Customer Services: What You Offer Them: Discounts, promotions, and loyalty programs

There’s a little trick out there that many of us have used; using a different email address to get an extra discount or promo and then cancel it.
There’s something to be learned in that.
First and foremost, people love discounts. But, in reality, they want to feel like the brand is caring for them. So, the discount is more than 10% off. It’s more about this idea of “Hey, we want you to shop with us and we’re willing to give you a discount if you’re willing to spend some time with us”.
That’s an important consideration. However, that also belies the fact that we’ve become more and more product-driven.
Another way to be able to do this is through the use of loyalty programs. Now, loyalty programs are extremely important among Millennials and Gen Z shoppers. One of the reasons for that is creating a community.
So, if you have developed a loyalty program or are thinking about doing so, give your customers something back when they purchase. You’ll also be able to quickly reach out to a customer through a loyalty platform program and say “Hey, this is still in your cart. Do you want to pass this transaction?” or “just so you know, the item that you have in your cart is now 10% off because you’re a loyalty member”.
So, there are these ways that you can go about to able to get people back into a cart that they may have abandoned.

Daphne Lin Discusses the UX Design Jobs-To-Be-Done Method

The Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD) method is relatively new. It’s both a theory about consumer actions and a set of tools that you can use to help you figure out why someone is using your product. You can trace its roots to marketing.

Jobs-To-Be-Done History

The primary story that’s told about JTBD is that there were two researchers who were trying to improve sales of milkshakes. They basically had customer segmentation down, but they still couldn’t figure out how to improve sales.

As we often see in UX design, they tried an observational and feedback approach. They went into stores and watched people use and buy milkshakes. They figured out that people were buying milkshakes as a breakfast item that would help them during their commute. A milkshake would conveniently fit in one hand as they were driving to work or other locations.

It was an “aha moment” for these marketers because they realized that it’s not really your age that contributes to why you buy milkshakes… it’s your situation.

Online UX Design Education

As these marketers discovered, you can learn a great deal about user experiences during your UX studies, whether you’re working on an early UI design, UI prototype or merely trying to better understand a target market, by using a Jobs-To-Be-Done perspective. You merely need to find out more information about the job or task that members of a target market believe a particular product can complete for them.

A User Research Plan for UX Design

When you’re at the point in your online UX design education where you have insight into user research, research tools, and ethical practices, you should also understand the technology at your disposal. That means you’re ready to move to more specific activities in UX design.

You’ll need to go through the process of creating a user research plan. You’ll start by thinking about all the components that are involved in creating the plan. Don’t forget about the problems that you need to solve in your UX or UI design.

Creating a plan will help you build up toward a portfolio. Since your portfolio should be a visual document, you should create a visual representation of your research plan.

To do this, decide how you’re planning to move into the next step. What are your resources? What are the techniques and the practices that you will follow in order to obtain all the data that’s needed to plan a good UX?

Do you have all the data that will inform you and allow you to create a successful persona, or a set of personas, that will guide you through the next steps of the journey?

Good luck, and don’t forget about your data or the end-user when designing a UI.

Designing a Tone and Feel That Match the Brand

When it comes to the brand Islam, it’s important to keep in mind that the brand is not necessarily just the visuals. Really, it’s the entire feeling that you get when you deal with the company. This is typically the way that brands strive to present themselves.

When you’re designing a website, an app or a product, you’re often subconsciously creating something that is an extension of the brand it’s under. Because of this, you have to be keeping in mind what that brand stands for and how that brand wants to be represented. You also have to consider how the brand wants to communicate with users, and all of these things go into creating a continuation of that brand in a digital format.

Let’s say you’re working with a brand that’s relatively quiet or minimalist. In this case, you want to ensure that what you’re designing carries on that same kind of feeling. Whereas if you’re working with a brand that’s louder and more boisterous, you’ll want to ensure the design feels more like that instead. Basically, you want to be sure that what you’re designing fits what the brand is trying to do and communicates in the same way that the brand chooses to communicate with its users and other formats.

To learn more about having your design appropriately match the brand, as well as many other concepts involving UI, UX, UI design and UX design, consider trying out online UX design education. This way, you can access valuable lessons and information without needing the same level of available time and resources that you’d need for an in-person education.

After the Moodboard: What Comes Next?

Once you’ve finished a product design moodboard and you present it to someone, they might say, “I love this idea, I want to see more. I’ll give you five days to come back with something more distinctive and worked out.” In that case, you go back home and start thinking about how to do this. You have to search for materials. You have to find some way to create the prototype, which could be anything that represents this idea. At this stage of product development, it could be a paper roll with something on top of it. It doesn’t have to be a complete, thoroughly worked-out prototype because they do come with a hefty price tag most of the time.

Visualizing your idea is a great next step because that gives you a sense of proportion. How big will it be? Are some details more important than others? With prototyping, if you have the money, do a 3D mock-up, as that’s the best way to do it. A combination of a prototype, a physical representation, and a moodboard with material swatches is a really good way to go.

There are lots of services around the country that do the prototyping for you, which you might have heard about in product design education seminars or classes. It comes down to your budget. How much money do you want to invest? How picky is the client to see how distinctive your idea actually is? It’s really up to you to judge what is best for this moment. Maybe you can do a very rough, basic prototype and say: “Here’s my first thinking,” and then ask for a couple more days. At that point, maybe they can help you with some money to provide a better prototype.

Negotiations in Online Product Design Education

In many ways, the next step in product development, after moodboarding and design processing, is negotiation. You need to negotiate with the client or the manufacturer about how far to go in detail. How distinctive does it have to be? Sometimes they want to take it to a focus group, so you would have to do a super polished prototype. Then you may get some financial help from them to do that.

Everything is allowed in the whole spectra for this representation. It’s OK for you to come with a crummy prototype as long as you can talk about it, as long as you can justify why you are showing this paper roll and nothing more. It comes back to you to find a language and explain why you didn’t do more. Alternately, maybe it’s enough, and then you support your idea with other materials around it.

Designing the Site: Copy: Written Content

Designing your website and the written content thereon is extremely important for the success of your ecommerce business.
When a customer buys from you online, they don’t really have a reason to trust you, especially if they’re a first-time buyer. With the visual content on your website, the language you use, and the content you produce, you can create a sense of trust to make it easier for customers to make the leap to buy from you.
So, what is the importance of content design as compared to the actual text on your ecommerce website? Understand that writing is essential to ecommerce. People tend to emphasize the visual content, especially if they work with design a lot. Visual content is important, but you can’t forget about writing.
Where you place the text depends on how easy it is for someone to quickly get information or not. One of the biggest components is knowing when to put more text on a page, but not too much.
If the images are center stage, you might have less text to keep the webpage from crowding or looking too busy. You might need to develop a separate webpage where there’s more text about the product that the customer needs to know.
You don’t have to hire a bunch of specialists to write everything for you. Consciously think about what you write, where you put it, and how it represents your products on your e-commerce store, as well as on social media and any other place where you put your content.
You also want to make sure there are no spelling mistakes or inconsistencies. If these items exist in your content, it can subconsciously create a feeling in your customers that your ecommerce website cannot be trusted. Having another person read and review your content can catch some of these items for you.

Appeal to Your Ideal Audience Through UX and UI Design

As designers, we must know what context we’re designing for to reach the right customers. In the past, UX design teams would target specific elite audience sets. Now, we design products for all levels of users, regardless of whether they’re experts or novices using the item. It’s our job to think of how users will feel and act when using a product. We must “put ourselves in the position of the user” to develop a desirable user experience.

There are many factors to consider when designing a UX or a UI product for a particular demographic of society. For example, an aspect of your design might mean something different across different cultural, geographical, and demographical customers. Online UX Design Education can give you the tools you need to design a universally compatible product for many people to use.

Take a television remote as a simple example. Each button on the remote will have a specific function, but a symbol on the remote might be interpreted differently, depending on the demographic details of the user. Without giving an easy and intuitive interface or UI, the customer could become frustrated and decide against the product. That is a vital consideration for a designer because even a simple product like this should make things easier for the customers, not cause them frustration.

Designing complicated systems meant only for experts is not a good idea. If you do so, you’re likely going to lose millions of customers that could use your product. This is why it’s essential to figure out who is using your product and who you are trying to reach to gain more business opportunities. In addition, many countries worldwide don’t use English as a first language, so you’ll want to internationalize or localize your product to these areas, as well.

You also have to think of other constraints, such as what is pleasurable to particular people. Another example is colorful products. If you’re trying to attract children, you’ll want to use bright and bold colors that’ll appeal to them. On the other hand, a senior citizen will probably not like that type of product, so they will not want it unless they’re giving it to a child. Our opinions and actions can change based on the generation we were raised in.

If you’re designing an educational product for kids, however, you need to make sure you use enough colors to keep their interests. With that, some may like a lot of colors, while others may not. Or some cultures prefer specific shapes in their products, while others will not. An example of this is the culture of people of Native American heritage. Many people of Native American heritage will be more attracted to the geometrical shapes and styles of products than other cultures.

There are no right or wrong answers when designing UX and UI designs other than you have to imagine yourself in the shoes of your ideal user. Maintain diversity in your design team to prevent incorrect assumptions. When you’re expanding your audiences, you should complete detailed research on the areas you plan to target. Then you can ensure no culture will be offended, no particular place experiences frustration and the product will be compatible with the different classes of society. Take the first step, and choose an online UX design education that will help you to attract your ideal customers.

Designing the Site: Images: Images, Images, Images

What is it that makes e-tail design meaningful? It’s about how you use images and how you place them so that the customer who visits your site understands what you want them to feel and do. How do you want them to interact with your brand? Think of e-tail design as the flagship of your company. Even if you were only on an e-commerce platform, it’s still the flagship of your brand because everyone has access to it.
So, how do you use images to evoke a feeling? What types of images do you want to have? Even if it’s only a single shot of the product, that shot of the product needs to be so beautifully done that it compels the buyer to click and transact with you. Or, if you want to use people, how does your image represent how your brand views the community as a whole or to your shoppers? So, it’s really important how you think about the image.
The next thing is to understand how you want those images placed on the page. One important aspect you’ll learn about is the symmetry and balance of the actual website pages. How do you want the customer to navigate through each page? Do you want your customer to view an ad campaign upon their first visit to your website? Do you want to ask them for their email from the moment they click on your website?
You really have to think about the design of what your e-tail business will look like. All these factors play important roles to ensure your success.

Choosing the Right Design Software

There are so many different UX and UI design programs out there to choose from. It really depends on what you’re designing for. For print design, I use Adobe Illustrator, and I use Adobe InDesign for different pages. Web designers might consider also creating elements in Photoshop or programs like Sketch.

You need to pick good programs that are right for the job that you’re doing. Do a bit of research. Find out what it is that you need to achieve, and find the best program. To create elements, Adobe has so many programs you can use nowadays to do different things. It’s quite in-tune, so it’s very good. It’s a good place to start.

You can use just one program, but generally, you want to really dip into another one and carry on using it. There’s other print software out there. There’re a lot of things that you can pick up for your UI or UX design, and I think it’s really important that you’re using the right ones.

As part of your online UX design education, ask other people in the industry what they are using. Make sure you are using the industry standards, and really submerge yourself in the language of the industry as well. You’ll get to know what people are talking about when you communicate, which will make it easier for you to move and progress within the industry.

Designing the Site: Layout & Navigation: Wireframing

Why is it necessary to first build the skeleton of your website using wireframing? One reason is that we expect all websites to conform to a certain standard. Maybe, the menu bar is always on the top left, and the search magnifying glass is always on the top right.
If you disrupt this, you also disrupt how the user navigates your site. You don’t want to deviate from how everyone uses a website because it becomes frustrating for the customer. By conforming to existing standards on your site, you make it easier for your customers to navigate your site and buy your products.
Wireframing is a process that we use at the beginning when designing a website. A wireframe is a stripped-down version of your website design in which you focus less on what the site looks like and more on what the user experience will be. You can use it to sketch out ideas quickly and share them to make sure that everyone agrees. If you need to make changes, you can easily update the wireframes because they are low fidelity and don’t contain minor details.
You can use wireframes during the design phase to share ideas instantaneously with project stakeholders. If you want to share your site design with friends and get feedback before going into details, wireframes are a great idea. Wireframes help you move expeditiously, confirm that the user experience is pleasing, and generate actionable ideas. They affirm that you’re designing the right thing before investing a ton of time in a detailed design.