Every day design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site.

The best way to keep up with the most important stories for web professionals is to subscribe to Webdesigner News or check out the site regularly. However, in case you missed a day this week, here’s a handy compilation of the top curated stories from the last seven days. Enjoy!

Supercharge Your Node.js With Rust

Icon Trends in 2021

Material Design 3

5 Pillars of Effective Landing Page Design

Can Include (a Certain HTML Element Within Another Certain HTML Element)

Is Photoshop & Illustrator in the Web the Most Exciting Reveal of Adobe MAX?

Box Shadow Generator – Generate Multilayer CSS3 Box Shadows

Olio – Illustration Constructor with 130+ Characters and Objects

The Button Cheat Sheet

Marvel Character or Font?

Source

The post Popular Design News of the Week: October 25, 2021 – October 31, 2021 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

• A guide to designing accessible, WCAG-compliant focus indicators — Sara Soueidan says you can make more accessible focus outlines by doing your own, rather than leaving it to the browser — as long as you do it right. Deep dive!
• a11y-syntax-highlighting — Eric Bailey’s repo of code syntax highlighting themes for a variety of software that are both attractive and meet WCAG color contrast guidelines (including support for Windows High Contrast mode as well).
• Respecting Users’ Motion Preferences — Michelle Barker with a guide on when and how to honor people’s prefers-reduced-motion setting. While there is no one right way, it should be done. It’s interesting how many things might apply. Properties like transition and animation are fairly obvious, but did you think of scroll-behavior or things specifically in JavaScript (where you can also test for a preference)?
• Accessibility testing — Jeremy Keith: “When you commission an accessibility audit, you should hope to get feedback that’s mostly in that third category—interactive widgets.” Don’t waste an accessibility expert’s time telling you about color contrast problems because you can find and fix those yourself fairly easily.
• The effect of CSS on screen readers — Part of me wishes the effect of CSS on screen readers was “nothing” but Jozsef Polgar notes there are some things CSS does affect. A classic is setting list-style: none on lists will force them to not read as lists in VoiceOver. Jozsef points to Ben Meyer’s article covering similar ground.
• In Quest of Search — Sara again, this time weighing in on . I’ve heard mostly negative things (like, why the focus on this when there are so many bigger fish to fry, like and inert), but Sara is all for it. I agree that we might as well have an element that gives us a free role="search" like we get with

• Accessible Palette: stop using HSL for color systems — Eugene Fedorenko says, “While HSL and HSV are fine choices for choosing a single color, they’re not suitable for building a color system, as they simply transform the RGB model and ignore the complexities of human perception.” It seems like everyone who has looked into next-gen color formats is a fan, but I haven’t wrapped my mind around them yet. Things like LCh, Lch(ab), HCL, LCH(uv)… There is starting to be some trickles of browser support.
• One last time: custom styling radio buttons and checkboxes — Scott O’Hara notes that you can entirely replace these inputs with custom styling, and do it accessibly. Part of doing it right is dealing with every possible state. Worth noting: without replacing everything, you can get pretty far in styling checkboxes/radios by just changing width/height and the accent-color, as Dave and I noted here.
• Understanding Logical Focus Order — Rachel Leggett explains it is “the idea that someone navigating your webpage with a keyboard (i.e. without a mouse) will encounter elements in an order that makes sense.” Nearly anytime you use the order property, you’re probably interferring here. But less obviously, hidden elements that remain interactive can confuse logical focus order.
• Assistiv Labs — I didn’t realize there was a tool in the vein of CrossBrowserTesting or BrowserStack that allowed you to test in JAWS and NVDA and stuff — but there is! Just the other day I wanted to test in JAWS, so I spun up a (paid) copy of Parallels with my (paid) copy of Windows 10 and used my (40-minute test version) of JAWS to test. While it worked, it was not particularly cheap or without significant technical debt. This seems easier, although I haven’t actually tried it yet.

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The post Some Articles About Accessibility I’ve Saved Recently IV appeared first on CSS-Tricks. You can support CSS-Tricks by being an MVP Supporter.

It’s almost Halloween, so we were all expecting the odd scare, but little could have prepared us for the blood-chilling horror of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg ‘acting’ amazed in front of a green-screened mockup of The Metaverse, during his keynote at the company’s Connect event.

Zuckerberg — or The Zuckster, as I imagine he introduces himself when arriving uninvited to your birthday drinks — was in the process of announcing that the company formally known as Facebook would from now on be known simply as Meta.

Facebook, the social network, will remain Facebook, but it will be one product among many. Or, as The Zuckster clearly hopes, one among all.

With the new name comes a new visual identity, one so bland that I need to go full-on Clockwork Orange just to critique it. Eyes pinned open, you’ll see an elongated infinity wave in an inoffensive tech-blue gradient and a generic geometric sans logotype. You could throw $5 at a sweat-shop style freelance site and receive a more ambitious, inspiring design than this. It is utterly bland.

If I try really, really hard to find something wrong, I might suggest the M feels a little too large, the single-story a is a little too open compared to the spacing elsewhere, and the wave is a little unbalanced and a little too small. But that is being super-picky because just as there’s little to get excited about, there’s little to be offended by either. It’s a logo fit to adorn a mid-range domestic router.

The Zuckster’s faith in himself as a positive brand ambassador means that he takes full credit for the new direction. The small team involved was reportedly required to sign extensive NDAs, and there’s no credit being given to any external agency.

Of course, it’s very easy to point out what Meta (née Facebook) gets wrong. What it doesn’t get wrong is making money. And this is a sensible business decision from a company that has watched Google extricate itself from algorithm-related ethics allegations with its Alphabet rebrand.

Leaked internal research suggests that Facebook is extremely concerned about its ability to maintain its position in the social media landscape. The app is in sharp decline. It’s no longer the most installed app, and even for those who still have an account, it’s used weekly rather than hourly. Most worrying of all, the average age of its userbase is steadily increasing.

Strategically, it’s a good design direction for Facebook. The most significant benefit is that absolutely none of the insidious, anti-democratic crimes that Facebook has been accused of can be associated with Meta; Meta is a blank slate.

In a press release that echoed The Zuckster’s keynote, Meta notes that it will begin trading under the stock ticker MVRS from December 1, staking a claim as the Metaverse business entity.

The Metaverse — and let’s be clear, this is not The Zuckster’s concept — is a so far ill-defined collection of ideas that will potentially coalesce over the next few years into some form of virtual reality web. It’s almost as if someone over at Facebook HQ said, “If only we could name ourselves ‘Inter,’ then we’d own the whole Internet!” And everyone cheered.

So yes, there is the sickening reality that we’re going to spend the rest of our careers trying to find a less tainted name for metadata. But that’s nothing to the amount of time we’ll devote explaining to future generations that Meta is not The Metaverse.

From now on, I’ll be referring to all Web 3.0 as the Geoverse and see if I can’t revive the fortunes of Geocities. Ah, now there’s a social network worth raising from the dead. Happy Halloween.

Source

The post Facebook Goes All Meta first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

I believe that copywriting is the most valuable skill you’ll ever learn. Great copy engages your readers, builds connections, turns readers into consumers and consumers into brand evangelists. Of course, this all means a fatter bottom line, which makes you the most popular person in the room!

If you’re ready to acquire near-mystical powers of persuasion, check out these useful resources and tools that are bound to help strengthen your copywriting skills.

Brush Up On Your Language Skills

I’d like to introduce this section with a small proviso. Great grammar does not equal great copywriting. Copywriting is a unique animal, different from academic, journalistic or literary writing. Copywriting is about human psychology, consumer behaviour and applying tried and tested methodologies. It’s not about beautiful words, and I know many great writers who make poor copywriters and vice versa.

That said, language mistakes matter if they get in the way of comprehension. So it’s worth brushing up on those language skills to avoid errors that will derail your message.

• Use English Punctuation Correctly
  An easy-to-follow crash course in English punctuation, starting with the basics.
• Grammar Girl
  A welcome break from dull and dry grammar guides. Mignon Fogarty, AKA Grammar Girl, provides short, friendly tips for better writing. Grammar rules, word choices, and tricks to remember them all. Who knew grammar could be so bright and breezy?
• Common Errors In English
  A comprehensive alphabetical list of common English errors, from misspellings to confounded compound nouns and common expressions gone rogue. Click for detailed explanations of each one.
• 10 Flagrant Grammar Mistakes That Make You Look Stupid
  More common errors to sidestep.
• Grammarly: Free Online Writing Assistant
  This AI-powered writing assistant grows ever more sophisticated. Adept at spotting errors, it can also identify tone, point out erroneous words or suggest better ones. Well worth downloading.
• Eats, Shoots And Leaves
  Download the Kindle edition of this witty exploration of the perils of improper punctuation. A joy for anyone who cringes at the sight of an errant apostrophe.
• Six Common Punctuation Errors That Bedevil Bloggers
  So true. This contains a couple of my pet peeves.

Master Plain English

In a hectic world, getting straight to the point and communicating your message quickly and clearly is a non-negotiable. But the most common challenge budding copywriters tell me about is writing concisely. This is partly because of some very unhelpful lessons we learnt at school.

So I’m going to ask you to forget all those long words and stop writing winding sentences. It may be big, but it’s not clever. Find out why below…

• The Complete Plain Words | Plain Words
  Sir Ernest Gowers was an eminent civil servant who railed against the convoluted language so often used in the service. Sixty years after he wrote Plain Words, it’s still a superb and charmingly written guide to clear communication.
• The Elements of Style
  A freely available online version of the classic reference book, The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr.
• Plain English Campaign
  Home to an award-winning group of anti-gobblydegook activists. Browse the site, particularly the free tools section to find out why plain English is so important and how to achieve it.
• Plain English Writing | SkillsYouNeed
  A nice visual guide to how and why to craft short, clear, easily digestible sentences.

Understand Style Guides And Brand Voice

When your brand talks, what does it sound like? Your brand voice is a vital part of your overall brand identity, building connections, trust and recognition with your readers. Brand voice covers tone, language and style points (whether to capitalise, how to format dates, Oxford comma or no Oxford comma, and so on).

• How To Create A Brand Tone Of Voice Guide
  Don’t have a brand guide yet? Check out this site for helpful hints on putting one together.
• 10 Best Examples of Brand Guidelines
  For inspiration, look to the brands that are doing it well. Many brands publish their guidelines online and this site will point you to ten of the greats. Skip to the section on voice in each.
• Associated Press Stylebook
  Use this guide if American English is more your cup of tea.
• English Style Guide — Economist
  This surprisingly readable usage guide is based on the style book given to all journalists at The Economist. The online version offers up hints on how to use metaphors, punctuation, figures, hyphens, and so on.

Craft The Perfect Heading

Guess what? Most people are only going to read your heading before deciding whether to read on or click away. Dramatically boost your results by getting it right.

• 50 Trigger Words and Phrases for Powerful Multimedia Content
  A super handy list of words that grab attention and push buttons. Perfect for hard-hitting headings.
• How To Write Magnetic Headlines
  Another free ebook from the Copyblogger team, this time on writing ‘magnetic’ headings.
• 2001 Greatest Headlines Ever Written
  Think of this great book as a giant swipe file of hit headlines from across the industries.
• 5 Simple Ways to Open Your Blog Post With a Bang
  So you have an awesome heading. Then what? Next in order and rank comes the opening paragraph. Check out this piece to make sure the energy doesn’t fizzle out.

Cram With Easy Online Copywriting Guides

• Copywriting 101: An Introduction to Copywriting
  This free e-book from the Copyblogger team is designed to get you up and running with the copywriting basics in ten easy lessons. Afterwards, you’ll get recommendations for professional copywriting training, plus links to tutorials on SEO copywriting and writing killer headlines.
• Copywriting 101: The Beginner’s Guide to Copy
  A quick and easy beginner’s guide.

Get Guidance From The Literary Greats

Now, I’ve already mentioned that copywriting is a completely different animal from literary writing. But we can still learn a trick or two from great fiction. The writers below in particular have had a marked influence on modern writing and their lessons hold true for writing effective copy.

• George Orwell’s tips on better writing
• Stephen King’s Top 7 Tips for Becoming a Better Writer
• 10 Writing Tips from the Masters
• Ernest Hemingway’s Top 5 Tips for Writing Well

Dip In With Bite-Sized Tips

• 10 Writing Tips for Web Designers
  Nice, succinct summary of the differences between writing for print and online.
• How to Write Faster, Better, and Easier
  Not strictly aimed at copywriters but still a good overview of the steps in the writing process. Highlights the importance of every stage, from planning to final proofread.
• Writing Tips for Non-Writers Who Don’t Want to Work at Writing
  An amusingly opinionated list of ways to improve your writing.
• A Guide to Becoming a Better Writer: 15 Practical Tips
  More of the above, without the expletives…

Browse The Best Copywriting Blogs

• CopyBlogger
  Often recognized as the Bible of content creation, founder Brian Clark’s site features hundreds of insightful and easy-to-read articles on all things content related. If you only read one blog, this should be it.
• Problogger
  Lots of useful stuff from Darren Rowse for anyone with a blog to write, including how to add income streams.
• CopyWriting
  This easy-to-navigate site offers up the Trinity — a copywriting blog, copywriting services and training. Browse the blog for articles that communicate valuable tips clearly and quickly. This team practises what they preach.
• SEO Copywriting — Moz
  Pop over to the MOZ blog for a deep dive into SEO copywriting and check out their free tutorials.
• Honey Copy
  How could we not include HoneyCopy and their words that ‘read like poetry and sell like Ogilvy’? Inspirational pieces on advertising, writing, creativity and life.
• Men with Pens
  A regularly updated blog with an almost overwhelming amount of useful information for writers, freelancers and entrepreneurs.

Enjoy the Jack Sparrow quote on the homepage:

“I think we’ve all arrived at a very special place. Spiritually, ecumenically, grammatically.”

— Captain Jack Sparrow

Read Books (Sort Of)

• Shortform — The World’s Best Book Summaries
  So many books, so little time. The team at Shortform has done a great job of summarising popular works of non-fiction so you can download the key messages fast. Sign up for the free trial and check out Ogilvy on Advertising, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion and Made to Stick.
• How to Make Your Advertising Make Money eBook
  A classic from copywriter John Caples, the man behind spilt testing. Kindle edition.
• All Of Gary Halbert’s Boron Letters From Prison
  If you’d like your copywriting tips wrapped up with life advice and personal anecdotes, you might enjoy the Boron letters. Copywriter Gary Halbert wrote them to his son while in prison.
• The Copywriter’s Handbook: A Step-By-Step Guide To Writing Copy That Sells
  Considered by many to be the copywriting guide, this book is exactly what it claims to be — a clear and comprehensive step-by-step guide to writing great copy.

Hack With Handy Tools

• OneLook Dictionary Search
  More than 13.5 million words in more than 1024 online dictionaries are indexed by the OneLook search engine. You can find, define, and translate words all at one site.
• Verbix
  This English conjugator will help you to determine how to use verbs in the proper tense.
• Synonyms and Antonyms of Words
  Can’t think of quite the right word? Search synonyms to avoid repetition and capture the right tone. Hazard warning: do not be tempted by the big words you may find here!
• Top 10 SEO Copywriting Tips
  This piece from Semrush combines tips and a list of tools for SEO copywriting.
• WordCounter
  This tool helps you find out the reading time so you can share it with your reader and get a ranking of the most frequently used words. Use it to make sure you’re using enough keywords to boost your SEO or simply to spot words you overuse and correct unnecessary repetition.

Keep Learning

• Udemy
  If your budget is restrictive but you want to dip your toes into the world of copywriting courses, check out Udemy. They have a wide range of low-cost and even free tutorials available on demand. Do check the reviews to make sure it’s what you’re looking for.
• The Giles Academy
  If you’re serious about copywriting, we recommend working closely with a professional team. The courses at The Giles Academy offer different levels for different needs. Opt for Pro level to get individual feedback from a professional copywriter plus certification.

There’s a special offer for Smashing Magazine readers. Use the code 40OFF at checkout to get 40% off!

Power Up Your Productivity

It’s easy for the cold tendrils of inaction to creep in when faced with a blank page. But copywriters work to deadlines and don’t have the luxury of waiting for the muse to appear.

“My favourite part of the writing process is cleaning the apartment.”

Here are a few tips and tricks to kick writer’s block to the curb:

• 21 Productivity Hacks from 21 Prolific Writers
  More from the Copyblogger team. Can you tell we’re fans?
• Productivity For Writers: 5 Ways To Become More Productive
  Practical tips, from scheduling to accountability
• Eugene Schwartz’ 33.33 Minute Rule — How To Get Shit Done
  My favourite way to beat procrastination. I’m pretty sure my mother actually came up with this one, but here’s a refined version from Eugene Shwartz (one of the highest paid copywriters ever).

Get It Done For You

If you’re still working on your copywriting skills, but need some copy urgently, there’s plenty of support out there. For freelance writers to suit a range of budgets, make sure to visit Upwork™ and Fivver.com, and if you’d like the professional support of an experienced team, you’re always welcome to reach out to us at the Giles Agency.

That’s it for now. Do you have any resource or tool to add to the list? We’d love to know! Be sure to pop your favourite resources in the comments below.

I believe that copywriting is the most valuable skill you’ll ever learn. Great copy engages your readers, builds connections, turns readers into consumers and consumers into brand evangelists. Of course, this all means a fatter bottom line, which makes you the most popular person in the room!

If you’re ready to acquire near-mystical powers of persuasion, check out these useful resources and tools that are bound to help strengthen your copywriting skills.

Brush Up On Your Language Skills

I’d like to introduce this section with a small proviso. Great grammar does not equal great copywriting. Copywriting is a unique animal, different from academic, journalistic or literary writing. Copywriting is about human psychology, consumer behaviour and applying tried and tested methodologies. It’s not about beautiful words, and I know many great writers who make poor copywriters and vice versa.

That said, language mistakes matter if they get in the way of comprehension. So it’s worth brushing up on those language skills to avoid errors that will derail your message.

• Use English Punctuation Correctly
  An easy-to-follow crash course in English punctuation, starting with the basics.
• Grammar Girl
  A welcome break from dull and dry grammar guides. Mignon Fogarty, AKA Grammar Girl, provides short, friendly tips for better writing. Grammar rules, word choices, and tricks to remember them all. Who knew grammar could be so bright and breezy?
• Common Errors In English
  A comprehensive alphabetical list of common English errors, from misspellings to confounded compound nouns and common expressions gone rogue. Click for detailed explanations of each one.
• 10 Flagrant Grammar Mistakes That Make You Look Stupid
  More common errors to sidestep.
• Grammarly: Free Online Writing Assistant
  This AI-powered writing assistant grows ever more sophisticated. Adept at spotting errors, it can also identify tone, point out erroneous words or suggest better ones. Well worth downloading.
• Eats, Shoots And Leaves
  Download the Kindle edition of this witty exploration of the perils of improper punctuation. A joy for anyone who cringes at the sight of an errant apostrophe.
• Six Common Punctuation Errors That Bedevil Bloggers
  So true. This contains a couple of my pet peeves.

Master Plain English

In a hectic world, getting straight to the point and communicating your message quickly and clearly is a non-negotiable. But the most common challenge budding copywriters tell me about is writing concisely. This is partly because of some very unhelpful lessons we learnt at school.

So I’m going to ask you to forget all those long words and stop writing winding sentences. It may be big, but it’s not clever. Find out why below…

• The Complete Plain Words | Plain Words
  Sir Ernest Gowers was an eminent civil servant who railed against the convoluted language so often used in the service. Sixty years after he wrote Plain Words, it’s still a superb and charmingly written guide to clear communication.
• The Elements of Style
  A freely available online version of the classic reference book, The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr.
• Plain English Campaign
  Home to an award-winning group of anti-gobblydegook activists. Browse the site, particularly the free tools section to find out why plain English is so important and how to achieve it.
• Plain English Writing | SkillsYouNeed
  A nice visual guide to how and why to craft short, clear, easily digestible sentences.

Understand Style Guides And Brand Voice

When your brand talks, what does it sound like? Your brand voice is a vital part of your overall brand identity, building connections, trust and recognition with your readers. Brand voice covers tone, language and style points (whether to capitalise, how to format dates, Oxford comma or no Oxford comma, and so on).

• How To Create A Brand Tone Of Voice Guide
  Don’t have a brand guide yet? Check out this site for helpful hints on putting one together.
• 10 Best Examples of Brand Guidelines
  For inspiration, look to the brands that are doing it well. Many brands publish their guidelines online and this site will point you to ten of the greats. Skip to the section on voice in each.
• Associated Press Stylebook
  Use this guide if American English is more your cup of tea.
• English Style Guide — Economist
  This surprisingly readable usage guide is based on the style book given to all journalists at The Economist. The online version offers up hints on how to use metaphors, punctuation, figures, hyphens, and so on.

Craft The Perfect Heading

Guess what? Most people are only going to read your heading before deciding whether to read on or click away. Dramatically boost your results by getting it right.

• 50 Trigger Words and Phrases for Powerful Multimedia Content
  A super handy list of words that grab attention and push buttons. Perfect for hard-hitting headings.
• How To Write Magnetic Headlines
  Another free ebook from the Copyblogger team, this time on writing ‘magnetic’ headings.
• 2001 Greatest Headlines Ever Written
  Think of this great book as a giant swipe file of hit headlines from across the industries.
• 5 Simple Ways to Open Your Blog Post With a Bang
  So you have an awesome heading. Then what? Next in order and rank comes the opening paragraph. Check out this piece to make sure the energy doesn’t fizzle out.

Cram With Easy Online Copywriting Guides

• Copywriting 101: An Introduction to Copywriting
  This free e-book from the Copyblogger team is designed to get you up and running with the copywriting basics in ten easy lessons. Afterwards, you’ll get recommendations for professional copywriting training, plus links to tutorials on SEO copywriting and writing killer headlines.
• Copywriting 101: The Beginner’s Guide to Copy
  A quick and easy beginner’s guide.

Get Guidance From The Literary Greats

Now, I’ve already mentioned that copywriting is a completely different animal from literary writing. But we can still learn a trick or two from great fiction. The writers below in particular have had a marked influence on modern writing and their lessons hold true for writing effective copy.

• George Orwell’s tips on better writing
• Stephen King’s Top 7 Tips for Becoming a Better Writer
• 10 Writing Tips from the Masters
• Ernest Hemingway’s Top 5 Tips for Writing Well

Dip In With Bite-Sized Tips

• 10 Writing Tips for Web Designers
  Nice, succinct summary of the differences between writing for print and online.
• How to Write Faster, Better, and Easier
  Not strictly aimed at copywriters but still a good overview of the steps in the writing process. Highlights the importance of every stage, from planning to final proofread.
• Writing Tips for Non-Writers Who Don’t Want to Work at Writing
  An amusingly opinionated list of ways to improve your writing.
• A Guide to Becoming a Better Writer: 15 Practical Tips
  More of the above, without the expletives…

Browse The Best Copywriting Blogs

• CopyBlogger
  Often recognized as the Bible of content creation, founder Brian Clark’s site features hundreds of insightful and easy-to-read articles on all things content related. If you only read one blog, this should be it.
• Problogger
  Lots of useful stuff from Darren Rowse for anyone with a blog to write, including how to add income streams.
• CopyWriting
  This easy-to-navigate site offers up the Trinity — a copywriting blog, copywriting services and training. Browse the blog for articles that communicate valuable tips clearly and quickly. This team practises what they preach.
• SEO Copywriting — Moz
  Pop over to the MOZ blog for a deep dive into SEO copywriting and check out their free tutorials.
• Honey Copy
  How could we not include HoneyCopy and their words that ‘read like poetry and sell like Ogilvy’? Inspirational pieces on advertising, writing, creativity and life.
• Men with Pens
  A regularly updated blog with an almost overwhelming amount of useful information for writers, freelancers and entrepreneurs.

Enjoy the Jack Sparrow quote on the homepage:

“I think we’ve all arrived at a very special place. Spiritually, ecumenically, grammatically.”

— Captain Jack Sparrow

Read Books (Sort Of)

• Shortform — The World’s Best Book Summaries
  So many books, so little time. The team at Shortform has done a great job of summarising popular works of non-fiction so you can download the key messages fast. Sign up for the free trial and check out Ogilvy on Advertising, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion and Made to Stick.
• How to Make Your Advertising Make Money eBook
  A classic from copywriter John Caples, the man behind spilt testing. Kindle edition.
• All Of Gary Halbert’s Boron Letters From Prison
  If you’d like your copywriting tips wrapped up with life advice and personal anecdotes, you might enjoy the Boron letters. Copywriter Gary Halbert wrote them to his son while in prison.
• The Copywriter’s Handbook: A Step-By-Step Guide To Writing Copy That Sells
  Considered by many to be the copywriting guide, this book is exactly what it claims to be — a clear and comprehensive step-by-step guide to writing great copy.

Hack With Handy Tools

• OneLook Dictionary Search
  More than 13.5 million words in more than 1024 online dictionaries are indexed by the OneLook search engine. You can find, define, and translate words all at one site.
• Verbix
  This English conjugator will help you to determine how to use verbs in the proper tense.
• Synonyms and Antonyms of Words
  Can’t think of quite the right word? Search synonyms to avoid repetition and capture the right tone. Hazard warning: do not be tempted by the big words you may find here!
• Top 10 SEO Copywriting Tips
  This piece from Semrush combines tips and a list of tools for SEO copywriting.
• WordCounter
  This tool helps you find out the reading time so you can share it with your reader and get a ranking of the most frequently used words. Use it to make sure you’re using enough keywords to boost your SEO or simply to spot words you overuse and correct unnecessary repetition.

Keep Learning

• Udemy
  If your budget is restrictive but you want to dip your toes into the world of copywriting courses, check out Udemy. They have a wide range of low-cost and even free tutorials available on demand. Do check the reviews to make sure it’s what you’re looking for.
• The Giles Academy
  If you’re serious about copywriting, we recommend working closely with a professional team. The courses at The Giles Academy offer different levels for different needs. Opt for Pro level to get individual feedback from a professional copywriter plus certification.

There’s a special offer for Smashing Magazine readers. Use the code 40OFF at checkout to get 40% off!

Power Up Your Productivity

It’s easy for the cold tendrils of inaction to creep in when faced with a blank page. But copywriters work to deadlines and don’t have the luxury of waiting for the muse to appear.

“My favourite part of the writing process is cleaning the apartment.”

Here are a few tips and tricks to kick writer’s block to the curb:

• 21 Productivity Hacks from 21 Prolific Writers
  More from the Copyblogger team. Can you tell we’re fans?
• Productivity For Writers: 5 Ways To Become More Productive
  Practical tips, from scheduling to accountability
• Eugene Schwartz’ 33.33 Minute Rule — How To Get Shit Done
  My favourite way to beat procrastination. I’m pretty sure my mother actually came up with this one, but here’s a refined version from Eugene Shwartz (one of the highest paid copywriters ever).

Get It Done For You

If you’re still working on your copywriting skills, but need some copy urgently, there’s plenty of support out there. For freelance writers to suit a range of budgets, make sure to visit Upwork™ and Fivver.com, and if you’d like the professional support of an experienced team, you’re always welcome to reach out to us at the Giles Agency.

That’s it for now. Do you have any resource or tool to add to the list? We’d love to know! Be sure to pop your favourite resources in the comments below.

There is an old Russian fable where Okhsv and Okhsl are on a rowboat and Okhsv says to Okhsl, “What are the known shortcomings of HSL and HSV color pickers in design applications?” I kid, I kid. But really, what are they?

Björn Ottosson shows the two classics:

Despite color picking playing a big role in a lot of applications, the design of color pickers isn’t a particularly well researched topic. While some variation exist in the widgets themselves, the choice of HSL or HSV is mostly taken for granted, with only a few exceptions.

Is their dominance well deserved or would it be possible to create better alternatives?

It’s all rather above my head, but I certainly support the idea of researching and exploring things that so many of us just take for granted. There is a whole playground comparing different possibilities. It’s not so much about the UI/UX of the picker itself, but how the range of colors is expressed in the picker area.

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

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Vite, “Next Generation Frontend Tooling” from Evan You, has been capturing a lot of attention. I’ve heard rave reviews from developers, even in private chats (you gotta try this!). Being from Evan, Vite works great with Vue, but Vue doesn’t seem to be the only first-class citizen of Vite. The plugins support Vue and React just the same and it looks like configurations for lit, Preact, and Svelte are easy.

It’s interesting to see other technologies try to get on the bandwagon, almost certainly for the wicked speed. I believe it uses esbuild, which is known for speed, for… some things?… under the hood, but not bundling. Just noting some of this bandwagon stuff happening like…

• Sam Richard making Eleventy work with Vite.
• Ben Holmes made Slinkity, which “duct-tapes” (see Smashing article) Eleventy and Vite together.
• Michael Shilman makes Storybook work with Vite.
• Fred K. Schott notes that Astro has moved to Vite.
• Anthony Fu has a “starter pack” called Vitesse that smashes together lots of opinionated tools all together with Vite.
• There are sandboxes starting to use it, like StackBlitz, and Replit is clearly stoked about it.
• Vue-specific projects are moving to it, for example a Vite-specific Nuxt and Vite-specific VuePress.

Hey, people like speed and good DX. Always worth noting when you see this much movement.

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1, 2, 3 – That’s exactly how long it takes you to start losing visitors if you have a slow-loading website.

Hold on! Surely, the only thing that matters to users is that your website works flawlessly and looks great… right? Wrong!

The fact of the matter is that we’ve all become accustomed to instant access to information and content. The average internet user today places a lot of value on speed, and the bar is continually being raised.

If you are like most people, you probably feel an immediate sense of dread at the thought of optimizing your website. Where do you start? How can you make the most impactful improvements? What makes your website slow in the first place?

Have no fear, as we’ll be answering all of your questions below as well as putting you on your way to a website that loads with blazing speed.

Why Should You Be Worried About A Slow-Loading Website?

Good question!

As many as 53% of visitors abandon a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Even worse, 1 in 3 shoppers will leave a website if it takes longer than 5 seconds to load.

So, performance plays a huge role in the user experience of your website and whether your visitors will stay on your website or be converted into customers.

For some time, Google has been keenly aware of this fact. As a search engine, Google knows that it’s counterproductive to recommend content to users if they won’t stick around to consume it.

That’s why they’ve continually been increasing the role performance plays when ranking websites for their SERPs (search engine results pages).

In recent years, Google has introduced core web vitals. These are metrics they hope will help quantify how performance affects the user experience. In general, they measure how fast, stable, and interactive a page is while loading. This will be more important than ever after Google announced its Page Experience update, which started its global rollout in June 2021.

As you may know, ranking highly for Google is vital for your website’s visibility. For one, 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine, of which Google has a 92.7% market share. Even if you manage to land on the coveted first page of Google, the first five results get over 70% of all clicks (28% to the first result alone).

So, to recap why a fast loading website is so desirable:

• It directly affects your ability to keep, satisfy, and even convert visitors to your website.
• It impacts your search engine rankings which impacts your “findability” and organic traffic.

8 Reasons Your Site Is Slow + How to Fix Them

O.K., so now that we’re all on the same page regarding the importance of your website performance, let’s look at common issues slowing down your website + how to fix them.

1. You’re Using A Sub-Par Hosting Service

As the party responsible for making your website available to the outside world, your hosting service can be a make-or-break factor. Not only should you pick a host that has a good track record when it comes to uptime a performance, but also one that’s suitable according to your needs.

Even if you take all the steps below to optimize your website’s performance, it may still load slowly if traffic to your website is overwhelming your available bandwidth or your host’s server capacity. If that happens, some users may experience extremely slow loading times, broken features, or even complete unavailability.

For most personal, blog, or local/small business sites, a respectable hosting provider like Bluehost or GoDaddy should be good enough. However, if you plan on running any type of large-scale, high-traffic webstore, business portal, or other type of website, you’ll want premium hosting, such as WPEngine (for WordPress), VPS hosting, or even a dedicated server.

2. You’re Not Optimizing Your Media Assets

As you probably know, media like images and videos take up significantly more space than most other types of content, such as text, code, stylesheets, or other static files. Even a single image has the potential of consisting of more data than dozens of website pages containing nothing but the underlying HTML and text.

In a Speed Essentials presentation, the Google team identified images as the largest contributor to page weight. In fact, they have the potential to consume a website’s entire performance budget if left unoptimized. Images can also directly impact all three of Google’s core web vitals – key metrics Google uses to measure the performance of a website.

However, the use of images and video is likely to continue growing, heightening the importance of finding a sustainable solution. According to HTTPArchive, images have increased by 19.3% on desktop and 42.7% on mobile.

For now and the foreseeable future, optimizing your images carries the greatest potential for improving performance.

The problem is that optimizing image assets requires multiple steps. Most importantly:

• Using the appropriate next-gen formats which can differ depending on the user’s device, OS, or browser.
• Appropriately compressing the size and quality of images to reduce payload without affecting visual quality too badly.
• Using the optimal display size and density based on the accessing device to reduce payloads further.
• Using lazy loading to only load images as needed.

As you can see, manually going through these steps for every single image on your website can be extremely labor-intensive. This is especially true if you consider that you somehow need to create the optimal variants for different users based on what device, OS, or browser they are using.

In-code strategies, like a JS plugin, responsive images, or CSS media queries tend to bloat your code and lead to other performance issues we’ll discuss below.

Luckily, there are plenty of CDN services available designed specifically for providing some degree of automated image optimization. These platforms analyze the context (i.e., a specific mobile device model, OS version, and browser version) of the user trying to load one of your images and try to serve them a version of the image that’s ideally optimized for them.

However, any media optimization platforms still require installing a small JavaScript plugin to dramatically improve the image and video optimization capabilities. 

The one exception here is ImageEngine. ImageEngine uses WURFL device-detection to pick up every possible detail of the user’s device. The logic is built into their device-aware edge servers and doesn’t rely on you adding any additional code or markup to your website pages.

So, not only does it reduce your image payloads by up to 80% and serve them via a global CDN, but it doesn’t leave a footprint in your website’s code. As a bonus, it also happens to support the widest range of image/video formats, including animated GIFs, as well as client hints and save-data mode.

3. Render-Blocking JavaScript And CSS Is Delaying Page Loads

JavaScript is the de facto programming language for adding interactivity and advanced features to websites today. Likewise, CSS is the standard for adding styling. Both are critical components for almost any modern website.

However, nothing good comes free, and both may impact the performance of your website, particularly when used carelessly. 

The following are some steps you can take to minimize the impact of these assets on your website performance:

• Minify your JavaScript and CSS files.
• Combine a large number of JS/CSS files into fewer files.
• Replace some of your external JS and CSS files with inline JS/CSS. (Don’t overdo this! Inline JS and CSS is only suitable for small code snippets).
• Defer loading JavaScript until after all your content is loaded and use media queries for CSS files.

Because media can have a more significant impact on your page weight, this leads some to believe that adding more JavaScript is the lesser of two evils. 

However, depending on whether you already have render-blocking JS, Google might flag this as a completely new issue. Regardless, it will negatively impact your performance score in tools like PageSpeed Insights:

You can avoid it altogether by using an optimization engine like ImageEngine that doesn’t require any JavaScript.

4. You’re Not Using A Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A CDN is a network of servers spread across various regions all over the globe. What it basically does is store a copy of your website on each of these servers. When an internet user visits your site, the CDN automatically serves your website from the nearest server to that user.

What this does is allow your website to load faster, no matter where in the world people are visiting it from. If your website was only hosted on a single server, say somewhere in the U.S., then it could take much longer to load for a visitor located in Asia than one in the U.S.

While they all basically do the same thing, different CDNs are better at handling different types of content. Cloudflare, Fastly, and Akamai are just some of the most popular general-purpose CDNs around. Image CDNs like ImageEngine are purpose-built to not only serve image and video assets but to also optimize them using compression, formatting, etc.

So, the two main factors to consider are the type of content you want to deliver via the CDN and its global coverage. However, it’s usually possible to use multiple CDNs in tandem to cover different types of content and reach a wider area.

5. There’s Excessive Overhead In Your Database

If you have a website with any type of complexity, you probably have a corresponding database. In fact, all WordPress websites require a database to function.

Over the years, a lot of information moves in and out of the database. Sometimes, the data can get lost along the way or become obsolete. If you don’t regularly spring-clean your database, then this can really start to add up. Not only will it bloat the storage size of your database, but it will start to impact the speed of database queries and requests.

CMS users are especially prone to racking up these kinds of artifacts from plugins and themes that have been installed and removed over the years.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many easy fixes for this issue available. With most hosting providers, you’ll probably need to use phpMyAdmin to manually check and scrub your data. If you have a managed hosting solution, the host’s support team might be able to help you out. In the event that you have a locally installed database, there are some tools you can use, although they’re not 100% effective.

The best way to avoid any issues is to make database maintenance part of your routine and to learn the basics of how databases work.

6. You Have Too Many Plugins Or Themes Installed

For CMS users, plugins or themes offer near-limitless potential to spruce up the design and functionality of their website. However, each plugin or theme comes with additional code and content that add to the overall complexity and size of your website.

If you have a hand-coded website, the same goes for any additional applets or libraries you want to add to your site. 

The best way to combat this is to be conscientious when adding any extras to your website. Only install what you really need or want, and make sure to uninstall and properly remove them if you don’t need them anymore.

As mentioned, they might leave various transients or artifacts behind, so you should keep an eye out for them throughout your website files (not just the database) whenever you do some spring cleaning.

7. You Aren’t Utilizing Caching

Caching is often one of the most effective yet ignored techniques for improving website performance. Caching stores your website content in fast-access memory in the user’s browser, allowing it to be loaded near-instantaneously by users. This can include everything from text to stylesheets to images to JavaScript files.

Without caching, a user will need to redownload everything when they navigate to or reload a page — whether or not anything has changed.

However, not properly configuring caching on your website can lead to issues, such as users only loading out-of-date content. Most high-quality caching tools have built-in features that automatically clear the cache when you make changes to a specific website page or content. So, users will only reload content once it has been modified.

Some hosts offer out-of-the-box caching tools with their hosting service. CMS can also usually find plugins for this, such as WPRocket for WordPress.

8. Ads Are Dragging You Down

In the end, ads are just another form of media that increases the overall weight of your website pages. While they are typically small and lightweight, multiple ad placements can really start to add up.

What aggravates the issue is that ads are loaded from external sources. This means they’ll take longer to render, generate more requests, and may mess with how stable your pages load — affecting your core web vitals.

Depending on how important ads are to your revenue stream, you’ll want to carefully consider how many ads you use on your site, where to position them, and when they load. If possible, avoid loading ads at the same time as the rest of your page, especially interstitials.

Conclusion

As you can see, website performance is a multi-faceted subject. Although some may be worse than others, you can’t just address one area and expect your website to suddenly be performant.

However, some general principles apply:

• Keep HTTP requests low by limiting the number of files required for each of your website pages.
• Maintain proper code hygiene and spring clean transients and leftover artifacts.
• Invest in proper hosting infrastructure as well as a CDN for your website.
• Optimize your media assets to significantly bring down payloads without sacrificing engagement.

The final point deserves another shoutout. As we’ve pointed out, finding an optimization solution for your media, particularly images, is probably the best thing you can do to improve your website performance. From purely a performance perspective, there is no service quite as effective as ImageEngine. It’s also the one that requires the least amount of technical expertise and ongoing maintenance.

Regardless, you’ll want to run some tests using tools like PageSpeed Insights so you can gather data on what issues your website is facing. From there, you can prioritize fixes to make your website more competitive.

 

[– This is a sponsored post on behalf of ImageEngine –]

Source

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If you want to share your create talents with the world having a portfolio website gives you the most effective way to do so.

If you don’t have the time or the wherewithal to build one from scratch and you don’t want to spend a fortune to putting one together, your best approach will be to find an affordable website-building tool that will do the heavy lifting for you.

If you look for a cheap and easy solution your portfolio website could come up short in terms of quality or performance or might lack a feature you really want it to have.

Your creations can speak for themselves. They are impressive. Your portfolio website needs to be equally impressive to gain your visitors and potential clients or customers attention and trust.

There are certain features to look for in your search for a fast and affordable website builder. We’ll use the Portfoliobox portfolio-builder solutions to demonstrate what some of these features are and how you can best take advantage of them.

5 Portfolio Website Building Features that are Time Savers and Performance Boosters

A portfolio website should serve to impress its visitors and boost your business and/or reputation. A poorly built one can do just the opposite. It can be a detriment.

That is why it is so important to find a portfolio builder you can put your trust in. Here are 5 time-saving and quality-enhancing features you should look for to ensure the finished product will meet your objectives.

Let’s start with:

1. Template mix-and-match page building

A theme-based website builder can be a real time saver but only if you can find a theme that can easily be customized to give you the layout and look and feel want. If it cannot, you could end up spending time doing a ton of customizing or deciding to start from scratch.

You want your portfolio website to reflect your unique creative abilities – at a minimum. The most promising way to do this is to look for a website builder (preferably a portfolio website builder) that allows you to mix and match templates to achieve what you want.

By doing so, you won’t have to worry about

• Allowing someone else to impose constraints on your site’s content
• Spending hours customizing a theme to achieve the correct look and feel
• Designing your portfolio website from scratch

Take Portfoliobox for example. You start with a black slate (not the same as starting from scratch) and build your site’s pages a section at a time.

Since there’s plenty of variety as to what each section template will look like, you should easily find examples that align well with what you expect your portfolio, testimonial, contact, and other pages to look like.

Filling in details can be faster that customizing and is usually more satisfying.

2. All-in-one pricing and affordable and transparent monthly plans

When you’re in a hurry to create a website quickly and you come across a website builder that claims you can use if for “free”, or offers an “affordable” plan, life seems good.

Or maybe it doesn’t.

When it gets down to incorporating all the features you want and need, you suddenly discover that they are only available if you sign up for an upgrade. Even then, you may not get everything you need.

That’s not the case with every portfolio website builder, but to be certain you’ll get the features you need you should look for transparent upfront pricing.

That’s the best way to avoid an unpleasant surprise. Portfoliobox provides an excellent example of transparent upfront pricing.

Portfoliobox offers three pricing plans, Light, Pro, and Pro Plus  (Pro is free for students). You can also select monthly pricing if it will work best for you.

The features of each of these plans are broken out, so you can see what’s included and what’s not:

• A custom domain name (on Pro plans)
• Web hosting and unlimited bandwidth
• SSL certification
• A mobile responsive website editor
• Image storage and protection
• eCommerce functionality is included in the platform
• SEO tools
• 24/7 customer support (chat)

3. Four strategic business features for creatives

You obviously want to use a website builder that enables you to create an impressive online portfolio. But if you plan to offer products or services your site also needs to do an impressive job of streamlining your business dealings.

Your website builder should feature such things as:

Right-click disabling – if you want to protect your online work from theft. With Portfoliobox, this is done by toggling the Disable Right-Click feature as shown below.

 

Private client galleries – which will give you a fast and secure way to send artwork, photos, web designs, or whatever you are selling to your clients or customers.

There are other tools to create private client galleries, but why take the time and trouble to set up and coordinate with another platform when you can create one within Portfoliobox.

In addition to only having to upload and transfer your work once, this Portfoliobox feature also lets you manage your portfolio and your client/customer collaboration from a single platform.

Image watermarking – protects your work from thieves. It also streamlines your business dealings with your clients in that it enables you to make sure that clients have approved and paid for your products before they can put them to use.

Portfoliobox makes image watermarking easy and you can apply the feature to any client gallery.

Third-party integration – is another time-saving tool to look for.

With the third-party integration feature your portfolio builder can pull files into your website from a image or video editing platform.

4. eCommerce integration

This is another example of the benefits of having your portfolio folder and being able to conduct business on the same platform. There are more than a few website builder solutions that feature eCommerce integration, but most place an emphasis on product pages as opposed to creating outstanding client portfolio galleries.

The Portfoliobox solution also avoid having to configure separate eCommerce settings since eCommerce is built right into the platform.

There are no add-ons needed either. It’s as easy as adding the store as a new page, choosing the template you want, and uploading your products.

5. Timely customer service

A few website builders provide users with an FAQ page, most supply decent user documentation, and a some give you detailed documentation along with tutorial videos. Still, when you find yourself having to troubleshoot a website issue, wouldn’t you rather have a real person giving you expert advice when you most need it?

Attempting to troubleshoot a website problem on your own could take time, and the downtime you’re experiencing could cost potential business. The Portfoliobox platform offers the support you need when you need it.

When you’re on one of Portfoliobox’s Pro plans, you can go to the chat widget at the bottom of the screen to access instant customer support 24/7.

Building an impressive creative portfolio website the fast, affordable, and intuitive way  

While there is no shortage of website builders out there that feature portfolio-building tools, Portfoliobox was built specifically for creatives who need a tool for building a website whose main attraction is an attention-getting portfolio and doing so quickly.

Portfoliobox just happens to be one of the best website builders for creatives out there. Website builders that have all the features outlined in this post are rare, and that is especially true for the business oriented features.

Portfolio is fast and easy to use, and its affordable pricing plans are transparent, so you know you’re getting what you need to get your portfolio website up and running in no time at all.

Read More at How to Make a Portfolio Website Quickly? Read in This Article

The eye-tracking methodology can be extremely valuable for usability tests since it records the journey without interfering with the users’ natural behavior. Imagine, for example, that you test a prototype but discover that users are not interacting with the interface how they are supposed to. You most likely think that the buttons might be too small or you need to change the color, font, or position. As a result, you make the buttons more prominent, and still, the users are not interacting with the interface as intended.

After spending time and resources on improvements, you realize that the problem is not that they don’t see the buttons, but that even when they see them, they don’t know what to do with them. Utilizing an eye-tracking device, however, would help the researcher notice the lack of understanding right away. This is one example of the benefits of using eye-tracking. When the researcher can see through the user’s eyes, recognizing a usability problem sooner would save the client and developer time and money.

Eye-tracking provides information on how people navigate on a page and how attracted they are to visual elements on the screen, like in this study conducted by Nielsen Norman Group which shows the pattern that people use to scan comparison tables. If you are designing an app or a website, you can test how easy and intuitive it is to complete a specific task, fill out a form, find certain information, or buy a product.

Eye-Tracking Evolution

The first time someone conducted a study observing the movement of the eyes was through direct observations in the 1800s. Since then, technology has evolved, and what started with naked-eye observations has become a sophisticated and accurate technology to measure eye movements.

Eye-tracking is nothing but new, but recent developments in technology made the methodology accessible to businesses of all sizes.

In the late 1990s, marketing and advertising agencies saw the potential of eye-tracking for the Internet and started using the technology to analyze how people consume content online. One of the few advertising companies that used eye-tracking back then was EURO RSCG/DSW Partners. They used eye-tracking to measure visual attention on banners, animated graphics, and navigational tools in websites. Before those studies, web pages were designed as printed media, with columns and big blocks of text.

It was the implementation of eye-tracking that provided useful insights that helped shape the work of web designers.

For instance, Nielsen’s research conducted in 2006 showed that people read content on the Internet in an F-shaped pattern. Users tend to start reading from top/left. Next, they move to the top/right of the page, skimming through the content that stands out, such as images and subheadings.

Nowadays, hardware and software are designed to conduct eye-tracking studies for marketing, UX, psychological and medical research, gaming, and several other use cases.

In marketing, eye-tracking is used to test advertising, product placement, and packaging, such as this use case that shows the visual attention that different smoothie brands receive from shoppers:

Another area that has been showing huge potential is eye-tracking in the context of virtual reality. VR headsets use eye-tracking to see where the person is really looking and make the experience significantly more immersive. For PC gaming, eye-tracking allows the player to just look at the object that they want to interact with and press a button instead of using the mouse or controller to guide them to the place the player has their eyes on.

The eye-tracking market is expected to be worth USD 1.75 billion by 2025, being present in different segments and industries.

How Eye-Tracking Works

To incorporate eye-tracking in your research, it is necessary to understand how this methodology works. The researcher uses an eye tracker, namely a device designed to measure the eyes’ movements (usually glasses), or software integrated with a webcam or selfie camera of the smartphone, to conduct a test.

Usually, researchers select areas of the stimulus to be displayed, namely Area of Interest (AOI). In usability, it can be a filter function in the app or an advertisement on the website, for example. The AOI will determine what areas you will calculate metrics for. Besides the AOI, two concepts are extensively used in eye-tracking:

1. Fixation
   When the person’s gaze stops moving and rests focused on one object.
2. Saccade
   The movement of the eyes between the fixations.

After defining the AOIs and designing the test, it is time for the participants to join the study and interact with your app or website. The metrics and how they will be shown depending on the eye-tracking tool you choose. It also ranges from studying individual recordings to gather data about the behavior of specific users to quantitatively comparing the number of users who looked at an AOI, the amount of time that they spent on it, and the speed with which it is first detected.

By visualizing the gaze path on video recordings or heatmaps, you can see where the person is looking, for how long, and get actionable data. For example, a long time for the user to first fixate on the AOI (more than 0.15 seconds) can indicate that the AOI should be positioned elsewhere. Or conversely, a long time looking at an AOI can suggest that either it was not clear for the user what to do with that information or simply that the AOI was engaging enough to get the user’s attention for a long time. The data needs to be analyzed in context so that it can be interpreted correctly.

That is why eye-tracking can and should be combined with other methodologies such as surveys, Thinking Aloud (when users verbalize what goes through their mind while performing a task during a usability test), and click rate to provide valuable insights for the researcher.

Eye-Tracking For UX Research

Although some information provided by eye-tracking could be obtained with click heatmaps (visual representation using thermal imaging that shows where people are clicking) or surveys, eye-tracking can also capture data that the participant does not remember, does not describe, or interacts with only visually, without tapping or clicking on it.

With eye-tracking, product designers can get actionable data about how the users perceive and interact with the UI, on both desktop and mobile. However, the price of eye-tracking used to be much higher than heatmaps, as measuring users’ gaze required special hardware to be used in-lab. However, conducting eye-tracking studies became considerably cheaper recently, with software that can transform any webcam or selfie camera of the smartphone into an eye tracker.

Next, we will focus on usability in mobile research and present a use case that shows how UX teams can incorporate eye-tracking in their research toolbox.

Mobile UX Research

Incorporating eye-tracking in mobile UX research was complicated until very recently due to the technological struggle to measure eyes’ movements on the smartphone. Web designers worked until recently with a desktop-first approach. Since 2014, however, mobile users have been gaining more and more importance. Designing for mobile is not only about the size of the screen but also about the users’ behavior. When using smartphones, people are usually distracted, have shorter attention spans, or want to perform a task quickly — such as buying a ticket or finding an address. For this reason, doing UX research for mobile nowadays is essential to many companies.

Eye trackers, the glasses used for most eye-tracking studies, are usually not as precise to track the small screens of smartphones. Therefore, it needed elaborate synchronization of the screen content and the eye-tracking data, resulting in a complex study design and analysis. At the same time, using the webcam does not allow the user to test the app or website in a natural setting; after all, the users usually interact with mobile apps and websites on the smartphone. However, conducting online experiments is a fairly inexpensive way to develop better websites, apps, services, and strategies and make decisions not based on intuition, but on scientific data.

Companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft conduct more than 10,000 controlled online tests annually each: they know the investment pays off. Bing also benefited from testing and made revenue-related improvements that resulted in a 10% to 25% increase in revenue per search every year.

Luckily, technology has evolved, from eye trackers and webcams to mobile software, to now enable the opportunity to conduct eye-tracking tests for mobile UX research directly on the smartphone — with no additional hardware required. Software-only solutions can be up to 100x more affordable than eye-tracker studies and allow researchers to conduct tests with participants from all over the world and get accurate results immediately that will help them draw strategies for their digital product.

How To Conduct An Eye-Tracking Study

An eye-tracking study always begins with a question. Let’s say, for example, that you are launching an e-commerce app and want to find out if people see the sales banner placed on the main page. Based on this well-thought research question, you can formulate a hypothesis that reflects your assumptions regarding the users’ behavior, such as “using a photo of the products on sale will drive more conversion”. This will enable you to test predictions and make it easier to analyze the results. After defining assumptions you select the essential metrics to track and measure whether your assumptions indeed reflect the users’ behavior. Next, you create the tasks and the visual stimuli the participants will interact with.

It is very productive for web and mobile eye-tracking research to conduct studies with different versions of your website, application or advertisement, and competitors’ websites, known as A/B testing. By running comparative studies, you will be able to evaluate which elements work best. Once you have designed the test and implemented the study in the testing tool of your choice, it is time to think about the people who will join your study.

For studies where researchers will analyze only heatmaps, it is necessary to recruit at least 30 participants. Although heatmaps are visually appealing and tend to be more popular among researchers, they require many participants to generate more satisfactory results. You can also conduct smaller studies, watching the individual video replays while listening to what they say with the thinking aloud method. For this kind of study, you should have at least six participants joining.

The study can be conducted in-lab or remotely, moderated or unmoderated. In-lab studies demand more time and resources and it is limited to participants who can join the study in person. All the eye-tracking devices and software must be provided in the lab and the study must be monitored by researchers and facilitators.

Remote studies can be conducted with participants from all over the world, which suits companies who have clients located in different cities or even countries. Remote studies can be done unmoderated with the help of tools that can collect and save the data. All the researcher needs to do is to send out the invitation and relax while the technology does all the work.

The metrics available in eye-tracking can vary from tool to tool. Most tools offer qualitative as well as some quantitative results. What is more relevant to you highly depends on the type of study that you run. Some of the most used metrics to measure eyes’ movements quantitatively are Time to first Fixation, First Fixation Duration, Dwell Time, Revisits, amongst many others.

Eye-Tracking Insights

A study conducted by Eye Square, a market research institute, using their in-real context testing and Oculid’s smartphone eye-tracking technology, shows that remote eye-tracking research conducted on smartphones can give insightful data for UX teams.

The Eye Square and Oculid study was based on tests done by 100 respondents across the United States to find out how shoppers interact with e-commerce and what are the elements that get them engaged in a product, with samples being collected during two days. Each tester was given 3 to 5 minutes to complete each test. Two UX-related scenarios were included in this study: an online shopping scenario and a scenario where advertising was tested in context.

The eye-tracking study was designed on Oculid’s platform. (Source: Oculid) (Large preview)

The analysis of the study provided deep insights into what customers were doing and why, while at the same time guaranteeing their privacy. It is an automated, anonymous analysis, with full transparency for testers and compliant with the regulation in EU law General Data Protection Regulation 2016/697 (GDPR). The data is recorded only with the explicit consent of the user and deleted according to GDPR regulations.

Here are the findings of the two scenarios analyzed in the eye-tracking study:

1. Online Shopping

When examining or considering online shopping, eye-tracking shows which elements engage the consumers at first sight. Eye Square conducted an A/B test, a process in which two or more versions of a variable (page element, advertising, app) are shown to different segments of users, using Oculid’s eye-tracking technology.

An A/B test is conducted by having two groups interacting with two different versions of the website:

• A (the control): this one confirms the hypothesis;
• B (the challenger): this one is a modification.

The analysis showed that less than 10% of shoppers scroll down to see products that are not visible on the first page.

The A/B test also demonstrated that consumers engage with visual triggers they already know, but also with other images that are big and clear. However, the decision-making does not limit to the visuals of the page, but it is also influenced by the content. For example, shoppers tend to spend a long time reading the Product Detail Page, proving the importance of having compelling copywriting on the product page.

The second UX scenario was an advertisement in the social media context.

2. Advertising In Context

In the scenario of the Eye Square and Oculid study where an ad was displayed in context, the participants first viewed an Instagram feed which, amongst other items, showed a video advertising a specific pair of headphones. Subsequently, the participants of the study were asked to shop online for a pair of headphones. Here it was not specified what type of headphones that should be. Participants were directed to the webpage of Amazon where they saw different products from this category with different brands being displayed.

The analysis of Oculid’s eye-tracking data provided by the advertisement in context revealed that the specific headphone displayed in the video advertising received more visual attention than products from the competitor brands. The advertised headphones received 2.4 seconds of visual attention as compared to 2.1 seconds from the closest competitor, even though the closest competitor was listed before.

This was true even though the researched product was listed as fourth in the online shopping platform, demonstrating that the advertisement contributes to getting the customers’ attention. In addition to receiving longer viewing times overall, customers of the Eye Square and Oculid study showed 50% more interactions/clicks with the advertised product than with any other competing product. For UX teams, this study showcases how measuring visual attention can give information about patterns that people follow when accessing a website or an app.

Conclusion

Eye-tracking used to be an expensive and challenging methodology, which turned many researchers away from it and made it difficult for UX researchers to conduct mobile studies. Nowadays, smartphones have up to 50-megapixel selfie cameras and can be used as highly accurate eye trackers to conduct mobile UX research. Thanks to technology and easy integration of study design and data analysis, eye-tracking can be easily incorporated into the researchers’ toolbox.

Including eye-tracking in the process of usability testing can offer many benefits for UX teams. For one, it allows you to test prototypes and make changes based not only on what users say but on what they do, almost like seeing over the shoulders of the users, but in their natural environment. Also, it can provide insights about users’ behavior that will save time and money for the company.

The technology can be used by eye-tracking experts, but also by UX teams that are only familiar with other methodologies. Knowledge about usability testing and some reading about the main metrics of eye-tracking and how to interpret them is enough to get started and try out. Giving a chance to test this methodology can complement usability testing and take it to a higher level.

It is certain that not every question on mobile UX can be answered with eye-tracking alone. As mentioned before, combining different methods is recommended to get different perspectives of users’ behavior. However, the technology combined with online questionnaires, Thinking Aloud, interviews, and so on can offer insights about subconscious processes that affect decision-making and are not obtained through other methods.

Sources

• Mobile User Experience (UX) Design, Interaction Design Foundation
• “Pioneers Of Eye Movement Research,” Nicholas J Wade
• “A Brief History Of Eye-Tracking,” David Leggett
• “Eye Tracking And Usability: How Does It Work?” by Nick Babich
• Eye Tracking, Usability.de
• “The Surprising Power Of Online Experiments,” Ron Kohavi & Stefan Thomke