The Internet may be virtual, but customers live in physical space and often need to visit companies in the real world. Given this, geography determines business success in a very simple way: Customers can either identify and find your location or they cannot.
Websites play a major role in helping customers find their way to company locations, including branches, stores, offices, dealers, and other outlets such as ATMs, package drop-off points, or facilities that accept return goods for e-commerce sites. Whenever customers need to transact business at a physical location, a company's website should help them find the most convenient location that offers the services they need.
However, open-ended questions alone are not enough to ensure effective participant screening, because they have some critical limitations. If you are recruiting for a very specific niche behavior, an open-ended question may fail to elicit relevant information because some people who do engage in
In the early 1900's husband and wife designers Charles and Ray Eames practiced “learning by doing,” exploring a range of needs and constraints before designing their Eames chairs, which continue to be in production even now, seventy years later. 1960's dressmaker Jean Muir was well known for
The success of infinite scrolling on social media sites such as Twitter have made this technique popular, but that doesn’t mean you should do it too. Continuous scrolling is advantageous for content that streams constantly and has a relatively flat structure, where each unit of content belongs at
A marketplace solution for IoT development through decentralized smart contract ledger
According to India’s telecom secretary, Aruna Sundararajan, 10-15 million jobs are estimated to be created in India alone through IoT. So, one could optimistically speculate that the possible number of global job creation through IoT would be upwards of the above figure. Hence, the potential
Freewheeling Freelancers will Dominate the Future Jobs Market
Today, if you need a 2,500 in-depth article about a niche aspect of your industry you only need to look online, and in a matter of clicks, you could be in touch with an individual in possession of all the required knowledge that’s willing to complete your piece. This sort of freelance
Cross-Platform Scaling: The Way Forward for Businesses on Blockchain
Over the past 18 months, we have witnessed a significant shift in the state of the financial markets. Cryptocurrencies, once a niche fascination, have exploded in value. At the start of 2017, digital currencies held collective market cap of less than a $20 billion. They entered 2018 with a
The Four Dimensions of Tone of Voice
As our example with an error message shows, tone of voice applies to all touchpoints, not just to your homepage copy. Your tone of voice should be part of your omnichannel strategy and be used when creating writing and other communications for all channels, including email (whether promotional
helping users find physical locations
Applying Discounts and Promotions on Ecommerce Websites
Sephora.com had numerous Beauty Offers consolidated on one page. This approach allowed users to quickly browse discounts; however, all discounts (and accompanying coupon codes) were (linked) images, not text. So, the coupon code could not be selected and copied — users had to memorize it and
What B2B Designers Can Learn from B2C About Building Trust
Even if a site makes the purchasing process extremely easy, the buyers are often getting more than just a product — they are getting additional value such as services, maintenance, and support. These aspects make the decision complex, even in the best-case scenario. The complexity of the decision
Assessing the Usability of a User Interface Standard
Despite the mainly positive attitudes towards the standard, there were also negative points mentioned during the interviews. Even though 67% of the developers felt that the standard made it easier for them to design screens and develop the associated software, 20% disagreed with that statement. As
Date-Input Form Fields: UX Design Guidelines
Prevent users from selecting illogical dates. Obviously, what’s reasonable will depend from case to case: for example, dates older than 130 years will be unlikely for birthdates, but quite acceptable for document dates. Users should be prevented from entering a return date that takes place before
Toggle-Switch Guidelines
Toggles help users update preferences, settings, and other types of information. When using toggles, provide direct labels, use standard visual design, and deliver immediate results. Keep in mind that toggle switches should only be used when the user needs to decide between two opposing states. As
Hackathon 2019 Goes Boldly Where No Engineers Have Gone Before
While some of that spark comes from our roots as an eight-year-old startup, it’s also part of a pioneering spirit we actively foster through various activities during the year. Arguably some of the most impactful—and most fun—are our bi-annual hackathons, where teams of developers and
helping users find physical locations
Bringing Array Themes into the WP Engine Family
We’re excited about all of these developments—the new styles we’ll be incorporating into future Genesis themes, the added ease and functionality we’ll be able to provide for Gutenberg, and the addition of Mike and John to our team. But most of all, we’re looking forward to the
A Look at WordCamp Los Angeles 2018 .
There are so many things to love about WordCamp. The one thing that makes these events uniquely awesome is it’s inclusion of different people of all backgrounds, skills, and interests. This made for a comfortable, safe environment to truly learn and explore the open-source world of WP. Huge
The Magnifying-Glass Icon in Search Design: Pros and Cons
And yet, some patterns emerging today break these fundamental guidelines. The magnifying-glass icon saves space, so more websites use it. It’s OK to be flexible with previous guidelines, so long as we acknowledge that the users’ needs remain unchanged. People don’t care what the search area
Which UX Deliverables Are Most Commonly Created and Shared?
This suggests that noninteractive wireframes tend to be artifacts that UX professionals produce for their own benefit, whether as a natural part of their design process, or for use in usability testing, but those same people don’t frequently share them with others. However, interactive prototypes
Dropdowns: Design Guidelines
A while back, as part of a presentation on web-usability methods, we ran a small user test for the audience. When completing a registration page, our test participant had to enter her address on a form with a text field for the name of the street but a dropdown menu for the type of street (Avenue
Data Science Careers: From Fragmentation to Necessity
Over the past decade — the concept of being a data scientist has become a “normal” occupation title. It is no longer an unusual way to phrase the job description in data analytics. Now this to the industry standard term for a swath of data careers. Data Science. Like any career
The 3 Biggest Threats Healthcare Data Security is Facing Right Now
Researchers highlight multiple entries that threat actors can use to exploit the hospital supply chain. The potential one is the device manufacturer; a hospital or medical facility has no idea whether the devices they use meet quality and safety standards or get tampered during the manufacturing
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Melissa Hathaway came across our radar recently when President Obama tasked the former Bush administration aide with leading a 60-day review of Bush’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative; a largely classified, purported $30 billion, multi phase plan to address cybersecurity issues
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
She explained that the original design of the Internet was driven more by considerations of interoperability rather than security, and as a result we are now faced with almost insurmountable issues. Some examples include online criminals who steal our information, mass bandits who have the ability
helping users find physical locations
Your Pitch to VCs is More Than a Deck
There is a difference between your pitch, a distillation of your vision, and the deck, a tool that facilitates your pitch. There’s also a difference between the presenter, the person who communicates the most important points, and the presentation, the cumulative experience that includes
Production Quality Over Cost: What Really Generates Engaging Video Advertising
After producing hundreds of videos for clients, Wistia began to see a pattern in the results. Often, it wasn’t the expensive, glossy videos that were the most well-received by audiences. This led them to theorize that video cost didn’t always equate to video success. Instead, a company could
Helping Users Find Physical Locations | Official Olympic Website: UI Silver - but UX DQ
Official Olympic Website: UI Silver - but UX DQ
Another example is even more grotesque: The site's homepage features a promotion to buy the official souvenir program for £10. So if you click this link, what would you expect? A page about the souvenir program, with a button to add it to your cart. After all, the web's one fundamental rule is
Computer Screens Getting Bigger
The 1024×768 became the leading monitor size in 2004 and has only just been dethroned by a (slightly) larger screen resolution of 1366×768, according to StatCounter. The change over from 1024×768 to bigger screens actually occurred in 2009, but there were so many different larger-resolution
Scaling User Interfaces: An Information-Processing Approach
Websites that are specifically designed for mobile start from a different assumption. They do take into account the limited channel capacity and make assumptions about what the users may be interested in. They deliver to the channel: they presume that, since content that’s buried too deeply into