LEARN
It is not your job to know how to build UX-led digital assets, but we believe a little knowledge to help you understand wouldn’t hurt.
What kind of website do you need?
There are many different types of websites. Some businesses like it simple and minimalistic, while others like it complex and boasts many features. It all boils down to your business and the purpose of your website – what can your website do for you? A website can showcase your products and services, it can also allow your customers and audience to reach out to you through a form or chatbot, or it can allow your customers to directly purchase your product or service online. The modern website is unlike the past – you NEED it and you want it to be your shopfront.
What is a Content Management System (CMS)?
A CMS is a system that allows your staff to manage the content on your website. There was a time when CMSs didn’t exist, any content changes on your website (update of address, change of product name or adding a new page) will require a technical developer to help you – yes this means more costs incurred. With a CMS, you only need to login to the system and do the changes yourself – which is a more cost effective in the long run. Popular CMS options are WordPress, Kentico, Sitecore, Sitefinity, Adobe – in order increasing license costs and total cost of ownership. If you intend to sell products and services online directly to customers, you can consider using E-commerce systems such as Shopify and Squarespace where there are ready templates and payment options available for you to use.
What is user experience (UX)?
UX design is the art of understanding your users and applying that design to your digital product – website or mobile app. UX is made up of 4 key ingredients: design, content, navigation, performance. During UX design, we speak to your customers to find out what are their desired features and design, and their pain points when executing a certain task online. A desired feature on the website or app could be a financial calculator if your business is a money lending one or a virtual tour if you are a property agent. A pain point could be there is too much product information to read and understand - so how can the design of the content and navigation be simpler for users to scroll, click, read and buy? This is the UX team’s job to find out. At JMV, we have experience with hundreds of websites, and we know what the market wants in terms of best and worst practices.
What is considered a modern website?
There are many different types of websites. Some businesses like it simple and minimalistic, while others like it complex and boasts many features. It all boils down to your business and the purpose of your website – what can your website do for you? A website can showcase your products and services, it can also allow your customers and audience to reach out to you through a form or chatbot, or it can allow your customers to directly purchase your product or service online. The modern website is unlike the past – you NEED it and you want it to be your shopfront.
What are the technologies needed to build these digital assets?
It is almost certain that all digital assets require design and development. Design refers to the look and feel of the overall product – whether it’s a website, Instagram video or mobile app. Development is a tad different – there are 2 parts to development, the frontend and the backend development. Front end development is how the website behaves on various devices, enabling it to be mobile responsive using coding languages such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Backend development refers to the coding of the system – which in the case of a website, is the CMS. Backend developers use coding languages such as .Net (Sitecore) and PHP (WordPress) to build features for the system users so that they can manage the website content – one backend feature could be to change an image, the other being changing of form fields in form. Almost everything on the website can be managed, it’s all up to what you frequently change in your website.
How do I make sure my website is UX optimized?
A UX optimized website has a few key elements – the copy should be easy to understand, use simple words and less acronyms, make sure the main tabs on your navigation bar are no acronyms and a best practice is to not have more than six main navigation items. Navigation can be greatly improved using a search engine within the website. There should be good balance of images and text, to allow your users to understand your business quicker. Images should be hi-resolution ones and optimized to ensure their file size is not too big as the load time will be longer. Videos should be hosted on sites such as YouTube and Vimeo, and then embedded in your website instead of placing the whole video on your own website, as it adversely impacts your website load speed again.
How can I make sure my target customers visit my website?
A website is like a physical shop, if you don’t market or advertise it, nobody will know about your website. Good news is today, both physical and digital shops use the same advertising channels, search engines and social media. This is because the modern customer does research, browsing and purchasing for products and services on the internet. The most widely used search engine is Google, and to advertise on it, you can either pay (SEM) or improve your website content (SEO). For social media platforms, there are many options if your business is a consumer business (B2C) – you can pay to advertise on Facebook or Instagram. If you are more of a B2B business, you can do paid advertisements on LinkedIn (where professionals reside) or continue to advertise on search engines. You need to create attractive ads in the form of image or video posts on these channels and scope your online target audience on the various platforms by adjusting demographics such as age, gender, occupation, hobbies, search behavior, or location.
