Top 5 Web Design and Usability Tips
Web design is paramount, as it communicates your brand, company ideals and reputation all at once. More importantly, it serves as a window through which your audience sees and perceives you. Therefore, less-than-perfect web design can mean the difference between your audience choosing you or your competitor when making purchasing decisions. The challenge for web designers is to balance eye-catching design with properly functioning interfaces and applications to meet specific user needs and goals. Here are our top five tips for creating more usable (and beautiful) web pages that meet the needs of the intended end user. 1. Function before form It's not just about beauty, it's about function. Before you begin designing, it's essential to think about what each page will offer, as a web page exists to provide something that's useful or interesting to visitors. Think - what are you offering your visitors? Why should they take time to peruse your site? Separate topics into defined sections, and keep text direct and to the point to make it easy for your visitors to find and absorb the information they need. ...
QR Codes Decoded: What is a QR Code and Do I need it?
At Vivo Group, we've noticed a distinct technology trend emerging this year, one that is blurring the lines between our physical and online worlds, and evident in gamification, face recognition and NFC technology. It's called Augmented Reality, which describes how our real world is being enriched with the virtual; where the use of technology provides knowledge and tools to enhance the capacity of people to perform ‘real world’ tasks. One of the most widely used forms of augmented reality is evident in QR codes - which are connecting users to digital content when they’re away from their PC (but still have access to a smart phone). What is a QR code? A Quick Response (QR) code is a two-dimensional matrix code, designed to be read by a QR Reader application on an iPhone, Android or other camera-enabled smart phone. Once the image has been scanned, the software deciphers the encrypted information to activate a response in your device, such as opening email, sending an SMS or...
Customer Service in the Digital Age
Providing poor customer service has always been dangerous for brands, but thanks to social media, the game has changed. Issues are now aired in the public arena, and the smallest whimper of discontent has the potential to spread instantly and become a full-blown disaster with an immediate and far-reaching impact. In our age of connectivity and social networking, the voice of the customer has never been more powerful. And whether you know it or not, your customers ARE talking about you online. They’re taking to their Facebook profiles, Twitter feeds and blogs to air their feedback, whether positive or negative. The question is, are you listening? Apparently not. A recent survey by evolve24 found that 71% of customer complaints remain unanswered on Twitter. Yet, consumers increasingly want to be engaged online, with 43% of consumers saying that companies should use social media to solve customer’s problems ...
