Friday, August 4, 2017

75 Web Animation Tools You Have to Try

Animation is one of those trends that has got its claws into web interfaces. Its popularity fluctuates, but it’s always there somewhere, as an essential component in any web site.

From tiny, barely visible, loading spinners, to whole page transitions like a movie experience, animation reaches into every area of our designs.

For designers looking to incorporate animation, there are a wealth of options available. From purely decorative transitions that just prettify the interfaces, to meaningful effects that enhance user experiences, our collection covers tools that allow you to craft animations of various scales and for different purpose. Here are 75 plugins and libraries that you’ll want to check out; you won’t use them all every time, but each has an ideal use case, and some you’ll use over and over again…

1. Animate.css

Animate.css is a fundamental library of neat cross-browser animations that underlies many solutions. From classic bouncings and fadings to modern twists and unique effects it is able to meet needs of almost any project.

2. Magic Animations

Magic Animations focuses on exceptional effects that give an interface a particular zest. Although the library cannot boast of an immense diversity, it is enough to enrich the user experience.

3. Bounce.js

Bounce.js is a small playground where you can conduct experiments with CSS-based animations. Just add a component and tune the settings to bring everything to live. And at the end, export the css file.

4. AnijS

AnijS assists in handling animation in an intuitive way by using simple instructions such as If, On, Do, To. The great thing is that you are welcome to use your own classes or even Animate.css (mentioned earlier) to create something awesome.

5. Snabbt.js

Snabbt.js is famous for its minimal approach that brings about fast animations. It weighs just 5kb; however, it is able to give any component a visible boost by translating, rotating, skewing, scaling or resizing its shape.

6. Kute.js

Kute.js is a sterling animation engine that delivers excellent performance. It is fast and compatible across different browsers thanks to a set of viable fallbacks that handle legacy browsers. It comes with numerous plugins to provide an efficient working environment.

7. Velocity.js

Velocity.js is an animation engine that at first glance may look unrepresentative. However, its arsenal includes all the regular types of animation such as morphing, loop, easing, scrolling etc. It is fast and jQuery-independent.

8. Lazy Line Painter

SVG path animations are made easy with Lazy Line Painter. Take your line artwork from the Illustrator in SVG format and upload it to the converter. The latter will generate a jQuery file that handles the animation process. If it is necessary you can make changes right inside the code.

9. SVG.js

SVG.js offers you an intuitive environment where you can manipulate and animate SVGs. It is small and independent with clean syntax and unified API. Do whatever you want: animate size, color, position, text paths; transform components; bind events etc.

10.  Motion UI

Unlike the previous examples, Motion UI takes the advantage of SASS to create intriguing CSS animations. There is a whole slew of predefined transitions and effects that can be applied to any HTML component. Everything works in all popular browsers except for IE9.

11. Wait! Animate

Wait! Animate lets you operate delays and waits in animations in a simple way. Calculate all the required time intervals through the small panel and build a natural animation without hustle and bustle.

12. Dynamics.js

Dynamics.js is a JavaScript-powered library that offers 9 standard effects to play with. You can specify duration, frequency, friction, anticipation size, and anticipation strength to achieve real-life physics-based animations.

13. Choreographer.js

With Choreographer.js at your fingertips you should not be scared of complex animations, since this JavaScript library does all the heavy lifting. Although it deals with a limited amount of animations yet it lets you work with custom functions so that you can craft your own masterpieces.

14. Anime.js

Coming with an impressive set of features that allows chaining multiple animations, synchronizing different instances, drawing lines, morphing objects, building individual animations etc, this JavaScript animation engine will surprise you with its potential.

15. Mo.js

Mo.js stands for motion for the Web. It is incredibly fast and at the same time intuitive and simple. Create engaging trails, unexpected dialogue modal transitions, bubble layouts, bursting animations and much more.

16. Sequence.js

Sequence.js is a CSS-driven framework for building responsive touch-enabled step-based animations. It is ideal for creating sliders, presentations, banners and other sorts of dynamic components. Among the several premium plans you will find a free one that grants you with a personal open-source license.

17. Shifty

Shifty is a tweening engine with a strong focus on optimization, fast performance, flexibility and extensibility. It is considered to be a viable alternative to GreenSock yet with a much simpler interface.

18. It’s Tuesday

Tuesday is a standalone animation library that can be used in tandem with other libraries. It makes the entrances and exits look smooth, subtle and elegant. It offers a variety of standard effects such as fade-ins, expand-ins, shrink-ins, drop-ins, etc.

19. CSS Animate

CSS Animate is a primitive playground that generates a valid and clutter-free code for any regular animation. Set name, class, animation properties, frame properties; manipulate timeline and add markers: in one word, adjust everything you need to produce a regular keyframe-based animation.

20. Vivus.js

Shipping with three types of animation: delaying, synchronizing and revealing one by one, Vivus.js will draw an SVG in a smooth and natural way making the emergence of the component a lovely experience. You can go for predefined animations or use your own custom functions.

21. Bonsai.js

Bonsai.js is a JavaScript library for advanced graphics manipulations. It has a pretty simple API and SVG renderer. Use its online editor to give a test drive, familiarize yourself with the syntax and even download some samples to get started with.

22. GSAP by GreenSock

GSAP is a powerful animation platform that is targeted at professional animations. It has numerous plugins and utilities that are responsible for various types of animations. It consists of BezierPlugin, CSSPlugin, DrawSVGPlugin, MorphSVGPlugin, Physics2DPlugin, TweenLite, etc.

23. Popmotion

Popmotion is another lightweight and handy alternative to Greensock in our collection. It is a motion engine with a full control over each frame. It has an advanced tween, color blending and a bunch of functions and actions for building complex solutions.

24. Tween.js

A great deal of incredible stuff is made with the help of Tween.js. It is a cutting-edge tweening engine with numerous parameters to get the animation under control. It is also an excellent solution for enhancing projects that are driven by Three.js.

25. Hover.css

Hover.css’ library can be broken into several basic categories: 2D transitions, background transitions, icon animations, border transitions, shadow and glow transitions, speech bubbles and curls. Apply these effects to any element in your design without restrictions.

26. Transit

The list of features of Transit is rather short yet it includes the most vital stuff for building 2D and 3D transformations. For example, you can specify delays and durations, add easing function, use relative values, and more.

27. Rocket

Rocket is a solution for prettifying an object’s movement from one point to another. There are 8 special effects like pulsation or rotation that give this journey a lovely zest.

28. Animo.js

Animo.js is a relatively small tool for getting a handle on transitions and animations. It has a set of extra plugins such as countdown, rotate and animate that enriches the library and makes it much easier to achieve the desired effect.

29. Shift.css

Shift.css is a framework to build animations within a container that affects both nested and adaptive elements. There are 15 types of standard animations including moving, entering, exiting, dropping and some other.

30. CSShake

CSShake comes with 11 classes that force the elements of your DOM to shake. You can choose direction (horizontal or vertical), type (fixed, crazy, constant, chunk), intensity (slow or hard) or just go for a default option.

31. Saffron

If you prefer to use mixins in order to easily and quickly manipulate animations and transitions then Saffron is certainly for you. It is a compilation of reusable methods that are written in Sass where you can set variables and parameters.

32. CSSynth

CSSynth is a small editor where you can enjoy the beauty of synchronization. The animation is based on a range of squares the number of which you can specify on the left panel. Select an effect, set delay and choose whether you want to download the result code in CSS or SCSS format.

33. Ceaser

Ceaser is an old, time-proven tool for conducting experiments with the classic easing animation. There is a number of variants starting from linear and ending with the custom one. Two extra parameters (duration and effect) will help to perfect the result.

34. Morf.js

To take the above mentioned tool a bit further, you can give a try to Morf.js. It offers transitions based on custom easing functions. There are almost 40 predefined options that you can quickly adapt to your project.

35. Voxel.css

Voxel.css was created specifically for 3D renderings. Its simple implementation allows even newbies to get the grasp of the 3D CSS. The library has 4 important classes: Scene, World, Editor and Voxel that help to build games and enjoy the action.

36. Repaintless.css

Repaintless.css uses FLIP technique to make animation fast and smooth. Although it requires some improvements; nevertheless, it is a perfect start for those who pay a particular attention to performance.

37. MixItUp

MixItUp is a library for beautifying filtering, sorting, insertion and other default actions inherent to the majority interfaces such as portfolios, galleries, etc. It is a dependency-free and promises to provide a high level of performance.

38. Wallop

As the title states, Wallop is for showing and hiding things in a pleasant manner; predictably, its general use lies in building sliders. However, no one stops you from exploiting its potential and creating something interesting and intriguing.

39. Ramjet

Ramjet transforms one element into another with the illusion of movement that is realized by means of easing function. It is capable of working with DOM elements, SVGs, static images or animated images.

40. jQuery DrawSVG

Based on a powerful jQuery animation engine it efficiently draws all the paths inside the SVG giving the picture a dramatic and at the same time elegant entrance. The procedure is simple: add the plugin to the page, initialize it and run the animation.

41. Animatic.js

Animatic.js is a great cross-browser solution with integrated physics rules that employs CSS transformations, 3D transformations and JavaScript to bring everything to life. Its main task is to lessen your efforts for animating numerous objects at once. You can build both parallel and sequential animations carefully adjusting duration, delay and easing function.

42. Move.js

Move.js is an oversimplified tool for creating regular animations such as scaling, skewing, moving or translating. Each animation can be improved with the classic ease function.

43. Eg.js

Eg.js is a carefully assembled collection of various effects and dynamic elements that are aimed to enhance interactions in the interfaces. There are 8 powerful components that sort out basic tasks and 6 main methods and events for other purposes.

44. GFX

GFX is a compelling 3D animation library for building CSS3 animations in a programmatic way. It works with jQuery making it much easier to produce the desired result. You can toy with scaling, rotating, translating, skewing, and some other stuff.

45. Stylie

Although it is said that Stylie is a tool for fun, yet it will certainly impress you with its capabilities. The control center features 4 tabs that let you tune up keyframes, easing, export options, and HTML, making complex animations easy-peasy.

46. Iconate.js

Iconate.js injects life into icons’ transformations, enhancing a transition between two items by a pleasant accompanying effect. It works great not only with Font Awesome, but also with Glyphicons and even your own custom set of pictograms.

47. AnimateMate

AnimateMate is a small tool for producing and exporting small-scale animations from your Sketch environment. It is not something fancy, yet it allows you to play with keyframes, add easing functions, control sequences and some more.

48. CAAT

CAAT (which stands for Canvas Advanced Animation Toolkit) is a sterling framework that forms a powerful tandem with JavaScript. Its toolset features scenes, multi render technologies, clipping masks, standard pack of behaviors, etc.

49. Granim.js

Granim.js is a tiny JavaScript library for spicing up interfaces with interactive gradient-based centerpieces. It can be a standard radial gradient animation, dynamic gradients applied above the image backdrop, or moving gradients combined with image masks.

50. Animista

Created by Ana Travas, Animista is a playground for performing experiments with a bunch of conventional and uncommon predefined CSS-driven animations. Choose duration, timing function, delay, iteration count and some other options to examine the outcome.

51. Obnoxious.css

Obnoxious.css comes with 5 unique CSS-based animations that force the elements of the interface to shake, twist, enlarge, imitate the strobe effect, or change the weight of the typeface. All you need to do is to apply the preferred class to the desired div.

52. Animatelo

Animatelo includes a ton of eye-catching dynamic effects that were borrowed from the famous and powerful Animate.css, providing an easier way to apply them. Thanks to the Web Animations API polyfill it is supported by all modern browsers.

53. Foxholder

Foxholder is a package of 15 nice tiny effects that were created specifically for improving user’s interactions with the form. Each method stresses the input field in its own way: it can make border brighter, add visual clues, set in motion text and much more.

54. Rhythm.js

Rhythm.js is all about playful disco-inspired tiny animations. This JavaScript library comprises effects that imitate some kind of dance moves. There are almost 20 options that will add boogie-woogie to your website.

55. Colorido.js

Much like the Granim.js, this JavaScript-powered plugin was created to manipulate the color property. It helps to dynamically change tones and opacity of the background and text, as well as create non-static radial, linear, diagonal and horizontal gradients.

56. Barba.js

Barba.js leverages PJAX (an ajax-based technique) to relieve users of so-called hard refresh switching between the pages. It just hides the old container and shows the new container in a subtle eye-pleasing fashion.

57. ScrollReveal.js

ScrollReveal.js is a popular tool for creating scroll animations. With its main reveal() method you can manage different animations and control all their standard aspects. The great thing is that it works well with both web and mobile browsers.

58. Scrollanim

Scrollanim is less sophisticated yet handier and simpler tool to use rather than the previous example. Although it favors CSS3 but it allows you to add animations using JavaScript API to produce scroll-triggered animations. It has a number of prebuilt solutions that you can quickly introduce to your project.

59. ScrollTrigger

While the previous two solutions mainly concentrate on traditional vertical scrolling, this one is for building long horizontal websites. It lets you build dynamic interfaces in the x-axis plane populated with beautiful CSS3 animations using a rather primitive syntax.

60. Force.js

Force.js is a small solution that is deprived of huge functionality and richness of options. However, it is ideal for regular tasks like setting objects into subtle motion or prettifying scrolling. As usual, easing lies in its core making animation clean and neat.

61. AOS

AOS stands for animate on scroll. It does what it says – provide you with a bunch of lively predefined effects that are triggered by a scrolling event. If you want to give sections a dramatic entrance without deeply digging into code then it is certainly for you.

62. Rellax

Rellax is for beautiful parallax. It is a light vanilla JavaScript library for giving a subtle touch of 3D dimension to interfaces.

63. Tilt.js

Tilt.js produces intriguing parallax-driven tilt effect. It will move objects into a sloping position imitating 3D in a basic 2D plane. You can fix an axis thereby making the effect more alluring and interesting, or recreate some kind of glare or floating feeling.

64. Transform-when

Transform-when is a great solution for designing storytelling experiences with a high performance and native support for mobile devices. It bets on two vital parameters: time and scroll position thereby making user’s adventure through the interface vigilantly controlled by your side. It works with both SVG and regular HTML elements.

65. CSS3 Animation

This is an old-school generator with a live preview for creating basic CSS3 animations. There is a standard control center where you can adjust the duration of the transition, number of iterations, timing functions etc. The routine is simple: set everything up, copy the resulting HTML and CSS codes and paste them into your project.

66. Curve.js

Curve.js breathes life into lines making them “dance” and spin just like a wave. Use it to create an abstract elegant geometric-inspired backgrounds or centerpieces.

67. Animator.js

Animator.js is said to be flexible, efficient and light. It offers the easiest way to manage the keyframes and generate CSS animations of various scales. It is also dependency free.

68. Cel-animation

Cel-animation is a Sass mixin that gives you control over the traditional keyframes. You can set in motion SVG or any type of HTML elements.

69. Scrollissimo

Scrollismo was created to work in partnership with Greensock skillfully and smoothly animating objects on user’s scroll. With an additional accompanying JavaScript plugin for touch screen gadgets it covers numerous devices.

70. jqClouds

jqClouds is a primitive plugin that generates and populates a design with moving clouds that soar over the interface. You can change the concept, replacing clouds by any other object, to give a static interface a particular dynamic flavor.

71. Color animation

As you have guessed, this tool is for animating tone and transparency of background, border, or text. Actually, it works with color of any object that has it as a property.

72. Flubber

To exclude sudden jumps and drastic metamorphosis that can occur when one object converts into another you can use Flubber. The plugin offers smooth interpolations between the two shapes. The only drawback is that it only works with 2D graphics.

73. Particles.js

If you are up to playful particles animation—a popular choice nowadays—you can use this handy generator. It is based on viable JavaScript library that does all the work. Set preferences like color, number, shape, size, opacity etc. and simply export the result.

74. 3D Lines Animation with Three.js

This is a small script that does not possess all the capabilities of the above mentioned plugins. Nonetheless, it adds to your interface a beautiful animated background filled with particle animation. You can configure color, lines, opacity and some other options to make it blend into your environment.

75. Three.js

Last but not least, Three.js – a powerful and versatile library that stands behind numerous impressive websites. It is suitable for both simple and complex projects. It lets you work with <canvas>, <svg>, CSS3D and WebGL to build spectacular 3D animations.

250+ Smoke Effects Including Shapes, Brushes, Patterns and More – only $14!

Source

p img {display:inline-block; margin-right:10px;}
.alignleft {float:left;}
p.showcase {clear:both;}
body#browserfriendly p, body#podcast p, div#emailbody p{margin:0;}

from Webdesigner Depot http://ift.tt/2wdT7At




from WordPress http://ift.tt/2v3Ui6V

Thursday, August 3, 2017

7 Tools for Developing Your First Progressive Web App

UX has been the focal point of modern web development for quite some time now. This is influenced by several factors, including page loading speed, readability, usability, and design. But now that more users prefer mobile web browsing over using desktops, any website—be it a niche blog or an e-commerce store—should start prioritizing mobile friendliness.

Nowadays, it’s easy to apply a mobile-responsive theme and use tools like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to receive additional recommendations on how to optimize your site. But if you want to take things to the next level, you can develop a Progressive Web App (PWA) to deliver fresh and memorable new experiences to your mobile users.

What’s a Progressive Web App?

A PWA leverages modern web technologies to enable app-like features. Unlike traditional mobile websites, a PWA doesn’t have to refresh the entire page when loading new content—nor does it need internet connectivity to be accessible. They’re also installable, meaning users can easily reuse them by adding a home screen shortcut.

Progressive web applications have the potential to be the next big thing for the mobile web. This was originally proposed by Google just a couple of years back in 2015. But, within such a short time, it has already attracted a lot of attention because it’s relatively easy to develop and for the application’s user experience delivery.

—Rahul Varshneya, cofounder of app development company Arkenea.

A PWA is a big project that might lead the direction of your mobile web presence in the future. But if you’re completely new to PWAs, here are 7 tools and resources that will put you on the right track:

1. PWA.rocks

When it comes to developing a PWA, you need to have a deeper understanding on what they are capable of.   

To see PWAs in action, you can refer to PWA.rocks for examples under several categories, including business, games, shopping, and social. This will help you visualize what your future PWA could look like. You can also borrow inspiration from the available examples when conceptualizing what your PWA will offer mobile users. 

2. Knockout

Knockout is a free, open source tool that can help you with Model-View-View Model or MVVM bindings. This allows you to simplify the process of coding JavaScript UIs by letting you define views and declarative bindings that are controlled by viewmodel properties.

The platform runs purely on JavaScript, which works with all major browsers and any web framework. The Knockout library can also easily be integrated with existing websites without extensive rewrites.

3. PWABuilder

The fastest way to create a PWA is to use PWABuilder and quickly build a service worker for offline functionality, which works by pulling and serving the “offline.html” from your web server whenever users lose internet connectivity. You can also submit your PWA to the app store for Android and iOS devices.

To use PWABuilder, all you need to do is insert your website’s URL and then fill in the additional details like your name, site description, and preferred icon. You can also easily modify certain properties such as your PWA’s screen orientation, language, and background color. The platform will then automatically generate a manifest based on the information you provide. 

4. AngularJS

JavaScript is usually the introductory language learned by students who wish to learn web development. If you’re an experienced Java or .NET developer, then AngularJS is one of the best JavaScript frameworks you can use for web applications. Even so, their website offers a ton of guides, tutorials, and resources that will help you learn your way around the platform.

The latest version, Angular v4.0, provides the same environment whether you’re developing for mobile or desktop. In case you think Angular is too complex for your needs, you may opt instead for React—a JavaScript library tailored to UI development. Another alternative is Polymer, which can provide you with templates and other reusable components that can speed up the process of PWA development. 

5. Google Developers

A PWA is not exactly a DIY project for self-made bloggers or affiliate marketers, but it can still be done with the right resources. If you already have experience with content management systems but are clueless about developing web applications, then you can get the basics down through Google Developersa library of resources that can help you learn how to code.

Google Developers have a comprehensive tutorial on how PWAs work, how to build one, and how to make it run correctly. It also covers other basics such as enabling the “add to home screen banner” and using HTTPS.

6. Webpack

Webpack is an extremely useful tool for bundling your JavaScript app resources, including non-code assets like fonts and images. These will be treated as JavaScript objects, which in turn allows them to be loaded faster. The platform also makes it significantly easier to manage dependencies.

Just remember that Webpack has a steep learning curve, meaning you could be looking at hours of browsing for tutorials and guides. However, the learning resources and documentation available on their website aren’t beginner-friendly. The good news is, Webpack is widely covered in other sites, including Angular 4.0’s documentation section.

7. GitHub

Finally, GitHub is a community-driven website that maintains repositories of projects. It covers a broad range of programming-related topics, including JavaScript and PWA service workers. In fact, you can find the PWA.rocks and Webpack repositories within the platform. This will help you deepen your understanding or even contribute to further development.

Today, there’s a handful of repositories involving PWAs on GitHub. You can learn from these projects or start your own repository as you experiment with your first PWA. GitHub now also has project management features, allowing you to seamlessly collaborate with other developers remotely.   

Conclusion

Progressive Web Apps are the future of mobile web experiences, but not a lot of brands currently use them. With the tools above, you’re now fully capable of creating a standout PWA and establishing an authoritative presence. Just take note that PWA tools, resources, and practices evolve with the constantly evolving technologies of major online browsers.

LAST DAY: 1,000+ Logo Templates from WornOutMedia – only $24!

Source

p img {display:inline-block; margin-right:10px;}
.alignleft {float:left;}
p.showcase {clear:both;}
body#browserfriendly p, body#podcast p, div#emailbody p{margin:0;}

from Webdesigner Depot http://ift.tt/2wokuXF




from WordPress http://ift.tt/2vw9StJ

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

How to Use Customer Feedback Loops to Reduce Churn

Churn is a fascinating thing.

When users keep coming back month after month, it helps you grow your business rapidly and it makes you a very happy business owner.

But when you’re losing more customers than you’re gaining, it can spell disaster for your business.

What makes it frustrating is that you don’t always have a clear picture of what causes people to churn or what you should do about it.

Sure, you can use analytics and it will tell you a lot. But it won’t tell you why people are leaving.

That’s where feedback loops come in.

Building feedback loops into your business allows you to gather data that you can’t get from analytics. You’ll get valuable insights straight from the people who are handing over their hard-earned money: your customers.

In this article, we’ll look at some of the ways you can build customer feedback loops into your business and how to use the feedback that you gain.

How Feedback Loops Help You Reduce Churn

Before we go over some ways you can build in customer feedback loops into your business, let’s look at how they reduce churn.

They help you create an awesome product

You can be the best marketer, the best developer, or the best designer, but if your product doesn’t solve a problem you’re fighting an uphill battle. Especially if your business depends on people buying from you month after month.

One of the best ways to improve your product is to make sure it meets your customer’s needs. How do you figure out those needs? You guessed it: customer feedback.

And while feedback isn’t the be all and end all of product improvement, it helps you figure out if you’re on the right track.

Leadpages, for example, allows people to vote on what they want to see implemented next. This gives them an idea of what their product is missing and what they need to do to make it better.

customers submit product ideas

They help you write copy that connects

Good copy is crucial for any business.

It’s the first thing people see when they land on your website. If you get it right. Your copy can communicate everything your customer needs to know about your business. It can tell them what you’re about, what you can do for them, what their life is going to look like when they use your product.

But if you get it wrong, if your copy doesn’t speak to your audience, they’re going to leave, never to be seen again. Bad copy costs you a lot of money.

In order to write good copy, you need to know what words and phrases your customer uses and how they talk about their problems. This isn’t something you can just come up with in a vacuum or by looking at analytics. You need customer feedback to figure this out.

Once you start using the exact words and phrases your target audience uses, though, they’ll feel like you truly understand what they’re going through. Your copy will be better aligned with what they want and they’ll have a better idea of what to expect.

In October 2016, Hubspot hired conversion copywriter Joel Klettke to help them create better sales copy. Instead of just hammering out new copy, Joel used feedback gathered from surveys, chat logs, and support to create a customer-driven message that increased the total volume of demo requests by 35% and increased the total volume of product signups by 27%.

They allow you to create a better user experience

In order to get people to use your product, you have to show them how to get value out of it as quickly as possible. That means guiding them through the initial stages.

But if you don’t know what is valuable to your users, you could be helping users with the wrong thing.

By using feedback loops, you’ll learn what people are having trouble with and what they consider something valuable. Once you know that, you can craft a user/onboarding experience that sets people up for long term use of your product.

They help you get better, more qualified customers

One of the big advantages of using customer feedback loops is that they help you form a crystal clear image of who your ideal customer is.

You can map out their wants and needs. You get to see what type of people they are. You can figure out what job they have and how they use your product.

You’ll be able to see which customers benefit the most from your product and who might be better off using another solution. You’ll be able to direct your marketing efforts to the people who you know will love it and use it a lot.

4 Common Types of Customer Feedback Loops

Now that we’ve gone over the benefits of using loops in your funnel, let’s explore what types of feedback loops are available and when to use them.

Email

Email is very easy to implement and is one of the most basic feedback loops of them all. While it’s a great way to get to know more about your customer, it can be hard to keep track of all the responses you’re getting.

There are two types of feedback you can get from email. You can either ask open-ended questions like this:

feedback solicitation emailImage Source

Or you can create closed-ended questions like this:

dollar shave club emailImage Source

Open-ended questions will let your customers talk freely about your product and they will give you to most valuable info. Closed-ended questions are better if you have a couple of options you want to explore and you want to ask your customers which one is best.

Surveys

Surveys allow you to gather a lot of information in a short period of time.

With surveys, everything depends on what questions you ask. Asking ‘How awesome are we?’ isn’t going to help you very much, even if you’re awesome.

Here’s an example. Recently, Sumo wanted to find out how they could improve their product and pricing. To do this, they created a short survey and sent it to their users using Sumo’s own notification system.

The notification takes you to a SurveyMonkey questionnaire where you’re asked what stage your business is in and how you perceive Sumo’s pricing. It also provides a place to leave open-ended feedback.

feedback survey

Chat boxes

Chat boxes give you a real time, direct communication line between you and your customer.

You’ll have a much faster way of responding to inquiries, but someone has to man the chat.

Chat boxes have several advantages. The biggest one, however, is that it allows you to help a customer overcome a pain point before they get frustrated and leave.

They help increase sales, too. When Cory Miller from iThemes started using live chat on their website they noticed more opportunities to upsell customers. By building trust and answering questions, customers had more confidence in what they were buying.

Support

The good thing about support is that you probably already have it installed in your business. It’s a goldmine when it comes to product ideas or ideas for improving your customer experience.

If they have a technical problem they’ll tell you. If they don’t know how to use a feature, they’ll tell you. If they find something confusing, they’ll tell you.

The downside of support is that you can not actively request feedback from people. It’s a passive way of gathering feedback.

How to Use customer Feedback to Improve Your Business

In this section, we’ll go over some ways you can use the feedback that you’ve gained to improve your business and reduce churn. We’ll look at how to prioritize what part of your product to improve next, how you can use the feedback to improve your copy, and how you can use the feedback to craft a better user experience.

Improving your product

Making changes to your product is a big decision.

But if you do it right, it can make your life a lot easier. If you mess up, you end up increasing churn instead of decreasing it.

So how do you know what feedback to listen to and what feedback to ignore? After all, if you ask 10 people what your product should look like you’re likely to get 11 different answers.

According to J.T.Trollman, product designer at Facebook, it depends on 2 things:

  1. Knowing your core values
  2. When in doubt, count

The first thing you need to do is be crystal clear about your values. What are you trying to do? What problem are you trying to solve?

If the feedback you receive contradicts your core values, you ignore the feedback and continue building what you’re already building.

But what if you’re not sure?

In that case: count. A lot of times a small group of people will have a very strong (and loud) opinion. Count how many people are saying the same thing and if that number is big enough, adjust accordingly.

In the Leadpages example we’ve talked about earlier, you can see they’ve labeled all the suggestions. If the suggestion is aligned with their values and enough people vote for it, it gets implemented. But when the idea doesn’t fit their vision, they label it ‘will not implemented’.

This gives them a nice balance between what people want and where they want to go as a company.

Improving your Copy

To write good, persuasive copy, you need to know answers to 3 questions.

  • What does your customer want to achieve?
  • What does your customer want to avoid?
  • What is stopping them from achieving their goal?

Once you know that, you can write copy that inspires them to take action and overcomes objections.

But you still need to know what exact words and phrases they use. A good way to figure that out is to take your responses and turn them into word clouds. This will quickly show you what words are being used the most.

There are plenty of free services online that can help you turn feedback into word clouds. A couple of good ones are:

Image Source

Once you have your word clouds, ask yourself the following questions:

  • What specific words are they using? (e.g: leads)
  • What words aren’t they using that they could be using? (e.g: subscribers)
  • What do they talk about a lot? (e.g: content)

Improving the Onboarding Experience

When customers use your product or service for the first time, they don’t know what to expect. If they don’t know what to do or what to look for, chances are they’re going to leave and look for a different solution.

The goal of your onboarding experience is to get your user to a point where they can see the value in your product. Facebook, for example, is useless if you only create an account. Once you start adding friends and join some groups, you get to see what it can do for you.

Take a look at your feedback and see if there are any recurring problems people are facing. Are they having trouble with a certain feature? Do they have no clue where to start? Are they getting confused by the UI?

Once you know what people are struggling with, you can adjust your onboarding experience to nip churn in the bud and prevent customers from leaving.

Mention, for example, already had a good idea of what users wanted thanks to user feedback. Their automated marketing process was doing a good job at converting free users into paid ones. But whenever a free user became a paid one, the whole marketing process came to a standstill.

mention onboarding email

Realizing this could increase churn, they extended the lifecycle emails to paid customers and showed them how to get the most out of every feature.

Creating content

Not only does customer feedback help you better serve your current customers, it also helps you attract new ones.

Once you have a good idea of who you are targeting, you can create content that closely fits their needs. And if you add the words and phrases you found earlier, you can really get this going and make awesome content that attracts people to your business.

You can also use the feedback to beef up your Frequently Asked Question and support sections. This will help you solve the biggest problems and it will take some pressure off you so you can work on things like your product.

Keeping Your Customers Happy

Building feedback loops into your business might seem like a ton of work.

And it is. It does take time and it does take effort. But the time and effort you put in will pay off in the long run.

By listening to your users, you start to reveal patterns that help you reduce churn. You start to reveal what your customers want. You start to reveal ways you can grow your business.

And it will make you a very happy business owner.

Have you ever used customer feedback loops to reduce churn? Let me know in the comments.

About the Author: Robin Geuens is a freelance copywriter that helps businesses write copy that connects. Get his report, 7 Tools That Reveal What Your Customer is Thinking to get a deep understanding of who your customer is.

from The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/2wmewGM




from WordPress http://ift.tt/2vtIlZX

5 Essential Rules of Wearable Design

Wearables are becoming increasingly important devices with a growing array of apps available. There are millions of wearable devices in the market today (including watches, wristbands, glasses, earphones, and rings) and even more are coming.

If you haven’t designed for these devices, chances are you’ll have to soon. But wearables present a unique set of challenges when it comes to design. Designers are quickly learning that the rules they use for desktop and mobile design don’t necessarily work on the tiny screen of wearable devices. New rules apply.

Below are 5 essential rules that you should keep in mind when designing for a wearable device.

1. Keep It Simple

The well known KISS Principle is perhaps even more relevant in the domain of wearables than in desktop or mobile user interfaces. Screen size on the majority of wearables is really small. When you’re designing for a device with a screen even smaller than a smartphone, you have to optimize for simplicity while staying hyper-focused on your end goal.

Apps for wearables should be designed to support your app’s core functionality

Apps for wearables should be designed to support your app’s core functionality. Don’t include unnecessary features, actions, or content in your app’s wearable UI. Instead, focus on single use case and cover it by creating an efficient flow that helps users complete tasks quickly.

Complex apps that require a lot of steps to complete tasks may be difficult to interact with on a watch. Make interactions as easy as possible. Reduce the number of steps needed to complete a task. Create efficient flows that help users complete tasks quickly and easily.

Avoid relying on a large amount of user input to use the app. When designing apps for wearables, focus on use cases that make sense for the wearable environment.

2. Make It Glanceable

No word has been thrown around in wearable design quite as much as “glanceable.” In a context of wearable devices, glanceability is about figuring out exactly what the user needs to see at any given moment. People using wearables are regularly in motion, whether they are standing, acting, or running to catch a bus.

Keep interfaces uncluttered and easy to read. For wearables’ limited screen real estate, it’s crucial that designers focus on displaying only the most critical information. Easy-to-read snippets of information work best.

Test your designs in situations that involve user movement to make sure the design is usable at a glance. A user should be able to consume content made for wearables in less than 5 seconds. Shazam is a great example of a glanceable wearable app: the app helps users immediately identify each screen’s message and the app’s intended action.

3. Prioritize Information

Android Wear guideline perfectly summarise this point:

Wearables provide the right information at the right time, allowing users to be more connected to both the online and real worlds.

The information pushed to users via a wearable should be filtered: prioritizing what is necessary and what can be looked at later in the day should be at the forefront of design. Developers should limit the data being shown and, in most cases, only provide users with the minimal amount required to undertake an action. For that, you need to understand what any given person actually needs to see. A good example of this is Google Now, Android Wear’s personal assistant that analyzes repeated actions and contextual information to serve up relevant information.

4. Opt For More Privacy

Wearable devices can display extremely personal information: private conversations or health data. Unlike smartphones, which are usually concealed in a pocket, wearables are in plain sight and everyone around the user can (potentially) see a personal information. Given the choice, designers should always opt for more privacy. For example, when designing a notification about an incoming message, a wearable device should vibrate first, display second.

5. Minimize Interruption

Even on large-screen smartphones, incoming notifications and alerts are often disruptive. But when wearable devices require a lot of attention, this can make people abandon them. It is one thing to have a mobile device buzz in your pocket, but It’s a completely different thing to have something buzzing that is right up against your skin.

Constantly buzzing device will be really annoying for users. Thus, prioritize all events and notify users only when information is really required their attention. Users shouldn’t be interrupted by notifications.

Conclusion

The wearable interface presents unique usage opportunities that are not available on a traditional desktop or mobile devices, but at the same time, it comes with a lot of limitations. You should consider both the capabilities and limitations of this medium when designing apps for wearables.

The Mila Script Pro Font Family: Script, Sans & Ornaments – only $9!

Source

p img {display:inline-block; margin-right:10px;}
.alignleft {float:left;}
p.showcase {clear:both;}
body#browserfriendly p, body#podcast p, div#emailbody p{margin:0;}

from Webdesigner Depot http://ift.tt/2hn9jMh




from WordPress http://ift.tt/2tZEC1P

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Getting Started with Automated Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of those pivotal, game-changing facets of online marketing that nearly every serious marketer needs to not only know how to do — but do successfully. As you’ve learned to grow your business, you no doubt have come across email marketing jargon such as segments and drip feeds.

But what does it all mean, and how does it all come together to deliver the kind of results that matter to your bottom line? Better yet, how can you automate it so that every email practically sells itself? Let’s take a closer look:

What Is Automated Email Marketing?

Just as the name implies, automated email marketing is sending out emails to your customers and prospects automatically, based on a schedule, or triggers, you define.

It sounds simple, right? And for the most part, it is. But just like with any other online marketing skill, the more time you spend learning and testing and improving your email marketing campaigns, the more you learn. And the more you learn, the better you can apply those skills to further improve and grow your campaigns. If the idea of consistent, impactful marketing growth sets your heart aflutter – you’re going to love automated email marketing.

But before we delve into that, it’s worth noting what automated email marketing is not:

Despite the fact that they have a lot in common, automated email marketing does not refer to the emails your customers get when they place an order. These are mainly transactional emails that are sent out automatically, like “thank you for your order” and “your product has shipped”. And while these can be used to market your business further — as in, “now take 20% off on your next order”, their primary goal is to notify, not engage, subscribers.

Why Bother with Email At All?

Believe it or not, this is a common question I receive when helping people set up their automated email marketing campaigns. Compared to newer technologies like mobile text alerts, Facebook ads, retargeting and native advertising, email just seems…well, old.

But despite the fact that email has been around for over 40 years (feeling old yet?), it’s still one of the best lead generation channels available:

email marketing channelImage Source

So with that in mind, how can you get started with a system like this that not only sends relevant, engaging emails to your customers but also does it automatically? First, it’s worth knowing what types of automated emails you can send. These emails generally fall into two camps:

  1. Event-based trigger emails and
  2. Drip-feed email content

They can be used independently or together depending on your end goals. For example, you could start with an event-based trigger email that then enrolls the customer in a drip feed – delivering content to them by email at set intervals you define.

Setting Up Trigger Emails

Trigger emails are just what they sound like — emails that are triggered based on your subscribers’ behavior (or lack of it). These are the most common types of automated emails, since they remove a lot of the tedious creation and sending of everyday messages. Trigger emails generally include:

  • Welcome emails / onboarding / getting started with your product or service
  • Abandoned cart emails
  • Refer-a-friend (you bought something, now tell others for a coupon or other special)
  • Milestone emails (birthdays, join dates, specific milestones)

Modcloth sends out an automated 6 month anniversary email with a coupon code(Image Source)

You can also set up automated emails to be triggered based on actions that the customer takes. This is known as behavioral email marketing and can encompass all the points above and many more, including rewards emails, bonus emails (like free trial extensions) and much more.

Setting Up Drip-Feed Emails

Drip-feed emails — which deliver sequential messages based on a timeframe you specify, can also be a great source of extra revenue and leads if you do them right. Drip-feed emails are most commonly used to deliver things to subscribers that have signed up for a free report — to get them to take the next step in your funnel.

But that only scratches the surface of the potential that drip-feed emails have. Here’s an example from InsightSquared which was sent to a somewhat cold lead prospect list, inviting them to book a meeting with the company:

Image Source

InsightSquared Account executive Dylan Rushe clarifies the drip-feed email set-up above:

“We were working through this huge list from a sales-specific event. It wasn’t a great list; everyone on it was pretty cold,” says Rushe. “So I created a 3-email drip […]. The initial email asked if the person was free for lunch Wednesday, with a GIF of the InsightSquared dashboard. This email was sent on a Sunday. The second email was automated to send on Tuesday to anyone who did not reply; it asked “are we still on for tomorrow?” If they didn’t respond, they received a third email on Thursday, saying “sorry that yesterday didn’t work out, happy to reschedule.”

This unusual type of approach – especially the “Are we still on for tomorrow?” creates a heightened interest (or even panic!) – especially if the recipient doesn’t have anything marked on their calendar. And then, they click — so you’d better have something click-worthy waiting for them.

Taking the Next Steps with Automated Email Marketing

It’s not enough just to know the types of emails you can send, or even brainstorm ideas about possible campaigns. What matters is getting the basics down so that you can have a solid foundation to build upon. With that in mind, you can create your first automated email marketing campaign by following these tips:

Segment Your Subscribers

Oftentimes, marketers start their email marketing campaigns by blasting every subscriber on their list with the same message. But just because you can do this, doesn’t mean you should. Fortunately, every serious email marketing platform offers segmentation options that let you divide your subscribers based on specific criteria which make them more likely to act on your personalized emails, including:

  • Location
  • Industry
  • Product or service purchased / not purchased
  • How they learned about you (for example, if they signed up through a Facebook contest or from your website)

By segmenting your subscribers based on actions they took or other identifying elements, you’ll greatly increase the odds that they’ll click through and take the action you want them to take.

Personalize Your Messages

It should go without saying, but blasting a message out to anyone and everyone with no real personalization is a sure-fire way to end up in your subscriber’s circular file (or get tons of unsubscribe notifications).

Personalizing your messages, even with simple things such as their name, location or the product(s) they were looking at or have bought, can go a long way toward establishing rapport and fostering a relationship.

Connect Your Emails to Customized Landing Pages

Too often, many marketers concentrate on getting the perfect email ready, only to send readers to a lackluster landing page. Make sure to tailor your landing page to your email campaign and create as much of a seamless transition between them as possible (so your email looks like it would match your landing page in terms of design, content, and call-to-action). This helps your readers feel much more comfortable about clicking, and helps create greater familiarity between your brand and products.

Split Test Your Emails

Many times, marketers reserve split testing for things like their landing pages or calls to action. But what about emails? Any platform you choose should give you the ability to A/B test your emails to determine which one generates the greatest number of clicks and conversions from your target audience.

Analyze Your Results

When split testing your email messages, you’ll want to take the time to properly analyze and look for certain KPIs (key performance indicators) that let you know if the email was successful, or what you can do better next time. These include:

  • Email delivery rate – What percentage of the messages you sent actually arrived at your users’ inbox? A low delivery rate means that your server could be blacklisted and you’ll need to contact your web host or ISP to determine why.
  • View rate – Of the emails that were successfully delivered, how many of them were viewed by recipients? Most email programs have a “preview pane” that allows their users to filter out and delete unwanted messages. Did yours pass the “view” test?
  • Open rate – Of the users who received and previewed your email, how many actually opened it? This is one of the more important indicators, where your subject line typically does all the heavy lifting.
  • Click-through rate – Of the users who received, previewed and opened your emails, how many of them clicked your call-to-action? A high click-through rate means that your users found your email enticing and interesting enough to click. This is where the email part of your marketing steps back and puts your landing page squarely in the spotlight.
  • Conversion rate – Of the users who received, previewed, opened and clicked your email’s call-to-action, how many of them ultimately took the action you wanted? This can be a sale, but it doesn’t have to be. It could be signing up for a webinar, requesting a free estimate, or any other measurable action that you want your subscribers to take.

Choosing the Right Platform

Now that you have a better handle on not only how to get started with email marketing automation and what to look for, how do you choose a solid, reliable platform to help you do it all? There are a wide range of email automation services out there, each with their own pros and cons.

Kissmetrics Campaigns takes the behavior-based analytics that Kissmetrics is famous for, and lets you build gorgeous, automated emails with it, letting you segment, trigger, split test and analyze your marketing messages to see what’s working, and improve what isn’t. Check out the video below to learn more about Kissmetrics campaigns and start making your emails work harder for you:

http://ift.tt/1SsY8tZ

About the Author: 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!

from The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/2uVzdKo




from WordPress http://ift.tt/2f5G7st

Optimizing Homepages: How a clear objective can increase conversion

Think of your homepage as a large house. Your visitors arrive and should be warmly greeted and drawn inside. Then you guide them to the room in the house where they should go and ensure they feel at home.

But if your guests feel at all unwelcome or are left to wander about the place on their own, then you are a poor host whose guests may not want to return.

Every homepage needs to guide its visitors to a specific place. As a marketer, you should ask yourself, what is that place — that main objective of my homepage? What is the dominate message it is trying to communicate to visitors? Until you are clear on that and every element on your page supports that objective, your visitors will experience anxiety, and your page will underperform.

In this Quick Win Clinic, Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director, MECLABS Institute, looks at a homepage submitted by Central Berkshire Habitat for Humanity that has no clear objective. Its visitors become lost somewhere in between the disjointed pictures, ads, video and phrases. Watch now to get ideas for clarifying a homepage’s objective to increase clicks and performance.

from MarketingExperiments http://ift.tt/2u0uzNK




from WordPress http://ift.tt/2tVsij5

5 Lessons UX Designers Can Learn From Game Development

Game development and web development have more than a few things in common. Specifically—if you’re lucky—you’re developing a product that will be seen and used by thousands, if not millions, of people on a regular basis. You’re going to need a good team, good quality assurance, and whole lot of support staff to answer questions. You’re going to need god-tier servers. You’re going to hear a lot of complaints that range from constructive criticism to outright petulant whining.

Gamers are a rather demanding audience. Many companies often hide their development and project management processes behind a veil of secrecy (and sometimes outright shame) sticking mostly to press releases. Game developers are usually a bit more transparent. This isn’t because they’re morally superior. It’s because their customers are willing and able to raise hell if they think things are going in the wrong direction.

You’re going to hear a lot of complaints that range from constructive criticism to outright petulant whining

As a result, we can learn a lot by watching the ways different game developers handle their projects, and their relationship with their communities. They don’t tell us everything, but they often do go into some detail about their process, their intentions, and their vision. Also, they put out fairly detailed patch notes, which is cool.

The two games whose ongoing development I have followed the closest are Overwatch, and Dungeons and Dragons Online. I’ll be using them for my examples.

1. Be open about your intentions

The developers of Overwatch have very clear goals in mind for everything they do. They publically state what they want to accomplish, and they go for it. Their actions consistently show determination to meet all of their stated goals. They don’t always pull it off, but they sure as heck try hard.

You can adopt the same strategy: Tell your users exactly what you’re aiming for when you make a change, or new feature. Don’t give them vague mission statements like, “We want to be more efficient, and less not-efficient.” Tell them exactly how you intend to make your service more efficient. Give details. Believe me, it makes all the difference between the users believing you, and saying, “Yeah. Sure. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

2. Correct your mistakes

DDO has a bug with its ladders. Sometimes you can’t climb up them past a certain point, and other times you can’t even grab onto them for a few seconds. This is partially due to lag, which affects all online games. But sometimes, even when every other system is working fine, with no lag, the ladders just don’t. The devs have claimed that they’ve fixed this bug as many times as they’ve denied its existence. Even now, it’s not on the list of known issues.

The users, however, know it’s real. The bug has gotten their characters killed often enough. If most of your community tells you something is erratic on your site, they’re probably right. Even if you have trouble reproducing the issue, you have to keep looking. Your users’ trust in you depends on it.

3. Document everything

Part of the reason they can’t find or fix some bugs in DDO is because the game is over a decade old, and many (if not all) of the original developers are long gone. There are so many systems and features in there that are only half-finished in the first place, it’s a miracle when they can find bugs to fix them.

It’s not just about commenting your code, it’s about documenting your decisions

If you want to avoid the same problem, start documenting. It’s not just about commenting your code (though that helps), it’s about documenting your decisions. Every decision you make about your project, every new feature you start work on, it should all be in an easy-to-find file somewhere. Your reasons for making the change, or reverting it, altering it, or not finishing the feature, this should all be in there. Also, you should write down where to find all of the relevant code for each new feature or change.

A lack of this kind of documentation leads to unforeseeable—and sometimes nearly unfixable—bugs.

4. Play your own game

Overwatch’s development and management team play the game. This is a known fact. And they’re not all pros. They have employees playing at every skill level, which means they get to experience the game as it appears to low-level and high-level players. This means they can more easily empathize with their user base.

One of DDO’s staffers (who shall not be user-named) is routinely mocked in the community because he can’t keep up without turning on god mode while he streams the game. Also, he uses potions to heal himself, and potions are…not great in DDO. No one’s expecting him to be the best, but they do expect him to know the mechanics of the game better than that. And they expect him not to use god mode.

This principle is also called “eating your own dog food”. You should be confident enough in your own product that you yourself use it daily. This principle applies more to apps than, blogs, for example, but it’s important to remember. If your users see that you wouldn’t use your own product, they’ll wonder why they should.

5. Don’t alienate the ones who came first

This is a problem that has affected DDO, pretty much every other MMO out there, and may even hit Overwatch one day. Essentially, sometimes game developers will more or less destroy the very thing that attracted their original audience. Sometimes they try to attract new players by changing the mechanics, only to ruin the core gameplay. Sometimes they just go and make everything that the original gamers worked so hard for obsolete. Sometimes their new monetization efforts upset the balance of game.

Sometimes they try to base their game on D&D 4th Edition, which everyone hates.

Oftentimes, these changes do bring in new players for a little while. But they usually don’t stay that long, and in the end, the game has fewer hardcore fans than when it started. And then sometimes, big changes can revitalize a game completely.

You’ll never make everyone happy, but there’s a lot to be said for keeping the old-timers around

Before you make any massive, sweeping changes, talk to your hardcore users. Talk to the people who might depend on your app for their everyday business. If you have a small feature that not many people use, ask those people who do use it how important it is to them. They might depend on it.

You’ll never make everyone happy, but there’s a lot to be said for keeping the old-timers around. From a moral standpoint, you owe them some consideration. They made your product what it is today. From a practical standpoint, fans and users can sometimes have a better idea of why people love your product than you do. They might be wrong, but you’ll never know if you don’t listen to them in the first place.

UX Flowchart Cards to Easily Plan Your Website Structure – only $24!

Source

p img {display:inline-block; margin-right:10px;}
.alignleft {float:left;}
p.showcase {clear:both;}
body#browserfriendly p, body#podcast p, div#emailbody p{margin:0;}

from Webdesigner Depot http://ift.tt/2viUwro




from WordPress http://ift.tt/2uTUdRG