Learning from the Best: 10 Examples of Great Website Design 

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Building a website is simple. But designing a website that meets all the modern web design requirements and works for your unique customers and business is challenging. Most companies create compelling websites but end up sacrificing performance or the user experience. Others prioritize simplicity and convenience but end up with poorly optimized sites. In the sections below, you’ll explore 10 examples of great website designs to inspire your creativity the next time you design a website.

1. Dropbox

 

If there’s one website that has done a great job designing a super rsponsive website, it’s got to be Dropbox. This cloud storage and file hosting company has made sure that every site visitor, regardless of the device they use to access the site, enjoys the best navigation, graphics, and content.

Every aspect of the site design, from the font color to the navigation buttons, has been carefully customized for every device, ensuring compatibility and interactive experiences for the varying screen sizes.

For instance, on the desktop, a small arrow directs users to scroll down for more content, helping to minimize the bounce rate. However, this is absent on the mobile version, as users are more likely to scroll down easily.

2. Freshbooks

 

 

Freshbooks is an accounting website with one of the best homepage designs, thanks to the simple and minimalist copy, inspiring visuals, and the strategic use of white space in web design. The site also uses a perfect blend of colors with easy-to-spot CTA buttons. There’s also a well-organized navigation system that makes it easier for first-time site visitors to find solutions to their complex accounting problems.

3. Walmart

 

 

Walmart is one of the leading online marketplaces offering a one-stop shopping experience. The retail giant has prioritized convenience by streamlining the checkout process. Once you’ve selected the items you want to buy, you won’t be taken to a new checkout page. Instead, an on-page checkout sidebar allows you to complete your shopping without even signing up. A cart storage option saves your cart for up to three days if you forget to complete the checkout process or are distracted while on the site.

4. Nike

 

 

Nike is one of the leading sportswear companies whose success is rooted in simplicity and convenience. The same is reflected on its website, which prioritizes a minimalist design and easy navigation. Nike’s checkout process, for instance, is one of the simplest yet super interactive. If you enter the correct information during checkout, a green checkmark appears, allowing you to continue shopping.

There’s also an auto-fill address feature that saves you time during checkout. By simplifying the time-consuming steps and focusing on web design principles that boost conversions, Nike has successfully attracted and even retained more converting prospects.

5. Uber

 

 

Uber falls into the category of companies that prioritize their homepage design, and it’s obvious why. Imagine landing on the Uber website and reading through needless copy, images, or videos before requesting your ride. Now think of a ride-sharing or service company that has made its home page simple, straightforward, and effective. You need to choose what you want, and you’re directed to the service almost instantly without going through the tedious sign-up process.

 

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6. Wired

 

 

WIRED, a leading technology magazine and online publication, is among the many sites that have done a lot to improve the user experience. When you browse through the site using a PC or desktop, you’ll find multiple columns and a handy sidebar, but switching to your mobile transforms into a single column for smooth navigation.

The company also pays keen attention to details, such as adjusting image ratios to fit perfectly on each device. And for even more simplicity on mobile, they’ve combined search and newsfeed filter icons into one button.

7. Slack

 

 

Slack is a business messaging app that’s been in the market for nearly a decade. The brand is known for its focus on simplicity, and they have successfully made it one of their competitive advantages. Slack has ensured that its site is easy to access and navigate, no matter the screen size of your device.

You’ll see customer logos in a neat three-column layout on a computer. But they have switched it to a single-column design on mobile phones for better viewing. And their call-to-action buttons? They span the whole column on tablets and mobiles, so you won’t accidentally click something else.

8. Shopify

 

 

Shopify has built a reputation as one of the leading e-commerce website builders thanks to its robust features, comprehensive support, and intuitive user interface. The Shopify website is one of the few that has managed to strike a delicate balance between site consistency across devices and enhanced user experience.

If you access the official Shopify website from a desktop or phone, you’ll find that most things remain unchanged except for the CTA buttons and a few menus. Additionally, Shopify is among the few sites that enjoy impressive web page speeds despite using graphics-intensive image carousels.

9. IBM

 

 

As one of the leading technology companies, IBM has set an excellent example for companies looking to create a fully-immersive site experience. The company has gone the extra mile to make its site not only responsive but also interactive, unique, and modern.

When you land on IBM’s homepage, you’ll be greeted with a responsive background, interactive videos, and a bold CTA. And while the IBM website is far from simple, it has incorporated complex design tools, from AI features to game-like functions, to create an immersive site experience.

10. Airbnb

 

 

Airbnb uses some of the best design strategies, such as easy navigation, a consistent color scheme, and text minimization, to ensure user-centricity and enhance the customer experience. The homepage, for instance, displays lightweight graphics consisting of images and short, engaging videos.

All the media elements on the homepage have been carefully chosen to engage and convert without compromising site performance. The images of stunning rentals, from all across the globe, for example, create a sense of urgency and encourage site visitors to book their dream Airbnb.

Bottom Line

In today’s interconnected world, online presence significantly influences marketing, customer engagement, brand identity, and business growth. However, the discussed 10 examples of exceptional website designs emphasize that merely having an online presence for the sake of it is insufficient.

To truly make an impact, you must rethink every aspect of your online presence, considering not only how your website looks but also how customers can access, browse, and interact with it. Moreover, it is essential to incorporate these considerations into your digital strategy and plan regular updates to your website and its features.

 

 

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Digital Communication Tools to Help Build a Human Brand

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Whether you’re a brand looking to establish a human connection with your audience or an individual seeking to engage with peers and build professional networks, leveraging these digital communication tools will undoubtedly enhance your ability to connect, collaborate, and succeed in the digital age.

The success of your brand depends on much more than just convincing a potential customer to try your product. While in the past the customer experience has been based around the product being offered, these days, you need to look at the big picture. It’s not just about the customer experience in regards to your product. It’s about the emotional connection that they are able to form with your brand.

Customers don’t just want a product, they want a relationship with the brand that is selling them that product.  You need to focus on fostering an emotional connection instead of just trying to build awareness for a certain product. Fortunately, building an emotional connection with your audience is easier than ever before with the number of digital communication tools that are at your disposal.

The Importance Of An Emotional Connection

Customers are human beings. They have hopes, dreams, and feelings. In a world where their product choices are practically limitless, they will want much more out of a brand. They do not want to engage with a corporation. Customers want to engage with a brand that’s relatable on a personal level. Their desire for connection in such a world is not surprising. A brand that is able to touch them emotionally is going to make them more engaged.

There are many ways that you can do this; reinforcing the beliefs or perspective of your audience, supporting the goals or perspective of your audience, or challenging your audience to do greater things.

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How Digital Communication Tools Can Help Foster An Emotional Connection

Engaging on an emotional level with your audience is easier than it’s ever been, as long as you make the effort to do so. The following are just a few ways that digital communication tools can help you to connect with your audience emotionally and to build meaningful relationships with them:

  • Video content – When it comes to content, few other forms are able to engage audiences on an emotional level like video content. There are numerous reasons for this. First of all, people consume visual content much more easily than written content. Secondly, you can use actors or even real figures that audiences can relate to on a personal level. Thirdly, you can emphasize certain emotions much more effectively through the production of video, from the look of how it was filmed to the type of music that’s used to how the video is edited.
  • Segmentation – Segmenting your leads and customers based on the data you’ve collected (via opt-in forms, surveys, and more) will provide you with valuable insight into who your audience is and how you can connect with them. It also allows you to personalize your content much more effectively, which will make it easier to drive engagement.
  • Social interaction – The use of social channels makes it easy to engage with your audience directly. Direct interaction makes it easier to build meaningful relationships. You’ll have a bigger emotional impact on those who witness the interactions on social media as well.

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Building a human brand will help you build long-term relationships with your audience based on real emotional connections. Use the digital communication tools available to you to emphasize emotion in your marketing efforts. Doing so will help your audience relate to you on a more personal level, thereby driving engagement with your brand.

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Web Design

6 Web Design Principles to Increase Conversions

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Putting thought into your web design is a must if you have any ambitions to grow your business. While the content that you host on your site and the strength of your SEO strategy will help you attract leads, your web design will play a big part in your ability to convert leads. Keeping that in mind, the following are six web design principles for conversions:

1. Use A Responsive Design

If you’re not using a responsive design, it means that although your website may load properly on desktops, it may not be displayed correctly on smaller screens, such as those on smartphones and tablets. If your website doesn’t load properly on a smartphone, it will require the user to not only scroll up and down but also left to right — and to zoom in and out. Few mobile users will have the patience to deal with a site like this, which will lead to a significant bounce rate. Use a responsive design so that you don’t lose your mobile leads.

2. Ensure That Your Pages Load Quickly

Even if your site does load properly, few visitors will have the patience for pages that load slowly. It should take no more than one to two seconds for your site to load. If it takes three or more seconds, you’re in trouble. Leads will get frustrated and will likely abandon your site. Test your page speeds to ensure that they load quickly.

3. Don’t Include Too Many Choices

Too many choices can make it difficult for visitors to figure out what they want or to find what they’re looking for. For example, a navigation menu is a great addition. It lets visitors find your blog, contact page, product page, etc. However, if you fill up that navigation menu with dozens upon dozens of links, it becomes overwhelming. Not only will it actually be more difficult for visitors to find what they’re looking for, but too many choices requires them to commit more of their time to make a decision. To capture leads, you need to help guide their decision making–offering too many choices does the opposite. Keep it simple.

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4. Use Negative Space

The visual design of a page should be kept relatively simple to prevent visitors from becoming overwhelmed. The last thing you want is a page covered in text, links, images, videos, and more. This makes it hard to find anything amidst the clutter. To avoid this, make sure that there’s plenty of negative space throughout each page. Negative space helps reduce clutter, gives your site a clean and elegant look, and makes your page easier to scan.

5. Choose Colors Carefully

The way you use color is psychologically important. Colors evoke different emotions and reactions from your visitors. For example, blue indicates trust, which is why it’s a color often used for CTA buttons. However, the colors you choose should reflect the content on your page as well as your brand in general. Just make sure you keep your colors consistent and that you don’t go overboard using colors. You should stick to a few main colors and their variations. Typically, it’s best if you choose one color along with a second that offers some contrast.

6. Use An F-Layout

Studies have shown that the attention of users is focused in an F-pattern. This means that when they first come to a page, they will be most focused on the top left and top right parts of your page. This slowly diminishes as they work their way down, which means the bottom right of a page gets the least amount of attention. Designing your pages so that they display information in an F-layout is therefore a good way to ensure that the information you want to convey is consumed by your visitors. For example, having the bulk of your content on the left side, positioning important links on the top right side, and then adding your CTA to the bottom left will create an effective F-layout.

The design of your website is essential to not only keeping your visitors engaged, but to keep them on your website for as long as possible. The longer you’re able to keep your visitors on your site, the better of a chance you have of converting them. These are six web design principles for conversions that you should consider implementing.

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Vital Factors to Consider When Implementing a Growth Driven Web Design

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A well-designed site is vital to the online success of your business. Recent studies show that at least 94% of respondents rarely trust websites with poor designs. On the other hand, a growth driven web design is intuitive and positively impacts brand perception and lead conversion.

Growth-driven design is a revolutionary approach to creating high-performance websites founded on analytics and designed with specific objectives for continuous improvement.

Here are some important considerations when implementing a growth driven website design.

1. Customer Needs and Wants

Develop a clear picture of your target audience’s needs and wants, and determine the best way to fulfill them.

This sets the essential foundation for a growth driven web design. Start by developing a clear, focused strategy that pivots on the needs and wants of your ideal customer. While your website will launch with a simple version, focusing on customer needs helps you plan future updates and the continuous process cycle.

Understanding your customer needs requires creating accurate buyer personas. Buyer personas represent your ideal customers and website users. They help your team determine the best ways to communicate with empathy and personalize customer interactions.

In addition, a persona establishes a common messaging tone among your marketing team since they have a clear picture of your website’s end user.

You can start by running internal and external interviews to gather information from employees and past clients representing your ideal audience. Email surveys and phone calls are common when gathering information to finetune your buyer persona.

2. Customer Journey

The customer journey charts the road map for your website users and customers seeking solutions to their problems. Growth driven web design makes it easy to identify different stages of the customer journey and provide appropriate tools and solutions to help customers make quick decisions.

Determining the exact stage in the customer journey is essential in determining appropriate offers, website features, and supporting content for optimum conversions. The goal is to get a comprehensive view of your customer’s actions throughout your sales funnels and ensure satisfaction.

3. Fundamental Assumptions

In growth driven web design, fundamental assumptions are like the foundation for a house. Therefore, you must determine the aspects that exert the most weight on the foundation.

Establishing a strong foundation is essential to ensure the website is versatile and long-lasting. Ideally, ensure the design is aligned with your goals and has the right content to guide your team.

You can accomplish this by combining personas, customer journeys, and analytics to develop fundamental assumptions to guide your design and marketing approach for the best results.

4. Short-term and Long-term Goals

This stage involves establishing goals based on buyer persona data and customer research. Each goal is anchored in business metrics and analytics to ensure the website has all the necessary features. However, it’s essential to know what you want to achieve with your growth driven design web. Your overall business objectives guide the process by creating a clear road map.

In addition, you can brainstorm a wish list of things that might improve your website’s impact on your business and customers. Think about additional integrations, modules, features, and functionality.

This process starts by identifying elements that create the highest impact. Typically, it involves identifying the must-have and nice-to-have elements so you can cross out anything that can be added later. This process allows you to identify the core purpose of your website.

Most importantly, it helps finetune your strategy blueprint for the perfect design based on your business needs. However, your team’s collaboration between the strategist, designer, and project manager is essential to ensure the strategy aligns with your business objectives.

5. Content Development

Effective content strategy is among the key elements of a robust online presence to achieve business goals. While the minimum viable design aims at launching a functional site, it’s critical to determine the ideal content to answer user queries and move customers through the sales funnel. Ideally, you should create memorable content that connects with users and solves their problems.

ReportsThe information should be simple, well-organized, and easy to understand. Visual hierarchy helps in content structure to ensure it’s logical and meaningful. This ensures that important information gets the most emphasis while less important information gets the least emphasis.

You can achieve content hierarchy by implementing visual techniques like contrast, color, white space, size, movement, and alignment. Content hierarchy improves information digestion and guides users to find important information quickly to fulfill their intentions.

6. Process Cycle

Once you’ve launched the website, it’s important to review its performance to determine the impact on your business goals. The process involves stakeholder feedback to gain insights into traffic sources and visitor behaviors. Real user data is invaluable at every stage as it gives you a clear picture of website activity.

Depending on the analysis results, you can determine the next action based on the items on your wish list.

Possible actions may include:

  • Improving conversions by influencing users to take specific actions
  • Boost the user experience by enhancing user interaction with the site to ensure easier navigation. Periodic updates are necessary to streamline the design and content.
  • Visitor personalization by leveraging user data to implement changes that suit evolving needs, including content offers and calls to action.
  • Integrating marketing assets like signup forms, social platforms, resources, and tools to provide more value to users and enhance engagement

7. User Experience

Regardless of your site’s design and the available information, user experience determines its success. You might have invaluable resources on your website, but if the user experience hardships navigating and finding what they want, you risk losing valuable prospects.

While outstanding website usability may go unnoticed by the users, poor usability has immediate impacts. Therefore, your website design must be intuitive, navigable, mobile-friendly, and accessible. Ideally, you should anticipate visitors’ actions and help them achieve their goals effortlessly.

While visual aesthetics are essential across multiple devices, upholding a consistent brand image is critical. The website should represent your business fully and create a strong connection with users.

The Bottom Line

Most businesses are shifting from traditional designs and moving towards growth driven web design. Besides enjoying additional flexibility, the companies experience more success in lead conversion and user experience.

Instead of redesigning and launching a new website every two years, growth driven web design creates an upgrade-ready design that evolves with your business. Moreover, decisions are based on data analytics to ensure upgrades are based on real customer needs.

Creating Creative Video Campaign

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The Super Bowl is undoubtedly one of the most celebrated sporting events. It can draw millions of viewers across digital channels and traditional TV platforms. This one-day event with a history of high-profile commercials often means a lot to marketers and business owners. And while many wait a few weeks before the Super Bowl to begin working on their video campaign idea, it’s best to prepare early enough. To create the best video campaigns for the next Super Bowl, you’ll need to review and learn from previous events. That means exploring various video marketing campaigns, including the best and worst Super Bowl commercials.

In the sections below, we’ll discuss a few Super Bowl video marketing ideas and how you can use them to improve your overall video marketing campaigns.

Create a Memorable Pre-game Teaser

You’ve probably watched those super bowl ads that went on to feature in every article for the rest of the year and attracted lots of social media attention. And perhaps you know of some big-time super bowl advertisement fails. The difference between these two sets of video commercials may not be so pronounced and could lie in the finer details.

Making a thirty-seconds pre-game teaser memorable takes a lot of expertise and some trial and error. It also requires understanding emotional advertising, creativity, and proper timing. Sometimes the best ads turn out to be a complete flop, so only after testing them can you confirm the ads will work for your specific audience.

Before consolidating your resources to create a pre-game teaser, you want to focus on delivering the right message in the shortest possible time. A rule of thumb is to be unique while driving the point home. Here are a few tips to keep in mind:

  • Ensure your video is relevant to the event. Super-bowl is highly anticipated; you want to capture the thrill and excitement. Everything about your video, from the visuals to the sound, should be engaging, dynamic and compelling.
  • Use suspense. There’s a lot to fit in a 30-second pre-game teaser, and your video should convey just the relevant information without being deemed boring. You can use the various elements of suspense, such as conflict, empathy, and anticipation, to drive the point home.
  • Make the video shareable. Your pre-game teaser won’t be as impactful if it’s not optimized for sharing. Consider promoting your Super Bowl teaser across various social media channels. You can leverage influencers to share your teaser and invite your audience to share their thoughts.

Utilize Humor to Make an Impact

There’s something about humor that makes it irresistibly powerful, especially in the video marketing niche. People anticipating the super bowl want to share in the fun and excitement of their favorite team engaging in a competitive sporting event that’s deeply rooted in their culture. What you don’t want to do is bring in some dull vibes and spoil their uplifted spirit.

Besides making your brand and message more memorable, humor also connects with the audience personally, making them laugh and feel good and relaxed. It also keeps viewers wanting more, it makes your super bowl commercial more sharable across social media and other platforms.

And while everyone knows that humor is critical to a successful viral marketing campaign, most marketers are yet to leverage this low-hanging fruit. But the problem isn’t using humor for video marketing, but how well to integrate humor into a 30-second commercial.

The common mistake many people make when incorporating humor into their marketing is being insensitive to their audience. A good old joke you often circulate in your department can be offensive to certain groups of people. This often comes with a hefty price and could quickly damage your brand’s reputation. Many marketers try to copy past commercials or successful Super Bowl ads, and they end up hurting their image. As much as you want to add humor to your commercial, try not to overdo it.

Leverage Social Media

Not so long ago, Super Bowl ads were meant for the big screens. Large media houses had the monopoly of showcasing whatever ads were lined up during the commercial breaks. This, however, is no longer the case. Nowadays, millions of people watch the Super Bowl from the comfort of their smartphones.

For video marketers, this means a lot as far as video marketing ideas are concerned. Instead of designing Super Bowl ads just for the big screens, you want to design them for social media platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

Before creating a Super Bowl ad or teaser, you must carefully plan the delivery. You must also ensure the audience can easily share the video across all social media channels. Most Super Bowl commercials that go viral are well-optimized for social media. They are short and visually stunning and appear on various social media platforms, encouraging people to share the videos and discuss what they think about the game and the video commercials.

The other video marketing ideas you can implement are: posting some sneak previews and behind the scene-videos of the ads on social media. You can also source user-generated content by developing a social media challenge relating to your ad where you invite users to edit the videos for sound and graphics, with the best editor earning some prize, e.g., branded merchandise, the next super bowl ticket, etc.

Make Video Marketing Work for You

Creating an effective video marketing campaign takes a lot of practice and expertise. Unless you can create an informative, visually appealing video that speaks to your audience, you’ll have difficulty selling your products or services. Whether you are a marketer, a business executive, or a business owner, it’s crucial to understand the basics of video marketing. Combining several video marketing ideas and seeking expert advice could mark the difference between failed branding and a golden opportunity to create a memorable ad that steals the show and gets the attention you’ve been longing for.