Top 10 UX Design Principles

6 Oct 2020 Web design

Design principles are widely accepted guidelines, laws, and design considerations that the designers apply with discretion. In other words, they are fundamental pieces of advice for the designer to make easy-to-use, eye-catching designs. These are applied when creating, selecting, and organizing elements and features in the work. In a UX design, it is crucial to find ways to improve usability, influence perception, increase appeal, teach users, and make effective design decisions for projects.

Top UX design principles to keep in mind while designing the website

  1. Know your user and their needs – A website is only as good as its user’s experience. The focus of all UX design principles is on users throughout the design process, understanding their needs, expectations, motivations, and frustrations thereby making it clear that the website design should work on providing and improving the users’ experience with the product and services. A clear understanding of these will help the designer to build and focus on the personas throughout the design process. It is important to know what the users are looking for in a design.
  2. Content is supreme – To give a website a more meaningful direction, it is important to focus on crafting a story of a brand or a product before getting into the visual design phase of a website. Telling a story can connect people to an idea or a product or service. Start with planning the content and then move around designing the website.
  3. Have a clear hierarchy – It is one of the best tools for designers to help a user smoothly navigate throughout the design easily. There are two different hierarchies involved in UX design for a website.
  • The first hierarchy relates to information with the focus on how the content is organized across the website. This mainly refers to a primary navigation menu that includes the main sections. This is the menu which you notice when you arrive on a site. As you click on each item, what you see is the secondary menu that gets more specific moving you down the information hierarchy.
  • The visual hierarchy is the way the designer helps the user navigate more easily with a section or a page. Visual hierarchy requires the more important content to stand out like for instance, headings are typically larger than the body text and often use a different font. Similarly, interactive elements use different colours to draw attention to its interactiveness.
  1. Consistency – Users expect products to be consistent with similar products they have used in the past. The more familiar the product, the more easily the users will learn and have a better experience without any additional learning cost. This consistency makes the design process easier for the designers as they don’t have to reinvent new designs with every project.
  2. Understand accessibility – An important rule to keep in mind while designing a website or an app is accessibility. It is for the designer to make sure that the design is usable for as many people as possible including people with disabilities. Accessibility can mean many things at the interface level. From the ease of keyboard navigation and speech input technology to controlled animation for photosensitive user amongst other things. Remove any hurdles in the design layout for easy navigation.
  3. Begin with mobile in mind – A “mobile in mind” approach should be adopted to cater to the needs of the users and not face any issues when scaling up the design. Designers should focus on designing mobile and desktop wireframes at the same time to test the breakpoints.
  4. Experiment with animation – Interactive web design and animation can add movement and make the website come to life. Animation, when done well, has been known to help educate the customer about how the website or an app function. It is usually seen that users respond positively to small, unexpected, and playful elements.
  5. Ease in finding the right information – The most important information should be the easiest to find. Once the user is acclimatized with the site, more advanced features and technical details can be unveiled. For many sticking to the principle of being minimalistic and showing only what is necessary has proven to work well.
  6. User control – Focuses on providing greater flexibility of use and control of where a user is within the design, enhancing UX. An essential part of providing user control is to allow users to backpedal or recover from any errors. For instance, when a user is creating a new item like an email or an event, a cancel button should let them abandon the task. An undo button also comes in handy for reversing an unintended or undesired action. Another way to improve user control is by providing users with ways to improve their efficiency. Keyboard shortcuts are a great way to do this and so does advanced searching help users find what they are looking for more efficiently.
  7. Tree-test the prototypes – Tree testing exercising is done to evaluate the performance of the site’s architecture. It helps in understanding if the navigational paths are intuitive, and do they lead the users where they expect to go quickly without any confusion. For example, while browsing for something unique on an e-commerce site is the user able to find it easily, or is it a challenge? The answers to such a question can be found once tree-testing is done.

You want users to come back to your website for the products and services that you offer. The challenge than any web designer faces is to make the experience unique and as smooth as possible. The above UX design principles can surely help you in the right direction to achieving that.

Top 10 Affiliate Marketing Programs

5 Oct 2020 Content

How does the idea of making money while sleeping sound to you?

Affiliate marketing is how you get started. The main idea behind this kind of marketing is to promote other people’s products through an affiliate network, earning a commission if people buy these products thanks to your marketing efforts. This is a revenue-sharing model where if you have a product and want to increase the sales, then you offer the promoters a financial incentive through an affiliate program. Let us now look at the definition of what affiliate marketing is. “Affiliate Marketing is a process of earning a commission by promoting other people’s or company’s products. Choose a product that you like, promote it to others, and earn a piece of the profit for every sale that is made by you. In today’s online scenario affiliate marketing programs provide you with offers that can be promoted online. People can sign up for these programs online, use the existing marketing material and/or links with a unique URL, and convince others to click on it. In the event that someone signs up for the product or service using the URL, you can earn a commission.

Some of the best known Affiliate Marketing Programs can be found below:

  1. Amazon Associates – Amazon is a great platform for affiliate marketing and especially for beginners. The vast marketplace takes care of most of the sales process, bringing the leads to you. Signing up for the Amazon Affiliate program is an easy process and is free of cost. Once accepted, you can sell any Amazon products, including third-party ones without getting into individual programs. It is a great way to make money without having a strong background in affiliate marketing.
  2. CJ Affiliate – One of the largest affiliate networks since 1998 with expertise that shows in every aspect of their work. It is a great program for experienced marketers, featuring 300 brands. It has a very stringent selection process where you need to apply with your website which needs to be found worthy of becoming a partner based on traffic, quality of content, and optimization. However, this is just the first step. The next step involves applying individually to each vendor for their products to sell and you may or may not be accepted. The program has shown a 43 percent year-on-year growth in commission making it an attractive option.
  3. ShareASale – It has been in business for nearly two decades and is also one of the largest affiliate networks with a lot of trust in the industry. It is a well-loved program due to the user-friendly interface, easy free sign up and supports for the affiliates running multiple websites. A major advantage for this program is the standard and digital payout options with digital payouts being rare among the popular affiliate programs. With over 5000 vendors, you get a huge library of products to choose from. The only drawback with this program the pay-out threshold of $50 may be difficult to reach for newer websites who are still struggling to build their traffic.
  4. ClickBank – With 6 million digital products across 20 categories and with a reach of over 200 million people worldwide, ClickBank is an attractive choice for affiliate marketing. It offers a very high commission and has a reputation for regular payouts. The product base is easy to navigate making it easy to find products to promote. Unfortunately, they do not offer digital payments.
  5. eBay Partner Network – Offers a great way to tap into the massive affiliate potential of the eBay market. The sign up to this program is simple. As an affiliate marketer, you need to advertise eBay products through your social media, blog, or website to earn a commission for every product sold via your link.
  6. JVZoo – Relatively a newcomer with only 6 years of experience using the SaaS approach. The products can be listed in the marketplace for free and JVZoo earns a 5 percent standard commission on anything that sells. The affiliate marketers are paid instantly as the item is sold. Affiliate marketers stand to make more money when affiliates that they recruit sell products. Another advantage of using this program is that when a buyer referred by you purchases another product that may not have been referred by you, you get the commission for that sale as well.
  7. Fiverr Affiliates Program – It pitches itself as one of the world’s largest digital service marketplace with over 11 million users spread across over 190 countries. It offers a substantial commission plan and has no limit on referrals. It is user friendly and has an attractive portfolio of creative resources to promote.
  8. Shopify  – It is one of the leading e-commerce programs used by online retailers and bloggers. It offers a great partnership for affiliate marketing and you can earn a lot per referral. Shopify is known to be the leading contender in its space with very few other eCommerce platforms coming close to it. While the pay-outs are good, the audience needs to be selling things online for the platform to be relevant to them.
  9. PartnerStack – An affiliate program that focuses on promoting software products and tools including well-known popular software. 30 percent of the software sales can be attributed to the channel partners so if there is an audience for a particular software, then it has great potential for an affiliate marketer. PartnerStack focuses on building partnerships between the product owners and the affiliate marketers which is an advantage.
  10. Affiliate – This is a top choice for affiliate marketers looking to have access to many verticals which means a large variety of products and offering to choose and focus on to get the best results. Once accepted to the program, it gives you access to your very own affiliate manager that helps in optimizing the traffic and create a bonus program to gain the maximum.

No two affiliate programs are the same. Depending on your niche, your audience, and your personality different affiliate programs may be better suited for you. The different affiliate programs covered here offer a range of possibilities for a beginner to an advanced affiliate marketer.

 

Top 10 Payment Gateways

1 Oct 2020 E-Commerce

Having safe online payment methods is one of the crucial elements of running a successful online store that can achieve its sales objectives. Multiple and reliable payment methods significantly impact the volume of sales and engagement. If the payment gateways on a website are not reliable, it impacts a business negatively by increasing the bounce rate on the store and drives away a large number of customers who can purchase on the store. Hence it is essential to be aware of all the top online payment gateways and companies that provide good payment services to deal with to enhance and boost the online store, make the process of payment smooth, fast, and secure and gain the confidence of the shoppers. A payment gateway should allow merchants to accept multiple transaction facilities like debit/credit cards, wallets, etc. securely on the website as well as a mobile app.

How does a payment gateway work?

The customers while shopping on the website or app adds the product or service to the cart and proceed to the payment page. The customer is prompted to provide the details of the credit/debit card to make the payment which is the 16-digit card number along with the name of the cardholder, the expiration date, and the CVV number. This information is then submitted and securely passed to the payment gateway based on the integration type. The payment gateway encrypts the card details and after the security checks, the card information is sent to the acquiring bank. They further send these details to card schemes like Visa, Mastercard, etc. It is for the card schemes to ensure another security check before sending the payment information to the issuing bank. The issuing bank authorizes the transaction after security and fraud check. Whether the payment is approved or declined, the message is sent to the payment gateway which further sends the message to the merchant. Based on the message from the payment gateway the merchant either displays the payment confirmation or asks the customer to try again. Some of the top payment gateways provide smooth transactions and the whole process runs in the background in real-time within a few seconds.

Having understood how the payment gateway works, the next step is to look at the factors to consider when choosing a payment gateway.
• Security- the payment gateway security standards should meet the PCI Data Security Standard and should be integrated with 3D secure. This ensures protection against fraud and hacking activities.
• Easy Website Integration- the payment gateway integration should be simple and the customer support should be good. Any issues that you may face should be resolved quickly and with ease.
• Payout time- some of the best payment gateway service providers have taken a reasonable timeframe for payouts. It is important to check payout time frames before the integration process.
• Multi-currency option- if the business is global, then the payment gateway provider should support multi-currency payment.

Here are the Top 10 Payment Gateways

1. Paypal – It is one of the leading online payment companies that help people and companies to send and receive payments without the hassle of providing any financial information using just an email address. Paypal operates in 203 countries and has taken over most of the auction sites as well as e-commerce sites for businesses that rely heavily on PayPal e-payment services. The differentiating feature of PayPal is that it accepts electronic payments in more than 25 currencies in the world and supports most of the widely used credit cards like Visa, American Express, Mastercard, etc. Some of the other important features of PayPal are that it has a mobile application that makes it easier for the customers to manage their accounts via a mobile phone, provides advanced protection from fraud, and that you do not need a merchant account to use Paypal. It is PCI compliant, offers Express checkout, and also provides the option of bill me later.

2. PayFort – This is an Amazon Company, operating in Arabic speaking and surrounding countries such as UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, and Qatar. Payfort’s payment gateway accepts and proceeds multiple online payment methods with high security in order to minimize transaction risks in your site and boost your revenue.

3. Stripe – It is a cloud payment gateway platform that helps in accepting and managing online transactions anywhere in the world. It is a complete solution for online payments with features like custom UI toolkit, consolidated reports amongst other things. It ensures a smooth movement of funds for any business while preventing frauds offering great security, managing revenue, and drive sales. Since it offers an open API that helps in integration with the ecosystem of the business. Some other important features are that it provides a mobile customer interface, allows multiple- currency payouts, offers payment options, has a dispute handling feature.

4. Skrill – One of the well-known payment gateways that understand the modern payment demand in terms of payment processing and money transferring. It has many top companies as their customers owing to the use of innovative business solutions that they offer. It is one of the successful UK-based payment gateways that supports 30 different currencies and has been recognized and awarded by many top companies like Deloitte Technology and several others. Some of the important features include email transactions, provides quick access, and offer a free account.

5. Authorize.net – A global payment gateway providing strong infrastructure and security for smooth, fast, and secure transfer of transactional data. It manages the routing of transactions in an online setting without the installation of any specific software just like in the case of swiping your card. With a merchant base of 370,000 around the globe, it accepts payments securely ensuring a smooth experience. It has a fully integrated checkout payment system that accepts and processes payments from other bank accounts through the Authorization.net virtual terminal or the user’s website. Some of the other features that it offers are e-check processing, customer information. Manager, retail payment, Mail/phone payment, advanced fraud detection.

6. PayTabs – PayTabs is well-known for leading-edge payment processing and fraud prevention system. This flexible and secure online payment solution enables e-businesses to make or receive payments online with ease, create and send invoices through agile and unique technology. Moreover, PayTabs’s innovative layers of security management are certified by both Visa and MasterCard.

7. Telr – Is one of the most well-known payment gateways, which supports multiple popular payment methods. It is accepted in more than 100 countries, and constantly updates more payment methods. There are three payment levels: Entry, Small, and Medium, which are great for startups, SMEs, and e-commerce businesses in the emerging market.

8. Cashu – Cashu is considered the first and the largest online payment solution company in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). This secure payment gateway applies modern fraud prevention and AML systems to avoid all risks associated with online transactions. Every transaction is guaranteed without any risk of chargeback. With Cashu, you will have a lot of opportunities to grow your business across markets on both a local and global scale.

9. 2Checkout.com – Whether you’re tapping into international markets, looking to boost conversion rates, or running a subscription-based business, 2Checkout can help you tackle the complexities of digital commerce, globally.

10. Payoneer – One of the world’s leading online payment company offering its services to individuals and businesses around the globe. It has its presence in more than 200 countries enabling businesses and individuals to send and receive money in a safe, simple, and low-cost way.

To be successful in e-commerce, many factors need to work simultaneously. If you provide products and services online, you need to understand how these work for the success of your online business. Your choice of the payment gateways can either lead to success in business or its failure. Choose wisely.

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