As is the case with most software, the WordPress backend has changed drastically over the past 15 years, and there’s no question it has come a long way.

UX writing enables businesses to establish their brand voice, guide users to take action, and make it easier to complete tasks.

We’ve said this before, but it’s always worth repeating: usability testing is critical to project success. While you may not be able to conduct as many onsite, in-person usability tests as you’d like, remote moderated testing is always a viable option.

Card sorting is a UX research method that helps you present information in a way that meets the end user’s expectations. It’s a cost-effective and straightforward technique that allows you to get valuable feedback from users.

Building a new website is no small feat, and if you have little technical knowledge, it can feel next to impossible. Although some platforms such as WordPress make the process easier, it can still be challenging to create a site that’s both functional and stylish.

A common misconception about SEO is that it’s all about using the right keywords in your content and link building. And while that’s incredibly important, search engines take many other factors (something like 200) into account when ranking websites.

Successful (and usable) websites start with content first followed by design. But this doesn’t mean you can get away with using lorem ipsum filler text in place of realistic content.

If you’ve spent any time at all with WordPress, chances are you’ve heard about page builders. These popular tools provide an alternative to the platform’s standard editor. You may even have wondered whether it’s worth picking up one of these tools yourself.

Design research is a necessary part of creating a user-centered product. When done right, you’re able to gather data that helps you

Writing task scenarios for usability testing that accurately reflect user goals can be pretty difficult. Ideally, you want to come up with tasks that are realistic, actionable, and don’t give away obvious clues.

At its core, design thinking is a problem-solving methodology that, first and foremost, focuses on the user’s needs rather than the product’s specifications. Teams that fuse design thinking into their design process can develop better, user-centered products.

Usability testing is critical to project success which is why there are many different methods for conducting usability tests. The only problem is that most of these methods are incredibly resource intensive. You need to recruit test participants, make arrangements for conducting the tests, fill out paperwork, and much more.

Grids are an essential tool for modern web design. In a reality that expects user interfaces to function and look great on any number of unknown screen sizes, the grid helps create a “one size can adapt to all” final product. This further manifests itself into quicker launches, predictable budgets, and an overall better product for most projects.

Designers and developers have specific roles when it comes to building websites. Designers ideate, conceptualize, sketch, and prototype design ideas. Developers make those prototypes come to life by creating layouts, integrating graphics, and coding interactive elements.

In the context of UI design, illustrations can be drawings, sketches, graphic designs, or printed works of art. They are used to clarify, decorate, or visually represent text or complex ideas.

Prototypes are clickable, high-fidelity representations of the end product that are designed with the purpose to simulate user interactions. Prototyping enables UX designers to evaluate how their design solutions align with user experience.

Users will take a specific set of actions when interacting with a website to accomplish a specific goal. This set of actions is their user flow, and the amount of friction they experience in their user flow determines how good (or how bad) their user experience will be.

Contrast is a difference, especially a strong dissimilarity, between entities or objects compared. In simple terms, it’s when two elements on a page are distinctly different. Designers use contrast for various reasons.

Peer review is integral to the design process and, when done right, can be invaluable and motivational. Honing your feedback skills allows you to build a culture of knowledge and experience sharing in your design teams. In this article, we’ll show you how you can give designers feedback that will help them polish their design skills, strengthen their design process, and motivate them to produce better work.

Heuristics provide general guidelines that UI designers can reference to perform usability audits on their projects. With this in mind, we’ll explore Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design in detail and look at some real-world examples.

Optimizing your site’s performance is paramount in the modern web. It should be no surprise people like fast loading sites and so does Google. And although this is something that a great designer should consider during the earliest stages of design, the reality is that we most often fix the problem after the fact.

Unlike traditional copywriting, UX writing is a discipline focused on the actionable content that helps direct users in some meaningful way. Specifically, effective UX writing allows you to guide users to take action and achieve their goals, motivate desired browsing behavior and interactions, and improve task completion.

Web content accessibility is quickly becoming a growing initiative for many forward-thinking organizations, both domestic and international. In this article, we’ll step through some tips and techniques you can follow for designing a more accessible website.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve noticed an influx of marketing emails declaring changes to terms of service and privacy policies. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) makes Privacy by Design (specifically its privacy by default principle) a legal requirement. According to the new regulation, you’re required to design for and build user privacy principles into your projects and document your Privacy by Design (PbD) processes.

Launching a website that delivers a phenomenal user experience requires a commitment to usability testing from the get-go. At each stage of the UI design process, change becomes exponentially more challenging, and as a result, it’s beneficial to start these usability tests as early as possible.

When the design team knows what will be on the website and what the goals of the design are, there’s a better chance the end result will be custom-tailored to that content. Simply, that means that the design is likely to be more functional because the pieces were actually made for each other.

In this article, we take a look at some of Yablonski’s laws of UX, as well as principles of design theory that have evolved with the digital landscape. Every one of these seven “rules” should be factors when planning and outlining website design projects.

Speeding up a project can be one of the most difficult challenges creative teams face but it is possible. It takes a combination of planning in the early phases, trusting the creative team and letting everyone do their job and remembering to check in and evaluate milestones along the way. Letting a misstep get in the way is often the biggest project derailment.

Before you pick out the first color, font or photo for your website redesign, you need to take a hard look at the content. A successful website starts with the content first and then the design.

Good design often starts with a good eye for space, typography and relationships between design elements. But there’s distinct design theory that backs up that thinking – Gestalt Theory.

Do you ever worry that you’ve incorporated so many trends into your website design that it looks like a certain time period? Or that the super-awesome website you launched three years ago is starting to look a little dated?

Creating and developing content ahead of a website design will help you organize all those creative thoughts and brainstorms into usable work product. Crafting a solid outline for the content will help the design team and the creative team get on the same page regarding the focus of the website.

Everyone seems to be talking about how to design for search these days. But have you thought about how to design for users who have already found your website?

There’s nothing like a great podcast to help you get through the day, especially if it can provide you with a bit of inspiration.

It seems like almost every client is demanding some type of animation for their website these days. They don’t always know what that animation should be, or what it should do, but they want animation.

Crafting a website is a lot like writing a novel. There’s a theme and a plot line that guides the user through a narrative that (hopefully) leads to a happy ending.

When designing a website, it is important to think about product awareness and how the visual presentation will impact a user or potential customer.

Design documentation is a set of tools and guidelines that will help the owner of a site understand how to maintain the design and use backend functionality to make updates and changes.

Every website designer should have a go-to list of questions to ask every prospect before signing a contract and starting a project. So grab a note card or get ready to put this checklist in Evernote so you’ll be ready with everything you need to get new projects off on the right start.

Just any old website design won’t do. Neither will that website that you launched 10 years ago. Users want, and demand, modern website interfaces. A modern design shows that you care and that maintain and update your website and content regularly. (Even if it isn’t, a modern design will give this impression.)

While you probably don’t want to share all your design secrets, it can be beneficial to teach a few design concepts to clients.

Design feedback is a double-edged sword. On one hand, designers want and need feedback to improve projects and make them better. On the other hand, client feedback can be ambiguous and not provide enough direction to get to those solutions.

While there’s no right or wrong software choice, many webs designers are making a move to Sketch. If it’s something you’ve considered here’s everything you need to know to help you make the move.

Almost half of Americans (43 percent) reported working from home at least some of the time in 2016, and 20 percent said they did all of their work from home, according to The Wall Street Journal. That means chances are your company – if it hasn’t already – will soon embrace a remote workforce.

It’s the design version of the chicken and egg question. Creatives can debate for hours over how to create a design, whether it is based on an idea that is completely drawn out or a “bucket of parts” that can be mixed and matched throughout the design.

The line between design and development is getting less clear every day. More designers have development skills and more developers are becoming well-versed in design. And it means that the lines of communication between the two are wide open. Here’s how to ensure that both sides of the website project are working together effectively to ensure the best possible projects.

Modern UI designers rely on plenty of great tools to make prototyping and design faster. Clients demand quick turnaround times and having a solid collection of tools ready at hand can be a big asset.

Grids are the backbone of responsive websites. And for the foreseeable future, grids are necessary to build cost-effective websites that render effectively in all browsers and any number of known and unknown resolutions. There are just too many devices to account for everything.

To launch a successful project, designers and developers have to work together. This collaboration will result in better ideas and a more usable final website design. The hard part? Actually making that happen.

You can’t really get far into the design of a website until several questions are answered and you already have much of that content thought out. Although it’s common to dismiss content until the last step, the best design and development teams will require it before they get started.

The web has evolved into a full-featured medium and, like most things in life, the simpler times are behind us.

It’s long past due for designers to follow the lead of their technical peers who have embraced Agile’s flexibility and aren’t looking back. Ignoring this modern process costs money, time and will leave your projects lacking.

The designer-developer handoff is a major milestone for every web development project. And more often than not, it is problematic. From a lack of communication between teams, to misunderstandings about the design’s intent, this transition is known to cause a lot of unnecessary stress on the entire team. The good news is that this is a totally fixable problem. Here’s how you do it.

Sketching is an important and often overlooked gem of the UI design process (even for non-designers). Starting your designs offline and with pen and paper can help teams better visualize the project’s potential early in the process.

A card-based design can create a framework of tiny containers, each holding one key piece of information. And while cards aren’t new, the style is in somewhat of a renaissance period thanks to the popularity of Material Design patterns.

The best designs start with copy that resembles the final product, and designers should be reluctant to work with anything less. Here are some tips to ensure your design uses real copy from Day 1. (And your web design projects will be better for it.)

Your web design projects should be constantly evolving as new design trends and user patterns become familiar amongst consumers. Like fashion, trends come and go. Everything from color palettes and typography styles to animations and user interactions become stale within an ever-changing web landscape.