UX/UI Essentials: Typography in Mobile Applications

You have probably heard this many times that good typography is difficult to find, but what we feel and acknowledge is that good and accurate typography makes the art of reading smooth and effortless. When our eyes read each word in a line, it does so in small jumps, which is widely known as saccades, a term most of you might not have heard. We obviously don’t read letters, and as a matter of fact words, we take in the snapshots of a part of words and our brain registers them and look further what it expects to find. In case the brain was not able to make out what the text is actually portraying, it sends the eyes back to read the text and verify if the assumptions it has made was 100% correct. A good typography minimizes the amount of effort your eyes need to put in order to read along with a line of text.

Mobile devices over the last few years have seen a tremendous growth in regards to usage. 80% of internet users today own a Smartphone and users spend on average 69% of their media time on Smartphones. A typical Smartphone with sufficient battery life and powerful wifi can bring users a world full of valuable and infinite information. We all are living and breathing in a world full of mobile phones and since every user today owns a mobile phone, it is our responsibility to optimize it for unhindered and better user experience. Now, how can you give users stellar UX and UI experience on a small screen without overloading it? Though the world of mobile apps is filled to the brim with multiple options to bring such change, as a leading Website Designing Company, we consider Typography in Mobile Apps the most important one.

Mobile design requires a significant amount of detailing, intricacy, and elaboration due to its limited screen size. The User Interface of mobile apps is made up of different elements, mainly smooth navigation bars, and tab buttons, side sliding menus, along with some aesthetic and graphic elements to highlight these elements. But even with the incorporation of these visuals elements, we keep the users hooked by communicating with them in a most traditional and roundabout way, i.e. via text. Communication plays a pivotal role in mobile design. No matter how and where you are developing your mobile app, it should clearly portray their intent and purpose. The objective of developing a mobile application is crystal clear, to develop a connection between the app and the user and help a user find what they are looking for in an app.

According to sources, 95% of communication over the internet is via text. Unfortunately, web designers are focusing on every major design element but this. Here an acclaimed Web Development Company in Phoenix Arizona AZ is talking about a field that has redefined over the years and typography has become a major design element in mobile apps.

What is Typography?

Going by Wikipedia’s apt definition,

“Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing (leading), and letter-spacing (tracking), and adjusting the space between pairs of letters (kerning). The term typography is also applied to the style, arrangement, and appearance of the letters, numbers, and symbols created by the process.”

Why is Typography so important in Mobile Apps?

The role of typography is not just limited to filling up the spaces in the mobile apps, but to aesthetically complement the overall mobile application design. This will significantly empower the overall user experience and will increase user’s amazement within the app.
Typography plays a vital part in triggering human psychology and doesn’t restrict only to being a graphic contributor. With right and effective choice of typography, it becomes easier for the app users to connect with the overall app usability.
It is a matter of fact that great design captures the attention of a user in a blink, but to prolong that attention, typography plays a very quintessential role. That is why it is must to build a typographic hierarchy which is a part of the visual hierarchy in the designing context which guides the user attention and helps them explore an application.
When typography done right, it can help communicate better with the users. You can win trust and attention of the users with the selection of typography that gels well with the overall app design. You can highlight important details with typography and encourage users to take actions through words.

What are the best practices in mobile typography?

Font Size: Let’s talk about Apple’s take on this. Apple in its website devoted to developers has clearly mentioned that “Your font will be no good if users can’t read it, no matter if it’s the most beautiful font in the world.” According to the Cupertino multinational technology company, font size ranging from 11 to 17 points is apt for iOS devices and 35 and 50 characters per line, which is somewhere close to what needs to be done in Android Apps. The screen of mobile phone ends, before they can even start, so use them wisely.

Font Style: The selection of font style says a lot about your mobile app and what you are trying to portray with it and it is something which is often sidetracked or simply plucked from the library. The type of font style you are selecting largely depends on the type of content you want to display. This is because fonts can express really well. Opt for curvier and thinner fonts and kick aside over-decorative and gaudy fonts that look shabby on a small screen. Below is the list of the best free mobile fonts to use for your design projects.

Leading: In the typography context, leading is the space between the baselines of consecutive lines of type. Since there is major screen size issue with mobile phones, leading is significantly smaller than desktop versions. Leading in mobile phones should be a little bit tight as compared to the desktop. Too much wider and shorter leading can entirely break the overall user interface of your mobile app. In mobile phones, the standard leading should be 120% the point size of the font.

Kerning: It is defined as the “distance between two letters”. It is the process of adjusting the distance between the characters. It isn’t something that is too important in the large space of typography, but definitely worth the attention. If you notice clearly, you may witness that sometimes the letter spacing between capital letters may lead to inconsistent kerning as compared to the spacing between lowercase letter. So divert your attention to this problem and maintain the space visually even.

If you would like to add something to this list, feel free to drop it in our comments box below.

3 Ways to Improve Your Website’s Page Speed

A well-known maxim “Patience is a virtue” doesn’t apply online.

“Page speed” is often used interminably with “site speed”, which can actually be described as the page speed for a sample of page views on a website. Page speed, on the other hand, can be described as the actual speed of the page or “page load time”, the time a website page takes to fully display all the contents it features. It can also be described as the “time to first byte” i.e. how long it takes for your browser to get the first byte of information from the web server.

Time and again, Google has stressed on the fact that site speed which ultimately leads to page speed is one of the most important signals used by its search algorithm to rank website pages and the researchers have revealed that Google takes into consideration “time to first byte” when it determines page speed.

Website’s Page Speed

Going by the statistics a 1-second delay in page load time garners website,

11% fewer page views
16% decrease in customer satisfaction
7% decrease in website conversions

Therefore it is imperative to keep your website page load speed in check, not only to rank well on Google but also to improve the bottom line profits. Here are 3 sure short ways listed together by the experts of the Top Website Designing Company in Delhi to take your website’s page speed a few notches up.

Use a Content Delivery Network: Well this one is the most beneficial when reducing your page load time. Hosting your website’s media files on a content delivery network is one of the best ways to snatch those extra seconds from your site to fully load. It proves to be utterly beneficial since it saves up to 60% bandwidth and approximately halve the number of requests your website makes.

Use GZIP Compression: If you are creating high-quality content, then your website must be harboring large pages which are often 100KB and sometimes more. This makes the website heavier and takes few more seconds to process and download. One and the only way to boost the load time of these pages is to zip them together in a file, a technique which is popularly known as compression. GZIP compression is a tool which helps reduce the bandwidth of your website pages and alleviates HTTP response.

Optimize your CSS: Know this, your CSS loads much before your website is fully displayed in front of the users. The longer it takes for them to fully download your CSS, the more they wait. By optimizing your CSS it will take less time for the files to download and will give visitors faster access to your website pages. How? Get rid of redundant code in your files and remove extra spaces in your style sheets.

Quick Tips for Improving Mobile Website Usability

With thousands of mobile websites all around the world, it has become extremely important to ace every single aspect of a mobile website. Mobile websites can be a nightmare for mobile devices with under done usability testing and improper design implementations. These have been the major factors that lead to the diminishing number of mobile webs and users dislike to this particular functionality.

It is extremely important for designers and developers to take into consideration on how well they are going to use the barest minimum of the available screen space to display their business’s major features and content and remain valuable for the mobile users. Usability and functionality are the main factors that can make or break the overall success of your mobile website. If your website isn’t responsive, “amplified” and A/B tested, it will look good on desktops and laptops, but what they will look on mobile phones, you can’t even imagine.

To help you make a website which is high on usability, here are few steps put together by a renowned Ecommerce Website Designing Company in Phoenix, Etoile Info Solutions.

Decide Screen Resolution

How will you ever going to decide what should be there on the site or not, if you have not decided on the screen resolution? Your mobile website should work smoothly, without hampering the design and functionality on the wide range of possible mobile devices. You need to make a perfect balance between the appropriate screen size and the size of your audience. Make a list of specifications of various mobile devices, their screen size and resolution and then use your best judgment to create one display which will be compatible across all screen sizes.

Mobile Website Usability

Know your customers: In order to decide what functionality and what content you are going to put into your mobile website, you need to know what your customers really want from you. The best way to achieve that is by conducting few usability tests or how well your website is doing on usability by letting some users use your standard website. This will help you gather crucial information on what users would like to see when coming to your website.

Don’t go overboard: “Simplicity is the key”. In this case usability is the key to effective usability. Let them explore the website without any conundrum. Try to keep your website free of any tables, frames and other complex formatting features. It should be a much simpler version of your desktop site, with unique and bold buttons, less graphics and a less complex navigation system. In case you are using padding, just make sure you are using it on a minimum side, which is far less than what you’d use for a normal website.

What are the Pros of Implementing HTTPS?

There was a study conducted by the Peter J. Meyers of Moz revealing that “30% of Page-1 Google Results were secure HTTPS”. Shocking?Hardly! This spike in the HTTPS sites is a result of Google’s tirade stating that HTTPS is a favorable ranking factor and will be given preference over HTTP. Well, this particular statistic has grabbed a lot of attention since then and has given rise to one question in general, what are the advantages do HTTPS web services provide websites with that it was given so much weight in Google’s ranking algorithm.

But first, let’s understand what HTTPS is?

HTTPs, fully formed, Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, is a protocol that employs HTTP on a secure, encrypted and transport-layer security environment. HTTPs connection is used to encrypt connections to and from a site so that they can’t be accessed by any third-party invader. Now, it will be next to impossible for anyone to access data that flows between your site and the visitor. It is used to protect the transmitted transaction from going out. They are generally used for carrying out financial transactions and to protect website’s user from any kind of censorship by the government.

The HTTP secured website’s URL begins with https:// and you will see a lock sign ensuring that you are navigating in a secured, protected environment.

Now, let’s study the various pros of implementing HTTPS as listed by a reputable Web Development Company in Delhi.

Pros of Using HTTPS

Privacy: HTTPs plays a function of identity verification very efficiently. One of the major advantages of implementing HTTPs is that it ensures the website users that the website they are visiting isn’t a scam and they are who they are showing. HTTPs connection verifies your website on the server it is meant to be connecting to, so the visitors will have a piece of mind that they are in a secure environment.

Security: If the interaction between a browser and server is happening in the clear, it’s not rocket science that a third party site can easily access and alter the data transmitted between them. By taking over or in more understandable terms hijacking a connection, the third party site can easily alter the data sent from the server before it can finally reach the browser.

Google and SEO: Google wants only the best for their visitors. They want their visitors to visit only a secured and protected websites and, HTTPs fulfill the criteria. That’s why it is one of the favorable Google ranking factors. There has been a significant hike in the number of HTTPs site in the Google rankings.

What are the Different Varieties of Customer Churn?

Before we dive straight into the matter in question, let a Website Designing Company in Phoenix Arizona AZ aware you of few churn statistics.

Churn rate describes the health of your business. So it is important to ensure that your business is taking the right turns to reduce the churn rate and to improve the health of your business.

According to different studies and resources

Reducing churn by 5% can increase your company profits by 25-125%.
70% of the times, the reason why customers switch companies has nothing to do with the product and everything to do with the quality of service.
If your customer service representatives are not responding to customers over social media, your churn can increase by up to 15%.
82% of consumers have stopped doing business with a company because of bad customer service.

Keep these statistics in mind as we analyze the different varieties of churn.

Varieties of Customer Churn

varieties of churn

Subscription churn

Subscription churn is the percentage metric that calculates the total number of people who cancel your services during a given period, based on the number of people subscribed during that period. For example, if you have 100 customers and 20 had cancelled your services, you had a 20% churn rate.

Subscription churn

Gross Revenue Churn

Gross Revenue churn is described as the percentage of your revenue that you have lost during a given period due to customers cancelling, switching or downgrading.

Gross Revenue Churn

Remember customers with low purchasing power are most likely to churn more quickly than the customers with high purchasing power.

Net Revenue Churn

Net Revenue Churn is the best indicator that determines the health of your business. It is described as the percentage of revenue that your company has lost from existing customers during a given period.

For more blogs like these, refer to the blog section of a highly acknowledged website Designing Company in Delhi, www.websolutioncentre.com

What is Native Advertising and what are Its Types?

Etoile Info Solutions has been delivering result-oriented and custom made Seo Services in Phoenix Arizona for a long time now. We know you all must be familiar with the concept of native advertising and what all it entails. But seeing the far end of the sea is not something everybody can accomplish. Native advertising is more than what we all think and this blog is everything “native advertising” and more.

What is Native Advertising?

Native advertising feels like an extended version of a publisher’s website. Confused? Let’s talk in simple and understandable terms. Native advertising is a form of paid media where the ad experience circumvents around the natural form and function of the user experience in which it is placed.

Form: Native ads complement the visual design of the experience they are placed within, and look and feel like natural content.

Function: Native ads must work in harmony with the native user experience and the various function so that they look and feel like natural content.

Examples of Native Advertising

The main purpose of native advertising is to look and feel like the content around it, native ads are often difficult to spot. Here are some examples of native advertising to help you understand its different forms.

Native Search Engine Ads

In the image below, you can see native search engine ads are designed to look exactly like the organic search engine results.

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Native Twitter Ads

Twitter’s promoted tweets are another form of native advertising. A promoted tweet looks just like any other tweet but is differentiated by the “Promoted by” text.

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Native News Feed

This is the form of native advertising where the promoted posts pop up next to real news in publisher’s new feed. Refer to the image below.

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In the dictionary of Native Advertising, these promoted posts can be “sponsored” or “branded”.

Sponsored: A brand sponsores or pays the publisher to create the content of the ad.

Branded: A brand pays the publisher to simply publish the ad.

Native Advertorial Ads

Advertorials are different from traditional advertisements because they are created to give the look and feel of articles appearing in publications. They are editorial content usually created to advertise a brand.

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Native Video Ads

Native video ads are focused primarily on education and entertainment. They are generally click-to-play or autoplay (muted) video ads, mostly 30 seconds in length. These can be published on numerous social media channels including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram; video uploading platforms, such as YouTube; and even the content discovery network like Taboola.

Goals of Native Advertising

With native advertising, the marketer tends to achieve two main goals,

To drive higher brand uplift and position a brand’s image in the customer’s mind.
Compelling consumers to take one particular action which can be done through native search engine ads mentioned above.

Why adopt Native Advertising?

There are two main reasons why one must incorporate native advertising to their arsenal of digital marketing tactics.

1. Native ads grab a lot of attention. According to a study, 25% more consumers were measured to look at in-feed native ad placements (the most common editorial native ad format) than display ad units.

2. Native ads not only garner clicks, they also garner conversions. “Native advertisements registered 9% higher lift for brand affinity and 18% higher lift for purchase intent responses than traditional banner ads.”

But the question is, WHY NOW?

There are still many marketers who are still not able to grasp the concept of native marketing.

According to a survey by Copyblogger, nearly 50% of marketers still have no idea what native advertising is all about and only 3% are thorough with the concept of native advertising.

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So isn’t it this a wonderful opportunity to reap the benefits of a digital marketing tactic your competitor know nothing about?

Yes, it is.

Reasons Your Company Should Use Native Advertising

Since websites are literally breathing in an internet world of ad blocking, ad skimming, ad skipping and free ad streaming services, marketers have actually run out of options to make their digital marketing strategy a success or make a niche in the online world. Well, they just need to put in one single extra tactic- Native Advertising. As mentioned before native advertising is a form of paid advertising which resembles the form and function of the content in which it appears.

As a Reputed Mobile App Development Company in Phoenix Arizona, the experts of Etoile Info Solutions has curated few reasons why your company should use native marketing.

Let’s dig in!

People want to watch and share good content: For all those who still live in a wonderland thinking that people won’t pay much attention to the native advertising, the watch this video Microsoft created to ask users to reconnect with the new Internet Explorer. This native video is an epitome od excellence and did a wonderful job reminding people the perks of being a 90s kid. The video’s 50+ million views are all we need to know what the craze is all about.

Consumers don’t want to be JUST sold: According to a research, millennials are very clever in determining when brands are selling to them. And they simply hate it. More than 51% of millennials between the 18-44 years of age feel that branded content has more credibility than traditional advertising. This isn’t something new; you can see this trend everywhere. Young people tend to block ads and they go by the words of influencers than rely on TV commercials.

Help spread real ideas: Good native advertising isn’t only restricted to product or service promotion, they are formed to harbor emotions, educate and entertain. This method helps brands to pay attention to the various social issues, make people love and laugh and increase their brand awareness through high-quality content. This is the type of content people want and look forward to.

Heatmaps Conversion Improvement Takeaways

Heatmaps as we have discussed in one of our older blogs “is an incredible evidence based marketing/ SEO tool that showcases how people are interacting with your company’s website. It is a way of analyzing exactly what people are doing and seeing on your website. Heatmaps are a small portion of JavaScript that can be placed on your website to track not only the links a user clicks on but also to track the mouse movements and the areas they click the most on.”

In this blog Etoile Info Solutions, a renowned company, delivering pragmatic and result-oriented SEO services in Phoenix is here to impart some new found discoveries made possible by heatmaps, specifically when it comes to increasing conversions.

Visitors look left: Vistors tend to spend more time looking at the left side of the website. So it’s beneficial to put vital information that you want your visitors to see and read on the left side of the website. But this might be different for languages that are read from right to left rather than left to right.

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Upper Left, Most Looked Area: The upper left-hand side is the most looked area of a page- visitors spend more time looking there than anywhere else on a page.

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With Scrolling Attention Span Diminishes: The more you let your website visitors scroll down, the less interested and engaged they get. So if you’re incorporating an essential conversion element on your website at the bottom make sure you are putting it at the very bottom.

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What you find appealing is what you buy: According to a study by Caltech, when it comes to high-speed shopping, graphics play a very important role than consumer preference. What you want to sell and what you want the visitor to buy must pop out. This means visually attractive images are an effective conversion tool.

Avoid carousels: Carousels aren’t much of a help in boosting your conversions. They are only effective if your customers don’t have any specific goal or item in mind. But if that isn’t the scenario restrain yourself from incorporating home page sliders.

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A/B Testing is crucial: Believe us A/B testing in combination with heat maps can do wonders. Picking out design patterns from different page designs will only multiply your output. So test different page designs and finalize those you feel can optimally put forth your brand.

Why Your Website Witnesses High Bounce Rate?

Bounce rate is a term used in web traffic analysis. Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who come to your website and leave without visiting any other pages on your website. If you follow Google Analytics account of your website, you’ll see this percentage. For e.g, if the average bounce rate of your website is 65%, this implies that 65% of people who visit your website leave without further exploring the pages of your website. That is they leave the website only after viewing the page they landed on.

So the main point in question here is why it is happening in the first place. Etoile Info solutions from the very beginning are very adamant about their work ethos and they always strive to deliver result-driven Seo Services in Phoenix Arizona. To sincerely help you in curbing the high bounce rate your website might have witnessed, we are here with a list of reasons that can possibly be responsible for this.

Slow Loading Time: Let’s get one thing straight, your site can’t take all the time in the world to load since your customers don’t have all the time in the world to wait and wait…..and wait for your site to load. According to a study by Hosting Facts,

A single second delay in your website loading time can result in a 7% loss in conversion, and
40% of web users will leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load

A faster website landing page has special merits in the books of Google and is certainly more qualified for better search engine rankings.

Content Layout is Unattractive: First and foremost, visitors don’t read everything you have on your website; they just take a feel of it. There should be steady flow to the content that visitors see on your website. Design content in a way that can persuade them to take an action during their stay on your website.

Auto-Playing Videos: “Multimedia that plays automatically has a huge say in determining the length of stay of visitors on your website”, yes…. That was the ideology a few years back. But today as technology is more advance and people are more aware, they finally came to understand its down points. Videos on landing pages that play automatically slow down your landing page and if a visitor has “tortoise-walk” style internet connection he’ll be probably left with a buffering video player and a bad impression.

No Call-to-Action on Your Pages: It is important to have relevant call-to-action buttons on your website. Usually, visitors get lost as to where to go next from the landing page. If you really want visitors to take the actions you want them to, incorporate effective CTA on your website.

Why Do Businesses Need Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization or SEO involves the process of increasing the ranking of a company’s website on the search engines so that potential customers looking for a specific product/service can approach the company easily. With the help of SEO services in Phoenix Arizona, it is possible to bring the company right in front of the eyes of the customer, whenever he/she makes a search for the product/service offered by the company.

seo services phoenix az

But hold on! That’s not the only benefit. There are a slew of them, some of which have been explained below:

Give credibility to your business

When a website appears on top of the list on the search engines, it gives a boost to the credibility of the company. It is a known fact that a customer would rely on the first two pages of the search engine results. So if the company is not visible on these pages, it is assumed that it is not a popular one in its field.

Increase leads

For any company, it is great to make it to the first page of the search engine results. It is likely to attract more and more customers to the website, thereby enabling the company to enhance the number of customers, sales figures, and eventually the revenue.

Improve presence online

A website offers complete information regarding a particular product or service, but it is of no use if it cannot be seen on the search engines. SEO brings the site to the first page of the search engine results, thereby improving its visibility. Updating the site with relevant content is a great way to communicate with customers and improve online presence. It is also a smart way of increasing customer base. For more tips on this aspect, one may get in touch with Etoile Info Solutions, which specializes in providing social media marketing, link building, and SEO services in Phoenix Arizona.

By availing SEO services in Phoenix Arizona, a company can reach out to a targeted audience, improve the ranking of the company on search engines, and create awareness about the brand and its existence in the online world. Here’s Why Local SEO Means a Lot for Small Businesses.

3 Ways to Not Waste Your Time Blogging

If you are not paying attention to the following then you are probably doing it all wrong. In the name of structuring a compelling and informative blog, most us are doing nothing but wasting our precious time writing invaluable blog posts. If you want your blogs to reach and connect with your target audience, then you must pay heed to certain key factors.

To be a blogger, you need a lot of discipline. A lot of us just want to stay consistence like a horizontal line in a graph, but what’s the point of following a same route for years and years if we are not willing to improve our ways or at least engage your customers.

I know most of the time bloggers just write stuff and publish it just to complete a tradition of blogging, paying absolutely zero attention to the contents of the post. Trust me, you are only flushing down the toilet your precious time and efforts.

Just ask yourself these questions. Are your stats getting any better? Are you getting more likes, follows and shares? Is your traffic increasing? Is there any boost in your conversion rates?

If your answer comes out NO then its time you make some significant changes to your laid back and monotonous working methods. As a top Website Designing Company in Phoenix Arizona Etoile Info Solutions, it’s our duty to guide you on this path.

Your Topic Must Be Geared Towards Your Target Audience: Write on those topics which your target audience is looking for. Follow a simple thumb rule, if your blog post is witnessing high bounce rate of more than 60%, then that’s because your content is hardly providing any value to the customers. The average bounce rate for a blog is between 40% and 60%.

target audience

Incorporate Keywords in your Headline: Even after publishing your blog, no one is coming to your blog. Have you wondered why? That’s probably because you are not using the keywords to target your audience. In order to pique the interest of your audience you need to target long tail keywords that your audience will use to find your blog.

Incorporate Keywords

Display your Transparency: If you earnestly want to grow your audience and enhance your conversion rates, it is imperative to carry out activities that can develop a sense of trust in the hearts of your audience. Instead of stuffing your blog to the brim with random texts and facts, why not incorporate some real life examples to help connect on a deeper level with your audience.

display your transparency