Saturday, September 30, 2017

Comics of the Week #409

Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD.

The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers.

These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world today.

So for a few moments, take a break from your daily routine, have a laugh and enjoy these funny cartoons.

Feel free to leave your comments and suggestions below as well as any related stories of your own…

Rich but no budget

Extra work

No joint required

Can you relate to these situations? Please share your funny stories and comments below…

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Friday, September 29, 2017

5 Surefire Ways to Get Users to Scroll

The days of “above the fold” are over. Long scrolling and infinite scrolling sites are becoming more and more popular lately, and it’s no coincidence  that this technique translates well to mobile devices. The increased use of mobile screens has definitely played a key role in the widespread acceptance of long scroll technique: The smaller the screen, the longer the scroll.

Long scrolling opens a lot of new doors to designers. However, this pattern has its own drawbacks. It requires designers to pay a strong attention to content, navigation, and animation.

Here are 5 tips to follow to make sure that your long scrolling meets user expectations.

1. Provide Interesting Content Right From The Start

Despite the fact that people usually start scrolling as soon as their page loads, content at the top, visible part of the screen is very important. What appears at the top of the page creates an initial impression and sets a quality expectation for your users. Users do scroll, but only if what they see when they enter the page is promising enough.

To make sure that people will scroll, you need to provide content that keeps your visitors interested. Thus, put your most compelling content at the top area of the page:

  • Provide interesting facts (facts that attract visitors and keep their attention)
  • Use engaging imagery (users pay close attention to images and pictures that contain relevant information)

2. Give Users a Visual Cue

Sometimes the best way to make users scroll is to directly ask them to do it. Simply inform users that most of the content is available below the fold. A subtle visual cue, such as an arrow pointing off-screen or a text “scroll down”, can inform users that most of the content is available below.

Arrow pointing off-screen informs users that most of the content will be laid out below.

3. Keep Navigation Options Persistently Visible

Navigation is a make or break aspect of the user experience of a site. One of the biggest risks of using long scrolling in your design is a possibility of user disorientation. If the navigation bar loses its visibility when users scroll down, they will have to scroll all the way back up when they’re deep within the page . Usually, this behavior confuses and frustrates users.

The obvious solution for this problem is to use a sticky navigation menu which shows current location and remains on the screen in the same position at all times.

An example of persistently visible sticky navigation.

Mobile devices only: Since the mobile screen is much smaller than the desktop screen, a visible navigation bar can take up a relatively significant part of the screen. One way to solve the problem of a small screen estate is to hide a navigation bar when users are scrolling for new content and make it visible when users pull down in order to get back to the top.

4. Use Functional Animation To Engage Visitors

Creative effects like parallax scrolling and scroll-activated animations can engage users to scroll more. They turn scrolling into something more fun and make the user wonder “what will happen next?”

Consider breaking up your page into scrollable “chunks.” Within each chunk, you can introduce the content through creative animations. As users scroll, animations transition them to the next screen while creating a path of content to follow.

Parallax is another popular animated effect that can improve scrolling experience. Parallax effect creates an illusion of depth and immersion by making the background image move slower than the content in the foreground. When your site wants to tell a story in a smooth, linear fashion, long scrolling paired with parallax effect is able to create a completely immersive browsing experience.

5. Avoid Scroll Hijacking

Websites that implement scroll hijacking take control of the scroll and override a basic function of the web browser. Scroll hijacking is bad because the user no longer has full control of the page scroll and unable to predict its behavior. Users’ expectation of a website’s scrolling interaction shouldn’t be destroyed for the sake of narrative experience.

Apple uses scroll hijacking on their Mac Pro page.

Conclusion

Long scrolling is able to create a completely immersive browsing experience. It’s completely possible to make a journey as enjoyable as the destination. When users like the content on your site and find UI intuitive, then they won’t really mind the length of the scroll.

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Thursday, September 28, 2017

11 Experimental CSS Projects That’Ll Blow Your Mind

There’s a lot you can do with just CSS and a web browser. Great developers love to push the envelope and show just how much is possible.

While experimental projects aren’t always useful on production sites, they are incredibly inspiring and educational.

We’ve organized a handful of CSS projects that showcase the true power of CSS. These are all hosted on CodePen so you can even study and clone the source code to see how they work.

1. Gradient Loading Bars

This Sass loading page uses animated gradients and resizable elements to create a repeating loading effect.

Most people should recognize this loading animation from Facebook which uses a smaller version of this vertical bar loader. But most web loaders use animated GIFs since images are more compliant with all browsers.

This CSS3 loading bar proves that with some creative thinking to can rebuilt almost any animation style you want.

See the Pen Loading bars by MaxStalker (@MaxStalker) on CodePen.

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2. Solar System Animation

Here’s one of the most complex CSS projects I could find online. This dynamic solar system design by Malik Dellidj runs on pure CSS without any images.

Every planet is rendered in CSS including the rotation speeds. This project is meant to be an accurate model of the solar system and it even features a realistic interstellar background to boot.

I can’t imagine how long this took just to make the planet icons, let alone get the animation speeds right. But where there’s a will there’s a way.

See the Pen Solar System animation – Pure CSS by Malik Dellidj (@kowlor) on CodePen.

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3. Pure CSS Minesweeper

I never thought I’d see the day when classic Windows minesweeper could be played using pure CSS. Yet thanks to developer Bali Balo that day has come.

Note this doesn’t work exactly as well as the traditional Minesweeper because it doesn’t keep score properly. But it does track time accurately and it doesn’t use a lick of JavaScript.

Somehow even the interface looks surprisingly close to the original Minesweeper UI and it all runs on CSS. While it may not be a perfect replica it’s close enough to reel me into playing a few rounds.

See the Pen Pure CSS minesweeper by Bali Balo (@bali_balo) on CodePen.

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4. Day and Night Toggles

On the surface this toggle switch may look pretty simple. It runs through a checkbox input and passes data onto the backend, although that’s not really the impressive part.

This toggle has a few features that make it one of the best frontend on/off switches:

  • The toggle icon changes from a sun to a moon
  • Stars and clouds animate into while switching
  • It’s designed with 100% pure CSS

Somehow this on/off switch catches every user click and uses that event to animate the day/night toggle area into view. The sun and moon icon designs are also nicely stylized considering they run on nothing but CSS.

See the Pen Pure Css “day and night” toggle by Benjamin Réthoré (@bnthor) on CodePen.

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5. CSS Mouse Tracking

Traditional mouse tracking is the work of JavaScript which reports the user’s X/Y coordinates on the page.

Technically you still need JavaScript to gather these coordinates and do anything useful with them. But this snippet shows that you can design a pure CSS mouse tracking feature that follows the user’s every movement.

Can’t really think of a practical use for this but it could be fun on a prank site.

See the Pen Experimental pure CSS mouse tracking by Momcilo Popov (@Momciloo) on CodePen.

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6. Flat Amusement Park

We’ve all seen vector icons and illustrations designed for the web. But what about full-page vector illustrations designed with raw CSS and SVG code?

This amusement park design is an experimental project that only works in SVG-supported browsers. Yet in those modern browsers it renders flawlessly and every element has a very realistic placement on the page.

The animations are certainly impressive but it’s the accuracy of the SVG elements that also grab my attention. In a few years we might find these kinds of illustrations on the web running solely in code without any image files.

See the Pen Flat design amusement park svg by Lina (animation powered by CSS) by Vladimir Gashenko (@gxash) on CodePen.

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7. Möbius in 3D

Designing a repeating CSS animation like the Möbius strip concept is pretty tough. But add in some 3D elements and varying gradients? Now you’ve got a real challenge.

This snippet is quite impressive considering how smooth it looks and how little code is used (only 90 lines of CSS). With Haml you only need 6 lines of code to create the entire concept too.

I’ll admit this wouldn’t be super useful on a real website but it’s a testament to how much you can do with a few dozen lines of HTML and CSS.

See the Pen Möbius 6hedrons (pure CSS) by Ana Tudor (@thebabydino) on CodePen.

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8. Custom Map Creator

After using this webapp for a few seconds you may feel confident that it runs on JavaScript. The dynamic behaviors like 3D rotation and terrain placement are all signs of a sweet JS webapp.

But this map creator UI by Vincent Durand is actually 100% pure CSS. The arrows for rotation, the rotation effect itself, and all the click-to-place features run on CSS.

It’s worth mentioning how this entire concept is rendered using 3D cubes too. The blocks themselves work as 3D elements and you can rotate the cubes just by hovering.

No doubt one of the craziest uses for CSS I’ve seen in a long time.

See the Pen Full CSS Map creator by Vincent Durand (@onediv) on CodePen.

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9. Pure CSS iOS 7 Icons

This project’s a little less interactive but still just as breathtaking. Developer Peter Schmiz recreated all of the main iOS 7 app icons using pure HTML and CSS.

None of these icons use any SVGs or image files. Every element in each icon is hard coded into HTML with a span/div element, then styled using CSS. The craziest part is how accurate these are!

The full set includes 22 icons and they’re all pretty spot on. I’m most impressed with the attention to detail for icons like Maps and Weather. Just more proof that with enough time and patience you can pretty much design anything in CSS.

See the Pen iOS 7 icons with pure CSS by Peter Schmiz (@peterschmiz) on CodePen.

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10. Single-Element Slack Loader

Re-creating the Slack loading animation with CSS3 is definitely impressive. But this snippet recreates the Slack loader with just a single element on the page. That’s what I call dedication.

The total CSS count for this snippet is just over 100 lines which includes the Slack logo colors and the animation effects.

I can’t say if this idea would work for other branded loading icons but I’m certainly impressed with this one.

See the Pen Single element Slack loader by CrocoDillon (@CrocoDillon) on CodePen.

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11. Animated 3D Bar Charts

You’ll find dozens of custom 3D bar designs in CodePen all with their own animations. But these 3D bars by Rafael González stand out for all the other modern CSS bar graphs.

Each of these charts run on flexbox for containers so they’ll auto-size depending on how many bars you add and how large the container is. Plus each bar chart animates when it slides into view, all of which is controlled through pure CSS.

And since each bar’s size runs in em’s you can adjust every single bar to scale naturally based on browser font sizes. A nifty example proving that modern CSS is a whole lot more flexible than ever before.

See the Pen Pure CSS Bars by Rafael González (@rgg) on CodePen.

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Wednesday, September 27, 2017

How LucidChart Used Kissmetrics to Drive Growth

LucidChart, a SaaS-based diagramming application with over 9 million users, wanted to make sure their site was more than just pretty to look at. They wanted to ensure that it was leading users down the path to purchase. This is how they used Kissmetrics to leverage the behavioral data their users were leaving behind and increased conversions by 30%.

The initial step LucidChart took was to dive deep into data to better understand and evaluate the customer journey across their site. They learned what users were doing, where they were going and where they were dropping off across their site. Using insights from Kissmetrics they found key areas in the journey where they could drive efficiency and which pages they wanted to test a redesign.

After creating the new pages LucidChart used the Kissmetrics Funnel Report in correlation with the A/B Test Report to determine the effectiveness variation of the new pages both as a stand alone and part of the customer journey. Until they locked in on the best performing pages and process to drive conversions.

Funnel Report

Growth and marketing teams use our Funnel Report to see where dropoffs occur before conversion. This report is entirely customizable and can be used to track any conversion path you’d like. Furthermore, you can segment the data based on lead source, location, referring links, etc.

Used for illustration purposes. This is not LucidChart’s data.

LucidChart was able to track different segments across the customer journey and compare one another as well as use the A/B Test report to test the new design against the old.

A/B Test Report

With this report, you’ll create your test in an A/B testing tool, such as Optimizely, and track the results in Kissmetrics.

All data is imported from A/B testing tool and stored in Kissmetrics. Note: this is not LucidChart’s data.

What makes this Kissmetrics report unique is that you’ll be able to see how a test impacts any part of your funnel. Want to see if a new headline on your homepage leads to more purchases? Or see how a test in the middle of the funnel impacts the bottom line? Get your answer in just a few clicks in Kissmetrics. Having both reports coordinated in the same tool allowed LucidChart to measure the effectiveness of the new pages’ impact on the customer funnel with the old pages.

The Results

The outcome? By combining the power of the Kissmetrics A/B Test Report with the Funnel Report, LucidChart discovered that 2 pages in particular, their new homepage and new product page, were driving a huge 30% increase in conversions.

“Insights from Kissmetrics drove a 30% lift in our conversions. All of our key customer behavior data lives in Kissmetrics, for both our product and website, so we can quickly identify and take action on any roadblocks across our growth cycle. Kissmetrics is essential to Lucid Software’s growth efforts.”

Spencer Mann, VP of Growth at Lucid Software

Every time a prospect visits your site or uses your product they’re leaving a digital trail of their behavior – showing what they’re doing, where they get stuck, what they like, don’t like and why. There’s tremendous value in that data and it’s critical for driving growth.

Kissmetrics enables you to capture and leverage all that behavioral data to increase conversions, acquisitions and retention.

About Kissmetrics

Kissmetrics’ Customer Engagement Automation platform helps product and marketing teams turn insights into growth. Our software is comprised of 3 key features:

  • Analyze: A set of behavioral reports and metrics. Monitor your growth KPI’s across the customer lifecycle. And dive deep to understand user behavior and discover key insights.
  • Populations: Segment your users based on key growth initiatives and track their progress.
  • Campaigns: Behavior based email automation. Fully customizable editor puts you in complete control of customer engagement throughout the entire customer lifecycle.

kissmetrics products

Get, keep and grow more customers with Kissmetrics. Request a demo below to learn more.

About the Author: Jonathan Cabin is a Growth Analyst at Kissmetrics focused on initiatives that create sustainable growth. His background covers sales, project management and marketing. In his free time you can find him surfing, golfing and asking his boss for time off to travel.

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How to Get E-Commerce Customers Coming Back After Their First Purchase

Getting prospects to convert to customers is one thing. But how do you get customers to buy again and again after the first purchase? This is where attentive, customer-focused emails come on. Despite some heralding the “death of email” over more modern platforms like texting and social media, good, old-fashioned email remains one of the best ways to seal the deal, engage customers and encourage repeat purchases.

So what kinds of emails should you send? How often should you send them, and what should they contain? Here are a few of the best examples of e-commerce follow-up emails and why they work so well.

The Repurchase Reminder

Oftentimes, when you make a purchase on a website, they email you immediately after encouraging you to buy again. This marketing strategy is rooted in the idea that customers are likely to come back and purchase while your brand is still fresh in their mind. But oftentimes, companies send emails out immediately and when the customer (naturally) doesn’t respond, they no longer follow up.

If your repeat purchase numbers are flat-lining and your emails are stale, why not wait until more time has passed (depending on how often the customer uses the product) to remind them? Here’s a great example from Sephora, which reminds the customer to restock based on how much time has passed since their first purchase:

Sephora reminds the user to restock based on their past purchase. (Image Source)

Another creative spin on the restock email comes from Clinique. Since their data likely shows that women tend to shop online for beauty products more than men, they wouldn’t have as much luck sending a shaving gel refill reminder to men — so they advertised a refill reminder for him, to her. See how they did it:

An advertisement for men’s shaving gel — targeted to women, who are likely the ones shopping for beauty products. (Image Source)

We Miss You!

One alternative on the restock/repurchase follow-up email is tailored to the bargain hunter, like this email from Starbucks. There’s no better way to stay top-of-mind than with a coupon, and many customers actively wait to purchase until they get a deal. Knowing this, why not reach out with a discount?

This reminder from the Starbucks Store gets right to the point with a discount for customers that haven’t shopped in awhile. (Image Source)

Bodybuilding.com sends customers an email if they haven’t repurchased after about 3 months:

bodybuilding.com come back 10 percent off order

Another common tactic is to follow up with customers asking them to review their recent purchase. Again, this is extremely common and almost expected — but customers don’t always have the time at that very moment to write up a lengthy review. So how do you get them clicking? Here are some creative ideas that take feedback to a new level.

Going Beyond “How Did We Do?”

For the customer who doesn’t have time to write up a huge review, but the company still needs their feedback data to work with, I present to you the Amazon 1-click review:

amazon customer emailAmazon encourages busy customers to simply click to review the size of garments they’ve purchased online. (Image Source)

Of course, you’ve likely received plenty of emails asking for your feedback, and even some that go the extra mile by giving you a discount coupon, entering you into a contest and much more. But this one is noted for its pure simplicity plus its unobtrusive style. It doesn’t get in the way — one click and you’re done.

And speaking of Amazon, you already know that they’re the e-commerce leader simply because of how much they test, monitor, tweak and track everything about their site. One of the more famous changes was adding in the “Customers who bought X, also bought Y” feature. Now much more commonplace on e-commerce sites, this “Frequently purchased together” option often encourages greater purchase volume per customer.

But what happens when they don’t purchase all of the items together? Is emailing them about it a lost cause? Not exactly…

Frequently Purchased Together (But It’s Not What You Think!)

Not all “Frequently Purchased Together” emails have to be a sales pitch. And if the customer didn’t buy them when they were originally presented, there must have been a reason.

Of course, the reasons why customers choose not to buy could be a whole other blog post in itself, but knowing what you know, why not steer the customer more toward educating them about the product add-ons or accessories rather than simply presenting them?

An example of a Thank You follow-up email from BabyFirst. (Image Source)

Since, in the example above, the customer is shopping for baby-friendly TV shows, the company naturally recommends a couple of DVDs that a baby or toddler might like, as well as a coupon and directions on how to get it for free.

The Warranty Expiration Notice

This type of email normally applies in cases where you sell parts or electronics that are under warranty. When making a purchase, customers sometimes don’t opt for the extended warranty, preferring to rather stick with the original manufacturer’s timeframe. But reminding them that the original manufacturer’s warranty has almost expired, and inviting them to extend the protection on their purchase might be just the thing they need to keep their original purchase in good working order:

An official-looking email regarding a car warranty.

Here’s another example offering an enhanced warranty on a lamination machine:

A warranty announcement included on new products. (Image Source)

The “Just Looking” Reminder

With all of the email examples showcased so far, you’d need the appropriate data based on what the customer bought previously. But what if they haven’t bought yet, and are only looking? Are you out of luck? Not at all. Provided you have the prospect’s email address, you can still send them reminders, even if they haven’t added a product to their cart:

Recommendations on shirts and a reminder based on shirts and slacks previously looked at, from Calvin Klein. (Image Source)

Here’s another example that reminds the user of the products they browsed in case they want to take another look and don’t want to have to sift through their browser history:

An email reminding the user of the products they looked at. (Image Source)

Use Demographics to Sell

As opposed to many of our other example, these emails do not rely on previous purchases. They start fresh with new product recommendations based on the demographics.

For example – has it been raining in Minnesota for the past few days? Find all your prospects located in Minnesota and send them an email showcasing your umbrellas.

Many of your prospects are likely either searching for one because a) they don’t have one or b) the one they have is old, has holes, etc.

This can go beyond weather. Many political radio broadcasts will have “doomsday” meals when the inevitable apocalypse comes. When Barack Obama was president, Glenn Beck and many other conservative pundits advertised “4-week emergency food supplies”:

Image Source

Does this profit off irrational fears? Yes.

But it also means understanding your audience. If they’re afraid, what are they willing to buy? Sell it to them. If it’s snowing, what are they willing to buy? Offer it up for sale.

Marketing is all about targeting the right people, when they are most receptive to your product. What better product to advertise to those that fear end times are near?

New Product Recommendations Based on Past Purchases

Finally, we have the “new product recommendations” email. Rather than always notifying customers every time you have new items in stock (and hoping they might like some of them), why not segment the new product announcement emails based on what the customer has purchased previously? They’re much more likely to buy, and they’ll welcome the added personalized attention!

Despite the different products and industries, all of these emails have one major thing in common — and that is a dedicated — almost fanatical attention to customer orders, browsing habits and preferences. And although you may be doing a great deal of e-commerce by email, there are still, as these emails demonstrate, new ideas and approaches that can be capitalized on.

Do it all with Kissmetrics Campaigns

Kissmetrics Campaigns is a behaviorally-triggered email platform. Combining our behavioral analytics with Kissmetrics Campaigns makes it easy to find segments that need converting, and targeting them is done in a few steps. And best of all – it’s all done within Kissmetrics. There’s no need to export and import lists and mess around with APIs or databases. It’s all done in the same platform.

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And if you are using these strategies in your email announcements and customer lists, how have they worked for you so far? We’d love to hear your thoughts and comments. Share them with us below!

About the Authors: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today!

Zach Bulygo (Twitter) is the Blog Manager for Kissmetrics.

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