Author Suzanne Scacca

April 11, 2023 — If you want to maximize conversions or collect necessary user information for other purposes, a user onboarding flow is necessary. In this article, you will learn how, with the help of Feathery, to design an effective user onboarding flow for your app. Read more…

January 26, 2023 — 57% of product professionals say that product research has a positive effect on customer satisfaction. 42% agree that it affects profitability. Imagine how much more successful your product would be if you did research continuously? Read more…

December 15, 2022 — Concerns over online privacy and security are nothing new. In this article, Suzanne Scacca explores how the right CSV importer can help businesses better prioritize user security. Read more…

January 15, 2021 — 2020 was anything but normal. The world has changed, and so has our role as designers. We never know what the future will bring, but ultimately we shape it, and we can contribute more positive change to the world than we often think we can. Consumers had their lives shaken up and many businesses experienced new challenges as well as opportunities thanks to the novel events of the year. Read more…

January 7, 2021 — Developing a Shopify app and being able to sell it are two different things. While you might be a very skilled app developer, that’s not always enough for Shopify merchants to decide to install a newly released and unreviewed app on their sites. If you want to give merchants a reason to install and use your Shopify app, there are four things you need to do. Read more…

December 16, 2020 — Today, Suzanne Scacca is going to look at “The Website Dilemma”. In other words, is it possible to build an authoritative, lead generating, high converting website without manipulating visitors into doing what you want? If you follow social media’s lead, they’re one and the same. If you’d prefer not to trade your customers’ well-being for profit, keep reading. Read more…

December 11, 2020 — Software and apps often solve very complex problems for businesses and consumers in the way of sales, marketing, finances, and so on. But offering a product that solves your users’ problems isn’t enough. If the UI is just as complex as the original problem, user churn is going to be high. Today, we’re going to look at some tips for designing a simple UI regardless of your solution’s complexity. Read more…

December 2, 2020 — Even though the development of a data importer is a complex matter, you don’t want your users’ experience with it to be just as complex or complicated. The second they experience any friction or fault in data onboarding, the chances of them bailing from the software will skyrocket. So, in this post, we’re going to focus on how best to present your data importer to users. Read more…

November 10, 2020 — The goal of e-commerce design is to create interfaces that won’t get in the way of the overall shopping experience. In this post, Suzanne Scacca is going to look at three key parts of a digital store and show you what you can do to design each to help customers more quickly and effortlessly get to the checkout stage. Read more…

November 3, 2020 — Do you have a hard time throwing away mockups, logos and other content you’ve created for clients? The good news is that you don’t have to see rejected or unused designs as a sign of failure or waste. You can actually repurpose them and give them new life on other projects, for other customers, and even within your own business. I’ll explain four ways to do this in this post. Read more…

October 23, 2020 — Data onboarding with a custom-built solution can be a difficult and error-prone process. Now imagine what happens when you increase the complexity, allowing for different file types, more users, varying sources and a greater need for security and compliance. It shouldn’t be up to your software end users to work out the kinks of your data onboarding, nor should your team have to do it. In this post, Suzanne Scacca will look at how Flatfile Concierge deals with this problem. Read more…

October 6, 2020 — In some instances, privacy policy, terms of use, and cookie consent pages do have to be ugly. But that doesn’t mean you can’t improve upon how easy they are to read or navigate (which visitors will definitely appreciate). Today, we’re going to look at four ways that web designers can contribute to getting more policy disclosure pages read and terms actually agreed to. Read more…

September 28, 2020 — Digital content (eBooks, stock media and courses) can easily be advertised and sold through online marketplaces. But your clients won’t make as much money that way and really can’t control how their products are marketed. By designing digital product pages for smartphone users who are in that early discovery and research phase, your clients can make more money off of their products. Today, Suzanne Scacca will look at how this is done. Read more…

September 3, 2020 — Icons have long held an important place in the design of mobile apps. But beyond using them to create larger and more attractive touch targets, there are other ways mobile app designers can use these tiny elements to make an app more engaging. This post will explore four ways to do this. Today, Suzanna Scacca will look at a number of ways you can creatively add icons or icon-like elements to your apps and bring more life to them in the process. Read more…

August 21, 2020 — A website earns a backlink whenever another website links to it. But there’s a big difference between a backlink and a high-authority backlink. If an authoritative website links to yours, it can significantly boost your ranking in Google search. And this is why backlinks are so highly sought after in marketing… and why web designers should have this on their radar as they design websites for clients. Read more…

August 12, 2020 — The first place Suzanne Scacca goes to whenever she’s curious about what more could be done to improve our users experiences is the Google Developers site or Think with Google to pull the latest consumer data. There’s a reason why Google dominates market share for things like search engines, web browsers, email clients and cloud storage services. It knows exactly what consumers want and it has designed simple, intuitive, and useful solutions for them. If there’s one company whose product features you should be mirroring, it’s Google. Read more…

August 4, 2020 — Imagine if your website could evoke this kind of response. Visitors who respond to the sensory stimulation would instantly be in a more positive headspace, which they’d then associate with the site and your brand. While you don’t want to design a website for all five senses — because that would most certainly lead to sensory overload — you can use individual senses to strengthen the experience visitors have. In this article, Suzanne Scacca will take a look at five ways you can use the senses to put your visitors in a better headspace when they enter your site and interact with your brand. Read more…

July 14, 2020 — The Scrabble GO, Instacart and YouTube mobile apps have recently undergone disruptive redesigns. Were they worth it in the end? Judging by their users’ reactions, the answer to that is “No”. But that doesn’t mean that redesigns or design tweaks are a bad idea after launch. In this article, Suzanne Scacca will take a look at the mistakes made and the lessons we can extract from them. Read more…

July 9, 2020 — There was a time when marketers used things like urgency, scarcity and FOMO to drive online shoppers to a sale. But scare tactics can actually hurt a brand’s relationships with customers. By their very nature, we run into similar problems with shipping and inventory alerts. That said, there are ways that web designers can keep panic and frustration from seeping into the shopper’s experience. If you want to better control your shoppers’ responses and keep them on the path to conversion, Suzanne Scacca will tell you how, in this article. Read more…

June 23, 2020 — We’re at a point now where restaurants can no longer be reluctant or stingy about improving their digital presence. And, as a web designer, this should get you excited. The restaurant industry has begun to undergo a major digital transformation. Those that want to survive will need a website that can handle the new way of operating, which means they can no longer afford to hold onto that cheap website they built for themselves years ago. And this spells big opportunities for web designers interested in working in the space. Read more…

June 10, 2020 — Stress isn’t just something that makes people feel uncomfortable. It stimulates the urge to “fight” or “flight”. The very last thing you want is to design a website that stresses visitors out, leading them to dread the experience or abandon it entirely. There are many things that might invoke this response from your visitors, including the design. In the following guide, we’re going to look at some ways to de-stress your design. Read more…

May 26, 2020 — A desk is an essential piece of equipment for a web designer. Without it, you’d end up working from wobbly tables at cafes or staring down at your lap all day — uncomfortable options, to say the least. Then again, your desk could also cause you discomfort if you sit in it the wrong way or for too long. Rather than feeling like your desk is a torture device, Suzanne Scacca shares some pointers for enjoying the time you spend there. Read more…

May 22, 2020 — Great logo design can do incredible things for the company behind it. Set the tone for the brand. Improve memorability. Help users emotionally connect to the brand. Create consistency between all marketing channels. Set it apart from the competition. But as a web designer, do you know how to tackle the lofty request of logo design when a client brings it to you? Read more…

May 19, 2020 — Since more and more web traffic comes from mobile users, our websites need to be in the best position to serve them. The easiest thing to do would be to remove unnecessary content from the site. However, it may not always be the best solution. In this article, Suzanne Scacca proposes some ways to turn essential content into graphics to conserve space, create a more engaging UI and preserve the overall integrity of your content on mobile. Read more…

March 31, 2020 — By now, you’re probably used to seeing design trends come and go. But have you ever given any thought to what passing trends do to a website when left there for too long? As a web designer, you have a few choices. You can ignore popular design trends altogether; you can adopt them, but pull them out of rotation the second they go stale, or you can put your own unique spin on them. This guide will help you figure out which approach makes the most sense for your site. Read more…

March 26, 2020 — Recent research has found that e-commerce category pages have higher click-through rates in search than individual category pages. So, if your e-commerce site is struggling to attract shoppers and convert them, your category pages (specifically, those on mobile) might be in need of a redesign. Based on the following data, Suzanne Scacca will show you how category pages have a role to play — as the intermediary between search engines and e-commerce websites. Read more…

March 17, 2020 — There isn’t a ton of mystery when it comes to what makes for an attractive and modern-looking design these days. What’s not always clear, however, is the usability aspect of it. In other words, have the pathways you’ve designed for users intuitive enough? The truth is, it’s all really just a guessing game unless you start getting user feedback early on. Thankfully, Indigo.Design has a usability testing solution to help us out. Read more…

February 28, 2020 — The word “SEO” holds a lot of weight. We know how critical it is to the success of a website and, yet, it often becomes one of those things that’s left until the very end of a web design project to deal with. Or, worse, it’s pushed onto one person’s plate who likely isn’t capable of doing all that needs to be done. SEO should be a team sport — and that’s what today’s post is all about. Read more…

February 18, 2020 — Whether you’re building a new site or you’re managing a live one, you can’t afford to make any changes without a process for cross-browser testing and a tool to do the heavy lifting for you. LambdaTest’s wide array of tests are the answer. From fully automated cross-browser tests to semi-automated tasks, we’re going to explore a much more efficient way to review your websites and all their browser iterations for errors. Read more…

February 17, 2020 — Does your website have a mascot that the audience isn’t responding well to or that outright hates it? Or maybe your new client has brought along a mascot that you’re unsure about? If a mascot’s design or messaging isn’t on point with an audience, there’s no sense in keeping it as is and losing business over it. Today, Suzanne Scacca is going to give you four options for turning your hated brand mascot into one the people love. Read more…

February 11, 2020 — Appointment and event booking can be a time-consuming and tedious task. Business owners don’t want to deal with it and their assistants aren’t always the most effective way to capture or handle this information. Web designers, on the other hand, can help. By using the Amelia booking plugin for WordPress, you can create booking widgets that collect more appointments (and revenue) for your clients. Read more…

January 27, 2020 — Want to build a website or PWA that attracts a large audience and then converts as much of that audience into paying customers as possible? If that’s the case, what you need to do is use storytelling in your design — and there are a bunch of ways to do this. The key is to pair your client’s story, brand image, and goals with the style of story you decide to tell. There’s a ton of variation in how a story can be told. There is one thing they all need to have in common though: They need to somehow draw the reader into the narrative. Read more…

January 2, 2020 — Are you using sticky elements on your mobile website or PWA? If so, take a moment and ask yourself this question: Do you have anything in them besides your logo, hamburger menu or search bar? If that’s not the case, then it’s time to shake things up. Your mobile visitors are primed to take action. You just need to make it easy for them to do so — and sticky bars and elements are the perfect opportunity to do that. In this article, Suzanne Scacca is going to show you some creative uses for sticky elements in mobile design, so you can help more of your visitors to take action. Read more…

December 30, 2019 — Have you ever looked at the design techniques and elements you use to build mobile apps and evaluated whether or not they’re still useful or relevant? If you haven’t done this in a while (or ever), stop what you’re doing and read this. Today, Suzanne Scacca is going to look at the 5 things mobile app designers should stop doing so they can create more streamlined and positive user experiences. Read more…

December 12, 2019 — You spend so much time focused on other people’s websites that it’s easy to put yours on the backburner and tell yourself, “I’ll fix it up someday soon.” But do you really want to wait to improve your professional portfolio site? It could be bringing you a lot more business — a lot more quality business, too — if you’d only spend some more time on it. In this article, Suzanne Scacca explains why spending that time turning it into a PWA would be worth your while. Read more…

December 10, 2019 — “If you build it, they will come.” That’s certainly true when you put a lot of time and effort into building websites and PWAs for clients. But what happens when “they will come” becomes “too many of them came all at once and now the site’s gone down”? Traffic surges do happen. But rather than let your website become victim to them, Suzanne Scacca will show you how you can set it up to be the victor, with this guide. Read more…

December 6, 2019 — Every website or PWA you build should automate as much prospecting and selling as possible. The only thing is that visitors enter websites with various mindsets, depending on which part of the buying stage they’re at. This means that you can’t just take every person who enters the site through the same path. You have to design a custom sales funnel (or pathway) for each kind of buyer. In this article, Suzanna Scacca will tell you what you need to keep in mind. Read more…

November 21, 2019 — You may have heard that FOMO is harmful for consumers. There’s even research that supports it. That said, what if we removed “fear” from the “fear of missing out” and put the good parts of this marketing strategy to use in web and app design? It’s possible to do and in this article, Suzanna Scacca will unpack four ways you can more delicately and ethically use (F)OMO when designing digital experiences. Read more…

November 11, 2019 — We’ve all dealt with analysis paralysis before. Do I choose vanilla, strawberry or one of the 30 other flavors? And do I go with the cone or cup? When it comes to putting our visitors on the spot, giving them too many options hurts their decision-making ability along with how they feel about the experience as a whole. While you can’t do anything about how much “stuff” is on your site, you can design it in a way that makes it easier for your visitors to make a choice. Today, Suzanne Scacca will look at what it is about the psychology of choice that can be detrimental for conversions and what you can do to keep your PWA visitors from succumbing to it. Read more…

November 5, 2019 — Data import has historically been a time-consuming and frustrating task, especially for products that depend on ingesting a lot of data from users. That’s why many developers include CSV importers in their apps — to spare users from having to manually copy data from a spreadsheet into their database. But let’s face it: traditional data import solutions haven’t always been great. That’s why, today, Suzanne Scacca is going to look at how Flatfile helps you create a better import experience for your users, team, and product. Read more…

October 31, 2019 — What is it that makes a haunted house feel so disturbing? Is it the fact that it’s been long abandoned? That it’s riddled with dark and twisty hallways? That it simulates danger? Or maybe it’s the low-quality construction that makes people nervous? In this article, Suzanne Scacca is going to take these frightening characteristics and spin them around for the web. After all, what is a website, but a digital house? (Let’s just make sure yours doesn’t feel haunted!) Read more…

October 29, 2019 — Images are a big part of the web and, yet, they can cause a lot of challenges for the user experience if not properly optimized or delivered. It’s been almost a decade since Google introduced the world to WebP as a solution to this problem. As more of our browsers, devices and software support it, it’s time that web designers started adopting it as their default image format. In this article, Suzanne Scacca is going to show you What WebP is. Read more…

October 22, 2019 — You want to build a mobile website or PWA that converts visitors into leads or customers. But with Google and consumers alike becoming ever more demanding when it comes to loading speeds, what more can you do? ImageKit, a digital image optimization service, might have the all-in-one hands-off solution you need. Today, Suzanne Scacca will focus on how you can still design with as many images as you want without slowing down your website. Read more…

October 15, 2019 — As a web designer, you’re probably all too familiar with feast or famine. Or with the dreaded scope creep that robs you of the profits you were so looking forward to pocketing. But that’s what happens when your ability to make money rides on how many hours you can work. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a steady flow of money coming in at all times? In this post, Suzanne Scacca is going to look at how adding WordPress maintenance services might provide that solution. Read more…

October 9, 2019 — PWAs are supposed to provide visitors with a better experience than a mobile website. But just because PWAs will use sticky navigation the way that native apps do, that doesn’t make them as easy to get around. If you’re worried that your PWA is going to be difficult to navigate without some guidance, put breadcrumbs to work. You can use them to improve navigation, readability, conversions, and more. Today, Suzanne Scacca is going to look at how to design breadcrumbs for PWAs and some interesting use cases where they come in handy. Read more…

September 24, 2019 — Back in the day when we didn’t have responsive tables, it wouldn’t have been a problem to display a complex table on mobile the same way you would on desktop. Visitors knew that they’d need to pinch to zoom in, then scroll left and right, to consume all the data within it. But we don’t have any excuse for creating poor experiences like that today. Today, Suzanne Scacca will tell you what you need to know about designing complex tables for your mobile visitors in WordPress. Read more…

September 23, 2019 — Your mobile website or PWA needs social proof to convince visitors to convert. Social proof comes in a variety of forms. But just because your client has amassed testimonials, case studies, client logos and partnership seals, doesn’t mean you should bog down your mobile site or PWA with all of them. Yes, visitors need to be given a reason to trust. But that shouldn’t come at the expense of their experience. With this guide, Suzanne Scacca will show you how to build social proof into the mobile experience the right way. Read more…

September 17, 2019 — Let’s face it: it’s never easy to deal with client feedback. Requests may be vague (“the form is broken”), too subjective (“the page doesn’t load fast enough”), or difficult to assess without seeing it yourself (“the page still isn’t updated”). You could schedule some time to walk through the issues or bugs with your client, but a better solution to this often disruptive and frustrating process is to create a fool-proof system that’s easy for clients to leave feedback and even easier for you to implement and resolve it. In this article, Suzanne Scacca brings you great suggestions. Read more…

August 13, 2019 — You don’t have much time to capture the attention of visitors to your PWA. Rather than waste that time with an overcrowded hero image or, even worse, disappoint them with a lackluster design, get creative with what little space you have above-the-fold. One of the best sources of inspiration for this? Movie posters. In this article, Suzanne Scacca will look at some examples of good and bad movie posters and see what sort of lessons we can use to help you with your PWA hero design. Read more…

August 5, 2019 — Customers’ loyalty does not come for free. While it would be nice if they were satisfied with a high-quality product with some extra bells-and-whistles thrown in, sometimes what’s needed to seal the deal is a rewards system. But when a client asks you to design the mechanism for their loyalty program, how do you decide which format it should take? In this article, Suzanne Scacca shows you what you need to know about designing mobile loyalty programs. Read more…

July 31, 2019 — Until now, the designer-developer handoff has been fraught with inefficiencies. It’s not that software teams don’t know how to collaborate or communicate well with one another. It’s just that disparate platforms (namely, Sketch and Visual Studio Code) and incompatible workflows created tons of issues in how design was translated into code. In this article, Suzanne Scacca will show you Indigo.Design, which offers a simple solution to fix this costly and time-consuming problem for software teams. Read more…

July 26, 2019 — Apps are no small undertaking. Nor are they cheap to build and maintain. So, before you move ahead with creating a new mobile app or SaaS for your client, perhaps you should consider launching a minimum viable product (MVP) instead. With an MVP, you have a low-risk and lower cost way of testing your concept on the market. What’s not to love about that? In this article, Suzanne Scacca will show you what you need to know. Read more…

July 4, 2019 — Social media communication is unlike any other. It’s abbreviated. It’s personal. And it’s driven by visuals. Doesn’t that sound a lot like what a mobile website or PWA would benefit from? As you look for ways to improve engagement rates with your designs, consider weaving some social media-inspired elements into them. In this article, Suzanne Scacca talks about drawing inspiration from the abbreviated way in which we talk to others there. After all, mobile websites, PWAs, and native apps give us very little space to tell a story and engage an audience with it. Adopting a social media-inspired design would be helpful in quickly getting our message across on mobile screens. Read more…

July 2, 2019 — Prospective clients are not easy to say “yes” to. You worry that your profit margins will be slim — if you end up making any money at all. But what if there were a site builder solution built specifically for that purpose? In this article, Suzanne Scacca will tell you eberything about Sitejet. With Sitejet, you’ll be able to easily collaborate with your team and customers to build, manage and launch websites in record-time. If you’ve ever felt bad about turning away small businesses, Sitejet makes it possible for you to start saying “yes” to them. Read more…

June 26, 2019 — Web developers know what they’re doing in terms of optimizing a website for page speed, but is it enough in Google’s eyes? When it comes to mobile loading speeds, your website can always be faster. And if you’ve implemented all of the caching, minification and other optimizations you possibly can, it’s time for the web designer to step in and get creative. As a writer, Suzanne Scacca takes care of the on-page optimizations while the developer she hands content over to does the technical SEO stuff. Web designers and developers can easily tackle the parts of speed optimization that are in each of their wheelhouses. Read more…

June 21, 2019 — Email is a great tool for, first, acquiring leads from a website and, later, converting and retaining them. But just as you now approach web design with a mobile-first mentality, the same switch should occur as you design email marketing campaigns for your clients. If users are more likely to open email on mobile and we know that opened emails convert at a higher rate than those that go unopened, wouldn’t it make sense for designers to prioritize the mobile experience when designing emails? In this article, Suzanne Scacca brings you some facts and tips you need to know for designing mobile-first emails. Read more…

May 29, 2019 — Have you noticed that contact forms are disappearing? Have you also noticed that many websites are replacing their forms with chatbots? Whether you put a chatbot on your website or direct visitors to one hosted on Facebook Messenger, is that a better solution for capturing leads and other contact information than with a traditional form? In this article, Suzanne Scacca will explore what is happening to forms on the mobile web and why chatbots may or may not be a suitable replacement for them. Read more…

May 23, 2019 — Now that we have a year of GDPR under our belts, and the ePR is coming soon, there’s no better time than now to review your websites. Do you know what kinds of cookies collect information from your site? And have you provided visitors with information about an option to accept those cookies? If your site is currently not in compliance, or you’re not sure if it is, read this post and start using CookiePro’s cookie consent tool to get your sites moving in the right direction. Read more…

May 9, 2019 — Does the word “influencer” make you cringe? If you’re paying attention to the right ones (i.e. digital influencers), you’ll find that their websites actually have some very valuable lessons for web designers. In this article, Suzanne Scacca will show you some of the tricks they use to establish authority through design. This post is about giving your website the same kind of clout as a digital influencer — and using that perceived expert status to consistently maintain high levels of traffic, engagement and referrals. Read more…

May 7, 2019 — Software development and maintenance has, generally speaking, been a time-consuming and arduous process for developers and engineers who carry the brunt of the work. However, with the introduction of front-end-as-a-service, and a company like Mason pioneering the way, that could all change. In this article, Suzanne Scacca is going to give you a closer look at FEaaS, who it’s for and why empowering product and marketing teams with it is a big deal. Read more…

April 22, 2019 — A lead capture page greatly differs from a traditional web page in a number of ways. Put that lead generating page on mobile and you’ll see those differences expand and even test the limits of what you thought was possible for mobile. In this article, Suzanne Scacca is going to look at some tips for utilizing those differences to improve how well your lead capture pages convert on mobile. She’ll also analyze a number of landing pages on mobile so you can see how the design criteria may change based on what you’re promoting and who you’re trying to promote it to. Read more…

March 29, 2019 — Has Generation Z been part of your discussions with web design clients? If not, then it’s time you factored it in. This next generation wasn’t caught between worlds the way many millennials were, which means they have a whole different set of expectations when it comes to the technology they interact with on a daily basis. As Gen Z gets older and their spending power becomes more obvious, your clients are going to need you to design their websites in a way that appeals to their specific demands. With this guide, Suzanne Scacca will show you how to do that. Read more…

March 28, 2019 — It might feel like there are some things outside of your control as a web designer or developer. Like web hosting. But what if you had a say in it? Would you know how to best advise your clients on making the right choice for the future of their website? Today, we’re going to explore Plesk VPS hosting as an option. In the following article, Suzanne Scacca is going to show you why clients need the power of VPS hosting behind the websites you design for them. And why you — the administrator — need a tool like the Plesk control panel to manage it. Read more…

March 14, 2019 — Slack has done a lot to bring teams and partners together online. It’s also done a lot to empower developers to build their own custom apps for it. Until recently, however, developers were limited by how much they could do to customize the design of those apps. That’s changing today with Block Kit. Today, Suzanne Scacca is going to talk about Block Kit, Slack’s contribution to building a better collaboration UI. Read more…

March 8, 2019 — Take a gander at the revenues of the top mobile apps and it’s easy to get lost in dreams of what could be if only you built a mobile app today. Then again, have you ever considered how much it actually costs to build and maintain a mobile app? When you look at the big picture, you’ll soon realize that mobile apps aren’t a smart investment for most. That’s why you need to give serious consideration to building a PWA this year. In this article, Suzanne Scacca is going to talk about why app monetization needs to be one of the first things you think about before making a choice between designing a mobile app or PWA for your clients. Read more…

February 11, 2019 — In this mobile-first world, there is no such thing as designing a website near-perfectly the first time around. While we know that more experiences with websites begin on mobile, converting those users continues to be problematic. The goal in mobile-first A/B testing is to inspire mobile visitors to keep moving through the experience. Even if the element you’ve chosen to test doesn’t directly lead to conversion, the improvements you make should eventually trickle down to that final step. Today, Suzanne Scacca will show you how with proper A/B testing for mobile-first experiences, you can change that outcome for your clients. Read more…

January 24, 2019 — You’ve proven your expertise in designing mobile-first websites for clients. It might be time you made a move into designing mobile-first marketing campaigns for them as well. With this guide, Suzanne Scacca explains how to do just that. She will examine the key areas of marketing that stem from the websites you build. Then, zero in on the ways in which designers should adjust these marketing strategies for mobile-friendly and mobile-first audiences. Read more…

January 8, 2019 — A search bar isn’t some throwaway design element. When your app promises a speedy and convenient experience to its users, a search bar can cut down on the time they have to spend inside it. So, as you work on creating better experiences for your mobile app users, spend some time thinking about the design of your app’s search bar. Things like placement, hint text, and the way search results are displayed contribute to how users engage with search as well as your app as a whole. Read more…

January 3, 2019 — As a web designer, you might think that what you get paid to build websites doesn’t matter so long as you have money in the bank. But it does. If you want to remain competitive within the space, make sure to charge within one of the estimated ranges mentioned in this article — at least, to start. Then, as your business grows, you can steadily raise your prices in line with the increasing value of the websites you build. With this guide, Suzanne Scacca breaks down three ways you can charge for your design services and help you find the perfect rate to charge clients in 2019. Read more…

December 28, 2018 — The mobile web has definitely improved from where it was just a couple years ago. When it comes to the mobile user experience, are mobile websites all that bad? You hear so much about the benefits of building a dedicated native app, but that can become an incredibly costly gamble if users don’t take to it. That said, is the progressive web app the best choice? And will it eventually replace the mobile web and native apps? In this article, Suzanne Scacca explores this idea. Read more…

December 6, 2018 — Give yourself a break in 2019. There’s no need to master new design techniques; most of what was on trend this year is going to stay on trend next year. Instead, think about ways in which you can clean up your clients’ mobile websites and set a better standard for mobile-first design going forward. In this article, Suzanne Scacca is going to talk about the mobile design elements we’ve held onto for a little too long and what you should do about them going forward. Read more…

November 14, 2018 — Ever since Pokémon Go brought augmented reality into consumers’ line of sight, marketers and developers have been looking for a way to hone AR’s power for their own purposes. If there ever was a time to jump on this game-changing bandwagon, it’s now. AR provides spatial and facial mapping technologies that will not only delight your users, but will improve the overall experience of interacting with your app’s brand. In this post Suzanne Scacca will provide you with examples of what’s being done in the AR space now and hopefully inspire your own efforts to bring this game-changing tech to your mobile app in the near future. Read more…

October 18, 2018 — It’s an exciting time when your mobile app is ready to launch, but be careful. No matter how high you see those app store downloads go, don’t go rushing to celebrate just yet. There’s a more meaningful metric you should be paying attention to in order to determine the success of your app, and that’s the mobile app retention rate. Suzanne Scacca will explore what a good retention rate looks like for mobile apps. Let’s start with the basics. Read more…

September 24, 2018 — The mobile web is a booming place right now, which means web designers are spending lots of time trying to figure out how to win over this particular class of users. One way not to do that? Dark patterns. While your company may get some superficial and short-term gains in the process, nothing good will come from it in the long-run. Read more…

September 3, 2018 — The 2017 holiday season proved — once again — that e-commerce has become a major part of consumers’ shopping habits. This guide will take a closer look at the role mobile websites played in sales from that time period and how to use that data to prepare your website for the 2018 holiday season. Suzanne Scacca is going to give you a quick rundown of what happened during the 2017 holiday sales season and, in particular, what role mobile played in it. Read more…

August 17, 2018 — In Google’s never-ending journey to make the web a mobile-friendly place, we now have even greater insights into the four key reasons why consumers reach for their mobile devices. These are known as micro-moments, and this post aims to teach you how to design for micro-moments to increase website conversion rates. Read more…

June 28, 2018 — With mobile traffic increasing on local business websites, web developers and designers are now tasked with a new responsibility. It’s no longer enough for websites to rank well — they need to rank well in local search results, too. As mobile users demand more information about local businesses, your websites need to be creative in how that data is served to them in search and through design. You can use these seven mobile design strategies to do so. In this article, Suzanne Scacca is going to show you how to use mobile web design to improve local search ranking. Read more…

June 1, 2018 — In terms of how to handle typography in mobile web design, it appears that simpler and safer works best. In this article, Suzanne Scacca will break down the elements you need to pay attention to in mobile typography and then visit what the research says about how to handle them. She will give you a brief summary of what it is we know about typography in web design, and then see what UX experts and tests have been able to reveal about using typography for mobile. Read more…

April 20, 2018 — Data tells us that there are more mobile than desktop web visits. However, mobile conversion rates are still lagging behind those on desktop. As more mobile visitors flock to your website, every step leading to conversion needs to be optimized for convenience, speed and security. If your checkout is not adeptly designed to mobile users’ specific needs and expectations, you’re going to find that those conversion rates drop or shift back to desktop. In this article, Suzanne Scacca will dig into why your mobile visitors are willing to ditch their purchases altogether. Read more…

April 2, 2018 — Pop-ups still play a vital role in signing up more email subscribers and converting more customers from mobile devices. But, as with anything else, you need to play by Google’s rules and always think about how your decisions will affect your users’ experience. But, are mobile pop-ups dying, or will they simply undergo another adaptation? In this article, Suzanne Scacca will show you what the research says. Read more…

March 9, 2018 — As technologies improve and design techniques evolve, improvements in digital design are inevitable. What is truly impressive, however, is how we are now able to use design to tell a story. As attention spans shorten and visitors just want to get to the good stuff on a website, designers have to get more creative in how they communicate their website’s “story.” In this article, Suzanne Scacca suggests techniques that can be used in web design. Read more…

January 8, 2018 — Though we have a good understanding of the types of button design rules that universally work, there will be times when you’re surprised by a rogue element that performs well. Like ghost buttons. They aren’t much of a mystery, despite their eerie-sounding name. They’re call-to-action (CTA) buttons for your website, like any other. The key difference is in how they look. Logic would dictate that ghost buttons are not good for web design. Yet, research shows us that visitors don’t necessarily see them that way. Read more…

December 19, 2017 — Making improvements to your mobile app’s design isn’t necessarily the easiest of tasks. In this article, Suzanne Scacca explains the six key ways in which dating app developers successfully use design to create an engaging and addictive experience for their users. Dating apps often get a bad rap for turning the dating scene into something superficial, mechanical and impersonal. Log in through Facebook. Swipe left. Swipe right. While it’s easy to write off these apps as fun little diversions for people trying to find love, they’re actually quite successful. So, what’s their secret? Read more…