbound marketing involves pushing your messages out to people in a more “salesy” manner. Today only 18 per cent of marketers believe outbound practices provide the highest quality leads for sales, according to HubSpot statistics. This year inbound will just become the standard way of doing things and business owners will embrace digital not as a central component of their sales and marketing campaigns.
What do you think this year has in store for digital marketing?
– Georgia
Ready to see where digital marketing can take you in 2019? Let’s talk about how our expert team can help you achieve your goals.
Sources
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text el_class=”source-text”]https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/8-digital-marketing-trends-to-watch-out-for-in-2019
https://aiforum.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/AI-Report-2018_web-version.pdf – page 15
Picture this scenario: After typing a search query into Google, someone who fits your target audience lands on the services page of your company’s website.
They start reading some of the compelling content on your home page, are impressed with your branding, and have a quick browse of your About Us page. They get the information they’re looking for.
Then, they leave. Later in the week they visit the website of a competitor and book in a consultation with them. Why? Because your website wasn’t designed with conversion in mind. Had your landing pages been optimised for conversion, this situation would look very different.
What is a landing page, and why is designing them for conversion so important?
A landing page is a page of your website that someone “lands” on as a result of organic search or paid advertising through social media or Google Ads.
Conversion rate refers to the percentage of people who visit your website and perform a defined action. According to HubSpot, increasing your landing page conversion rate from 3% to 7% will result in a 133% increase in leads (Hubspot).
As the above hypothetical example demonstrates, a website that doesn’t put conversion first and foremost will struggle to achieve the digital marketing goals your business is after. If there’s no strategy driving your website design you’ll struggle to convert visitors into leads.
“Increasing your landing page conversion rate from 3% to 7% will result in a 133% increase in leads (HubSpot).”
Whether you’re an ecommerce website wanting someone to buy your products or a consultancy service wanting your visitors to book a meeting with you, you need to communicate loud and clear what it is you want them to do. There’s no point having stellar branding and compelling copy if your visitors don’t understand what action they should take.
What does a landing page designed for conversion look like?
A visible call to action: Great landing pages have obvious calls to action so visitors know exactly what they need to do. This doesn’t necessarily mean placing the call to action smack bang in the middle of your landing page, it just needs to be very clear what action is required.
Appealing visuals: Ensure your landing page has some high quality, attractive visuals that will render well on mobile devices as well as desktop. Steer clear of overly stocky images as these can have the opposite effect.
Make the value clear: Your visitors want to know what they’re going to get in exchange for sharing their personal information with you. Explain in the accompanying copy what will be included in the eBook you’re offering, the e-newsletter they’re signing up for, or the free consultation they’re booking.
“Your visitors want to know what they’re going to get in exchange for sharing their personal information with you.”
Clean, concise copy: Good conversion landing pages should provide a positive user experience and not be overwhelming for visitors. They should contain concise, informative copy divided into subheads and bullet points to make the text easy to digest. Limit the number of form fields to five or less to make filling it out as simple as possible.
Top tips to optimise your landing pages for conversion
Set up conversion goals in Google Analytics: You won’t know if your efforts are working unless you can measure changes over time. Set up conversion goals and get a report delivered to you every week, month or quarter to track how many people have submitted a form or completed a purchase – whatever your conversion goal may be.
“Only by testing will you know what works and what doesn’t, and be able to make small adjustments over time to improve your conversion rate.”
Test continually: If your landing pages aren’t getting the results you’d like, change things up. Try some new copy, use a different image, or position the call to action in another place. Only by testing will you know what works and what doesn’t, and be able to make small adjustments over time to improve your conversion rate.
This is a blog article, not a landing page, but we wouldn’t be doing things right if we didn’t take the opportunity to encourage you to take action right now!
Let’s chat about how our expert team can help you optimise your landing pages for conversion.
Sources
https://mailchimp.com/resources/landing-pages-design-tips/
https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/landing-page-essentials/
https://www.shopify.co.nz/partners/blog/landing-page-optimization
No doubt you’ve heard about WordPress – after all, it’s the world’s most popular content management system (CMS).
Bursting onto the scene back in the early 2000s, the platform’s ease of use, range of themes and handy plugins has made it a favourite for Kiwi businesses wanting beautiful sites that are easy to set up and have all the features their customers need.
Now making up 30 per cent of the internet, countless contributors are able to use the platform to transform their innovative ideas into reality.
But is WordPress the best option for your business’ website?
Building your website with WordPress can help you connect with your customers, tell your story and grow your business. Let’s delve into the benefits it has in delivering an ideal user experience, improving your site’s visibility on Google’s search engine results pages, and keeping things simple and straightforward for you.
“WordPress offers customisation in the form of tens of thousands of open-source plugins.”
1. You can craft the website you want
One of the main drawcards of setting up a site using WordPress is that it can be so easily customised. The platform allows businesses like yours to design a website that has the exact features you need to connect with your target audience.
Here are a few examples of some plugins that can be used to customise WordPress sites:
Polylang: Perfect if you want to reach a global audience, this custom plugin enables your website to support multiple languages.
Page Builder: This plugin by SiteOrigin facilitates responsive web design through its simple drag-and-drop interface. The content expertly adapts to render well on mobile devices, so smartphone shoppers will have a great experience browsing on your online store.
Contact Form 7: This popular plugin creates simple and effective contact forms that let potential customers get in touch with you.
MailChimp for WordPress: Add appealing, mobile-responsive newsletter opt-in forms to your website to grow your mailing list and assist your email marketing efforts.
TablePress: Create beautiful tables to display data such as pricing and product lists for your ecommerce website.
2. You’ll improve your Google ranking
WordPress sites are ideal if you’re wanting to nab a spot on that elusive page one of Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). With built-in sitemaps and search engine optimisation tools like the Yoast SEO plugin, WordPress lets you create content that connects while improving your website ranking. The Yoast plugin also helps you optimise your content marketing by analysing your blog posts and offering suggestions on how to improve them.
“WordPress lets you create content that connects while improving your website ranking.”
Our experienced website developers and designers have been working with WordPress since the very beginning of NZ Digital to create websites that not only look amazing, but deliver a streamlined and positive experience for your potential customers.
3. You don’t need to be an expert
The reason for WordPress enduring popularity is that it’s incredibly user-friendly. Once you’re all set up, you can easily upload and manage your content with little coding experience.
“Once you’re all set up, you can easily upload and manage your content with little coding experience.”
The WordPress back end is easy to navigate, and if your site is being built by an experienced WordPress developer, they’ll know exactly how to customise it to make things even easier for you.
Need help building and designing a WordPress site? Come and have a chat to us
Sources
https://wordpress.com Shopify is an ecommerce platform you can use to sell your products online. The platform enables you to design a sleek new website, set up shopping carts and secure payment gateways, as well as integrate with other platforms like Facebook and Google Analytics. There are different plans available, all of which offer different features depending on the needs and budget of your business. The main reason so many ecommerce businesses love using Shopify is because it enables them to manage all their products and inventory in one place. It also allows you to do everything, from marketing through to selling and shipping the final product to your customer. Let’s take a closer look at what makes Shopify such a great platform. “You can export customer groups and use them to
create better email marketing campaigns and optimise your promotions.” Your website needs to render well on all devices to ensure your customers get an optimal user experience. If your site isn’t fully optimised to render well on different devices, your users will become frustrated and may decide to shop elsewhere. Shopify offers a range of responsive web design templates optimised for any device, whether that be a smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer. With Shopify’s customer groups, you can segment your consumers based on their total spend, location or purchase activity. Once you’ve set this up, you can export customer groups and use them to create better email marketing campaigns and optimise your promotions by delivering content and offers that are targeted and relevant. “You can export customer groups and use them to
create better email marketing campaigns and optimise your promotions.” Shopify also allows you to sell your products on social media through its integration with Facebook. Users can buy your products via your Facebook page, which syncs with your Shopify online store. You can also set up a chat function in Facebook Messenger to help your customers track their orders, submit queries and have real time conversations with you. Shopify’s app store lets you offer additional services to your customers and optimise the content on your site. Here are just some examples of how these apps can enhance your site: You can now create 3D models of your products to show customers when they browse your website using Safari on an iOS 12 device. The AR Quick Look feature uses augmented reality to enable potential customers to place your products around their home to imagine what they’d look like. Pretty cool, right? Ready to set up your Shopify site? https://www.shopify.com/blog/57041477-7-handy-shopify-features-you-might-not-know-about
https://www.entrepreneur.comarticle/241535
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/08/15/planning-to-scale-your-company-your-wordpress-website-can-help/#4d7c610840fd
Shopify is an ecommerce platform that is not only easy to set up, but will help you grow your digital presence and your business. Let’s delve into the benefits of Shopify sites.
What is Shopify?
The benefits of Shopify sites for ecommerce businesses
1. Fully responsive ecommerce website design
2. Customer segmentation for more targeted marketing
3. Facebook integration for social selling
4. Add-ons to enhance the user experience
5. Cutting-edge features
We are experienced in setting up and managing Shopify websites for Kiwi businesses, so get in touch with us to get started with Shopify today.Sources
https://www.shopify.co.nz/facebook
https://www.finder.com/shopify-ecommerce-platform-review
https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/18/shopify-apple-ar-quick-look-ios-12/
https://www.semrush.com/blog/12-important-seo-tips-for-shopify-ecommerce-platform/
https://themes.shopify.com/templates/responsive
https://apps.shopify.com/browse/marketing-seo
Have your website engagement stats been looking a little dismal lately? Are you getting plenty of traffic to your site but encountering high bounce rates?
It’s time to identify what could be going wrong. Here are a few steps you can take to ensure users stay on your site and take the actions you want them to.
1. Optimise your website for mobile
Having a responsive website design is essential. As mobile phone usage is on the rise, you don’t want to give smartphone users a frustrating experience when they’re viewing your site. You can throw endless amounts of time and money into content marketing or social media advertising, but if people are arriving to your site on their smartphones to find it’s slow to load, has off-centre images and text they can’t read, your efforts will be in vain.
Firstly, keep things simple – don’t try to reinvent the wheel. When you’re dealing with mobile, you want your website design to be clean and minimal. Secondly, don’t make people work hard the minute they land on your homepage. Users shouldn’t have to zoom in simply to read your navigation menu, or swipe from right to left just to see a whole image that should be centred in the middle of the screen. According to Sweor, eight in ten customers will stop engaging with content if it doesn’t display well on their device.
“Eight in ten customers will stop engaging with content if it doesn’t display well on their device.”
2. Make your website easy to navigate
When designing a website, put yourself in your users’ shoes and consider how easy it is for them to access the information they’re looking for. If someone has to click more than several times to find the information they need, your website is too difficult to navigate. A user may become frustrated and give up, even if the information is only one more click away. Consider your website from a user experience perspective and ask yourself: What information do my website visitors want/need to know, and how will they find it? Consider reducing the number of tabs or simplifying the wording on your navigation menu, so that it’s easy for users to understand where to go. Try to avoid cluttering your homepage with too much text or images that distract users from navigating to where they want to go.
“If someone has to click more than several times to find the information they need, your website is too difficult to navigate.”
3. Speed up the load time of your site
Sites that load slowly will also put users off, regardless of what device they’re using. People are multi-tasking as they browse your site, and any frustration they experience could cause them to turn to a competitor at the click of a button. Test your site speed using a tool like Google’s PageSpeed Insights and enlist the help of an agency specialising in website development and UX design to help you shorten your load times and improve the on-page experience for people.
4. Ensure your calls-to-action are prominent
If users aren’t taking the action you want them to – signing up for your e-newsletter, downloading an eBook, or requesting a free consultation – it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not interested. Maybe they simply don’t know where to go. Good website design ensures that the key actions you want your users to take stand out. For example, are people not downloading the new eBook you published? Instead of hiding it away on a page someone needs to click three different links to get to, position it front and centre on your homepage. Is no one signing up for your monthly newsletter? Move the sign-up form on your homepage from the very bottom to the top, and see if this makes a difference.
“Good website design ensures that the key actions you want your users to take stand out.”
Great web design is an art, and at NZ Digital our team of website developers and web designers work together to deliver user experiences that engage and delight your users.
Navigating all the terminology in the world of digital marketing can be a little confusing. Still confusing your SEO for SEM and your CTA for CTR?
We’ve compiled a handy glossary of digital marketing acronyms so you’ll be up to speed in no time.
Search Engines
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation): Search Engine Optimisation is an integral part of any digital marketing strategy, and refers to the tactics you employ to help your content become more visible on search engine results pages.
SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages): These are the pages you see when you type a query into a search engine like Google or Bing. Paid ads generally appear at the top of the page, followed by organic (non-paid) results. You should aim to appear as high up on page one as possible for relevant search terms by using SEO tactics.
SEM (Search Engine Marketing): Search Engine Marketing is used to refer specifically to paid search activities such as PPC ads set up through platforms such as Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords).
“Good website design ensures that the key actions you want your users to take stand out.”
Paid Digital and Social Media Advertising
PPC (Pay Per Click): Pay Per Click refers to paid ads that appear on search engine results pages. They are so-called because you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. Because PPC ads appear first on a search engine results page, it’s important to ensure your business has a presence there.
CPC (Cost Per Click): This is the amount of money you spend for a single click on either a paid search ad or a social media ad. The lower your CPC, the better.
CTR (Click-through Rate): The click-through rate is also a common metric in paid search and social media advertising. It tells you the percentage of people who are seeing your ad and clicking through to your website, and it’s measured by taking the total number of clicks divided by the opportunities people had to click. The higher your CTR, the better your ads are performing.
SMO (Social Media Optimisation): SMO refers to the ways you optimise your social media platforms to increase traffic to your website.
Websites
CTA (Call to Action): The call to action is the engaging, attention-grabbing button or line of text that encourages someone to take action. This action could be anything from downloading an eBook to contacting you or booking a free consultation.
UGC (User Generated Content): User generated content refers to content that is produced by your customers, and it can be a highly effective inbound marketing tool when it’s done well. UGC encompasses things like guest blogs, reposts on social media, and Instagram or Snapchat takeovers.
UI (User Interface): User interface refers to the series of screens, pages, and visual elements that users interact with on a device such as websites, apps, wearables, and software. Good UI design has clear, consistent visual layouts and content which help users complete their desired actions quickly and efficiently.
UX (User Experience): User experience is the overarching experience that a customer has with your business, and all aspects of your digital marketing need to contribute to one that is both positive and consistent. Within this falls UX design, which refers to the way a website is set up to optimise usability, accessibility and positive experiences.
Learn more about the difference between UI and UX
Systems and Software
CMS (Content Management System): A Content Management System is what you use to create and manage the digital content on your website. WordPress is the most popular content management system, but you might be using others such as Joomla! or Drupal. Using a CMS, you can edit and index your website content, stay on top of users and permissions, and a whole lot more.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management): CRM is the strategy your business adopts towards building and maintaining relationships with customers. CRM systems, such as Salesforce, are IT platforms that store and organise information to give you a picture of who your customers and prospects are and how you’re interacting with them. You can use the insights generated by CRM software to improve the way you interact with customers, which is essential for acquisition and retention.
It’s one thing to know what these acronyms mean and another to effectively incorporate them into your digital marketing strategy. Our digitally-savvy team knows their stuff, and we speak your language.
Need help with content marketing for your niche or technical offering? Let’s have a conversation.
Email marketing is one of the most effective weapons in your business’s digital marketing arsenal – if you do it right.
Here are a few reasons your emails might not be performing as well as they should, and what you can do about it.
You’re not optimising your emails for mobile
According to emarketer, 55 per cent of emails are opened on mobile. If your emails aren’t formatted to be appealing and easily readable on a mobile device, you’re severely hampering your email marketing efforts.
What to do about it: Ensure your emails are fully optimised to appear in a visually compelling way across all devices. Preview your emails before sending them to see how they’ll appear on different devices and platforms, and fix something if it isn’t right.
- Keep text to a minimum. Use short paragraphs and concise headings.
- Use a responsive design. Select pre-designed templates that render well on all devices, or enlist the help of an expert to code your email for mobile.
- Don’t forget about your images. Use small image files that will load quickly and resize them to fit on a mobile screen.
- Make your calls to action obvious. Big, bold and colourful calls to action are more likely to tapped by someone scrolling on their phone.
“To give your readers a truly positive user experience, you need to personalise your emails.”
You’re sending the same thing to everyone in your mailing list
A high number of unsubscribes is generally a good indication that your email content isn’t engaging, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that people aren’t interested in your offering. It could be that the information you’re providing in the emails you send isn’t quite right for them.
What to do about it: Use marketing automation tools like HubSpot or Marketo to segment your audience and ensure you’re providing information that fits where they’re at in the buyer’s journey. Are you bombarding your entire email list with offers and discounts? Save these for those at the bottom of the funnel, or those who’ve purchased from you before. Those still weighing up their options may be more open to being nurtured with helpful advice and tips before being pushed to buy from you.
You’re analysing the results of your email marketing too late
Email marketing requires ongoing testing to optimise campaigns for recipients. If you run a drip campaign over a period of six months and only look at the results once the six months is up, you’ll miss valuable opportunities to improve engagement during that time.
What to do about it: A/B test right from the start. Test different subject lines to see which one gives you higher open rates. Test the time of day you send your emails. Once you have data the shows what’s working better, implement the necessary changes to improve your results.
You’re forgetting to be human
It’s now possible to automate a great deal of our email marketing. However, while marketing automation platforms help you save time and increase the amount of activity you can perform, if you’re not careful too much automation can have a detrimental effect. If you’re not treating every email as though it’s being personally delivered to each recipient, your readers will notice, and they might stop reading your emails altogether.
“To give your readers a truly positive user experience, you need to personalise your emails.”
What to do about it: To give your readers the best user experience, you need to personalise your emails. It’s not difficult to do this. Firstly, greet the people on your mailing list by their name. A “Hi Sarah” or “Kia ora Ryan” is far more inviting than a generic “Hi there!”. Secondly, only send out relevant content. This is where segmentation comes in. Marketing automation platforms can help you create dynamic content (content which changes depending on who you’re targeting) specific to actions the reader has taken, what stage of the buyer’s journey they’re at, where in New Zealand they’re located, or what products they’ve expressed interest in.
The team at NZ Digital can work with you to optimise your email marketing strategy, or to develop one from scratch. Reach out to us today to find out how we can help you get results from email.
Need help with content marketing for your niche or technical offering?
When you’re not selling once-in-a-lifetime travel experiences, it can be easy to fall into the trap of believing no one will be interested in your content.
But with the right digital marketing strategy, your content marketing will excite and engage potential customers, no matter how niche your offering may be.
Here are five tips to produce digital content that connects with your audience and encourage them to take action.
1. Use a unique voice
Take the time to consider the voice your content will adopt, and how it will stand out from all the other content that’s out there on the web. People will stop scrolling and pay attention when they read something in a voice not everyone else is using. Excitement is infectious, so one strategy is to funnel your excitement about your business into your content. It will have a flow-on effect. If it’s aligned with your brand, you could also consider using humour in your content marketing as a way to differentiate yourself and spice up dry subject matter. Just because every other business in your industry writes one way, it doesn’t mean you have to. Dare to be different, and you’ll stand out from the crowd.
2. Tell a story
A good story will always help you engage potential customers. That’s because when you get personal with your digital marketing and let people into the background behind your business, it connects with readers and makes them feel a part of it. You present yourself as human, relatable and trustworthy.
Share customer testimonials and case studies on your website. If you’re a family-owned business, don’t just write a generic About Us page – share the history of how it all started.
3. Make your content marketing useful
Good content shouldn’t focus on selling your product or service, and it also shouldn’t tell readers what they already know. Instead, use your content to offer thoughtful insights, unique perspectives and valuable advice to teach readers something new or help them solve a problem they’re facing. Useful content is always engaging, and it positions you as a helpful expert who delivers value.
“Useful content is always engaging.”
4. Incorporate visual elements
Audiences will only give your content a few seconds of their time before turning their attention elsewhere, so you need to grab them immediately with captivating visuals. Visual content interspersed throughout an article, webpage or eBook also gives the reader a mental rest, spicing up the written text and making it more compelling.
Here are some ways you can incorporate visual components into your content:
- Turn key figures or stats into a colourful graph to make them easier to digest.
- Reproduce the key points of your article as an infographic.
- Take an impactful sentence with a key takeaway and turn it into an info image.
If you don’t have the resources to create graphics in-house, try some simple tricks such as breaking up the text with some high-resolution images or embedding a video from an industry thought leader. Alternatively, get some expert content creators involved to help you create well-written and visually stunning pieces.
5. Get creative
Don’t assume that all the content you write has to be closely linked to your industry. As long as you provide value to your reader, and are able to link back to a product or service you offer, you can be as creative as you like. Carefully consider your audience and the things they’re interested in and would enjoy reading about – you can even ask them directly. Then, produce content on topics that they find interesting and helpful, and let your product or service take the back seat.
It’s difficult to make content exciting, and it takes the expertise of professional content creators to turn certain topics into a riveting read. NZ Digital is a full service agency with the experience and expertise to help any business produce engaging, valuable content.
Need help with content marketing for your niche or technical offering?
Let’s have a conversation.
Sources:
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/content-marketing-tips-boring-industries
https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2012/12/create-engaging-content-any-industry/
https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2017/10/visual-content-blog/
https://neilpatel.com/blog/blog-post-image-guide/
A quick guide to User Interface and Experience design.
The terms UI and UX have been banded around when it comes to websites for a number of years now. UI (User Interface) and UX (User Experience) are key components we carefully consider in every project we create.
At it’s most simplistic level, User interface (UI) is the series of screens, pages, and visual elements—like buttons and icons—that users interact with on a device such as websites, apps, wearables, and software.
While User Experience (UX) is user-centric. The purpose is to focus on the usability, ease of use, and pleasure provided in the interaction between the customer and the online presence. In turn, this will increase customer satisfaction and loyalty to that company/brand.
User Experience – People First
User experience design is a human-first way of designing products.
UX is predominantly made up of the following areas:
- Strategy and Content
- Competitor Analysis
- Customer Analysis
- Product Structure/Strategy
- Content Development
- Wireframing and Prototyping
- Wireframing
- Prototyping
- Testing/Iteration
- Development Planning
- Execution and Analytics
- Coordination with UI Designer(s)
- Coordination with Developer(s)
- Tracking Goals and Integration
- Analysis and Iteration
User Interface = Visual and interactions
Good user interface design supports usability with clear, consistent visual layouts and content which provides users explanations, expressions, gestures and hints to help users complete tasks while reducing the time it takes them to get to where they want to be with a website, software or an app.
UI is predominantly made up of the following areas:
- Customer Analysis
- Look and Feel
- Design Research
- Branding and Graphic Development
- User Guides/Storyline
- UI Prototyping
- Interactivity and Animation
- Adaptation to All Device Screen Sizes
- Implementation with Developer
A great example of how the use of animations and gesture helps the user to understand that progress has been actioned. Source: @kyokim
Here at NZ Digital, we have dedicated in house UX and UI designers who implement these practices into every website design we create. Over the past few months, we have worked on a number of projects where we have improved the UI and UX of existing sites along with new sites, such as The Apple Press.
The Apple Press (theapplepress.co.nz) came to NZ Digital to build a digital platform that communicated their unique brand story, highlighting their mission to make the world’s best apple juice, from what they believe are the world’s best apples – this is apple juice like you’ve never tasted before.
The new website accomplishes this through multiple forms of media such as video, interactive content and highly visual imagery. Simply by navigating through the site, the customer can obtain an understanding of what makes The Apple Press unique, but one area that principally highlights this important brand story is the ‘mix it up’ section. This is an area where the brand can really promote to the customer why and how they are different. They reiterate their love of apples, the importance of their juice making practices and that each and every apple is given the 5-star treatment.
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Last call to avoid these browser warnings!
In an effort to drive the world towards secure global internet, Google Chrome began marking all HTTPS web pages as secure last year. In the space of a year, progress was incredible with developers worldwide transitioning their sites to HTTPS and making the web safer.
According to Google:
- Over 68% of Chrome traffic on both Android and Windows is now protected
- Over 78% of Chrome traffic on both Chrome OS and Mac is now protected
- 81 of the top 100 sites on the web use HTTPS by default
This month Google has rolled out some more major changes with the Chrome 68 update.
All sites with HTTP will prominently display a warning in the address bar, alerting visitors to the risks of insecure connections.
With about 60 percent of all internet traffic utilized through Google Chrome, a change like this will affect every website on the internet.
Chrome is not the only web browser to show warnings to visitors of non-HTTPS pages. Safari detects if a website is not secure with the warning message – “Website Not Secure”.
So why HTTPS?
HTTPS is a form of SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. For more information check out our blog. Basically, without an HTTPS encryption, someone can potentially intercept information and infect malware in pages.
How can I stay safe?
Get an SSL certificate for your website today to avoid these warnings, which will damage your brand and lower your conversion rates.
A 256-bit encryption SSL certificate will cost $299 + GST per year. To avoid these warnings or for more information contact us now.
