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Hurray for Heuristics! UX Rules of thumb you can’t afford to ignore!

30 May 2022 / Christa Nuijs

Whether you are building your own website or application from scratch or using any of the templates from site or app builders such as Wix, WordPress or Shopify, it is important that you are aware interface rules of thumb, or heuristics, that improve the usability e of your site and enhance user retention. The last thing you want is visitors to your site to leave before completing the desired actions because they were annoyed with the interface and user-“unfriendliness” of the site.

To ensure best practices it is worthwhile to subject your site to a heuristics evaluation. Here are some of the criteria you should look out for which will make your site or app more user friendly and enhance the overall experience interacting with your brand.

1. Polite & interesting

What is the tone of your website? Is it friendly, guiding, and engaging? Is your message clear and not overly long? Or has it a touch of a condescending “I know best” tone. Treat your web visitors as if they were a potential client you are meeting in person. Don’t bombard them with too much information. Instead, stick to the point in a warm and polite manner!

2. Common sense and match the real world

It should go without saying, but there are plenty of website where common sense has left the building. Call to action buttons hidden on the other side of a page, navigational labyrinths that take you not where you want to be etc. Use common sense when designing your website flow. If it deviates to far of how the process would develop in the real world, people will get annoyed and leave your site.

3. Don’t force your client / Give them autonomy over the process

Give your web visitors the time to browse and discover. Don’t force them into a subscription or a sale every step of the way. Don’t force them to the check-out if they are still looking for more options. Your visitor needs to feel in control. Take that away from them and they will abandon that shopping basket in an instant.

4. Be forthcoming and don’t waste your visitor’s time

Time is something none of us have enough of and the last thing your potential client wants is to get frustrated by your site because they can’t find an answer, they don’t understand what the next step in the process is or they are guided through unnecessary and irrelevant side processes. The more straight forward the process is, the more likely your client will return. Let them know what is next, what it involves and how long it takes, so they can make a risk/reward evaluation. They may decide today is not a good day to take this action, but when they have time they will return. However, if they are stopping halfway through, annoyed with the length of the process they weren’t prepared for, they may decide to not come back at all.

5. Visibility and confidence

How to proceed through your website should be clear, visible and guided with a confident tone. If your web flow keeps repeating questions, if it displays broken links or if it seems to question itself it reduced the tone of confidence of your site, your brand and it diminishes the confidence the potential client will have in you.

These are just a handful heuristics you can check for. To read more about this and how to apply these to your interface, check out Jakob Nielsen, who compiled the original 10 usability heuristics.

There are more UX tips and tools you can apply to the design of your site or app. Use this UX Design Principles Check List to improve the interaction of your brand experience instantly.

13th June 2022

Uncategorized

UX Design Principles Check List

17 May 2022 / Christa Nuijs

UX Design is all the rage, but what does it actually mean and how can you start improving the user experience of your app, website or service delivery without having to study for 6 months or hiring a specialist?

Here’s a Check List you can use to evaluate the UX design of your product. Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg and a deep dive into user-testing and prototyping is recommended for a greater chance of success, but this list will give you a sneak peek into the most common UX design principles.

1. You don’t have too many features

When it comes to good design, “what if” is not a good question to ask. It will lead to unnecessary features which will most likely only benefit a few fringe cases of your target audience. Too many features will only confuse most of your users.

There is even a proper law for this, Hick’s Law: Too many options will increase the time a user takes to make a decision. And that’s something you want to avoid… Because in that increased decision-making time, they could very well choose the option to just bail out and discontinue the action.

2. You design for a specific use, for a specific audience

Tied in closely with the danger of features, is how you determine your use cases. Another “law” you can apply here is the Paradox of Specificity – the more specific the use for a certain audience is, the more likely it will cover the needs of other users too. A famous example is the roller trolley. This small hand luggage suitcase was designed as an overnight bag for aviation personal only. Needless to say, it has worked its way into the mainstream effortlessly. And as you are reading this article on the internet, it is worth noting that the World Wide Web was designed initially purely as a way for academics and scientist to share research.

3. You apply an appropriate tone of voice

The voice of your app or site design is imperative. To make sure you are striking the right balance, check out our article on heuristics and apply these rules of thumb!

4. You make use of conventions

There is no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to good design. Green is go, red is pay attention, and everyone knows what these buttons mean:

Especially when it comes to controls, to reinvent conventional design is a) a waste of time, b) a waste of money and c) most likely leads to a loss of users, as you will need to re-educate them on what they thought they knew. If it has no added value to your product other than to “be different” it is best to be different in other key areas. Not in the conventions that have been tried and tested.

I encountered this recently with my favourite body lotion. For some reason, this large luxury chain decided to redesign the bottle top. I can no longer twist and open the full cap, instead it only opens the cover at the top. It doesn’t add anything, and it confuses the action that I have taken for most of my life when opening a bottle. Closing it is not easy with lotioned hands either and even causes spillage. I am not amused and now get annoyed every morning when I apply the lotion.

5. Your user understands how to use the controls and what happens next.

Your users don’t like guessing. They want to understand and perceive what a design element does and be able to predict what will happen next. If there is a big red button, they understand that they can press that and if that red button says “buy now”, the user knows immediately what will happen next. There is no need to be enigmatic and ambiguous in your design. Like with conventions, put your attention to differentiate yourself in other places, not where the user expects a certain process.

6. Your feedback is relevant, timely and easy to understand

We all like to be kept informed about the process and if we are doing it right. So put your user’s mind at ease, let them know that their action has been registered and what is happening next or tell them if their action was incorrect and why. Feedback is your platform’s true voice, so make sure it is clear, relevant and to the point. Ideally, keep them informed throughout the process and not at the end only. Inline validation makes for a swift and smooth flow. Nothing is as annoying as completing a form and action only to get a response right at the end that somewhere in step 3 you had made a mistake and need to scroll all the way back.

Good design should not be noticeable. Good design should feel natural, easy, understandable, and comfortable. However, users will spot bad design immediately, as it deviates from what they expect the process to be. But with the above points, you can avoid those pitfalls!

13th June 2022

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Supporting the change makers

Author / Christa Nuijs

After a couple of years as a working adult, it is not uncommon to experience a moment of disillusion and start to question the purpose of our nine to five. Whether it’s watching a hard-hitting documentary, a pandemic that disrupts the status quo or just questioning your life’s decisions at the height of your midlife crisis, many of us come to a point that makes us question the purpose of mindless mass consumption, soulless capitalism or empty frivolity in business.

For me, that point came when I joined a charity with the naive ambition to truly make a difference on the frontline, only to realise that the people running the NGO full time were much better equipped for this. Their unwavering passion and dedication, not to mention working extreme hours to help others in harsh conditions, was such an inspiration and something I sincerely doubted I could commit myself selflessly to for a prolonged period of time. But it turned out that my experience in communication, operations and administrative management was of incredible value to them. I realised that supporting those who helped others is not only where my strengths lay, but also where I wanted to apply my expertise.

And I was not alone in my belief that every business should use its unique value proposition to help those that are making the world a better place. Together with my partners, we built our business with that motto in mind. And while we have been operating under our new name, The Right Mix Ltd, since only six months, we have been offering our services in operational support, marketing and design to NGOs, Non-profits and Purpose Driven SMEs for over four years. At that time, we were considered quite niche to only accept clients fitting that description. We had to take a leap of faith, as we knew that the budgets of such clients would be smaller than larger corporate clients. But it’s been nothing short of remarkable and satisfying on so many levels to engage with organisations working towards, among others, educational equality, environmental sustainability and gender gap reduction.

We are seeing a shift to “do good” in other companies too. Previous short-term feel-good Corporate Social Responsibility exercises like an annual staff beach clean-up or kindness walks handing out food to the homeless, are starting to be complemented by more in-depth and long-term support to NGOs, such as pro-bono business consultancy, IT support and accounting. It is even more heart-warming to see the business model we have implemented being increasingly adopted by other start-ups, who are dedicating their full suite of services to support cause-driven enterprises and organisations. We believe that the official agreement of the 17 UN Sustainability Development Goals has been a great incentive, as it gives companies a clear blueprint to follow, with concrete goals to achieve.

Finding purpose and balance in your work life is not new but merging job satisfaction and connectivity with a higher sense of urgency to help the world and all its inhabitants definitely seems an integral part of the current zeitgeist. Moving away from the traditional, profit- or consumption driven business model is not only more accepted, but it may also soon be expected and considered the norm.

There’s only so much control we have in this world and in this life to truly make an impact. And if you cannot be at the frontline, which honestly not many of us are fully equipped or willing to do, using your own talents to support those that are, is the next best thing to make a tangible difference!

13th June 2022

Uncategorized

Print vs Digital Media

27 Apr 2022 / Mar-Loes Mantoua

Companies have been shifting their focus from print to digital marketing for many years now. Print, however, has proven to be more resilient than expected. And with Asia-Pacific the largest region in the print advertising market in 2019 – and expected to remain in this position till 2030 – can brands disregard print when determining your marketing strategy? Here are the main advantages for each:

Pro digital:

Digital ads are processed more quickly than physical ads
Interactive ads to connect with your audience
Digital media has a further reach than print media when properly executed
Digital media is much quicker to market and errors can be rectified more easily
The costs for paper, printing and postal services are rising, making digital a more cost effective option

Pro print:

Physical ads are more effective in leaving a lasting impression
Print is considered a more secure source of information with digital having a propensity for fake news and misinformation
Digital fatigue has set in after 2 years of lockdown and restrictions
The tactility of print offers brands the opportunity to make a meaningful physical connection with customers
Customers return to print media items they receive multiple times, and these items remain in the home for over a week
Development on new print technologies

It is fair to say that although print media has been losing ground for many years, it still has a role to play in a marketing campaign. Print scores impressively high for audience attention and brand recall versus social media, and can be well used to boost digital channels. There are many new technologies in print media, allowing it to be more unique and original than ever before. Marketeers should take advantage of these opportunities and use a fair part of print creativity in their media mix.

These 17 print ads that Hubspot put together provide some great inspiration on how to incorporate print into a digital strategy.

29th April 2022

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10 practical steps to analyse SEO

20 Apr 2022 / Mar-Loes Mantoua

SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, has an enormous impact on the success of your business. Your SEO strategy determines how easily your target customers can find you. You want to be at the top of those search results lists, don’t you?

Here are a few simple and practical steps you can implement to make sure your SEO strategy is on point!

1 . Check your visibility on google

Yes, we are focussing on Google here as they hold over 90% of the total search engine market share. Is your business website ranked on the first search engine result page on Google’s? How can you ensure that your website will be visible on Google and be ranked on this essential first page (75% of people never scroll beyond the first page of search results)? Here’s how: Ensure that each page on your website targets specific topics and uses keywords to make this known to Google, who notices relevant websites that are best suited to specific searches.

Keyword research is the foundation of any good SEO strategy. If you know how to use keywords effectively, you can develop content that attracts more people to your website.

2 . Check URLs and Meta description

An effective URL (basically the address of your webpage) should tell your audience what your website is about, show the audience where they are on your website page, and if possible, it should include your target keywords. Users might decide whether to click or skip your page based on these alone.

The meta description appears below your link in Google. This description needs to be engaging, descriptive, and includes your target keywords. A solid meta description can help convince your searchers to visit your page. Altogether, a compelling meta description and SEO-friendly URL can improve your appearance in search results.

Title metadata is responsible for the page titles displayed at the top of a browser window and as the headline within search engine results. Make sure your title and meta description are unique for every page.

3 . Analyse titles and headings

Your title and headings are essential, they are there to tell the audience what they are about to read, help the audience find what they are looking for and whether the content is of value to them. You’ll need to create magnetic headlines that attract your audience. The title of your page should include the content, have the main words of the content in your title page and the content should not be too long nor too short. This will help your overall ranking on Google and help reduce your spam score (see point 5).

4 . Evaluate incoming links

Link evaluation is about setting priorities and goals for the links you want to pursue and do well. The right links can help drive traffic to your website. If someone adds a backlink (external links leading to your site) to your website, their readers are likely to click on that link. The right links can also help your website rank higher. This is because links tell search engines that your website has authority on a certain subject, therefore the more links your website has the better your website will rank on the search engines. Of course, these links need to be valid ones and useful to readers. Bad backlinks will result in a higher spam score (see point 5).

5 . Analyse your spam score

How do we lower our spam score and what are we doing wrong to increase it? When we overuse SEO’s capabilities, we start to over-optimise our website, making it hard to read. This leads to bad User Experiences (UX) and can increases the site’s spam score.

The higher the spam score, the less likely Google will be able to crawl your site, view your pages and rank your website. Only up to 5% is acceptable for SEO when reviewing your spam score. A few tips on how to reduce your spam score: The meta description length is important (also see point 2 above). If it appears too long or too short this can be considered a negative point for the site. The site fonts should be fonts recognised by Google. Luckily most are, but if you have a fancy font, this could be another reason for your spam score to increase. Lastly, the number of pages your site has, as well as the content on those pages, will link directly to your site’s ranking and will either gain a positive or negative score.

6 . Check your internal links

Internal links are links that point from one page to another on your website. They are there to make customer journeys as easy and as straightforward as possible.
Remember that a “Click here” link has no search engine value beyond the attached URL, whereas descriptive links rich with keywords will improve your search engine rankings as well as the ranking of the page you are linking to. Always use descriptive links by linking keywords—it not only improves search engine optimisation, but also adds value to your readers.

7 . Investigate for broken links

A 404 is a “page not found” error, is something you do not want your customers to come across. This is usually caused by broken links and/or broken images within your site. For example, if a page on your site is linked to an image or content that has been deleted, anyone who clicks on that link will get a 404 error on their screen. Keep up to date with your links and replace those that have since been deleted.

An easy way this can be done is using a spreadsheet on excel. Check all links in your website and record your link findings, e.g. if there are any broken links or how many internal links etc. These will then have to be fixed and upgraded. Make sure you upgrade them on other social media platforms as well, ensure that relevant SEO related backlinks are preserved where possible. Link upgrading is a big task but the last thing you want is a customer coming across a broken link on your website. They will simply move onto the next company on their list to get the information they are looking for.

8 . Analyse your web content

Quality, original, comprehensive, authoritative content is the number one driver of your search engine rankings and there is no substitute for great content.

To analyse the web content, you need to do a content inventory of all the content that you have created for your website. You want your user to have a good experience on your website, content is the most important, so make sure that it is always organised, relevant, and up-to-date. Regularly updated content is viewed as one of the best indicators of a site’s relevancy, so be sure to keep it fresh. We suggest you check your content on a set schedule and make updates as needed.

9 . Audit your images

Always describe your image and video media using alt tags, or alternative text descriptions. They allow search engines to locate your page, which is crucial—especially for those who use text-only browsers or screen readers. Pictures attract and appeal to customers AND Google likes them. Ensure that when you have images on your site, you have appropriately named the image with a description.

Google looks at your URL structure so keep it organised. Create folders/ file names for your images by topic or keyword – https://the-right-mix.com/the-right-mix-team/ . Lastly use original images where you can. Google prefers original content including images! Therefore, using stock photos that other people have used on their websites will not help your SEO.

10 . Check your page speed

Page speed is an important part of user experience. But as important is the fact that Google uses site speed (and as a result, page speed) as one of its signals used in its algorithm to rank pages. How can you increase your speed? By optimising your code, including removing spaces, commas, and other unnecessary characters, as well code comments, formatting, and unused code.

You can also increase your page speed compressing your images, the larger the image size the longer it takes to load your site, hurting your ranking on Google. Or try lazy loading – a strategy to identify resources as non-blocking (non-critical) and load these only when needed

Lastly, check for common mistakes that could be slowing down your website. Improve your server response time. Your server response time is affected by the amount of traffic you receive, the resources each page uses, the software your server uses, and the hosting solution you use. Find bottlenecks and fix them.

Google PageSpeed Insights is a free SEO tool that scores your desktop and mobile page speed on a scale of zero to 100, with 100 being the fastest.

Social media

11 . Analyze current content and engagement

When creating your content you need to be thinking and ensuring that it is specific to your target audience, do they want to see this? Will my content benefit or help my audience in any way? AND is your content up-to-date with the current trends? If you can tick all of these boxes this will help ensure that your content will be engaging with your target audience.

12 . Analyze current sharing options for users

Is your content shareable? You want to be posting content that is valuable to your audience. You want engagement, get more likes, get more shares and gain more followers. If your content doesn’t promote this then what is the point? Here are a few types of content that will give your users something to share; Infographics – are the most socially shared form of content. Interactive content – this is producing content that your users can better engage with. Content that evokes a strong positive emotion – If your content doesn’t evoke an emotion for someone or create a personality then it most likely won’t get shared. Lastly, content with images – image-rich content is extremely sharable. Now you know a few shareable types of content which one are you going to use first?

13 . Analyze social media profiles

Do the research and find who your competitors are, and who is your competition? From there find out what platforms they use, once you have narrowed down who your competitors are. The next step is to gather data, analyze your competitor’s activity and create a competitive analysis. Now with all of this information you are now able to compare your profiles to your competition and use it as a guide to help gain that competitive advantage.

14 . Check your images for SEO and social media

The images that you put out are just as important as any other content that you put out. There are many things to think about before you upload your image on social media. So make sure it will benefit your SEO. First of all, is your image the correct size? Too big and it will take too long to load you need to try scaling down without losing too much of the quality. Optimizing image file name, before uploading any image, you must name the file with the relevant, descriptive keywords to get the most out of your SEO power. Include captions, this may not have a direct impact on your SEO, but they are visible on your social media and they can add to the user experience. Using unique images, and unique content is better for your SEO. And lastly, ensure that your text complements your image, the copy on the page will help search engines determine the relevancy of your images and therefore improve your SEO

15 . Check current client relationships through active conversations

This is essential for building your client’s trust. So, how do you do this? Keep records of communication between potential and existing customers, understand what your client’s goals and wants are, and keep those in mind, keep your clients in the loop and up to date with any changes, communication is key and clients like to know what is going on and lastly follow up on every meeting an email follow up or just a phone call this will help build the relationships as well as help the communication. These small tips will ensure that there is no confusion or miscommunication on any projects/ deadlines or missed goals.

16 . Evaluate your social media marketing operations

Goals? Matrix? Get SMART about your core objectives, ensure that they are; specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and have a time frame, this will help keep you on track with your goals and objectives. Focus on having interactive content when creating a post, social media is a form of socializing the more interactive your content the better. And lastly, Set priorities for your list of tasks

17 . Check social media post captions

Are they compelling? Are they relatable? – When it comes to social media captions the copy needs: an engaging hook that will draw in your audience, Emojis to bring your text to life and add a bit of fun, a CTA (call to action) this will encourage and help interaction, language that reflects your brand personality and lastly bitesize text and easy to read when scrolling through social media.

18 . Analyze keywords and related keywords for relevancy

This is a great way to help identify what your target audience is searching for and the keywords that they are using to search these things. After doing this analysis you will be left with the relevant terms and phrases for your SEO and you will get a better insight into your target audience.

19 . Analyze hashtags for relevancy

Identifying the relevant hashtags is essential when it comes to social monitoring and engagement. By ensuring this people searching for those specific keywords can easily find your post and might end up following your account. Hashtags aren’t some simple trend, hashtags help to increase engagement.

20 . Check above against competitors

It is always a good idea to see what your competitors are up to. While analyzing your competitors, you should know what you are looking for and why or how this will help your business. This is not about stealing your competitor’s ideas, but rather figuring out what their strengths and weakness are and finding out what your competitive advantage is. A few tips are: analyze your competitor’s SEO and social media strategy, find out your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses.

28th April 2022

Uncategorized

April Fools’ Day

1 Apr 2022 / Mar-Loes Mantoua

At The Right MIX we love April Fools’ Day and we are not the only ones. It has become an increasingly popular marketing opportunity for corporations to show their lighter side.

Check out our personal favourite April Fools’ Day ads from previous years below and let us know your favourite ad of 2022 after today 😉

Google Nose (2013)

Google Nose by Google shows that people could search for things by smelling on their computers or devices.

Snoopavision – YouTube (2016)

Welcome to SnoopaVision, a fully immersive experience that lets you watch any video on YouTube in 360 degrees, with Snoop Dogg.

Lego Smart Bricks (2021)

Welcome to SnoopaVision, a fully immersive experience that lets you watch any video on YouTube in 360 degrees, with Snoop Dogg.

McDonalds Free Fries (2018)

Using Twitter, the brand offered a free supply of fries for an entire year. Users were asked to find a hidden code in the image.

28th April 2022

Uncategorized

META-VERSE: 5 tips to tackle the future of virtual commerce

14 February 2022 / Christa Nuijs

As an avid Sci-Fi reader, I’ve been exposed to various literary forms of the Metaverse, most notably the four part epic Otherland, by Tad Williams, which I have read and re-read at least 10 times since 2000. Never did I imagine that the world described by Willams would come into reality during my lifetime and the fact that this is truly happening is frighteningly fascinating.

While still in its infancy, this will move fast and it is wise for brands to consider how to leverage this new landscape. This article by Janit Ballis hands you 5 tips to start with on how to tackle the future of virtual commerce:

1) Pick your target – who is your (new?) demographic?
2) Watch the competition – look for peer champions and pioneers for inspiration
3) Look for applications – can you pilot your ESGs through the Metaverse?
4) Plan your entrance – how to comfortably integrate your brand and get exposure.
5) Keep your balance – manage your expectations and risk/reward outcome.

Personally, I can’t wait to experience this new dimension and the opportunities it will bring, especially in the field of creativity and virtual tourism. Until then, I’ll reread Otherland for the 11th time…

14th March 2022

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Ultra-High Resolution Masterpiece!

28 January 2022 / Christa Nuijs

Museum visits can be a bit of a hit-and-miss. Depending on the crowds, and the level of security, it may be hard to get the full immersive experience of a work of art. And while many museums now offer virtual tours, it is still nearly impossible to get your nose right up to the painting, to see the brush strokes, to distinguish the use of colour, application techniques and the texture of the materials. Especially with world-renowned masterpieces.

Until now!

The Rijksmuseum’s Operation Night Watch is the “most wide-ranging research and conservation project in the history of Rembrandt’s masterpiece.”

One element of this project is the publication of an Ultra-High Resolution of the painting. As it mentions on their website: “This is the largest and most detailed photo ever taken of a work of art. It is 717 gigapixels, or 717,000,000,000 pixels, in size. The distance between two pixels is 5 micrometres (0.005 millimetre), which means that one pixel is smaller than a human red blood cell.

The team used a 100-megapixel Hasselblad H6D 400 MS-camera to make 8439 individual photos measuring 5.5cm x 4.1cm. Artificial intelligence was used to stitch these smaller photographs together to form the final large image, with a total file size of 5.6 terabytes.”

And it truly delivers. View the delicate craquelure of the paint varnish. Zoom in on the intricate details of the clothing and research up close how impressions of colours and textures are achieved.

This breath-taking innovation is a marvellous piece of technology that we hope will be applied to many other visual projects in the future!

14th March 2022

Uncategorized

Creativity is an ROI skill!

11 January 2022 / Christa Nuijs

To see creativity acknowledged as an ROI skill is a long overdue celebration of an often undervalued asset. The irony is, the people who undervalue it, are often the creatives themselves. Creative attributes are presented as hobbies or mentioned beneath more “measurable” skills. And that’s those people who recognise they are creative.

I am always baffled by people who claim they are not creative at all, confusing creativity with artistic talent. Creativity comes in an infinite variety of shapes and forms. To place it within the confinement of rules and definitions goes against the nature of creativity itself. Creativity is invention, reinvention, rethinking, turning a solution upside down to repurpose it for a different problem. And those are skills we humans all possess, no matter how and in what kind of situation we apply it!

So next time you say you are not creative, don’t believe yourself!

14th March 2022

Uncategorized

The Death of Diet Coke?

18 January 2022 / Christa Nuijs

While it is only natural for a company’s brand message to evolve and adapt with the times, to veer too far from your original image can lead to irreversible alienation of your customers and shifting your focus to a different demographic is not a strategy without risk, as this essay by Enact Agency aptly and engagingly explores.

If like me, you still ask for a Diet Coke, spoiler alert: you are showing your age! The beautiful thing about reaching a certain age, is that you hardly care if and how you are categorised. But as a brand, you definitely should!

14th March 2022

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