Source: Statista

The advent of this new kind of industry presents businesses with a fantastic opportunity to tap into people’s very homes in a way never seen before. The system has been revolutionized by clever software for food delivery, fundamentally changing smartphones and point of sale systems.

It is now widely accepted that “the brick-and-mortar restaurant is no longer the focal point of consumers’ dining experiences but a single touch point in a much broader, decentralized and digital-first ecosystem” (Quote Source: Paytronix). Yet, many restaurants are still somewhat unwilling to accept that a digital ordering feature that works well is the price to be paid to enter this new market.

In order to squeeze the most juice out of meal delivery apps for your company, which accounted for some 14% of restaurant sales in 2021, let’s look at some of the major features of these apps and how to make them work effectively.

The Basics of Meal Delivery Apps

What makes these apps so successful? For one, sometimes there just isn’t time to cook, or for that matter bother dressing up and going to a restaurant. Convenience is absolutely key. And this often means you save money, not just on petrol, but also on online promotions.

Recent improvements also make everything seem rather effortless and immediate – you can choose anything, right from your sofa, and it usually arrives within 30 minutes. This is often before you even have time to choose what to watch after you finish eating. This is all thanks to hugely complex logistical systems. Using custom software development companies can be a great way to suit your individual needs.

However, this can be an issue in itself. With such an impressive logistical system, and soaring demand, there can sometimes be problems with delivery – and research suggests people have very high expectations of meal delivery apps. They tend to blame both the restaurant and the app itself.

Not only this, but with so much choice around, the market is rather saturated and customers are spoilt for choice. This leaves it up to platform providers to not only help customers make choices, but to encourage engagement through a well designed app. This all starts with providing an excellent customer experience.

Source: Descartes

Why it’s Important to AMP up your Customer Experience

This is the feeling you get after any interaction with a company. How did you make this interaction, through a call center, an app or social media? And were you happy with the treatment you got? If your answer is yes then you got an amazing customer experience, and you are probably likely to use that company again meaning you will begin trusting them and become loyal to that company.

And you really want your customers to come back for more – according to a recent survey it costs up to five times more to acquire new customers than retain old ones. And what about a bad customer experience? Some 64% of consumers say that they have stopped doing business with a company if this happens.

Top Tips to Improve Experience on your Delivery App

In a nutshell, ensuring your meal delivery app’s client experience is amazing offers a fantastic opportunity to see a great return on investment. By following these tips you can crack open this lucrative market.

Great user experience

If you want your app to provide a great user experience, make sure it is eye catching and easy to navigate, which will give any potential customer a great first impression. You also don’t want to over complicate matters by having a convoluted sign-up system – allow new users to connect with their email or social media. Dialpad’s virtual receptionist service could be a great way to offer customer support for individual restaurants who might not have the capacity to offer 24/7 phone service.

Other basics like an efficient search bar, which allows app users to refine their search based on cuisine, distance or cost will make customers feel valued and make them feel like you are focusing on their needs.

Something less obvious might be visual instruction features for the delivery person, like a photo of where to leave the food, and the ability to send messages to them. This could also be connected to a live delivery tracker connected to the restaurant and the courier – such features also encourage engagement as customers keenly watch the cooking stage of their pizza.

Why not try opening your app to more people through shared payment, social sharing and referral initiatives? You can empower your current users to do the job of client acquisition for you.

Using data

By maintaining a consistent client base, you are well on your way to possessing data to help you make further sales, while indirectly affecting the user experience.

Using data can be a fantastic way to make customers feel like you have taken their interests into consideration by personalizing ads, giving inspiration or providing discounts based on their purchasing habits. Such upselling or cross-selling techniques can mean big profits from people making impulse purchases due to receiving personalized ads.

Try thinking about offering your staff data engineer training as this role becomes increasingly important within businesses.

Clear customer query resolution plan

Although we always strive to run like clockwork, the reality is that sometimes things go wrong, and the meal delivery market has its challenges. People are happy to accept mistakes, so long as there is a customer service system in place that is not only efficient but consistent.

For example, does your platform offer in app chat support – both human and AI? Such features ensure customers feel more engaged. Having an effective AI could also help you collect data from your customers in real time. They can also solve up to 75% of FAQs, which saves the customer time, empowers them to take action themselves and encourages them to spend more in the future.

Source: hbr

 If an AI can’t help you, it’s time to think about the human point of contact. By encrypting numbers with drivers, it is possible for customers to communicate with them without the concern of sharing private information. You should also have a function that allows for human-to-human interaction, and a cloud-based contact management system could help you do this around the clock, improving the customer experience, and transcribing calls and even customer sentiment in real time.

Improve engagement

If people don’t return to your app, it could be that they did not feel very engaged with it. Perhaps the user experience was lackluster, or they were offered no opportunity to express their opinions. Think about offering the chance for social sharing on your meal delivery app. This allows your customers to post pictures and reviews about restaurants, making them feel involved and appreciated, while also legitimizing your brand and leveraging more loyalty and support. 

Another way this can be achieved is using forums, which in the past used to require setting one up from scratch but can now be done faster and cheaper, without too many tech skills, using software companies. Make sure you spend time researching the best forum software.

Think about offering the chance for social sharing on your meal delivery app, such as DingDoong: Delivery and Pickup. This allows your customers to post pictures and reviews about restaurants, making them feel involved and appreciated, while also legitimizing your brand and leveraging more loyalty and support.

Customer loyalty program

As already stated, keeping old customers is far easier and cheaper than gaining new ones. In the dynamic and crowded digital meal delivery market, this is incredibly important. Loyal customers are not just more economic, they tend to spend more money and help create and maintain your brand image. Research also suggests that a purchase, especially for a non-essential item, is generally an emotional process – so it is very important that you build that emotional connection with your customer.

Apart from making the customer have a pleasant experience, how can this be achieved? By doing all of the above and beginning to run a customer loyalty programme.

This is an initiative that offers benefits to frequent customers like discounts, rebates and free products. You could do this by offering a point scheme, setting up a membership program, offering rewards for referring a friend, or even a period spend offer to encourage purchasing.

Source: emarsys

Customer retention

This comes hand-in-hand with loyalty. If you reward your customers, you will keep them, and repeat customers increase the profitability of your company. This can be done by having a meal delivery app which works well. However, if your app has a low retention rate and an even lower engagement rate you are doing something wrong.

You can analyze your data; which demographic is happy, which not? Are there particular trends that appear? How engaged are your users, and can you engage them more effectively? Retaining your customers means lower marketing costs and greater profitability – they have returned because they like your product and service.

Start bringing Home the Bacon

As you can see, when meal delivery apps are done well, it can encourage loyalty among customers and keep them coming back for more. Engage them with rewards, personalized ads and a great user experience. Furthermore, empower them to engage with your company through forums and review options to cement trust in your brand. 

The post How To Ensure Your Meal Delivery App’s Client Experience is Amazing appeared first on Diggiecorp Blog.

Define The Purpose of Your Dashboard

Dashboards are great asset to understand the overall performance of a business and pick up on early signs of potential issues. But not all dashboards are created equal. Many dashboards are ineffective simply because they are built on no clear requirements. At the very least, before building a dashboard, one has to get the answers to the following two basic questions:

• Who will use the dashboard?
• What kind of decisions will be made based on the data provided through the dashboard?

If you’re unable to answer these two questions, it’s important you probe for more clarity. Only once the objective of the dashboard is clear in your mind, should you proceed with its development.

Types of Dashboards

There are 4 types of data dashboards for business intelligence (BI) and their selection comes down to the overall goals of your analytics and data monitoring practices.

1. Strategic Dashboard

The strategic dashboard is used to monitor the long-term business strategy through key performance indicators. Its chief aim is to bring departmental performance in alignment with the overall business strategy. They are complex to create and are mainly used by senior-level management.

Strategic dashboards rely a great deal on past performances. A strategic dashboard offers a bird’s eye view of the revenue and the customer overview for the current and last period. The findings from a strategic dashboard can inform the management of the current state of business, its growth rate and how stats stack up against the long-term business goals.

2. Operational Dashboard

Operational dashboards are meant for monitoring and managing the operations within a shorter time-frame. Their administration usually rests with the junior level managers. Since these dashboards are based on real-time data, their main focus is on creating alerts about business exceptions. Operational dashboards facilitate the smooth workflow of departments and help them stay ahead of problems.

It gives crucial operational information for KPIs such as Total Impressions, Total Clicks, Total Acquisitions and Cost Per Acquisition and the total amount spent. This is very useful as any deviation from the desired course can alert the marketing department to adjust its operational activities.

3. Analytical Dashboard

As the name suggests analytical dashboard is meant for analysts to collect vast amounts of data and use that to support executives. Analytical dashboards’ effectiveness is derived from their use of historical data-usage.

Analysts study this data to find out trends and create predictions and targets, which can form part of a business intelligence strategy. The analytical dashboard can be seen as an intersection between the strategic and operational dashboards.

4. Tactical Dashboard

Tactical dashboards are used to trace the performance with the company’s goal and objectives. They help middle-level managers in the decision-making process and see how the market reacts to the company’s actions. The level of detail in tactical dashboards falls between the operational and strategic dashboards.

With a tactical dashboard, it’s vital to use proper technology to support its various functionalities. This will enable drawing deeper insights from analyzed data, identify the problems, find out their root cause and make sound decisions to improve the current scenario.

In the IT project management dashboard, one gets a complete overview of the project. All the different activities and their progress status is easily understood. Moreover, there’s a separate section for risks and the average time consumed in different tasks. Once the project is finished, a comprehensive IT report can be created to evaluate results, and enhance the efficiency of future projects.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) & Their Selection:

KPIs are at the core of any dashboard as it’s these metrics that display a visual representation of the insights drawn from different business processes. Once you’ve identified your target audience and established your ultimate business goal, you’ll be able to select effective and value enhancing key performance indicators for your dashboard.

Measure your KPIs against the following 6 points to validate their selection:

• Aligned – Ensure that the KPIs align with the objectives and strategic goals of your organization.
• Attainable – Whatever indicator you choose to measure should have data that’s easy to obtain.
• Acute – They should bring everyone on the same page and going in the same direction.
• Accurate – The data used for performance indicators should be reliable and accurate.
• Actionable – Each indicator should offer key insights into the business that is actionable.
• Alive – Since the business never stops, so shouldn’t your KPIs. Keep evolving them.

KPIs generally fall into the following five categories:

• Sales – E.g. average order size, gross profit, conversion rate, new customer order vs returning customer orders, shopping cart abandonment rate.
• Marketing – E.g. site traffic, new visitors vs. returning visitors, bounce rate, average session duration, traffic source, newsletter subscribers.
• Customer Service – E.g. customer satisfaction (CSAT) score, hit rate, net promoter score (NPS), first response time, average resolution time, active issues.
• Manufacturing – E.g. cycle time, overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), overall labor effectiveness (OLE), yield, number of non-compliance events or incidents.
• Project Management – E.g. hours worked, budget, return on investment (ROI), cost variance, cost performance index (CPI).

Good Design Accentuates The Details of a Dashboard

The User interface (UI) and User experience (UX) of a dashboard are as much important as its overall functionality. Following are the six best practices for designing appealing dashboards.

1. Know Your Audience and What They Expect From Dashboard

Who is your audience? That’s the first question you need to answer. Create user personas and look to know their behavior and preferences in detail. Once you’re done with that, you’ll know what your audience expects from a dashboard. Focus on no more than 5 key takeaways that your audience will want to see. Then by applying the F and Z reading pattern, structure your page accordingly.

2. Great Dashboards Lead With Key Data

There’s something about dashboards that throw big numbers up front and clean out the clutter. In a way, they communicate confidence and decisiveness. The style of the dashboard should be right up with any modern and clean design. Presentation of this type in dashboards gives instantaneous access to the most important data and saves the end user’s time.

3. Use Information Architecture To Create Stunning Design

When designing the dashboard it’s good practice to refer to the principles of information architecture and hierarchy. They help you decide which card to display and in what position. The F and Z patterns reflect how a user’s eye scans a page. The same logic needs to be applied in structuring and ordering of elements on your dashboard. Start with the key takeaways and let your dashboard flow from there.

4. Different Views Make For a Clean Design

Dashboards that offer many views while keeping the main view as simple as possible are most desirable. The user should be able to easily filter data by date, access information about payments, and so much more while maintaining a simple and elegant look. Presenting all that information on a single screen would create a total mess.

5. Consistent Design and Color Theme

While data might be the most sought after thing on a dashboard, that doesn’t mean it can’t look appealing from the word go. In an ideal dashboard, the web designer manifests a great combination of pleasing colors with light and proportionate amount of data. The outcome is a visible, easy to navigate dashboard with an elegant look.

Conclusion

The effectiveness of a data dashboard lies in offering balance in all things. It should be appealing but visually light, edgy but straightforward, and most of all it should be tailored to help you achieve your business goals and serve your audience.

The post Building the Perfect Data Dashboard for Business Intelligence appeared first on Diggiecorp Blog.

Sales reps are no longer the first mode of interaction between businesses and consumers. That place has been taken up by the internet, which daily attracts millions of new users. In this circumstance, it is vital for brands to understand how consumers prefer to interact with businesses online.

After analysing consumer behaviour and their interaction with web pages, we have come up with this article. It contains most effective touchpoints to engage users and assist them in completing their desired actions.

Read below to see the touchpoints and how various brands utilize them for customer interaction.

Captivating Touch Point Examples to Improve Interaction and Optimize  Customer Experience

The following touchpoints have been precisely created to increase interaction between the website and visitors. You can implement them in your website to improve the overall design and experience.

1. First Fold of the Homepage

Source: W-Tutors

The 1st fold of the homepage is the first thing your visitors see when they visit your website. It needs to be attractive, user-friendly and clutter-free. Most companies utilize their front fold by providing an “enter email” field to interact with the brand. It is an easy way to connect with customers and improves navigation.

2. Newsletter Subscription Bar

Source: Voyij

Businesses can ask visitors to sign up for email newsletters in a variety of ways. One of the most effective ways is to request the visitor via the newsletter subscription bar. It is easy to fill and does not misguide visitors. They know they’ll be signing up to receive your blogs and promotions in their inbox and can contact your brand with ease anytime they want.

3. On-Page Contact Form

Source: Visitors Guru

The main goal behind on-page contact forms is to collect appropriate details about your customers before they contact your brand. This helps businesses provide more personalized experiences and target high-quality leads. A business can add various types of fields in the contact form.

4. Free Product Demo

Source: Diggiecorp

Consumers prefer receiving free demos of products before making a purchase. It keeps things transparent and assists in increasing conversions and trust. Brands who incur major expenses in providing free demos can limit their number to 1 free demo for each customer.

5. Testimonials from Clients and Partners

Source: Oyo Cater

Client testimonials motivate consumers to interact with the brand. They act as a trust-building element that progress the buyer’s journey towards conversion. There are several client testimonial formats that a website can use. It can also integrate a ‘Contact Us’ button with the testimonials section to use the section as a subconscious CTA.

6. Author Bio

Source: Entrepreneur

A short bio with a link to a landing page can help businesses create a distinct profile. If you plan on investing time and money to establish your presence on a third-party website, then focus on bringing value through content as well. Furthermore, you can use big data and content marketing to reach the right customer.

7. Live Chat for Answers to Questions in Real Time

Source: KoutureStudios

Consumers in every sector expect brands to provide fast and reliable customer service. They don’t want to navigate through the traditional IVR systems and want ease in finding customer support. In such a scenario, providing chat support via your websites is a very helpful option. If you cannot provide real-time support, then several AI-enabled chat integrations are also available.

8. Comments Section

Source: Wiser Community

Consumers consider comments and reviews a genuine source of information about a company or its products. They also use the comment section as a way to approach brands to clear any queries and doubts. This is especially common on blog pages. Also, consumers replying and interacting with other consumers also increases the website engagement.

9. Social Media Sharing

Source: Pendazi

Social media buttons enable visitors to share your products on their social media handles. This does marketing for your brand and helps visitors and influencers get a third-party opinion from their followers. Platforms like Facebook also provide a private message option, which is an upgrade to traditional social media sharing.

10. Pop-ups for Product Demo

Reference: Yo!Yumm

Pop-ups with a light and functional design that are timed well enhance the user experience. They assist in customer retention, and product demo pop-ups even introduce your products to visitors. There are various types of pop-ups that you can integrate into your website, such as exit-intent pop-ups and timed pop-ups.

11. Call-to-action Text – Inside Post

Source: PwC

Depending on the funnel stage a market asset belongs to, businesses can place various types of CTAs inside their blog posts. Contrasting colors, urgency, desire and preciseness in CTAs makes them most convincing and useful for business websites.

12. Push Notifications

Push notifications remind users to visit your store on an intermittent basis. eCommerce businesses have been using push notifications as a means for promotion and interaction for many years. Whether the user will click on the notification or not, it depends on the ad copy you sent. Also, push notifications can be sent on both computer web browsers and mobile phones with the later being more popular. They are a different type of CTAs with a very high chance of users reading them.

13. Email Signature

Source: WiseStamp

Email signatures signify a logical conclusion of your communication, making them noticeable to the users. A well-structured email signature amplifies brand image and can be used to convey important information just like the example shared above. This email signature has the primary contact number of the business along with the email address and the website for the receiver’s reference. Furthermore, links to the company’s social media handles advertises brand footprints and enhances brand awareness.

14. Survey Participation Request Form

Source: Adobe

To use surveys as a touchpoint, businesses can frame questions that are no hassle for their website visitors to answer. In the above example, the form is not shown upfront. Instead, it appears as a popup, asking the visitors if they would like to complete a short survey. A click on “Yes, later” will open a separate window to which the visitors can come back to at a later stage.

15. Landing Page CTAs

Source: Adobe

Many brands have configured a default contact button in the navigation bar of their website. As a touchpoint, a simple ‘contact us’ button is not so convincing and does not deliver value. Instead, brands can ramp up their landing pages by providing in-context CTAs that align with the buyer journey and assist in conversions. 

16. Refer a Friend

Source: Sprint

Rewarding consumers for referring your products to family and friends can also increase website engagement. It is good for business promotions and the reward only needs to be given incase of successful referrals, which means when a referred person actually buys your service or product.

17. Search Bar

Source: Oyo Cater

In a world, where consumers are hungry for experience, search bars should be made to bring convenience. In the above example, the search bar is the most prominent touchpoint, motivating visitors to interact with the brand. Any other type of web element or touchpoint would have taken away the convenience of finding products from consumers and resulted in poor conversions.

18. The Hover Effect

Source: Simplicity

Website design practices like hover effects use animations to improve the user experience of visitors. For example, a change in the color of an element when a visitor moves his mouse over it is an example of the hover effect. Using the combination of various animations and colors, brands can use the hover effect to increase clicks and user engagement.

19. Internal Linking

Source: Visitor Health Insurance

Internal linking has two benefits – enable a website visitor to explore the topic and improve ranking in search results. Ideally, keeping the sales funnel in mind and inserting appropriate internal links can lead visitors to the final purchase decision stage of the buyer’s journey.

20. Call-to-action Text – Side

Source: Uni Diamonds

Concealed CTAs that popup once a visitor takes an action also work as feasible touchpoints for brands. For example, in the given image, Uni Diamonds is using mail and call logos to conceal CTAs. Not only are they improving user experience, but also making the web design clutter-free.

Due to the presence of uncountable websites, consumers today have varied experiences in interacting with online businesses. In these circumstances, clear-cut digital touchpoints assist businesses in providing their consumers a direction to interact with their websites. Moreover, integrating these touchpoints not only improves a brand’s web design but also ameliorates the customer experience and encourages interaction.

Majority of the websites mentioned in this article are developed by using Diggiecorp products. To get a website with similar UI/UX design, you can check out our wide range of products or feel free to contact us for custom development.

The post 20 Customer Touch Point Examples To Improve Your Customer Journey appeared first on Diggiecorp Blog.

There is a reason why it always adjudicated that a webmaster must never let their guard down when it comes to designing each part of the website. Even a simple contact us form can either result in a potential customer contacting you or just moving to another website. Creating an effective contact page involves a key process and one should abide by some crucial tips in order to ensure that the send button does not sit idle.

1. CLEAR AND CONCISE TITLE

Titles are meant to convey the crux of the matter, so avoid stories and tales. Be clear and precise with your title. The visitor should understand what the form is for, by just looking at the title.

 2. INFORMATIVE DESCRIPTION

Although the title of the contact form should explain the contact form, in case the visitor still has any doubts and misconceptions, the description should come to your rescue. The description should answer- what is the need of the form and what will the visitor get in return of filling the form.

3. NO ONE LIKES LONG FORMS

Do not overdo your form with numerous fields. Use only those fields which are necessary and of utmost importance to your business. Avoid asking same information twice. Eg. Password – Confirm Password. Avoid asking for information, which is personal like Phone numbers, Spouse Name etc. In case you are asking such information, ensure the privacy of the user and communicate it using safety badges.

Given below are two options: Let us see which one do you like

Which one do you think is most likely to be filled by the end user? Surely, the first one is a clear winner; the second option contains unnecessary fields, which can make the visitor hesitant about completing the form.

4. KEEP LABELS LEFT ALIGNED ABOVE THE FEILD

Eye tracking studies have shown that left aligned labels above the field perform better than the right and left aligned labels in line with the field. To make the form compact and short, labels can be placed inside the field.

Left Aligned inside the field: 

Left Aligned above the field:

Left Aligned in line with field:

5. AVOID CONFUSING ACTION BUTTON

Using action buttons like Submit, OK, Continue, Done is the best way to confuse your visitors. So avoid using such buttons. An action button should always be reciprocation for filling the form and communicate what the visitor will get after he presses the action button.

6. PLACE THE FORM ABOVE THE FOLD

Doing this will encourage the visitor to focus more on the form itself and hence improve the rate of conversion. Keeping forms below the fold or spread across two folds of the page creates confusion and distraction.

 7. HELP VISITORS FILL FORM

Provide help text below the fields to guide user’s input. This way you are communicating the information as well as the format you are expecting from the visitor.

Eg: In the Email field you can write – “example@domain.com “

If the fields are complicated Help option can be given to facilitate the user about the required input.

8. ALERT ERRORs CLEARLY

Communicate the errors clearly. Do not just show an error without communicating the reason for error as it can be irritating for the visitor to keep searching where he has gone wrong.

 9. HIGHLIGHT FIELDs

While the visitor is filling a specific field highlight that field, so that in case the visitor gets distracted he can quickly come back and resume from where he left. Also, save time by automatic cursor placement in the first field. 

10. FONT SYLE, SIZE & BACKGROUND COLOUR

Readability of form is very important, so make sure the font style, size, and color do not hinder the reading. Avoid using funky font styles and color schemes, which make reading difficult. For Eg: Light gray background with white text.

11. DEMARCATE BETWEEN THE REQUIRED AND OPTIONAL FIELDS

Best and easiest way to differentiate between the required and optional fields is using the asterisk (*) sign. This will improve the user experience and hence the conversion rate.

12. USE MOBILE FRIENDLY FORMS

With the number of mobile users going up, it is very important to design a form, which provides a good user experience to mobile users. So invest in optimizing your fields for mobile use.

13. AVOID CROWDED DROP DOWN MENU OPTIONS

A drop down menu loaded with numerous options can confuse the visitor and they can end up saying Good Bye to your page. So use drop down menu wisely. In case you have a large number of options, using an Auto Complete will be a better option.

14. PERSONALIZE MESSAGE AFTER FORM IS SENT

Let your visitors know what will happen after the form is sent. Display a personalized message, which would include the name entered by the visitor telling helpful details like how long will it take for someone to follow-up or any other relevant info.

15. USE SIMPLE CAPTCHA

Although Captcha is an anti-spam measure but can prove extremely annoying if the visitor is unable to get captcha right the first time and you end up scaring off visitor from your page. To overcome this necessary evil, use simple captcha and give the option of changing the code.

Eg: Use something like this, just simple checkbox:

CONCLUSION

In the end, when it comes to designing a contact form, it all boils down to creating a form that is precise, relevant, personalized and easy to fill. Rather than having a loud form with its focus on high-quality graphics, the contact form ought to usher in the fastest way to contact you. In addition to that, you should also keep the form engaging, so that the visitor does not abandon it midway. Do you have some good examples of such contact forms? Feel free to start a conversation in the comments below.

The post 15 Tips to Design a Perfect Contact Form appeared first on Diggiecorp Blog.

But, is the structure of your blog and elements present in it helping readers to go through your posts smoothly?

Here are the best practices to improve the UX of your blog to allow readers to go through your posts easily; therefore, to improve its engagement rate and get more social shares.

Blog homepage – Provide a helpful signage

Most of the time readers land on your post following its link shared over the web. But a few readers arrive on it only after first coming to your website or blog homepage. It is crucial that you don’t overlook this factor, and work on improving the homepage of your blog.

The blog homepage must have an intuitive layout & navigation, and should be designed in such a manner that effortlessly directs visitors to the post page. Few techniques that most successful blogger practice to engage visitors on their blog include:

1. A featured image depicting the topic of the post in a clear & concise manner, and is also visually appealing
2. Counter for number of views & comments to highlight the engagement on the post
3. Create a unique excerpt summarizing your post to engage visitors so that they can have a better idea what the post is about

Although the above-mentioned practices are widely accepted in the blogger community, it is okay to come up with something new, but only if you are sure that it has a chance to work.

For example, marketing blog QuickSprout’s homepage displays post in a slightly different way. They use the introductory part of the post as the excerpt so that users get engaged with the post even before reaching the post page.

Separate and sticky top navigation

Plan a separate navigation bar for your blog to make visitors feel that they are on an entirely different section of your page. A dedicated navigation bar will also allow users to navigate through your blog easily, therefore, improve its engagement rate.

If your blog has many categories, put on the most popular ones on the navigation bar. Make a provision to keep the navigation bar always on the top as users scroll down the page. In technical language, make it a sticky navigation bar.

Additionally, also place a link back to the main website on your blog so that visitors don’t need to manually enter the URL to visit back your website.

Smaller visual span – Make it easy for eyes

Keep the view span of your blog somewhere between 650-750px to minimize the eye movement.

Don’t break the neck of your readers by making them move from one end to another to read every line on your blog. Keep the post span between the aforementioned limits, so that readers can read lines with the minimal eyeball movement. This, in long terms, will also improve your blog’s average stay time per visitor.

Keep paragraphs short and crisp

It takes a lot of effort to read big paragraphs even if they are very informative. Long paragraphs give readers a feeling that the post is a never-ending read; therefore, it becomes probable that they might lose interest somewhere in the middle of the post.

Ideally, a paragraph should consist of only 3 to 4 lines. Anything longer than this would require a lot of concentration from the readers’ end.

Don’t force readers to try too hard just to read your post. Keep paragraphs short, give readers pit stops to visualize things, and allow them to connect well with the post content.

Quick tip: Using bullet points to explain the process, benefits, features, etc. can do wonders.

Always go black-on-white

When it comes to the background color of your post, never-ever do any experiments. It should be white, always white. And the font color should be black (or a darker shade of gray) as it appears very clear on the white background, therefore, improve the readability of your blog.

Also, avoid using fancy fonts or too small font size for that matter, as it can adversely affect readability.

Don’t date a post

If you write posts on tips and how-to topics to educate your readers, then in most cases, that piece of content is meant to be evergreen. Adding date to it will make your post look outdated even if you update your posts on regular basis.

Two ways out of the date thing:

1. Do not allow the date to show with the post and in the URL.

2. Or if you think adding a date is important, try not to highlight it much. And if you regularly update your blog, keep a counter that automatically updates the date to the last time you updated its content.

This will tell readers that you regularly update your posts, therefore, chances are good that readers will come time & again to your blog.

Spread it with social sharing icons

A good post deserves to be spread across different social networks. And to make sure that it happens, you need to place social media sharing icons with your post.

Choose social media networks, where you want your post to be shared, wisely, and according to your audience.

Social media sharing icons should always remain visible to readers, so that your post can be shared whenever a reader feels like.

Tell your programmer that icons should stick to a place when scrolling down; also make sure that it doesn’t obstruct the post content view.

Let’s sprinkle some icing sugar on the cake:

1. Make a provision to show the total number of shares for the post like ConversionXL do. This will act as a social proof for the readers.

2. Make sure when someone tweets your post, your Twitter handle is displayed along with it. This will help you to easily track re-tweets and will also ensure that you get credit for your work.

Discuss this with your programmers and suggest that changes are required in settings of the plugin used for social sharing.

3. Let readers tweet a quote or a line from your post.

Don’t let the interest die

To keep the post engaging throughout its length, you should always maintain the balance between text and visual content. If you are giving tips, explaining a topic, giving your thoughts on a strategy, then it is possible that the post may go up to 1800-2000 words.

Keeping readers engaged on a long post requires including of following types of visual content:

• Screenshots
• Vines
• Memes
• Gifs
• Infographics
• Videos
• Quotes
• Tweets
• Stats
• Graphs

Do not try to add all of the above mentioned visuals in your post as it may affect the loading speed of your page. Here are a couple of tips in this regard:

• Always add optimized images and other visuals without compromising on quality.
• Always measure your page load speed using this tool.

Add estimated reading time

Your headline triggers the interest of your readers. Telling them right away the estimated reading time of your post can improve its engagement factor considerably.

Adding estimated reading time also improves the bounce rate. Always keep in mind that your readers’ time is important, therefore, make it a habit to always add time at the top of your post. Also, remember that adding estimated reading time only makes sense when it is for text only, not for post with lots of visual content.

Note: Add estimated reading time only if you think your post will take about 6-8 minutes to read. If the post will take more than that, mentioning time may have the opposite impact and discourage readers to read your post in the first place.

Insert CTAs smartly

Ask yourself: ‘Why do I have a blog?’

Answer might be: ‘To educate people.’

But that’s not true all the times. When you have a company blog, besides educating people, you also need to generate leads and convert them into clients.

[tweet_box design=”box_12_at” float=”none” author=”@Diggiecorp_tech” pic_url=”https://www.diggiecorp.com/fab/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/UX-of-Blog.png”]When you have a company blog, besides educating people, you also need to generate leads and convert them into clients[/tweet_box]

Therefore, it is also important to allow readers to learn about your services & products. To make it happen, practice following:

• Do internal linking in your posts
• Insert CTA-AB (Call-to-action –Action button) i.e. a statement that recognizes the pain-point or need of readers, plus the action button that takes visitors to a service/product/contact page.

Some CTA tips and etiquettes:

• Do not over stuff your post with CTAs and internal links
• Make sure you are adding relevant CTAs to the post and placing them at appropriate places

• Utilize your side panel and add a sticky graphical CTA which always remains visible to readers
• Add an exclusive CTA with benefits, social proofs, and offers at the end of the post

Don’t leave reader on a dead end

You did an extensive research and came up with an informative article; but don’t do the mistake of neglecting the end, otherwise, all your effort to engage readers may go in vain.

Deploy the following tactics towards the end:

Add a conclusion
A great article starts with a great title and ends with a great conclusion. No matter how engaging your entire article is, if you fail to add a conclusion in the end, it would be a purposeless piece of content; and your readers will go away without doing any further activity on your blog.

The conclusion should be short and a sum-up of all the main points of the post. Not only will it improve the engagement rate of your blog but will also motivate readers to take further actions.

Ask a question
Ending conclusion with a question is also a great way to motivate readers to take part in commenting.

Your post ends here…

Let’s talk about some more engagement tactics which are not the part of your post but play a great role in engaging readers.

Comments section

Now it’s time for the readers to ask their questions or answer the questions asked (by author) at the end of the post.

After going through a post, readers may have some queries which they want to ask. So, it is reader’s turn first. Comment form should appear on the top of the comments section.

On few blogs, comment submission form comes after all the comments. On a blog which receives hundreds of comments, such a practice is discouraging for readers, as they will have to scroll down a lot just to find the comment form.

Additionally, try to respond to all the comments from your readers. This will enable you to build a relationship with your readers, as well as encourage readers to comment on your future posts.

Send readers to other posts

Your readers are hungry for information, so feed them with more content. Here are few techniques you can try out:

• Highlight related posts (or previous & next post) below the comment section

• Place quick links for recent/trending/ popular posts in the right panel of the blog
• Highlight relevant categories and tags in the right panel to allow users to find related content easily

Conclusion – Provide better experience to improve engagement and trustworthiness

If you succeed to provide a better user experience and engage readers on your blog, you will automatically succeed in improving your brand value. And an improved brand value will help you achieve overall business success.

Let’s go through above-mentioned practices for improving the UX and engagement on your blog once again:

• Improve blog homepage to drive readers to post page
• Plan a separate and sticky top navigation for your blog
• Keep smaller visual span on post page
• Keep paragraphs short and crisp
• Always go for black font on white background
• Avoid placing date with a post (or place them smartly)
• Place sticky social media sharing icons
• Add visual content to keep interest alive
• Add estimated reading time (Not for blogs with extra-long posts)
• Insert call-to-actions to keep readers to allow readers to take further steps
• Don’t leave readers on a dead end

Are there any other ways to improve the UX and engagement on a blog? Please suggest in the comments.

The post How to improve User Experience of your blog to get maximum shares appeared first on Diggiecorp Blog.