Category: Blog

Your business website is an interface that your clients will interact with to buy your products and in this article, we will cover 6 essential UI design tips to make that experience even better.

The user interface (UI) is a combination of all the different elements that communicate with your client on your website. This includes everything that they can see from the moment the page loads. It’s your job to make sure that this interaction creates the best experience possible so that the client not only enjoys being on your website but never feels frustrated. Get this right and your bounce rate will decrease which will lead to an increase in conversions.

The difference between UX and UI design tips.

In a previous article, we covered six steps to improve your website’s user experience (UX). So, what makes this article so important then?

UX and UI are two separate design elements that need to work together for a successful website. That is why there is a lot of overlapping information about these two topics that can create some confusion. To avoid this confusion during these UI design tips, here are brief descriptions of each:

UX is all about user-first design and will cover everything about your website from the moment a client is introduced to it. Through UX, we define the way a client feels when engaging with the website and work on ways to make that feeling better. 

UI is on the other side of the coin and true to its name, it’s about the interface design. This will define how your websites interface looks, feels and interacts with your clients. It’s a tool that aids the overall UX of your website that guides the client with icons, buttons, typography, colour, spacing and so much more. 

Now that we have defined the difference between these two design elements, let’s start making your UI better with these six essential UI design tips.

Define how your interface is used.

Before we even begin to design the UI, we need to define how people will be using it. This starts with research on the demographics of your clients. The devices they use to browse the internet and how tech-savvy they are will all play a role in deciding how your client will interact with the UI. 

Here is a list of the most common ways a client can interact with a websites UI:

• Tapping or clicking
• Dragging and dropping
• Swiping
• Typing
• Talking

Choose the functionality that best suits your clients. Remember to make sure that whatever functionality you use is easy for both desktop and mobile browsers.

Show how the interface is used.

Now that we have defined how it will be used, we need to show this to our clients. The moment they have to figure out what to do means waisted time to them and will lead to frustration. In addition, one click or tap could lead to serious results for the client like spending money or deleting their account. When it’s not explicitly clear on what they need to do, clients can get nervous to interact. 

Our goal with UI is to remove frustration and fear and replace it with confidence. By making use of several design elements, we can make the intent of the UI clear to the client. 

Here are four things you can add to your UI to help your clients understand what they need to do:

• Highlighting the desired action.
• Using widely understood symbols.
• Clear and directional copy.
• Picking strong colours that correspond to the action.

Anticipate and make space for mistakes.

Let’s face it, someone is going to make a mistake or get lost at some point while browsing your website. If you leave the solution making to after these issues occur, you will be losing many potential clients on your business website. This is why it is vital to anticipate mistakes and provide ways to fix them before they even happen. 

If you have ever bought anything online or filled out personal information for an online account, you will see some of the best UI examples for anticipating mistakes. Forms can detect incorrectly entered emails and don’t allow you to submit the form without completing it. Online shopping carts will also have pop-ups to confirm deletion or when there’s an attempt to close the page. 

To properly solve this part of the UI, we need to brainstorm every page and answer these questions:

• What is my client doing on this page?
• What can they do incorrectly?
• How can we inform the client on what to do?

Copy plays a vital role here as words are often the fastest way to explain a situation. If your client is deleting something, use warnings if they can’t recover it. If your client is making filled in a form incorrectly, clearly point out what went wrong. It doesn’t hurt to put some of your brand personality into these warnings either.

The art of leaving breadcrumbs. 

One of the most common issues a client may have on a website is getting lost. This can be an incredibly frustrating issue and it can happen for several reasons. Whatever the reason is, it’s important to have a way for your client to navigate where they are if your website has many pages to follow.  

This is where breadcrumbs come in. They are a simple navigation bar that shows the pages your client went through to get to where they are right now.

White space is your friend.

If you have space, use it. If you don’t have space, make it. White space allows your design to breathe and helps your websites UX. Not only will the design look more polished, but it will be easier to navigate. 

When UI elements are placed too closely together, misclicking and mistakes from the client’s behalf will increase. So do your design and your clients a favour and give the UI the space it needs to be effective. 

Provide instant feedback.

When you flip a switch, you expect a light to turn on. When you turn your car key, you expect the motor to start running. Every day we receive instant feedback from the actions we take and there should be no exception when it comes to UI design. 

When a website’s UI doesn’t respond to a client’s actions, they will wonder if they should restart or give up. Fortunately, there are very simple ways in which we can give this feedback even if a page still needs to load. This can come in the form of a button reacting when being clicked or a loading screen when the page needs time to load. 

The way your UI elements respond should link directly to the decisions made in step one. 

Bonus tip: If the page will load in less than 5 seconds, don’t use a progress bar for your load screen. This will make the time waiting seem longer because we are used to progress bars showing with big tasks.

Make decisions simple.

The more UI elements your client sees, the more difficult it becomes for them to make a decision. This is especially true when it comes to making a purchase. This means you should KISS. Keep It Simple, Stupid. 

Use as few UI elements as possible, stick to one call to action (CTA) per page and make the space required to move from one UI element to the other minimal. 

That being said, you may have pages where you need your client to slow down and consider their options. An example of where you might want this is your company’s blog or when there is a very important decision that needs to be made. In this case, giving your clients more options and long-form content can be desired.

Get your business website’s UI right with Web2Web.

These UI design tips have covered the basic essentials you need to get started on creating great UI. The work doesn’t stop here though, it requires more research, design and development. This requires a full, dedicated team that will make your website their number one priority. This is exactly what we offer at Web2Web. With over 10 years of experience in website design and development, your UI design will speak to your clients and guide them to the final conversion when you work with us. Talk to us if you want to improve the way your website speaks.

If it’s a menu guide on how to order a hamburger you are looking for, then you are in the wrong place. Apart from jokes, there are no beef patties covered in cheese and surrounded in buns here because we are going to be giving a guide on the user interface (UI) tool that we call the hamburger menu. 

Used right, the hamburger menu can be an incredibly helpful tool for your business website. However, using it incorrectly can hinder instead of helping your clients. Below is our guide on everything you need to know about the hamburger menu and how you can use it. 

What is the hamburger menu? 

Travelling back to the 1980s, designer Norm Cox created the hamburger menu as a UI element for the Xerox Star personal workstation. It was four vertical lines above each other that when clicked, opened a list of items. 

Fast forward to where we are today and it has become one of the most known UI elements on websites and applications. It’s popularity greatly rose with the increase of mobile technology that has less space on the screen for bulky UI menus. Today the hamburger menu no longer has four lines, but three lines instead and it is typically placed at the top left or right side of a screen. 

These useful icons are used to open navigation menus for websites and applications allowing a clean UI and smooth user experience (UX). While the original has been changed slightly since the 80s, the hamburger menu remains one of the most well-known UI elements today. 

The rise of mobile-first design. 

Since the burst of mobile technology, the hamburger menu has become increasingly popular. This is because screen real estate is very limited on smaller screens. It didn’t take very long for Google to rank mobile-friendly websites higher either which means traditional websites soon adopted the hamburger menu too. Apart from mobile real estate and search engine optimisation (SEO), the hamburger menu has many other reasons why you might want to use it. In the rest of this guide, we will go over why you would want to or not want to use the hamburger menu and how you can implement it into your business website. 

Why you should use the hamburger menu.

Why you should not use the hamburger menu. 

Hiding features. 
When something is out of sight, it can become out of mind. A hamburger menu will hide features on your website behind the three lines. When hidden in this way, users will automatically assume that those features are less important. This will hinder click through rates and can hurt your UX. 

Requires more steps. 
While some features may be quicker to access through a hamburger menu, others won’t be. When a key feature on your website is hiding behind a hamburger menu, it will mean your clients need to make an extra click to get to where they want to be. This reduces the effectiveness of your UX because it is more difficult to reach. 

The guide to using the hamburger menu. 

 As you have seen, there are several pros and cons to the hamburger menu. Sometimes the pros outweigh the cons and other times, cons can be avoided with cleaver UI design. If you have decided the hamburger menu is for you or you just want to learn more, we will now discuss how you can use the hamburger menu and its best practises. 

When to use the hamburger menu. 

If your website has several features, some more important than others, then putting the secondary features behind a hamburger menu can be a good idea to avoid clutter. In this case, the extra click will save your client from having to search the landing page for what they want. 

Having a cluttered screen can seriously hinder your UX and your clients will be turned away. It’s important to not overload the landing page and limit the navigation that your client can do. This is where hamburger menus are perfect. They can hide features that are not core to the importance of your website while keeping the additional navigation optional in a neat and easy to read space. This is particularly helpful when the screen real estate is limited. 

When designing a responsive website, a hamburger menu for smaller screens but a more traditional menu for bigger screens can be the perfect in-between. This option is fantastic when your business website’s UI is strong but difficult to navigate on mobile devices. If this is how you wish to implement the hamburger menu, then be sure that the mobile version still carries the same core message with the menu hidden. 

Where to put the Hamburger menu. 

The rule of thumb for the position of a hamburger menu is at the top right corner of the screen. This is typically the easiest to access position that doesn’t clash with pre-existing UI. The latter becomes a concern when your client is using an iOS device where there is already a navigational button. This clash can cause misclicks that will result in a bad UX. 

The floating hamburger menu.

Using words is a good alternative.

MENU – It doesn’t take up much space and puts its intent in words. While a hamburger menu can be a brilliant solution to UI design, words can convey the message even clearer. If you know that your clients have the chance of not understanding the hamburger menu, then you can use the word or a combination of both.

Create the perfect UI for you and your clients with Web2Web. 

With good UI comes good client engagements. This will boost your website’s traffic and increase your conversions. This is why it is so important to get the UI of your brand’s website right. When building a website with Web2Web, you will get a design and development team that knows exactly how to make the UI perfect for your brand and your clients. Getting started is simple too, contact us if you are starting a new website or want to update an already existing one to support your business goals. 

As a space where your clients can engage with your brand 27/7, it’s important to improve your website user experience (UX). Good UX will turn your website into one of your strongest business tools. Think of it as a salesperson, a good one will guide the client to where they want to be, convincing them that you are the answer to their problem.

Whether you are starting a new website or already have one, it’s always a good idea to relook at UX. New trends and technology grow quickly making a lot of websites feel clunky in comparison. That is why we have gathered six steps that you can use to improve your website UX.

How to improve your website UX.

You know your business website’s UX is good when it is easy to navigate, offers valuable information and gives no frustration to the user. Before we start with improvements, it’s important to have your research down. Know your target audience and be aware of the current trends. Now that we have that ready, let’s begin.

Define your content’s purpose.

Increasing your audience or sales are a given. When we think about a website’s purpose, we need to be more specific. When we have our goals set, we can improve the UX on your website to make the journey seamless. While defining the purpose your website has, it’s a good idea to align it to the long-term goals of your company. This will allow the UX to be long-lasting.

Now that you have a purpose to design the UX too, it’s time to create content. Read our guide on creating more engaging content to get you going in the right direction.

Make strong headlines.

When it comes to navigation, your headlines are vital for guiding your clients around your website. In our previous step we spoke about having a purpose, your headlines should reflect that, leading your clients to the pages that solve their problems.

When creating or reviewing our headlines, we want to make sure they are doing two things: Using keywords and highlighting key content. This will assist your websites search engine optimisation (SEO) and allow the reader to quickly find exactly what they want.

The less time your clients spend searching, the greater the UX.

Create powerful calls to action.

A call to action (CTA) is what we use to make readers do something on your website. Having a fantastic experience on your website helps nobody if, at the end of the journey, there’s no prompt on what to do.

Whether it be sales or sign-ups, you need to spend time on creating strong CTAs. These will always include a powerful verb or action word. Consider colour and shape too. Your clients will need to know where to click and a CTA should stand out as the obvious place to do that.

Use responsive design.

All websites today must include responsive design for good UX. Unfortunately, websites that have not been refreshed in many years and even some new websites don’t use it. With smartphones, tablets and even more mobile devices that have access to the internet, your clients could be visiting your website from anywhere. Responsive design ensures that a website will offer the same great UX, no matter what the device.

It’s fact that the majority of people will search for a brand on their mobile device before desktop. This is why we recommend you always design for mobile-first for the best UX.

Keep your design consistent.

Consistency means making every page on your website feel like one. Every page should reflect your brand identity which will not only look professional but avoid any feelings of getting lost. When people get lost on a website, it doesn’t take them very long to give up and look for an alternative with better UX.

Optimize your website.

An unoptimized website is slow to load and leads to blank and error pages. Ideally, you want your website to load within 4 seconds and to be free from errors. To help improve your speed and address any errors, we have provided two guides that you can follow:

• The how and why of optimizing images for your website
• WordPress HTTP error codes explained and fixed

Start improving your website UX with Web2Web.

Great UX design is no simple process and it takes a team of designers, developers and writers working together to get right. With Web2Web, you get exactly that. Our team has over 10 years of experience in website design and development, creating high quality, enterprise-level web solutions for business. If you are planning a new website or refreshing an already existing one, contact us and we can improve your website UX.

You have just done the final proofread and you are ready to click publish, but what should you do after you publish your blog post? Definitely not just leave it, because then all your hard work won’t do anything for your brand. You can’t just stop after sharing it on social media either. That will just re-engage your current audience.

If you want your business blog to do work for you, you have to put in more work after you publish a blog. Below we are going to answer the question, “what should I do after I publish a blog?”, with seven simple steps that you can add to any marketing strategy.

To learn more about what you should be doing before you publish, read our article about making content that will get noticed.

Reread and Relink.

We know you just put in a lot of effort to make sure your business blog post is perfect. Trust us, we do. However, little mistakes can be overlooked and it’s often good to look at what you wrote with a fresh mind. So, the very first thing you should do after you publish a blog post is proofread again.

While you are still on your business website, now would be a great time to find older posts that could link to your new one. Chances are, your audience will still read your older posts and creating a link to a newer one will increase its traffic.

Use your brand’s emailer.

One of the quickest ways to increase traffic to your blog post is through your brand’s emailer. Your audience here is already interested in your content, so show them where to find more. So, if you have an emailer, you should be doing this step after you publish a blog post.

To make this step even more effective, there are some guidelines we should follow. When sharing your blog post on the emailer, you should only include a snippet of the content. Putting the entire blog post will give no need to visit your blog, so make a teaser to grab their attention. This teaser should have enough information to get a reader interested followed by a strong call-to-action to get them to your blog.

Share on social media.

If you haven’t been doing this already, you are missing out on a lot of traffic. To get you started, read our article about choosing the right social media for your brand. This will help you pick which platform you want to share your content on.

We can take this step even further. Posting your blog posts just once will only yield limited results. To get more traffic, add your older blog posts into your social media strategy too. This will keep those posts alive and get new readers engaged with your content.

When reusing older blog posts on social media, it is important to keep it fresh. Don’t just copy the post word for word, make it new. Here are three ideas that you can use to freshen up the message:

• Use a quote or an excerpt from the blog.
• Share an important image that appeared in the blog.
• Tag an influencer who featured in the blog.

Work with others.

Working with other blogs and influencers is a great way to increase traffic to your new blog post. However, this step is easier said than done. It can take a lot of time finding, curating and connecting with like-minded content creators. That is why we are going to break down one process that you can use.

It starts with a Google search on topics that are related to the one your posts are about. You want to find high ranking blogs that share quality content. From that list, look to see if they have social media pages and choose from the active ones. Then take the first step, let them know about posts you make that they will be interested in sharing. Don’t be afraid to share their content either.

Through this, you will boost traffic to your blog, increase engagements on social media and create high-value backlinks.

Reply to comments.

If you are new or experienced with creating blog posts, you know that just getting your readers to start commenting can be a challenge. So, if your blog has a comments section, you should be active with them after you publish a blog post.

When you engage with your readers, it rewards them for commenting. This will encourage them to do so again and others to join in. Not only that, but search engines will notice the activity too, boosting your search engine results page (SERP) rankings.

You can use Creator Studio when it comes to managing comments on Facebook and Instagram. It’s a free social media manager that puts both platforms into one place.

Answer questions with your blog.

Using more unique social media pages like Reddit and Quora are perfect for this step, although you can use the standard ones too. After you publish your blog post, you should search for people asking questions related to the same topic.

When you find the perfect question that your new blog post answers, you can reply to their query with your blog. But before you post a link and leave, you need to make sure your reply is helpful and informative. Answer the question in your reply and offer more information with your blog.

When it comes to Reddit and Quora, users appreciate genuine answers that really help.

Read and study your analytics.

This final step is one of the most important things that you should do after you publish a blog post. Without looking at your analytics, you will never know what is and isn’t working. Content management systems (CMSs) like WordPress offer their own analytics but you can always go a step further with Google Analytics. This will allow you to see the results of all the work you put in.

Here is an easy guide to setting up a Google Analytics account. You can use this to find any weaknesses your current plans have and form strategies to solve them.

Get engaging content creation and boost your traffic with Web2Web.

When it comes to content, consistency is key. Both regularity and quality need to be maintained for results to grow in addition to using the seven steps that we have covered. This can become an overwhelming task to handle, but with Web2Web, that can become a worry of the past. Our marketing and content team know the ins and outs of engaging content and getting your clients to find it. Contact us if you want to turn your content management into a successful marketing strategy.

While search engine optimization (SEO) practises change all the time, there are still tricks that we can always apply for better SEO. If you are a business website owner, you cannot ignore the power of search engine leads. They are more plentiful and often more dedicated to the product you are offering.

Think about it, when was the last time you went to a company’s website to look at things you had no interest in? If your answer is never, we would not be surprised. When someone enters your website for the first time, they are a potential client. These are 5 tricks that you can use for better SEO that you can apply to any strategy for more potential clients.

Trick 1: A faster website will have faster results.

Ever since Google added website speed into its algorithm, website speed has been a much-needed value to compete for search engine results page (SERP) rankings. We have discussed how important website speed is on numerous occasions.

Sure, you can still rank with a website that takes more than two to four seconds to load, but you will never beat your competition that has a faster loading page, but it doesn’t stop at SEO. The potential clients that you are getting from your SEO ranking are more likely to give up on your website or not trust it if your website if they are waiting for more than five seconds.

Some helpful advice to increase your brand’s website is to remove the plugins you don’t need and compress any images.

Trick 2: Take the first step and link to other websites.

Link building can quickly become a very intimidating task to undertake, we know. That is why we recommend you take the first step. Linking to another website may seem bad because it will take readers off your page, but that is not the case. You are providing the best answer to your clients which will build brand trust, create a relationship with whom you are linking to and improve your SEO.

When you link to another website, you want to pick blogs with high authority that will offer value to the reader. When those blogs start to notice you and link your content, you will need a way to find their links to your company and know what to do with them.

Trick 3: Forget the search engines and write for people.

Who is going to read, buy and rate your products and services? It definitely is not Google. Even with SEO as a top marketing priority, your clients are still more important and their journey from website to sale should be your first focus. This is because SEO can only make more people find you, it can’t make them buy.

So, when it comes to the content on your website, focus on who will be reading it first and the search engines will follow. Google likes good content because it follows where real people go and stay, which means forgetting about Google will make Google like you more. It’s like playing hard to get with an artificial algorithm.

While making your content great for people to read, we recommend that you take a look at meta descriptions. This will be the first content that your potential clients will read about your company, so it is a valuable asset to attracting them. You should have a unique and eye-catching meta description about every page on your business website. If you are a WordPress user, there are some excellent plugins that can use to change the meta description on your pages.

Trick 4: Use keywords that you can compete with.

Keyword research is at the core of all SEO strategy, but there is no point in using relevant keywords that are too vague to compete with. This is where we look at using long-tail keywords over their short-tail counterpart. Long-tail keywords consist of three to four words and you should generally not use any more than that. These keywords will have less competition which means you will have an easier time ranking higher. In turn, this will mean more people will find your business online and search engine will reward that even more.

While looking at the keywords you are using, remember that images are a very important place to invest research time into. Google has a whole portion of its search engine just for them, so they will help you rank.

With voice search growing in popularity, it is important to keep it in mind going forward. While it should not be your biggest focus in 2020, more and more people are starting to ask Siri and Alexa for their search queries. So, we will need to start planning for conversational questions as searches.

Trick 5: Work with industry-related influencers.

There are not many other strategies that can drive as many conversions like an influencer marketing campaign can. Even knowing that; this is not something that many companies do. This is a really big missed opportunity, one that you can take advantage of.

When you find the right influencers for your brand and get them to make content related to your brand, you can drive their audience through to your website. This will bring a significant amount of people who are already highly committed to a purchase. Throwing in a discount code can help a lot too. This trick relies on the correct research into which influencers to contact and how they should tag you.

If you want more tricks for better SEO, try our article about 4 SEO mistakes that you should avoid.

Improve your website SEO with Web2Web.

If you have only just become aware of its importance or are looking for more tricks for better SEO, the more experience you have on your team the better. With Web2Web, you can be on top of the ever-changing algorithms and latest SEO trends at all times. We develop search engine optimised websites and manage marketing plans that will boost your SERP rankings. If you want to take your business to the next level online, talk to us and let’s discuss how we can make that happen for you.

It doesn’t matter if it’s your business or personal accounts, email spoofing is a very real threat that we want to avoid. The problem is, with thousands of spoofing attacks every day, it can be difficult to not fall victim to some of them. During this article, we are going to go over what email spoofing is and what are the steps that your company can take to avoid it from ever affecting your business.

What is Email Spoofing?

In a nutshell, all forms of spoofing are a tactic to perform phishing scams. These scams make use of deception to trick the victims into taking some kind of action that is harmful to themselves and the company or person being impersonated.

Emails are the most common form of spoofing and they cost organisations and people millions every year. It doesn’t stop there, when cybercriminals impersonate brands, it can hurt your brand trust or open the inner workings of a company to damaging viruses.

If you have ever been the victim of a spoofing attack, you may have received emails or phone calls from your own number. While those may be obvious attacks that we can recognise, it’s when the attack impersonates someone else that this becomes a problem. This can come in the form of an email from your boss or a client.

Without a further inspection, you or one of your employees may engage with the email as though it was real and give the cybercriminal exactly what they want. This could include personal or financial information, intellectual property or data, a transfer of funds, login credentials or the download of malicious software.

Tip: We recommend keeping your whole company safe online, to boost your protection, Find out how you can improve your security on WordPress.

How does email spoofing work?

While impersonating your brand and making a convincing deception may sound like a difficult thing to do, the scariest part is that it’s not. Email spoofing is a very simple process that uses an SMTP server and email software.

All a cybercriminal needs to do after that is make the email headers look like they are coming from someone other than them. Email spoofing sometimes involves other types of spoofing to be more convincing. These can include email addresses, domains and display names. Cybercriminals will often research companies and individuals they wish to spoof to get all of this data.

If you are not yet convinced that this is a serious threat; these cybercriminals become you or your brand and commit crimes in that name. Employees and clients might hand over valuable information which can cost you money and trust.

Tip: When it comes to protecting valuable information that cybercriminals can use to spoof, preventing brute force attacks on WordPress is an important security step.

How to avoid email spoofing.

If you have ever looked at your inbox and seen too many “undeliverable” notifications, it’s a sign that your email address is being spoofed. This is not a situation that anyone wants to be in. That is why it is important that we take measures for this to never happen, especially in today’s digital age.

Avoid spoofing from your domain.

When it comes to stopping cybercriminals from using your domain, there are three tools that you need. In combination, they can protect your email and domain from spoofing.

The first is called Sender Policy Framework (SPF). This tool will outline valid IP addresses that are approved to send emails from your domain.

Next is a tool called Domain Keys Identification Mail (DKIM). This will prevent spoofing emails from being sent from your domain. It does this by updating the Domain Name System (DNS) of your email to add a digital signature. This is a way to guarantee that the email remains unaltered from the moment it was sent.

If you thought that last acronym was long, then prepare yourself for the last tool. A Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) is a tool that authenticates, reports and applies policy protocol. It uses both SPF and DKIM to provide information about the email domains.

Use an email signing certificate.

By making use of email signing certificates, you can supply a way for your clients and employees to confirm your identity when they receive an email. When you set this up, inform the receivers of your emails about the certificate. That way they can trust what comes from you and spot spoofing.

Spot the problem before it affects you.

One of the most common deceptions, when a cybercriminal is targeting your business, is to impersonate an owner or manager. This makes your employees the most vulnerable targets to receive spoof emails. Knowledge and understanding are the most powerful tools to combat this threat, so we recommend training in cyber awareness. Everyone in the company should get involved as this threat affects both the company and its employees.

With the whole team on board, there are two checks that you need to make to avoid email spoofing. The first check-in in the email header where we will look for the following common email spoofing traits:

• Content that doesn’t match the sender.
• Poor grammar and punctuation.
• Urgency to act or do something.
• Inaccurate sender information.

Now that we have taken steps to avoid being the victim of email spoofing, everyone in your company is equipped to find spoof email. But what do you do when you find an email that is considered spoof?

The first step to take is to inform your companies IT team. Forward the email in question with a warning about your suspicion. If the email was sent from a known email provider, you should inform that provider. Similar to the IT team, forward the email with a warning so that they are aware of the issue. Unfortunately, cybercriminals often use free email services and close the email account before any reports can be made. The last step is to inform the company or individual who is being impersonated about the spoof email so that they can take their own actions against it.

Get the best digital security advice from Web2Web.

You wouldn’t leave a physical store without an alarm system, so don’t leave your online business without one either. When it comes to internet security, it’s important that your company has the right measures put in place. At Web2Web, we don’t just develop in the digital world, we make it a more secure and safer place to do business. If you want to put your business online or make your current website a better place to do business, chat to us today.

While growing your brand’s influence online, you will always find an increase in User-Generated Content (UGC) to be incredibly important. This type of media will save you time and money while building brand loyalty and trust. These posts also tend to get way more engagements than any other type of posts. This means that there are more people finding your brand.

This all sounds amazing to have, but getting and growing it can be a difficult task. In this article, we are going to go over ways that you can take into your social media marketing plan to increase your User-Generated Content.

How to increase User-generated Content.

User-generated Content consists of all social media posts, online videos and blog posts that are about your brand, but not made or paid for by your brand. This is already an amazing help to any brand growth, but we can take it a step further.

Below are five different ways that you can use and encourage more User-generated content into your own content.

Be the first to engage.

While all User-generated Content is made by others, encouraging it starts with you. Your brand needs to be one that engages with its clients and fans on a regular basis. This needs to happen before you ask for any kind of User-generated Content, otherwise, it will be out of character for your brand. You can engage by liking, commenting and responding to conversations shares on your client’s platforms.

Show how your audience can tag you.
Hashtags and @mentions are incredibly important when it comes to finding user-generated content. During the engaging stages, you should make a clear and easy to use brand hashtag. Be sure to use it in a natural way so that your clients will know to use it when they want to get your attention.

Put the spotlight on your fans.
Now that we are regularly engaging with our clients and we have a great hashtag to use, we want to start finding and sharing their content. Find examples of great User-generated Content that you would like to see more of and share it on your online platforms. Remember to always get consent from the person who made the post and to reference them accurately when you share.

Incentivise more content.

There are many things that can motivate an audience to do things. So far, the only incentive we have talked has been exposure. Quite often, your audience will just be happy to be rewarded with just a share and an @mention. We don’t have to stop there, in fact, we can increase the amount of User-generated Content as well as the quality of it.

Here are two simple ways in which we can do this:

Social rewards.
If your brand has an email newsletter, blog or any other way it shares information with its clients, then you can use them to encourage more User-generated Content. Make it clear to your clients that their photos, videos or reviews will appear on one of your platforms if you like it. Keeping this consistent could bring a very natural increase in User-generated Content and quality.

Competition rewards.
There’s nothing like a competition to get fans interacting with your brand and generating content. This type of reward is similar to social rewards except it has a bigger but more limited reward. If you offer a significant reward that is on brand or appeals to your clients, entries will come. This is especially true if the entry can be as simple as one photo.

Host an event.

It can be physical or virtual, but depending on what type of business your brand runs, you might choose to run a workshop, webinar or a fundraiser for a cause you believe in. What matters is that your clients can engage with it and in turn, share their experience.

To make the event very successful for content, you need to make an event hashtag. This way you and others can find the content that is specifically make for the event. Encourage attendees to share their time at your event with the hashtag. You can even incorporate the incentive step into the event hashtag to get the ball rolling.

Give tests and samples of your latest offers.

User-generated content often comes from enthusiasm for your product or service. There probably isn’t a more exciting way to get that giving your brands new offering for free before its release. This can be to super fans or influencers that are in a similar field. Getting these types of people involved early on will encourage them to share their feelings on your product or service with others, and that is where the content comes in. Ask the people you give it to for feedback. You don’t have to be too picky about where the content is shared as long as you can share from where they post.

Bonus tip: If they post from a platform that you are not on, there is likely a small community that you are missing out on. This is a chance to expand to even more clients online.

Provide picture worthy places.

If your business has a physical store or your event has a non-virtual location, you can make a place where clients and attendees will want to take pictures and share them. Set up a stunning banner with the relevant hashtags and encourage others to take pictures there. You can even take the picture and post it yourself with their consent.

Increase the quality of your content with Web2Web.

Staying on top of the latest trends, curating User-generated Content and increasing the quality of your posts are all part of social media management and they all require time and experience to get right. That is why Web2Web offers professional social media management and marketing services. With over 10 years of experience with online business, we know how to get your clients more engaged and increase your User-generated Content.

With Instagram and any other social media platform, an increase in engagements is always a goal. It doesn’t matter if it’s a personal or professional account, when we post content that our audience likes, they will engage and encourage others to engage too. To do this for a business Instagram account, we need to be aware of changes that happen on the platform and make sure that our content provides value to our clients.

In this article, we are going to go over 5 steps that you can use in any social media plan to increase Instagram engagements. For more on why you should make Instagram one of your business’s social platforms, read our article about finding the right social media for your brand.

Find the best time and frequency to post.

You can make brilliant posts but if they aren’t being posted when your clients are around, they will not perform as well as they can. You want your posts to go up when your clients are most likely to engage. Thanks to social media analytics, the data is all at our fingertips, but this does take time to test for the best results.

Don’t fall for the trap of thinking that your research for posting times on Facebook automatically translate to Instagram and don’t stop at being happy with just 1 post a day. You may find that your Instagram account would benefit from 2 updates a day, one in the afternoon and another in the evening. It all comes down to staying on top of your analytics. Never stop figuring out what works best on Instagram.

Use the right hashtags for your brand.

Hashtags are an important way for your clients and potential clients to find your Instagram posts. Using them correctly can be tricky because it is easy to think that generic and highly populated hashtags are the best. While this may work for some of your posts, they will quickly get drowned by the millions of other posts with the same hashtag. The best hashtags to use are a mix of trendy and industry-specific ones.

It is always important to research hashtags every time you use them. During our research, we want to determine 2 things; what the hashtag is really for and how many we should use.

When using a new hashtag, always look at what the results will give you. This will not only give you insights on how the hashtag gets used, but it will also stop you from using a hashtag that is actually for some of the more niche communities on Instagram. The internet is a wild place and this can save a lot of embarrassment.

We recommend using less than 7 hashtags on each of your Instagram posts. The platform allows much more but when they are all put together, it will look unprofessional and will negatively impact your engagements. This step also requires research to find what your clients will respond to the most. To increase your brand’s Instagram engagements, vary the number and type of hashtags and always include your brand’s one.

Utilise different types of content.

The most effective type of content will vary from brand to brand. However, one way to increase your Instagram engagements is to use more than one. This means mixing up videos, carousels, photos and links regularly. Social media analytics will help find which types of media work best and organically rotate around them. Use them to communicate the unique aspects of your brand with your clients.

Make use of user-generated content.

User-Generated Content is a dream for any brand to get on a social platform. When you clients create content about or with your brand, reposting it will greatly increase engagements on Instagram. When your share these photos, it will also encourage others to join in. But, how do we encourage this kind of interaction with our clients?

It starts with you. Find quality content from your clients and start sharing them. Letting your clients know how to tag your brand will greatly help in finding this content. So, creating a strong brand hashtag can be instrumental. Keep the conversation with your clients going by engaging with their posts even when you are not going to share it. Give it a like, leave a comment and let them know how much you appreciate that they want your brand to appear on their Instagram feed. If you want more advice on user-generated content, keep up to date with the Web2Web Blog for future posts. 

Always credit the original content creator. Including them in the content you share and giving them a shout out will encourage other users to share more content. Not only that, but it is also a requirement in Instagram’s terms and conditions. As a brand, you don’t want to break those.

Update your Instagram bio.

While this step may seem obvious, there are a surprising number of brands that leave their bio blank or out of date. This is a prime place to leave contact information, store locations and your brand hashtag. All bios must be within 150 characters and you can use emojis and @mentions too.

If you want to take your bio to the next level, update it with your current advertising campaign, brand events or partner accounts. What’s most important is to keep it fresh and up to date.

Get the most out of your social media marketing with Web2Web.

Optimising your company’s performance on Instagram can be incredibly beneficial for your brand. It’s a great way to keep current clients engaged while exposing your products and services to new potential clients. This is why finding an experienced team like Web2Web to manage your social media marketing can boost your business as a whole. From studying analytical data to creating posts that will draw attention, contact us if you want to increase your engagements on Instagram or any other social platform.

A mood board is a brilliant way to create a visual direction for any project including website design. Website design mood boards do differ from standard boards because they contain field-specific elements that we will cover in this article. Put simply, we are going to find a way to establish colour, theme and style for websites.

What is a website design mood board?

During the middle ages, alchemists believed that there were five elements – water, earth, air, fire and essence. The first four can speak for themselves but ‘essence’ was unique. It is an intangible element that held the other four together to create matter. Thanks to modern science, we now have a much better explanation for what makes up the matter of the universe with 118 elements. However, the idea of essence can be used when discovering what a client wants for their website. This essence or the feel of a website can be found through a mood board. 

Website design consists of many elements and by defining the content through a mood board, we can get an idea of what our final product might be like. A mood board is in no way the final idea and every element can be changed during the design process. We are simply using it to capture the client’s idea with the brand’s style. 

The types of elements we want to cover in our website design mood boards are colours, fonts, images, iconography and navigation. By creating a mood board that covers these elements, we can put ourselves and our clients on the same page and even get them involved with the process.

A good mood board captures the essence of a websites design and acts as a source of inspiration during the designing process. 

How to make a website design mood board.

Before we can begin designing the client’s vision into a website, we need to define what they want. This will save us time and make communicating with our clients easier. Below we will cover the basic steps to create a mood board for website design.

Communicate and research.

It’s a good idea to get your client involved with your mood board during the planning stages. Let them know that you will be creating a mood board for their website and that they can send you inspiration and examples of what they want their website to look like. Chances are, they are going to enjoy adding their inspiration which is something we love to see. 

There are loads of great places where both you and your clients can get and share inspiration from. Two of our favourite examples are Pinterest and Dribbble. 

If your client has a brand identity, make sure to ask for it. Their brand identity will contain all the visual elements that we will need, allowing us to focus on images and navigation.

Collect and refine.

Now that we have images and photos of websites and other inspiration, we can find the core elements that stand out to us and the clients. There are five elements that we are specifically looking for: 

• Colours 
• Fonts 
• Images 
• Icons 
• Navigation 

Through the inspiration that you and your client have put together, find the common themes and images used and only use the best examples of those. There is a good chance that there may be more than one theme. In this case, select the best two or the two that are most in line with your client’s vision to explore.

Bringing it together.

Using the images that we have collected to make the mood board is the next part of the process. All you need is a way to put the information you have collected onto a single page and in a way that looks good. Avoid using other brand identities. 

We recommend using Adobe, Affinity or PicMonkey to put mood boards together. You can easily create your own template, or find ones online, to make your website design mood board process even easier. 

If your client offered you a brand identity in our first step, use their style to shape your mood board. If you are exploring two different themes, don’t feel like it’s a waste of time to complete two mood boards. Sometimes we need to see the final result to compare everything accurately.

Share it with your client.

This is probably the best part of the whole creation of a website design mood board. Your client now gets the chance to let you know if they like the emotion it evokes and how all the elements look like next to each other. It is very important to remind them that this is not the final product and that everything can be altered during the design process.

Get a stunning website tailored to your brand with Web2Web.

When it comes to website design and development, you need a team that you can trust and will put your brand as their number one priority. With over 10 years of experience in the field, Web2Web can give you the website answers you need for your business. If you want to update your current website or create your brands very first one, contact us today. Let’s talk about how we can make your website vision become your brand’s reality. 

Brand trust is one of the essential tools your business has to learn how to earn in order to be successful. Determined by your client’s expectations and how you meet them, building this trust can take a lot of time but it has a huge payoff. Once gained, clients are more likely to buy your products or services and make them return to you again. You become part of their everyday life.

Chances are, you already have decent brand trust or you are starting out a new brand and have no idea on where to begin. Don’t worry because we are going to talk about tips and tricks that can help start building and improve already existing brand trust.

The how and why you need to earn brand trust.

Trust is one of the most important factors for any client. They want to know that the brand they choose will give them a good experience first before purchasing anything. This leads them to search for proof from the moment they consider your brand. Preferring social media and friends over the standard advertising.

Reviews are also a big part of how you can build brand trust. The average person will read many reviews before they are convinced on the product or service in question.

After a brand trust has been established with your clients, you can start to gain the benefits of all the hard work you put in for it. This includes return customers and even word of mouth advertising. There are only positives for your brand to gain for the work we will put in, so let’s start finding out how we can do it.

How to earn brand trust.

Before we begin answering, “how to earn brand trust”, we need to find out how your current clients view you. If there are any loose ends or room for improvement, identifying it and putting it into a solution plan is critical. We can get this information from sources of feedback. These include; reviews, social media and tracking systems attached to your website, for example, Google Analytics.

Now that we know where to find the information, let’s find out what we can do to create brand trust.

Improve your customer experience.

Customer experience starts from the moment a client finds your product or service and only truly ends well after they have used it. From start to end, your client will be forming their opinion of your brand, so making the whole experience a good one is vital. If you can offer great service, that client is more likely to return, leave a positive review and trust your brand.

A returning customer that trusts you and spreads that trust is all you can ask for when it comes to clients.

In the case where there are negative experiences and reviews, the most important thing is to take them seriously. Listen to suggestions and find the core problem underneath the frustrations and address them. Creating a more personal experience is another way we can really strengthen brand trust. Nothing beats having a client that feels like they have gotten to know a brand and achieving that can be simple.

Here are our favourite ways to make a more personal customer experience:

• Offer a loyalty program. 
• Allow your clients to create online profiles. 
• Use geotargeting to give more appropriate results. 
• Categorise your emailers and let clients choose what they want to receive. 

Build a strong social media presence.

More and more people are going to social media to find out more about a product or service. There is also a no better place to share your brand’s message and personality than social media. When you post useful information related to what your brand is about, your clients will follow and engage. By making a positive experience on social media, you are building brand trust.

It is important for you to find out where your clients are online and use the same social media platforms as they do. Do your best to select more than one platform and update it regularly so that you can become part of your clients’ everyday life.

To help boost your social media platform for brand trust, even more, make use of user-generated content. These are the reviews, article, videos, pictures, podcasts and posts that other people have made outside of your company. Using them in your own posts shares your clients brand trust with other people who are still forming their trust.

Sharing brand trust, builds brand trust.

Your brand needs to be honest and authentic.

For real trust to form in any relationship, all parties need to be trustworthy. It works in relationships between people and it will work in your brand’s relationship with its clients. We can start working on showing honesty and authenticity by making social media posts that share the brand’s culture. When it’s someone’s birthday, celebrate it with a picture. When someone brings cake to the office, show your clients how much fun it is.

There is no hiding the truth either, you can’t fake authenticity. People are very good at noticing when something is off and having clients learn about even a small lie could ruin brand trust in more ways that the lie gained. So, don’t delete a bad review, address the problem they posed and show your solution. When clients see you improve to make their experience better, they will appreciate it.

Become an active member of your community.

The more people see your brand in a positive light, the more they are to trust it. Pick events and causes that your target market engages in and get involved as your brand. It is important to be careful with the event or cause and what you say about it. Like we mentioned earlier, people can spot a fake message.

Be consistent in your improvements.

If you have used what we have just spoken about to improve your brand trust, don’t stop. Consistency is incredibly important. Clients want a trustworthy brand that they can rely on and even though changing your image may be tempting, it’s not trustworthy. In fact, changing your identity or dropping what you did to create brand trust will leave you in a worse place than when you started.

Get everyone that is part of your brand involved. Create a brand identity that includes all the visuals, fonts and personality for employees to follow. Then use that to publish social media posts and emails regularly so that clients can make your message part of their schedule.

Get consistent social media marketing and management.

How to earn brand trust can vary between businesses, but it all takes a lot of time and management. That is why finding a team like Web2Web that can help improve your brand trust through social media is so important. We have professionals who are skilled in identifying and promoting businesses and know how to make them shine on any platform while keeping consistent and relevant. Talk to us today if you want stronger brand trust.