Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/20-useful-web-applications-for-firefox-sidebar/
Useful sidebar add-ons for Firefox browser that give you quick access to your most-used apps and service.
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Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/abduzeedo/~3/5X65xpStTfQ/photography-hong-kong-ballet-campaign
Photography: Hong Kong Ballet Campaign
AoiroStudio
May 28, 2018
Let’s tackle this Memorial Day with a colourful campaign for the Hong Kong Ballet, photography by Dean Alexander. Dean is working in the field of advertising/fashion photographer and film director/cinematographer. His work has taken him to over 50 countries and has won over 150 International Awards worldwide. What an accomplishment, the quality of this campaign is totally upscale. It looks like it was a fun client! It’s like the one thing they did care about was to give the creative a full “Carte Blanche” experience which judging by the results. It really paid off, beautifully!
Learn more about Dean Alexander
Photography
photography
hong kong
dean alexander
Original Source: https://www.sitepoint.com/understand-web-development-less-1-hour/
This article was created in partnership with KTree. Thank you for supporting the partners who make SitePoint possible.
This article explains what web development is, by exploring how it started and how it evolved. This is not an exact chronicle of the web’s evolution, but focuses more on what the needs for this evolution were, so we can understand the technology.
It all started with information. Humans have always needed to find ways to share information with others. As you are aware, before the internet, information was shared via letters, newspapers, radio and television. Each had its own disadvantages, which allowed the internet’s information highway to come to the forefront.
1. What is the Web?
What if you can publish information in a place where whoever is interested can go and read that information? That’s exactly what the web does. You keep the information on a web server, and people can read that information using clients (browsers). This architecture is called ‘server-client architecture’.
Why HTTP?
Initially, this information was all stored as text — that’s why the name hyper-text transfer protocol has stuck even though now text, media and files are all exchanged via this protocol.
2. How Is Information Kept, Retrieved and Saved?
The most basic and long-lived way of storing information on the web is in HTML files. To better understand, let's take a simple example of company publishing its price information so its vendors can download and view the list, which consists of products with a price and effective date. This was kept as a HTML file on the server, which can be viewed using a web browser. The browser requests the file from the sever, and the server serves it up and closes the connection.
HTML is a standard markup language used to create web pages. In other words, it’s a simple text file with tags that help the browser figure out how to display the information.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<h2>Price List</h2>
<hr>
<table>
<tr>
<td>Product Name</td>
<td>Sku</td>
<td>Price</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>KTree Web Service</td>
<td>1234566</td>
<td>60.USD Per Hr</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>KTree Web Service</td>
<td>1234566</td>
<td>60.USD Per Hr</td>
</tr>
</table>
<hr>
</body>
</html>
CSS
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language. Basic formatting and styling can be done via HTML, but it’s better to use CSS for this.
A web application contains many pages, either dynamic or static. If we use HTML tags for styling the information we have to repeat this information in every page. Suppose we want to change the background color — we have to edit the HTML for every page that is part of the site.
Instead, we can use CSS to store our style definitions in one location, and refer each HTML page to that location. By changing the CSS file, we can change the background color on every page that looks to the stylesheet for style defintions.
CSS does more than just setting the background color, of course: it allows us to set colors for all sorts of elements, fonts, page layouts, and much more.
We have styled our previous example using CSS. Let’s say we are using tables on different pages, but using the same CSS styles. We can move all this style information out to its own file.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<!–– for simplicity we have kept the CSS in inline in the HTML – you can keep the css in any file with a .css extension and include it using <link rel=”stylesheet” href=”styles.css”> –>
<style>
table {
font-family: arial, sans-serif;
border-collapse: collapse;
width: 100%;
}
td, th {
border: 1px solid #dddddd;
text-align: left;
padding: 8px;
}
tr:nth-child(even) {
background-color: #dddddd;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h2>Price List</h2>
<table>
<tr>
<td>Product Name</td>
<td>Sku</td>
<td>Price</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>KTree Web Service</td>
<td>1234564</td>
<td>60.USD Per Hr</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>KTree Web Service</td>
<td>1234565</td>
<td>40.USD Per Hr</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>KTree Web Service</td>
<td>1234566</td>
<td>50.USD Per Hr</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
JavaScript
JavaScript is the third pillar of the web, alongside HTML and CSS, and it is normally used to make web pages interactive. To understand JavaScript (JS), we need to know what the DOM is.
The Document Object Model (DOM) is a language-independent application programming interface that turns the HTML document into a tree structure. The nodes of every document are organized in that tree structure, called the DOM tree, with the topmost node called the “Document Object.”
Sample DOM Tree (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
When an HTML page is rendered in the browser, the browser downloads the HTML into local memory and creates a DOM tree to display the page on screen.
Using JS, we can manipulate the DOM tree in several ways:
JS can modify the DOM tree by adding, changing, and removing all of the HTML elements and attributes in the page.
JS can change all of the CSS styles on the page.
JS can react to all of the existing events on the page.
JS can create new events within the page and then react to all of those events.
In our JavaScript example, we continue with our price list example by adding another column — Special Price — which is hidden by default. We’ll show it once the user clicks on it. In technical terms, we use a click event attached to the web element (anchor tag) and change the existing text of the web element, in other words manipulating the DOM. To do this, we have to use the browser’s accepted scripting language, which is always JavaScript.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<!–– for simplicity we have kept the CSS in inline in the HTML – you can keep the css in any file with a .css extension and include it using <link rel=”stylesheet” href=”styles.css”> –>
<style>
table {
font-family: arial, sans-serif;
border-collapse: collapse;
width: 100%;
}
td, th {
border: 1px solid #dddddd;
text-align: left;
padding: 8px;
}
tr:nth-child(even) {
background-color: #dddddd;
}
#specialprice {
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h2>Price List</h2>
<table>
<tr>
<td>Product Name</td>
<td>Sku</td>
<td>Price</td>
<td>Special Price</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>KTree Web Service</td>
<td>1234564</td>
<td>60.USD Per Hr</td>
<td id=”specialprice”> <a href=”” onclick=”return false;”> Click Here </a> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>KTree Web Service</td>
<td>1234565</td>
<td>40.USD Per Hr</td>
<td id=”specialprice2″> <a href=”” onclick=”return false;”> Click Here </a> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>KTree Web Service</td>
<td>1234566</td>
<td>50.USD Per Hr</td>
<td id=”specialprice3″> <a href=”” onclick=”return false;”> Click Here </a> </td>
</tr>
</table>
<script>
document.getElementById(“specialprice”).onclick = function() {myFunction()};
function myFunction() {
document.getElementById(“specialprice”).innerHTML = “20% Off”;
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
Forms
Up til now, we’ve only discussed getting data from the server. Forms are the other side of HTML, which allows us to send information to the server. We can use forms to either update existing information or add new information. The most commonly used methods in HTML forms are GET and POST.
Continue reading %Understand Web Development in Less than 1 Hour%
Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tympanus/~3/FWVNgdUEWZ8/
Inspirational Website of the Week: Aristide Benoist
A unique design with some fine artistic touches. Our pick this week.
Get inspired
This content is sponsored via Syndicate Ads
Northwestern’s Online MS in Information Design and Strategy
Learn how to translate information and data into meaningful visual forms, narratives, and interfaces.
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Dynamic Bézier Curves
You’ll learn a lot in this fantastic Bézier curve deep-dive with Josh Comeau.
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Cool Backgrounds
A great tool for creating nice looking backgrounds. Made by Moe Amaya.
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Web performance made easy (Google I/O ’18)
Ewa Gasperowicz and Addy Osmani show you how to find and fix the most common web performance bottlenecks to improve your UX by using tools like Lighthouse and DevTools.
Watch it
Learning Gutenberg: React 101
The fifth article in a series that will teach you Gutenberg, the new React-driven SPA editing experience in WordPress.
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Hello TensorFlow
A small example of using tensorflow.js explained by Monica Dinculescu.
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Creating The Feature Queries Manager DevTools Extension
An article by Ire Aderinokun where she explains how developer tools extensions are built with the example of the Feature Queries Manager.
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Winds 2.0
Winds 2.0 is an open source podcast and RSS reader created by Stream. Free desktop apps are available for OSx, Linux and Windows.
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Supporting CSS selectors when navigating to a URL fragment
An interesting proposal to support CSS selectors in URL fragments for HTML documents. This could be useful when linking to some part of a page without an ID.
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Encroachment (CSS-only)
A great CSS-only GIF recreation by Stephen Shaw.
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FacePause
An experimental Chrome extension that pauses YouTube videos when you look away.
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The biggest WTF in design right now
An illustrated guide on user flows by Alexander Handley.
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GDPR Hall of Shame
A curated collection of GDPR shutdowns and horror stories.
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Skeuomorphic Lever Checkbox
A very realistic looking level checkbox made by Jon Kantner.
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117 Essential Tokens Set
A great set of versatile icons and objects, free for a subscription.
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Ethnic Abstract Textures
Some lovely hand-made abstract textures in high resolution with bonus AI and EPS files.
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JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures
Algorithms and data structures implemented in JavaScript with explanations and links to further readings.
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Immersive Linear Algebra
A fantastic tool for learning linear algebra with interactive figures.
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40 Clothes & Shopping Vector Icons
Some modern icons related to fashion and shopping made by Kasra Design.
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Pure CSS watch animation
An impressive watch demo by Grzegorz Witczak.
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The complete solution to comply with the GDPR
Make your organization compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulation by using iubenda to generate a privacy and cookie policy for your site and app.
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Collective #418 was written by Pedro Botelho and published on Codrops.
Original Source: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/05/how-do-you-know-website-success/
How Do You Know Your Website Is A Success?
How Do You Know Your Website Is A Success?
Nick Babich
2018-05-29T16:30:32+02:00
2018-06-04T11:19:00+00:00
(This article is kindly sponsored by Adobe.) We live in a world where just about every business has an online presence. Let’s say you want to reach out to a business — what would be the first thing you would do? Well, you would probably look up their website to search for answers to your questions or simply any contact details you can find. With no doubt, the first impression of any website is now more important than ever.
There are more than 1.8 billion websites on the Internet right now, and the number is growing. The increase of the competition brings a great interest in examining the factors of success of a website. While no one will argue that it’s essential to have a successful website, it’s still not easy to understand what exactly success means and how to actually measure it.
Define What Site Success Means To You
Set A Global Goal
Finding the answers to questions such as “What are our goals?” and “What do we want to achieve with this website?” should be the first thing to do when starting a new project. Skipping a stage of defining global goals and moving directly to the design stage is a pretty common mistake among many product teams. Without knowing exactly what you want to achieve, your chances of making a positive impact with your website will be poor.
Every website needs a well-defined product strategy. A strategy sets the tone for all of the activities, and it gives a context that helps in making design decisions. When you have a solid understanding of what you expect to get out of your site, it helps you to work towards that goal.
Product strategy is a combination of achievable goals and visions that work together to align the team around desirable outcomes for both the business and your users. (Image credit: Melissa Perri) (Large preview)
Here are a few tips that help you set a goal:
Tie the purpose to business goals.
The website’s purpose should serve to support the company’s mission and make the business more effective in achieving that mission.
Make it specific.
Instead of saying something like “I want to have a strong online presence,” consider this instead: “Our website should be a place where users submit requests for our services. Our goal is to have 50% of our orders submitted online, not over the phone.”
Conduct competitor research.
List sites of your competitors which you find successful, and try to pinpoint why they are successful.
Strive To Create User-Focused Experience
Because visitors ultimately determine the success of a website, they should be in the spotlight during site’s development. As Dieter Rams says:
“You cannot understand good design if you do not understand people; design is made for people.”
Thus, start with gathering this understanding:
Portrait your ideal users.
Try to understand what content they might need/want, their browsing habits (how they prefer to interact with a website) and the level of their technical competence. This knowledge will help you appeal to them better.
Think about the goal of your visitors.
Put yourself in the shoes of your visitor. What do you want them to get done? Place an order? Reach you for a quote? Become a member? Drive the design from the user’s goals and tasks.* *Ideally, each page you design should have a goal for your users.
Create user journey map.
If you have an existing site, you can figure out typical ways people use it by creating user journey maps.
User journey map. (Image credit: Temkin Group)
8 Essential Characteristics Of Website Design That Influence Its Success
In this section, we aren’t going to discuss design implementation details (e.g. where a logo should be placed). We’ll be focusing on the main principles and approaches for effective web design. These principles will be reviewed from the angle of the first impression. It’s essential to focus on great user experience during the first-time visit. Generally, the better the first impression, the better the chance that users will stay for longer. But if the first impression is negative, it might make users want to avoid interacting with your product for years.
And how do we leave a good first impression? Good design. First impressions are 94% design related. While it’s impossible to define one-fits-all design decisions that will guarantee a successful site, it is still possible to focus on factors that are able to create a great first impression: the quality of content, usability, and visual aesthetics.
1. High-Quality Content
The copy used on your website is just as important as the website’s design; it’s the reason why people visit your website. More than 95 percent of information on the web is in the form of written language. Even if your site is beautifully designed, it’s no more than an empty frame without good content. A good website has both great design and great content.
“Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.”
— Jeffrey Zeldman
Match Users’ Expectations
Provide information your users expect to see. For example, if you design a website for a chain of restaurants, most visitors will expect to find the restaurants’ menus as well as maps that show where each restaurant is located.
Content That Builds Trust
Trust is what creates a persuasive power; trust makes the user believe in your products or services. That’s why it so important to build a sense of trust on your website. For example, if you design a website that will offer services, you should include content that will bolster a visitor’s confidence in those offerings. A simple way to accomplish this is to provide social proofs — put some testimonials on your site.
One great example is Basecamp. The company lists feedback from its clients together with a data statistic that reinforces the power of the social proof.
Basecamp pairs testimonials with research findings to create an ultimate persuasive effect.
Focus On Microcopy
Microcopy is the tiny words we use in user interfaces. These might be field or button labels, or description for forms and other UI objects. Right microcopy can influence business profits. But in order to write good microcopy, it’s essential to understand user’s intentions and emotions.
During the Google I/O 2017, Maggie Stanphill explained the possible business value of writing good microcopy. After the Google team changed ‘Book a room’ to ‘Check availability’ in the Hotel search on Google, the engagement rate increased by 17%. This happened because the first version of microcopy (‘Book a room’) was too committal for that stage of the user journey. Users didn’t want to book a room; they wanted to explore all available options (date range as well as prices).
Good microcopy is human-oriented. In this example, ‘Check availability’ meets the user where they are in their mindset.
Text Is Optimized For Scanning
It’s necessary to adjust content to users’ browsing habits. It’s a well-known fact that users don’t read online, they scan. When a new visitor approaches a web page, the first thing s/he does is tries to do is to scan the page and divide the content into digestible pieces of information. By scanning through key parts of the page, they are trying to determine if the content is relevant to their needs.
Here are a few tips on how to format your content to make it easy to scan:
Avoid long blocks of text without images.
With a huge probability, such content will be skipped. Use headings, paragraphs, or bullet points to break up a text.
Optimize layouts for natural scanning patterns.
Eye tracking studies have identified that people scan pages in an “F” pattern. We read the first few lines, but then they start skipping down the page, caching only parts of the message. For this reason, it’s important to keep your text frontloaded — put the most important concepts first, so our eyes catch those important words as we track down.
Users don’t read, they scan. This heatmap shows where people’s focal points land. Effectively designed websites work with a reader’s natural behavior. (Image credit: Useit)
Quick design tip: You can measure your readability score using a tool called Webpagefx.
Avoid Distraction
The human eye can instantly recognize moving objects. Moving objects such as animated banners or video advertising can capture users’ attention. An abundance of such content can lead to annoying and distracting experience. Thus, put an emphasis on a site with minimal distractions.
Heatmaps from eye-tracking studies: The areas where users looked the most are colored red; the yellow areas indicate fewer views. Green boxes are used to highlight the advertisements. (Image credit: NNGroup)
Contact Information
Make it easy for people to reach you. This requirement sounds pretty obvious; still, it’s quite a typical situation for first-time visitors to have to hunt for contact information. Don’t let that happen. Make a phone number, email, address and a contact form easily accessible.
Quick design tip: When designing your site, don’t make email or phone number a part of an image. Phone number/email should be in plain text so that users can copy this information.
Relevant Images And Videos In High Quality
Studies have proven that people are majorly visual learners. Most people are able to understand and grasp concepts far better when they are delivered in visual way.
Remember the old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words”? It’s relevant to web design. A simple way to increase visual appeal is to provide high-quality imagery or video content.
One great example is Tesla which doesn’t tell the benefits of its car but rather shows a quick video that makes it clear what it feels like to drive a Tesla:
Tesla uses a principle ‘show, don’t tell’ when demonstrating the benefits of using cars.
2. Simple Interactions
According to Hubspot survey, 76% of respondents mentioned ease of use as the most important characteristic of a website. That’s why the “Keep It Simple” principle (KIS) should play a primary role in the process of web design.
Cut Out The Noise
Cluttering a user interface overloads your user with too much information — every added button, image, and line of text makes the screen more complicated. Cutting out the clutter on a website will make the primary message more easily understood by visitors. Include only the elements that are most important for communication, and use enough whitespace. It will help to reduce the cognitive load for the visitors and will make it easier to perceive the information presented on the screen.
Quick design tip: Put more visual weight on important elements. Make important elements such as call-to-action buttons or login forms focal points so visitors see them right away. You can emphasize elements using different sizes or colors.
Lyft makes the most important information on a page (the call-to-action button) stand out.
Strong Visual Hierarchy
The better visual hierarchy your create, the easier your content will be perceived by users (Simon’s law). A grid layout allows you to organize information in a way that makes it easier for visitors to read and comprehend information presented on the page. Using grids makes it much easier to create a layout that feels balanced.
Use a grid layout when designing web experiences. Using grids in Adobe XD.
Good Navigation
Good navigation is one of the most important aspects of website usability. Even the most beautifully designed website will be useless if users aren’t able to find their way around.
When developing navigation for your website, think about what pages are most likely to be important to visitors, and how they will move from one page to another. Follow users’ expectations — create a predictable navigation structure and place it where users expect to see it.
Quick design tip: Reduce the total number of actions required for users to reach the destination. Try to follow the Three-click rule which means creating a structure that will enable users to find the information they are looking for within three clicks.
Recognizable Design Patterns
Design patterns are designer’s best friends. When designing your site, it’s worth remembering that users spend most of their time on other sites. Every time the user has to learn how something new works, it creates friction. By using recognizable conventions, you can reduce the learning curve. Recognizable UI patterns eventually help users to parse complicated tasks easily. Thus, when you follow users’ expectations and create a familiar experience (e.g. place UI elements in places where users expect to find them), site visitors can use their previous knowledge and act through intuition. This helps reduce the learning curve and the need to figure out how things work.
3. Fast Loading Time
As technology enables faster experiences, users’ willingness to wait has decreased. Slow loading time is one of the main reasons visitors leave websites. A typical user will only wait for a few seconds for your page to load. If nothing happens during this time, they will consider the site to be too slow, and will most likely navigate away to a competitor’s site.
Slow loading not only creates a lousy impression on users, but it also affects site’s search engine ranking, as slow-loading pages are reduced in rank in Google’s Search engine.
Test Your Website
There are tools available that allow you to test website performance. One of them is Google’s Test My Site which gives you an actionable report on how to speed up and improve your site. WebPage Test is another helpful tool which allows you to run a free website speed test from multiple locations around the globe, using real browsers (Internet Explorer and Chrome) at real consumer connection speeds.
The slower your website is, the higher your bounce rate will be. (Image credit: Luke W.)
Find What Is Causing The Slow Loading Time, And Fix The Problem
If slow loading is a typical situation for your website, try to find out what causes the problem and solve it. Typically, page load times are affected by:
Visual elements (images and animations).
HD images and smooth animation can only create good UX when they don’t affect loading time. Consider reading the article Image Optimization for tips on image optimization.
Custom fonts.
Like any other asset, it takes some time to download a custom font (and it takes more time if the font is located on a 3rd party service).
Business logic.
Whether or not a solution you’ve developed is optimized for fast loading time. There are a lot of things developers can do to minimize the loading time. For example, it’s possible to use file compression and decompression to improve the performance of а website.
Technical infrastructure.
An infrastructure is a place where you host your websites. It includes both hardware and software components as well as internet bandwidth.
Create A Perception Of Speed
If you can’t improve the actual performance of your website, you can try to create a perception of speed — how fast something feels is often more important than how fast it actually is. Employing a technique of skeleton screens can help you with that. A skeleton layout is a version of your page that displays while content is being loaded. Skeletons give the impression of speed — that something is happening more quickly than it really is and improve perceived load time.
This real estate website reuses some of the data from search results page (the image of the building and basic description) while the detailed information is loading. This creates a sense of immediate response even when some time required to load the data. (Image credit: Owen Campbell-Moore) (Large preview)
Check out this Codepen example of skeleton effect in pure CSS. It uses a pulsation effect to give users a feeling that website is alive and content is loading:
See the Pen Skeleton Screen with CSS by Razvan Caliman (@oslego) on CodePen.
4. Feeling A Sense Of Control
A sense of control remains one of the basic usability heuristics for user interface design. Effective interfaces instill a sense of control in their users.
Good Error Handling
To err is human. Errors occur when people engage with user interfaces. Sometimes, they happen because users make mistakes. Sometimes, they happen because a website fails. Whatever the cause, these errors and how they are handled, have a significant impact on the user experience. Bad error handling paired with useless error messages can fill users with frustration and can lead them to abandon your website. When errors occur, it’s essential to create effective error messages.
Make your website sound human even. Each error message your website display should be clear, clean, and useful.
Designers can use a tactic called design for failure in which you try to anticipate the places users might face problems and plan for such cases. Whereas implementing the ideal user journey is the end goal, the complexities of an individual user’s experience are rarely so cut and dried. Recognizing potential pain points and preparing for it using tools like failure mapping for error recovery helps to ensure that you’re putting forth the best experience you can for the majority of your users.
No Aggressive Pushers
We all know that feeling. You visit a new website, the content on the page seems to be interesting. You begin to read it and just when you are halfway through the text, you are suddenly interrupted by a huge overlay asking you to either subscribe to a newsletter or take advantage of an offer. In most cases, your immediate reaction will be either to close the overlay or to close the entire page, the overlay along with it.
Aggressive pushers such as pop-ups with promotional content will put most people on the defensive. According to the NN Group, pop-ups are the most hated web experience ever.
Aggressive pushers create bad user experience. (Image credit: Vitaly Dulenko) (Large preview)
Don’t Autoplay Video With Sound
When users arrive on a page, they don’t expect that it will play any sound. Most users don’t use headphones and will be stressed because they’ll need to figure out how to turn the sound off. In most cases, users will leave the website as soon as it plays. Thus, if you use autoplay video content on your site, set audio to off by default, with the option to turn it on.
5. Good Visual Appearance
Does an attractive design lead to more conversion? While there’s no direct connection between attractive design and conversion, visual appearance might increase chances for conversion. As Steven Bradley says:
“Human beings have an attractiveness bias; we perceive beautiful things as being better, regardless of whether they actually are better. All else being equal, we prefer beautiful things, and we believe beautiful things function better. As in nature, function can follow form.”
Capitalize On Trends
Just like with any other area of design, web design is constantly changing. Design trends come and go, and its necessary to be sure that your design doesn’t look dated. Familiarize yourself with latest trends and try to keep your design up to date by tuning your design.
Awwwards and Behance are great places which will help you be familiar with the latest trends.
Avoid Generic Stock Photos
Many corporate websites are notorious for using generic stock photos to build a sense of trust. Such photos rarely hold useful information. Usability tests show that generic photos and other decorative graphic elements don’t add any value to the design and more often impair rather than improve the user experience. Eye-tracking studies show that users usually overlook stock images.
An example of a stock photo
6. Design Is Accessible To All Groups Of Users
You can’t call your design successful if your audience has trouble using it. There’s a direct connection between bad UX and inaccessibility. One typical example of design decisions that often create terrible UX for the sake of beauty is using light grey text on light backgrounds. The example below was taken from one of the most popular powerful platforms for creating websites. Even a person with normal vision will struggle to read a text on this page, and there’s a huge possibility that a visually impaired person wouldn’t be able to read it at all.
Insufficient color contrast paired with small font size create readability issues.
The website you design should be accessible to all groups of users including blind, disabled or the elderly. Be sure to check WCAG documents and WUHCAG’s checklist.
7. Memorable Design
Taking into account the fact that almost all business have an online presence today — no matter what product or service you offer online — there are many other websites offering exactly what you do (perhaps even with the same benefits). It’s essential to set your website apart from the competition by crafting really memorable design.
Barbara Fredrickson and Daniel Kahneman proposed a psychological heuristic called the “peak-end rule” which dictates the way our brain works with information. The peak-end rule states that people judge an experience based mainly on how they felt at its peak (i.e., its most intense point) and at its end, rather than based on the total sum or average of every moment of the experience. The effect occurs regardless of whether the experience is pleasant or unpleasant. In other words, when we remember experiences, we tend to recall not entire experience but only key events that happened. That’s why it’s essential to create a spark that will stay in a user’s memory for a long time.
Color
Color hugely influences on what people remember, and how vividly they remember it. Selective use of color can trigger the memory and be that one added element that ensures your brand stays memorable and recognizable.
For example, when we think about Spotify, we usually think about vibrant colors. The service uses color as a brand and experience differentiator:
Spotify plays with colors to create a memorable experience.
Illustrations
Illustrations are a versatile tool useful in creating a unique design. From small icons to large hand-drawn hero sketches, illustrations bring a sense of fine craftsmanship in digital experience.
A straightforward way of using illustrations in web design is to tailor them to your messaging.
Illustrations can be a great supplement of the text copy. (Image credit: Evernote)
Using brand mascots in web design is another great example when illustrations can create a memorable experience. Mascots become the elements of identity and inter-connector between the user and the product.
By pairing illustrations with jokes, Smashing Magazine has developed a distinct design style that makes them memorable for anyone who aware of the brand.
Brand Consistency
Consistency is arguably the key rule to a successful brand. Inconsistency brings a huge problem — users won’t picture a specific thing when they think about a brand, and, as a result, it can quickly become forgettable. That’s why the website’s design should be consistent with your brand. Make sure that basic brand attributes such as brand colors, fonts, logos, and slogans are used consistently on the website.
Quick design tip: An excellent way to boost your ability to maintain a consistent brand design is through a style guide. Prepare it once and use it for each product you design.
McDonald’s website design is consistent with its brand.
Humor
Make your experiences fun, so people remember them. One good example is Mailchimp, a service used to schedule and deploy email campaigns. The company fulfills a fairly technical niche, but by using humor it transforms this dry task into an inviting experience. Mailchimp uses a mascot called Freddie von Chimpenheimer. Freddie often cracks jokes, and humor is an effective way to connect with people. This positive attitude will often lead to people sharing and even advocating for the product with their friends.
Freddie, the cartoon mascot of MailChimp, is a great emotional carrier for humor.
Mailchimp adds small and delightful surprises throughout the user journey and makes sending emails a lot more fun. (Large preview)
8. Design Is Optimized For Mobile
Just a decade ago, designing for the web meant designing for a desktop, now it means designing for mobile and desktop. Mobile phones and tablets are driving an increasing amount of web traffic, and the numbers are only going to grow. In 2018, more than 50 percent of all website traffic worldwide was generated through mobile phones.
Prioritize Content And Features
Optimizing web design for mobile is a lot more than just making your design responsive. It’s about content and feature prioritization. Taking medium limitations into account, the goal is to show only what your users need in this medium.
Focus on refining the experience around your core objectives. Know what the core purpose of your app is — analyze which features of your app are used the most and put the most effort into making that experience intuitive.
Measure Success
After we’ve defined what makes a site successful, it’s time to understand how to measure the success. Measuring a site’s success requires an in-depth look at the analytics and data. As the first step in the process of measuring usage data, it’s essential to define right metrics. Metrics will make it clear whether your design decision is working or not. There are two groups of metrics — marketing metrics and UX metrics. Both groups of metrics are essential to a site’s success.
Marketing Metrics
Acquisition
Acquisition includes information about site’s visitors — how many people visit your site and how do they find it. Acquisition metrics include:
Number of gross visits.
This is the most basic acquisition metric that you can track. It gives you a good baseline on how your site is doing, but it won’t tell you much without other metrics. For example, an increasing number of visitors does not necessarily mean success, because those visitors might not be relevant to your business goals.
Channels.
As well as knowing your top-level traffic numbers (number of gross visits), you should also know where your traffic is coming from. If you use Google Analytics, it organizes acquired website traffic into a few broad categories such as Direct, Organic Search, Referral, Social. These groupings allow you to immediately segment your traffic source and identify specific patterns of behavior for each source.
Points of entrance.
An entrance shows you what page people started their session on. You might think this would be the home page, when in fact that’s rarely the case, especially with referral and social traffic. If you go to the Behavior section of Google Analytics, you’ll be able to see your best-performing pages regarding traffic volume. Knowing what pages bring the most traffic is hugely important because it gives you reliable information on what content attracts people.
Engagement
Engagement measures the amount of time visitors stay on your website, as well as how many pages they visit. Engagement metrics help UX teams understand how much attention visitors give to a website.
Engagement metrics include:
Time spent on your site.
Time visitors spend on site is often equated with engagement. Generally, the more time users spend on the site, the more valuable it’s for them. However, there might be an exception to this rule. For example, users might spend more time on a site because it’s hard to complete a specific task (e.g., find the information they need).
Total number of pages visited during user session.
Generally, the more pages people visited, the better. However, it can also be an indicator of dissatisfaction – if people have to visit dozens of pages to find what they’re looking for, that often leads to unhappiness.
Bounce rate.
The bounce rate (reported as a %) enables you to track how many people visit only one page before leaving your site. Naturally, you want this percentage to be as low as possible. There are some factors which could contribute to a high bounce rate. Generally, a high percentage could point to the lack of relevant content or usability issues. But of course, this rule has exceptions. For example, a visitor may have come to your site just to find contact information about your company. Once they had your phone number or address, there was no need to visit another page.
Quick tips:
Create a list of top 10 pages visitors are most engaged with. The pages that users are spending most time may help you determine if your goals are in-line with the goals of users.
Track exit pages. It’s essential not only to track how a user gets to your site but also how they leave it. This metric is different than a bounce rate in that it tracks visitors who visited multiple pages (bounce rate is a single page metric). If a particular page has a high exit rate, it might be an indication of a problem.
Retention
There are two types of website visitors: first-time visitors and returning visitors. Retention is the percentage of return visitors — people who continue visiting your website within a specific time frame. When a team measures retention, it becomes much easier to distinguish new users from returning users, and, as a result, see how quickly user base is growing or stabilizing.
Retention can be distilled from the percentage of new sessions. By comparing the percentage of new sessions vs. returning visitors, you can determine if your website is attracting new visitors and whether it offers enough value so people return to it.
Conversion
The majority of websites have a goal of getting visitors to convert (take action), whether it is to purchase an item or sign up for a newsletter. That’s why conversion is the metric that everyone cares about the most. Aim to maximize the number of people who convert (e.g., buy something after they come to your site). Obviously, the higher the conversion rate, the better your website is doing.
A conversion rate can tell you a lot about the quality of your traffic. For example, having a low conversion rate while having a lot of unique visits can be an indication that you are attracting the wrong traffic.
Here are a few tips for measuring conversion:
It’s always better to select easy-to-measure activities. For example, it might be something as simple as contact form submissions. Contact form submissions can be a great indicator of your site’s success — if users prompt an inquiry this is a great indication that your site has engaged them.
For larger sites, it’s good to have many different conversion goals on one site. For example, an eCommerce store might have three conversion goals — a product purchase, a subscriber to an email list, a social share.
Pirate Metrics (AARRR Framework)
As you can see, there are a lot of metrics that can be used. But how do you figure out which metrics to implement and track?
In the attempt to simplify the task of selecting right metrics, Dave McClure created a framework called AARRR. This framework uses a customer lifecycle as a foundation (the idea that visitors go from being a first-time visitor to a returning visitor), and tracks users through a conversion funnel over time. The life cycle consists of 5 steps:
Acquisition
Users come to the site from various channels.
Activation
Users enjoy their first visit (happy user experience).
Retention
Users come back and visit the site multiple times
Referral
Users like the product enough to refer it to others.
Revenue
Users conduct some type of monetization behavior.
Pirate metrics can help you determine where you should focus on optimizing your marketing funnel.
User Experience Metrics
While marketing metrics define the success of a product based on the conversion, user experience metrics focus on the quality of interaction with a product. Focusing on business goals does not necessarily lead to a better user experience. UX metrics can complement marketing metrics by concentrating on the critical aspects of user experience.
The Quality Of User Experience (HEART Framework)
When it comes to measuring user experience, it’s always hard to define specific metrics. Of course, there are high-level UX metrics that correlate with the success of user experiences such as usability, engagement, and conversion. But it might be hard to define metrics that will be relevant to a particular product. In the attempt to simplify this task, the Google team created a framework called HEART. This framework is intended to help designers focus on the product they create, and the user experience it provides. HEART uses some metrics that we already mentioned in the marketing section, but from a different angle.
Happiness
Measures of user attitudes: satisfaction, perceived ease of use, net-promoter score. This metric can be collected via survey.
Engagement
Level of user involvement. Engagement is typically measured as depth of interaction over some time period. For example, the number of visits per user per month.
Adoption
Gaining new users of a product or feature. For example, the number of users who tried new product features in the last week.
Retention
The rate at which existing users are returning. For example, for a web service this might be the number of active users remaining present over time. For e-commerce website, this might be the number of repeat purchases.
Task Success
This category is most applicable to areas of your product that are task-focused. It includes behavior metrics such as efficiency (e.g. time to complete a task), effectiveness (e.g. percent of tasks completed), and error rate. For example, for e-commerce website this might be the number of search result success.
The HEART framework is very flexible — it can be applied to a specific feature or a whole product. It’s important to mention that you don’t need to collect metrics in all of HEART categories — you should choose only the most important for your particular project. It’s possible to choose metrics by following a process of Goals-Signals-Metrics.
The Goals-Signals-Metrics Process
The Goals-Signals-Metrics process helps you to identify meaningful metrics you’ll actually use.
Google HEART framework and Goals-Signals-Metrics process
The process of selecting metrics you can implement and track starts with goals. To define a goal, you need to focus on knowing what determines success. This is where the HEART categories will be particularly useful. For example, if you create a news site you might set a goal in the engagement category; the aim would be to have users enjoy the articles they read, and to keep them browsing to discover more articles from different categories.
Here are two tips that will help you define better goal:
*Don’t define your goals in terms of your existing metrics. *It’s a common pitfall when a team defines goals based on information it has. As a result, a goal might sound as something like ‘We need to increase traffic to our site.’ Yes, everyone wants to have more visitors, but does more visitors will move you towards your goal? Not necessary.
Work with team and stakeholders to identify the goals. You may not realize that different members of your team have different ideas about the goals of your project. Identifying goals early on in design process provides an opportunity to build consensus about where you are headed. Make sure that everyone on the team understands the proposed solution in sufficient detail.
After identifying your goals, you need to think about what user actions will result in progress toward these goals. These actions are your signals. There are usually a large number of potentially useful signals for a particular goal. Once you have identified some potential signals, you may need to do research or analysis to choose the ones that are most relevant. If we circle back to our example with a news site, an engagement signal for it might be the number of articles users read on the site.
Here are a few tips:
Consider how easy or difficult is to track each signal. It’s preferable to focus on signals that can be monitored automatically (e.g. your product can log the relevant information so you can use it for further analysis).
Try to choose signals that are sensitive to changes in your design. This way you will be able to analyze the data you have to understand whether the design changes benefit your users or not.
Don’t ignore negative signals. Identifying signals for possible missteps (e.g. number of errors during particular interaction) can help you reveal pain points in your product.
Once you’ve chosen signals, you can refine them into metrics you’ll track over time. In our news site engagement example, we might implement “how long users spend reading news” as “the average number of minutes spent reading news per user per day.”
Prioritize your metrics.
Focus on tracking the metrics related to your top goals.
Don’t add metrics for sake of adding metrics.
Avoid the temptation to add “interesting stats” to the list of metrics. Always ask yourself whether you will actually use these numbers to help you make a decision.
The metrics you track should be tied back to design decisions.
When you see a change, you should be absolutely clear on what has caused that change.
What Can Influence Success
Follow TETO Principle
How to make sure that website meets user’s expectations? You can’t just assume that it does — you need to test your design to see how users engage with it. Testing can reveal much more than how usable a site is — it can also demonstrate the users’ emotional response to the design. That’s why TETO-principle (test early, test often) should be applied to every web design project.
Don’t expect to build a perfect product right from the first attempt.
Product design is an ongoing journey for both you and your users. That means that you design something, test it, rework it and then test it again.
Use comparative testing to find the best solution for your users.
If you have multiple solutions to a particular problem and not sure what solution works best for your product, you can use A/B testing to validate it. Compare what users do in one scenario vs. another, and see which design is the most effective.
Collect qualitative feedback.
All measurable data that we’ve talked about in previous sections can tell you a lot of answers on “*how many*” questions. But this data won’t tell you why people interact in a way they do. Facing readability issues, hesitation when filling out a payment form, using search because site’s navigation is really hard to deal with — all of these types of details are critical to understanding the user experience. They might be a reason why people abandon a process and leave the site. It’s possible to find answers to why questions by observing and interviewing your users.
User interview (Illustration by Igor Kopelnitsky)
Data-Informed, Not Data-Driven Design
When product teams collect data, they usually follow either data-driven or data-informed design process. The latter is more preferable. Design shouldn’t be driven by data, it should be informed by data.
Don’t Be Obsessed Over Numbers
A lot of metrics get reported simply because they are flowing in from analytics tool. While it’s tempting to report a lot of different things and hope that this will make your report more valuable, in reality, this usually leads to more complex reports that are hard to read.
Don’t Fall Into The Trap Of Complete Redesign
All too often design teams try to introduce a complete rework for a solution which they believe will result in more successful web experience. Jared Spool calls major product redesign a Flip-the-Switch strategy — “the most ineffective way to get major changes into a design.” In the article, “ The Quiet Death of the Major Re-Launch,” he shares a story on the eBay redesign — and it’s a great reminder of why users don’t like dramatic changes. A complete redesign that brings new visual and interaction design might be too much change and have an adverse effect.
If you have an existing website, instead of investing in a large scale redesign focus on subtle evolution, make small and incremental changes that can (over time) improve conversions without visitors even noticing that changes have been made.
Conclusion
So, how do you know that your website is a success? As a product creator, you must first define what success means to you. For that, it’s always important to have a big picture in mind of what it is that you want to achieve.
The next step would be to focus on metrics. Metrics will show you how a site changes over time. They will help you fill in the blanks between what has happened and why.
Recommended Reading
“A Comprehensive Guide To Web Design,” Nick Babich, Smashing Magazine
“Choosing The Right Metrics For User Experience,” Pamela Pavliscak, UXmatters
“How To Choose The Right UX metrics For Your Product,” Kerry Rodden, Medium
“Startup Metrics For Pirates,” Dave McClure, SlideShare, LinkedIn
This article is part of the UX design series sponsored by Adobe. Adobe XD tool is made for a fast and fluid UX design process, as it lets you go from idea to prototype faster. Design, prototype and share — all in one app. You can check out more inspiring projects created with Adobe XD on Behance, and also sign up for the Adobe experience design newsletter to stay updated and informed on the latest trends and insights for UX/UI design.
(ra, il)
Original Source: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/06/reference-guide-typography-mobile-web-design/
A Reference Guide For Typography In Mobile Web Design
A Reference Guide For Typography In Mobile Web Design
Suzanna Scacca
2018-06-01T13:17:42+02:00
2018-06-01T11:47:07+00:00
With mobile taking a front seat in search, it’s important that websites are designed in a way that prioritize the best experience possible for their users. While Google has brought attention to elements like pop-ups that might disrupt the mobile experience, what about something as seemingly simple as choice of typography?
The answer to the typography question might seem simple enough: what works on desktop should work on mobile so long as it scales well. Right?
While that would definitely make it a lot easier on web designers, that’s not necessarily the case. The problem in making that statement a decisive one is that there haven’t been a lot of studies done on the subject of mobile typography in recent years. So, what I intend to do today is give a brief summary of what it is we know about typography in web design, and then see what UX experts and tests have been able to reveal about using typography for mobile.
Understanding The Basics Of Typography In Modern Web Design
Look, I know typography isn’t the most glamorous of subjects. And, being a web designer, it might not be something you spend too much time thinking about, especially if clients bring their own style guides to you prior to beginning a project.
That said, with mobile-first now here, typography requires additional consideration.
Nope, we can’t do any magic tricks, but we have articles, books and webinars featuring techniques we all can use to improve our work. Smashing Members get a seasoned selection of magic front-end tricks — e.g. live designing sessions and perf audits, too. Just sayin’! 😉
Explore Smashing Wizardry →
Typography Terminology
Let’s start with the basics: terminology you’ll need to know before digging into mobile typography best practices.
Typography: This term refers to the technique used in styling, formatting, and arranging “printed” (as opposed to handwritten) text.
Typeface: This is the classification system used to label a family of characters. So, this would be something like Arial, Times New Roman, Calibri, Comic Sans, etc.
A typical offering of typefaces in word processing applications. (Source: Google Docs) (Large preview)
Font: This drills down further into a website’s typeface. The font details the typeface family, point size, and any special stylizations applied. For instance, 11-point Arial in bold.
An example of the three elements that define a font. (Source: Google Docs) (Large preview)
Size: There are two ways in which to refer to the size (or height) of a font: the word processing size in points or the web design size in pixels. For the purposes of talking about mobile web design, we use pixels.
Here is a line-by-line comparison of various font sizes:
An example of how the same string of text appears at different sizes. (Source: Google Docs) (Large preview)
As you can see in WordPress, font sizes are important when it comes to establishing hierarchy in header text:
Header size defaults available with a WordPress theme. (Source: WordPress) (Large preview)
Weight: This is the other part of defining a typeface as a font. Weight refers to any special styles applied to the face to make it appear heavier or lighter. In web design, weight comes into play in header fonts that complement the typically weightless body text.
Here is an example of options you could choose from in the WordPress theme customizer:
Sample font weights available with a WordPress theme. (Source: WordPress) (Large preview)
Kerning: This pertains to the space between two letters. It can be adjusted in order to create a more aesthetically pleasing result while also enhancing readability. You will need a design software like Photoshop to make these types of adjustments.
Tracking: Tracking, or letter-spacing, is often confused with kerning as it too relates to adding space in between letters. However, whereas kerning adjusts spacing between two letters in order to improve appearances, tracking is used to adjust spacing across a line. This is used more for the purposes of fixing density issues while reading.
To give you a sense for how this differs, here’s an example from Mozilla on how to use tracking to change letter-spacing:
This is what normal tracking looks like. (Source: Mozilla) (Large preview)
This is what (tighter) -1px tracking looks like. (Source: Mozilla) (Large preview)
This is what (looser) 1px tracking looks like. (Source: Mozilla) (Large preview)
Leading: Leading, or line spacing, is the amount of distance granted between the baselines of text (the bottom line upon which a font rests). Like tracking, this can be adjusted to fix density issues.
If you’ve been using word processing software for a while, you’re already familiar with leading. Single-spaced text. Double-spaced text. Even 1.5-spaced text. That’s leading.
The Role Of Typography In Modern Web Design
As for why we care about typography and each of the defining characteristics of it in modern web design, there’s a good reason for it. While it would be great if a well-written blog post or super convincing sales jargon on a landing page were enough to keep visitors happy, that’s not always the case. The choices you make in terms of typography can have major ramifications on whether or not people even give your site’s copy a read.
These are some of the ways in which typography affects your end users:
Reinforce Branding
Typography is another way in which you create a specific style for your web design. If images all contain clean lines and serious faces, you would want to use an equally buttoned-up typeface.
Set the Mood
It helps establish a mood or emotion. For instance, a more frivolous and light-bodied typeface would signal to users that the brand is fun, young and doesn’t take itself seriously.
Give It a Voice
It conveys a sense of personality and voice. While the actual message in the copy will be able to dictate this well, using a font that reinforces the tone would be a powerful choice.
Encourage Reading
As you can see, there are a number of ways in which you can adjust how type appears on a screen. If you can give it the right sense of speed and ease, you can encourage more users to read through it all.
Allow for Scanning
Scanning or glancing (which I’ll talk about shortly) is becoming more and more common as people engage with the web on their smart devices. Because of this, we need ways to format text to improve scannability and this usually involves lots of headers, pull quotes and in-line lists (bulleted, numbered, etc.).
Improve Accessibility
There is a lot to be done in order to design for accessibility. Your choice of font plays a big part in that, especially as the mobile experience has to rely less on big, bold designs and swatches of color and more on how quickly and well you can get visitors to your message.
Because typography has such a diverse role in the user experience, it’s a matter that needs to be taken seriously when strategizing new designs. So, let’s look at what the experts and tests have to say about handling it for mobile.
Typography For Mobile Web Design: What You Need To Know
Too small, too light, too fancy, too close together… You can run into a lot of problems if you don’t strike the perfect balance with your choice of typography in design. On mobile, however, it’s a bit of a different story.
I don’t want to say that playing it safe and using the system default from Google or Apple is the way to go. After all, you work so hard to develop unique, creative and eye-catching designs for your users. Why would you throw in the towel at this point and just slap Roboto all over your mobile website?
We know what the key elements are in defining and shaping a typeface and we also know how powerful fonts are within the context of a website. So, let’s drill down and see what exactly you need to do to make your typography play well with mobile.
1. Size
In general, the rule of thumb is that font size needs to be 16 pixels for mobile websites. Anything smaller than that could compromise readability for visually impaired readers. Anything too much larger could also make reading more difficult. You want to find that perfect Goldilocks formula and, time and time again, it comes back to 16 pixels.
In general, that rule is a safe one to play by when it comes to the main body text of your mobile website. However, what exactly are you allowed to do for header text? After all, you need to be able to distinguish your main headlines from the rest of the text. Not just for the sake of calling attention to bigger messages, but also for the purposes of increasing scannability of a mobile web page.
The Nielsen Norman Group reported on a study from MIT that covered this exact question. What can you do about text that users only have to glance at? In other words, what sort of sizing can you use for short strings of header text?
Here is what they found:
Short, glanceable strings of text lead to faster reading and greater comprehension when:
They are larger in size (specifically, 4mm as opposed to 3mm).
They are in all caps.
Lettering width is regular (and not condensed).
In sum:
Lowercase lettering required 26% more time for accurate reading than uppercase, and condensed text required 11.2% more time than regular. There were also significant interaction effects between case and size, suggesting that the negative effects of lowercase letters are exacerbated with small font sizes.
I’d be interested to see how the NerdWallet website does, in that case. While I do love the look of this, they have violated a number of these sizing and styling suggestions:
NerdWallet’s use of all-caps and smaller font sizes on mobile. (Source: NerdWallet) (Large preview)
Having looked at this a few times now, I do think the choice of a smaller-sized font for the all-caps header is an odd choice. My eyes are instantly drawn to the larger, bolder text beneath the main header. So, I think there is something to MIT’s research.
Flywheel Sports, on the other hand, does a great job of exemplifying this point.
Flywheel Sports’ smart font choices for mobile. (Source: Flywheel Sports) (Large preview)
There’s absolutely no doubt where the visitors’ attention needs to go: to the eye-catching header. It’s in all caps, it’s larger than all the other text on the page, and, although the font is incredibly basic, its infusion with a custom handwritten-style type looks really freaking cool here. I think the only thing I would fix here is the contrast between the white and yellow fonts and the blue background.
Just remember: this only applies to the sizing (and styling) of header text. If you want to keep large bodies of text readable, stick to the aforementioned sizing best practices.
2. Color and Contrast
Color, in general, is an important element in web design. There’s a lot you can convey to visitors by choosing the right color palette for designs, images and, yes, your text. But it’s not just the base color of the font that matters, it’s also the contrast between it and the background on which it sits (as evidenced by my note above about Flywheel Sports).
For some users, a white font on top of a busy photo or a lighter background may not pose too much of an issue. But “too much” isn’t really acceptable in web design. There should be no issues users encounter when they read text on a website, especially from an already compromised view of it on mobile.
Which is why color and contrast are top considerations you have to make when styling typography for mobile.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) has clear recommendations regarding how to address color contrast in section 1.4.3. At a minimum, the WCAG suggests that a contrast of 4.5 to 1 should be established between the text and background for optimal readability. There are a few exceptions to the rule:
Text sized using 18-point or a bold 14-point only needs a contrast of 3 to 1.
Text that doesn’t appear in an active part of the web page doesn’t need to abide by this rule.
The contrast of text within a logo can be set at the designer’s discretion.
If you’re unsure of how to establish that ratio between your font’s color and the background upon which it sits, use a color contrast checking tool like WebAIM.
An example of how to use the WebAIM color contrast checker tool. (Source: WebAIM) (Large preview)
The one thing I would ask you to be mindful of, however, is using opacity or other color settings that may compromise the color you’ve chosen. While the HEX color code will check out just fine in the tool, it may not be an accurate representation of how the color actually displays on a mobile device (or any screen, really).
To solve this problem and ensure you have a high enough contrast for your fonts, use a color eyedropper tool built into your browser like the ones for Firefox or Chrome. Simply hover the eyedropper over the color of the background (or font) on your web page, and let it tell you what the actual color code is now.
Here is an example of this in action: Dollar Shave Club.
This website has a rotation of images in the top banner of the home page. The font always remains white, but the background rotates.
Dollar Shave Club’s home page banner with a grey background. (Source: Dollar Shave Club) (Large preview)
Dollar Shave Club’s home page banner with a beige/taupe background. (Source: Dollar Shave Club) (Large preview)
Dollar Shave Club’s home page banner with a purple background. (Source: Dollar Shave Club) (Large preview)
Based on what we know now, the purple is probably the only one that will pass with flying colors. However, for the purposes of showing you how to work through this exercise, here is what the eyedropper tool says about the HEX color codes for each of the backgrounds:
Grey: #9a9a9a
Beige/taupe: #ffd0a8
Purple: #4c2c59.
Here is the contrast between these colors and the white font:
Grey: 2.81 to 1
Beige/taupe: 1.42 to 1
Purple: 11.59 to 1.
Clearly, the grey and beige backgrounds are going to lend themselves to a very poor experience for mobile visitors.
Also, if I had to guess, I’d say that “Try a risk-free Starter Set now.” is only a 10-point font (which is only about 13 pixels). So, the size of the font is also working against the readability factor, not to mention the poor choice of colors used with the lighter backgrounds.
The lesson here is that you should really make some time to think about how color and contrast of typography will work for the benefit of your readers. Without these additional steps, you may unintentionally be preventing visitors from moving forward on your site.
3. Tracking
Plain and simple: tracking in mobile web design needs to be used in order to control density. The standard recommendation is that there be no more than between 30 and 40 characters to a line. Anything more or less could affect readability adversely.
While it does appear that Dove is pushing the boundaries of that 40-character limit, I think this is nicely done.
Dove’s use of even tracking and (mostly) staying within the 40-character limit. (Source: Dove) (Large preview)
The font is so simple and clean, and the tracking is evenly spaced. You can see that, by keeping the amount of words on a line relegated to the recommended limits, it gives this segment of the page the appearance that it will be easy to read. And that’s exactly what you want your typography choices to do: to welcome visitors to stop for a brief moment, read the non-threatening amount of text, and then go on their way (which, hopefully, is to conversion).
4. Leading
According to the NNG, content that appears above the fold on a 30-inch desktop monitor equates to five swipes on a 4-inch mobile device. Granted, this data is a bit old as most smartphones are now between five and six inches:
Average smartphone screen sizes from 2015 to 2021. (Source: TechCrunch) (Large preview)
Even so, let’s say that equates to three or four good swipes of the smartphone screen to get to the tip of the fold on desktop. That’s a lot of work your mobile visitors have to do to get to the good stuff. It also means that their patience will already be wearing thin by the time they get there. As the NNG pointed out, a mobile session, on average, usually lasts about only 72 seconds. Compare that to desktop at 150 seconds and you can see why this is a big deal.
This means two things for you:
You absolutely need to cut out the excess on mobile. If this means creating a completely separate and shorter set of content for mobile, do it.
Be very careful with leading.
You’ve already taken care to keep optimize your font size and width, which is good. However, too much leading and you could unintentionally be asking users to scroll even more than they might have to. And with every scroll comes the possibility of fatigue, boredom, frustration, or distraction getting in the way.
So, you need to strike a good balance here between using line spacing to enhance readability while also reigning in how much work they need to do to get to the bottom of the page.
The Hill Holliday website isn’t just awesome inspiration on how to get a little “crazy” with mobile typography, but it also has done a fantastic job in using leading to make larger bodies of text easier to read:
Hill Holliday uses the perfect ratio of leading between lines and paragraphs. (Source: Hill Holliday) (Large preview)
Different resources will give you different guidelines on how to create spacing for mobile devices. I’ve seen suggestions for anywhere between 120% to 150% of the font’s point size. Since you also need to consider accessibility when designing for mobile, I’m going to suggest you follow WCAG’s guidelines:
Spacing between lines needs to be 1.5 (or 150%, whichever ratio works for you).
Spacing between paragraphs then needs to be 2.5 (or 250%).
At the end of the day, this is about making smart decisions with the space you’re given to work with. If you only have a minute to hook them, don’t waste it with too much vertical space. And don’t turn them off with too little.
5. Acceptable Fonts
Before I break down what makes for an acceptable font, I want to first look at what Android’s and Apple’s typeface defaults are. I think there’s a lot we can learn just by looking at these choices:
Android
Google uses two typefaces for its platforms (both desktop and mobile): Roboto and Noto. Roboto is the primary default. If a user visits a website in a language that doesn’t accept Roboto, then Noto is the secondary backup.
This is Roboto:
A snapshot of the Roboto character set. (Source: Roboto) (Large preview)
It’s also important to note that Roboto has a number of font families to choose from:
Other options of Roboto fonts to choose from. (Source: Roboto) (Large preview)
As you can see, there are versions of Roboto with condensed kerning, a heavier and serifed face as well as a looser, serif-like option. Overall, though, this is just a really clean and simply stylized typeface. You’re not likely to stir up any real emotions when using this on a website, and it may not convey much of a personality, but it’s a safe, smart choice.
Apple
Apple has its own set of typography guidelines for iOS along with its own system typeface: San Francisco.
The San Francisco font for Apple devices. (Source: San Francisco) (Large preview)
For the most part, what you see is what you get with San Francisco. It’s just a basic sans serif font. If you look at Apple’s recommended suggestions on default settings for the font, you’ll also find it doesn’t even recommend using bold stylization or outlandish sizing, leading or tracking rules:
Default settings and suggestions for the San Francisco typeface. (Source: San Francisco) (Large preview)
Like with pretty much everything else Apple does, the typography formula is very basic. And, you know what? It really works. Here it is in action on the Apple website:
Apple makes use of its own typography best practices. (Source: Apple) (Large preview)
Much like Google’s system typeface, Apple has gone with a simple and classic typeface. While it may not help your site stand out from the competition, it will never do anything to impair the legibility or readability of your text. It also would be a good choice if you want your visuals to leave a greater impact.
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My Recommendations
And, so, this now brings me to my own recommendations on what you should use in terms of type for mobile websites. Here’s the verdict:
Don’t be afraid to start with a system default font. They’re going to be your safest choices until you get a handle on how far you can push the limits of mobile typography.
Use only a sans serif or serif font. If your desktop website uses a decorative or handwritten font, ditch it for something more traditional on mobile.
That said, you don’t have to ignore decorative typefaces altogether. In the examples from Hill Holliday or Flywheel Sports (as shown above), you can see how small touches of custom, non-traditional type can add a little flavor.
Never use more than two typefaces on mobile. There just isn’t enough room for visitors to handle that many options visually.
Make sure your two typefaces complement one another. Specifically, look for faces that utilize a similar character width. The design of each face may be unique and contrast well with the other, but there should still be some uniformity in what you present to mobile visitors’ eyes.
Avoid typefaces that don’t have a distinct set of characters. For instance, compare how the uppercase “i”, lowercase “l” and the number “1” appear beside one another. Here’s an example of the Myriad Pro typeface from the Typekit website:
Myriad Pro’s typeface in action. (Source: Typekit) (Large preview)
While the number “1” isn’t too problematic, the uppercase “i” (the first letter in this sequence) and the lowercase “l (the second) are just too similar. This can create some unwanted slowdowns in reading on mobile.
Also, be sure to review how your font handles the conjunction of “r” and “n” beside one another. Can you differentiate each letter or do they smoosh together as one indistinguishable unit? Mobile visitors don’t have time to stop and figure out what those characters are, so make sure you use a typeface that gives each character its own space.
Use fonts that are compatible across as many devices as possible. Your best bets will be: Arial, Courier New, Georgia, Tahoma, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS and Verdana.
A list of system default typefaces for various mobile devices. (Source: tinytype) (Large preview)
Another view of the table that includes some Android-supported typefaces. (Source: tinytype) (Large preview)
I think the Typeform website is a good example of one that uses a “safe” typeface choice, but doesn’t prevent them from wowing visitors with their message or design.
Typeform’s striking typeface has nothing to do with the actual font. (Source: Typeform) (Large preview)
It’s short, to the point, perfectly sized, well-positioned, and overall a solid choice if they’re trying to demonstrate stability and professionalism (which I think they are).
When you’re feeling comfortable with mobile typography and want to branch out a little more, take a look at this list of the best web-safe typefaces from WebsiteSetup. You’ll find here that most of the choices are your basic serif and sans serif types. It’s definitely nothing exciting or earth-shattering, but it will give you some variation to play with if you want to add a little more flavor to your mobile type.
Wrapping Up
I know, I know. Mobile typography is no fun. But web design isn’t always about creating something exciting and cutting edge. Sometimes sticking to practical and safe choices is what will guarantee you the best user experience in the end. And that’s what we’re seeing when it comes to mobile typography.
The reduced amount of real estate and the shorter times-on-site just don’t lend themselves well to the experimental typography choices (or design choices, in general) you can use on desktop. So, moving forward, your approach will have to be more about learning how to reign it in while still creating a strong and consistent look for your website.
(lf, ra, yk, il)
Original Source: https://inspiredm.com/exclusive-freebie-world-cup-football-templates/
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The post Exclusive Freebie: WORLD CUP FOOTBALL TEMPLATES by BrandPacks appeared first on Inspired Magazine.
Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tympanus/~3/7ZFEUgHU6OI/
Inspirational Website of the Week: Studio Regale
A very different kind of web experience with lots of interesting goodies. Our pick this week.
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UTC is Enough for Everyone, Right?
A brilliant write-up on time for programmers by Zach Holman.
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From Beautiful Maps to Actionable Insights: Introducing kepler.gl, Uber’s Open Source Geospatial Toolbox
Shan He from Uber Engineering introduces kepler.gl for creating beautiful maps.
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Sculpting Software Animation
Pasquale D’Silva’s interesting guide to designing animations.
Read it
Proppy
ProppyJS is a small JavaScript library for composing props (objects that components receive to render themselves) which can then be used in a components-based UI framework like React or Vue.js.
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Critters
A Webpack plugin to inline your critical CSS and lazy-load the rest.
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Whimsical Wireframes
Whimsical includes a rich library of configurable elements for fast mockup creation with collaboration in real-time.
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A private URL shortener just for your team.
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Why is Front-End Development So Unstable?
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Jeeliz Face Filter
A face detection and tracking library in JavaScript based on WebGL deep learning.
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Pawtastic UI Kit for Adobe XD
A beautiful UI Kit to get you started with Adobe XD.
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Building a responsive image
A step-by-step guide for creating a responsive logo by Nils Binder.
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Free Font: Bedebah
A unique looking display typeface designed by Holis Majid.
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Solving Life’s Problems with CSS
A great article where Diana Smith shares a nifty CSS technique she used for creating Francine.
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Scantron Answer Sheet
A realistic looking Scantron answer sheet replication powered by CSS grid by Jon Kantner.
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Prerender-loader
Pre-rendering describes the process of rendering a client-side application at build time, producing useful static HTML that can be sent to the browser instead of an empty bootstrapping page.
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Buttons falling apart
A playful shattering button demo by Mikael Ainalem.
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code.xyz
An embeddable development environment for easily building APIs, webhooks, and workflow automation tasks that run atop StdLib infrastructure. Read more about it here.
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A secure TypeScript runtime on V8 that supports TypeScript 2.8 out of the box. By Ryan Dahl.
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Grid System Library
KK UI Store’s library of grid systems for iOS, Android and Bootstrap.
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Bolsters Design Project
Some wonderful and inspiring UI design work by Tai Chen.
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Collective #420 was written by Pedro Botelho and published on Codrops.
Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/1stwebdesigner/~3/44dpaH-PLD4/
Usually, the matter of security is something web developers are concerned with. Vulnerabilities can be caused by poorly written code, software not updated by users, something malicious injected into the site, or hackers finding a way to break through the main login area. However a website gets compromised, you don’t often hear stories about a design gone rogue. As such, web designers might not be too concerned with security or what role their design elements play within it.
That said, there are certain design elements that could impact your site’s security. Understanding how those elements may be compromised and how they affect your site will help you make smarter choices when it comes to using them. It’s simply a matter of knowing what they are, so you can be on the lookout.
If it’s not a part of your process yet, then I’m going to suggest that web security become something you pay closer attention to. Not sure exactly how or why that should be? Let’s take a look at the 8 design elements that have the potential to affect your site’s security.
1. Compromised Themes
Whenever you use a third-party software in order to build or start a design, be extra careful in which ones you choose. Even if you download or purchase a theme from a trusted repository, you could still run into trouble. Their software is just as susceptible to a security breach as any other piece of software.
Unfortunately, it’s not always the theme that’s been compromised either. Take the TimThumb exploit, for example. An image resizing tool called TimThumb was included in a number of WordPress themes, which opened any user of that theme to attack.
2. Compromised Plugins
Third-party extensions are another tool designers often use to create advanced or complicated design elements on websites. Again, because software is particularly vulnerable to hackers, you have to be very careful in which ones you use and how you maintain them.
The image slider plugin, Slider Revolution (RevSlider), was one such case of an exploit introduced to websites by a third-party extension.
3. Compromised Components
For those of you who code design elements from-scratch, you’re not necessarily any safer than plugin and theme users are from security breaches. Especially if you utilize pre-written components like CSS or JavaScript snippets, libraries, or frameworks.
That’s not to say you can’t trust code from others, but you should, again, be mindful of the quality of component you hook into your design.
4. Malicious File Uploads
In order for a website to be successful in converting visitors to paying customers or subscribed members, there needs to be a way for it to actively engage with them. Contact forms and comments systems can be particularly troublesome when they’re not protected against spam. However, there are also design elements that can come from external users that cause issues with security.
Specifically, if your website accepts file uploads from users–for instance, if users upload visuals to guest-submitted content or submit images for a contest–you could be putting your site at risk. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t accept media from other users; it just means having your developer implement ways to better vet those files and ensure it’s not a way to inject malicious code.
5. Malvertising
There are a number of ways to monetize a website. But if you want to do so with an element that more seamlessly integrates with your design, you would probably use a system like AdSense that places ad content on your site. Again, though, you have to trust that the third party behind the ad content doesn’t mean your site or its visitors any harm.
In 2015, AdSense made the news when malvertising campaigns were discovered on users’ websites. These ads seemed harmless in nature until visitors started being redirected to scam sites.
6. Phishing Pages
When you design a site, you’re very careful about including pages that are necessary for the user’s experience. Every now and again, you may build a landing page that exists outside of the navigation, but is there for the purposes of promoting something special. This is a commonly used marketing tactic.
However, hackers are well-aware of this, too, which is why some of them are able to get away with planting fake pages on legit websites. This is what’s known as a phishing page and it’s built with the purposes of installing malware on a visitor’s computer or directing them to a scam site.
7. Infected Images
Did you know that malware can be hidden inside of images, too? In 2011, this very problem was discovered within Google Images. In 2015, Saumil Shah gave a presentation at the HITB Security Conference where he discussed the Stegosploit hack.
Both of these examples demonstrate how hackers have learned to get around users’ growing awareness of malicious links and attachments. Now, they’ve found a way to compromise images.
8. Mixed Content
As the web moves towards a more secure place with the adoption of SSL certificates and HTTPS, some web designers run into trouble when media files aren’t properly shifted over to a secure address. This is what’s known as “mixed content”.
Basically, this is what happens when a website resides on a secure HTTP domain (HTTPS). However, when images remain sitting on the unsecured server (HTTP), they open the rest of the website up to the possibility of a breach.
Protect Your Design Elements
You’ve built a stunning design for your client, but worry now that your choice of design elements or third-party integrations may compromise the security of the site. While the probability of something like that happening might not be high, you don’t want to leave your design assets unprotected.
If you and your web developer haven’t done so yet, focus on setting up the following on your web server:
SSL certificate
Firewall
Malware and DDoS protection
Brute force protection
Scheduled software updates
And if you’re nervous about being able to secure these elements–as well as the rest of the site–on your own, then it’s time you considered moving to secure WordPress hosting. A managed WordPress hosting provider will take care of security, so you can focus strictly on the design piece of your clients’ websites.
Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/1stwebdesigner/~3/KSMqeuQLEuM/
Presentations are a crucial aspect of any branding project. They allow you to present your finished designs in the best light possible, looking to make the greatest impact on the client.
It also helps them to understand the direction, as well as envisage how it would look in production. As a result, it’s crucial these branding presentations are designed with great care and fit perfectly with the project styling and direction.
In this article, we take a look at a selection of the most inspiring examples of branding presentation design.
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Mention’s branding presentation applies some vibrant and appealing overlay effects to the full-size imagery upon their cover designs. It allows them to maintain a consistent accent color throughout the presentation.
Rebranding B&H
This simple but effective rebranding project is presented perfectly through the design proposal and business card mockups.
Vertical
In one of the more detailed examples, this presentation is comprehensive in its detail but maintains a consistent color scheme and structure through the use of grid lines.
Branding Exploration Process
Kickpush’s highly visual presentation design uses full-color and graphical backgrounds throughout. It contrasts with the content effectively and is high impact.
Twisto Brand Book
This beautiful branding project continues the use of purple and green colors throughout the presentation. The repeating background patterns are a perfect addition and provide an example of how the branding can be applied in production.
Melissa
Melissa’s branding presentation is highly visual but with similarly detailed explanation throughout. It applies multiple instances of patterned imagery and related text to further expand upon her vision for the brand.
Branding Showcase Layout
This minimal branding presentation is succinct and allows the visuals to communicate without a great deal of explanation. It makes for an easy-to-understand approach which is described through mockups and photography.
Something New for Sidecar
This presentation for PayTouch is inspiring in the way that it presents a unique slide for each branding concept. Each is carefully considered, and it presents a multitude of visions and approaches to the client.
One More Time
This beautiful dark theme is heavily reliant on visuals, with minimal use of typography. The red accent for the title text works perfectly against the maroon galaxy background.
uLikeIT Keynote Slides
This Keynote branding presentation utilizes a master slide to apply consistent design elements across all slides. The color scheme is beautifully consistent throughout, as are the background visuals, despite differing image selections.
