Category: Blog

Want to attract and convert more people without Facebook ads? Looking for tips to develop an organic Facebook funnel?

In this article, you’ll learn how to model an effective sales funnel with organic Facebook content.

#1: Leverage Existing Facebook Audience Engagement to Create Awareness With New Prospects

Back in the good old days when organic reach of Facebook posts was still very high, you could more or less count on your Facebook audience seeing your organic posts in their news feeds.

When Facebook overhauled organic reach, limiting the reach of our organic posts to our audience, it had a beneficial effect: Now you can have more confidence that a page like or follow comes from someone with a genuine interest in your business. And while you may not reach 100% of your Facebook audience with every organic post, your following is a more reliable source of potential prospects that you can count on.

With the right organic Facebook content, you’ll continually add new followers to your audience via shares and other audience engagement on organic posts. This, combined with the rate at which your posts are seen by your current followers, means that each new post you use to drive traffic through your funnel could potentially reach new faces.

For businesses that have cracked the code and found success in acquiring an audience but don’t have the budget for Facebook ads, converting that audience can be a struggle. What good is a Facebook fanbase if it never leads to a sale?

That’s where an organic sales funnel comes into play. What this sales funnel looks like will vary by business, but typically, the steps taken along the path to conversion are similar to this:

• Step 1: Awareness
• Step 2: Interest
• Step 3: Evaluation
• Step 4: Decision and action/conversion

Sales funnels often rely on ads, but when fueled by organic content designed to convert an existing Facebook audience, a sales funnel could look something like this:

• Awareness: A person likes or follows your Facebook page.
• Interest: They see and click on an organic Facebook post for a service you provide.
• Evaluation: They arrive at a landing page on your website populated with a few testimonials and bullet points listing the perks of using that service. The page also includes a form to request a quote.
• Decision and action: They fill in the form, see the estimate, and book the service.

The idea is to create organic content to create as much awareness of your Facebook page as possible, thereby filling the funnel and giving you the best chance at the maximum number of conversions on the other side.

Whether the sales funnel concept is new to you or you’ve had one in place without realizing it, it will benefit your business to put some attention toward refining it into a sales-driving machine. And if you have a strong Facebook following or are working toward creating one, you already have the ideal resource from which to draw sales prospects.

#2: Create Organic Facebook Content to Nurture Prospects Through Interest and Evaluation

We’ve established that the top of this sales funnel is composed of your Facebook fanbase. So how do you get those who follow you on Facebook to continue along the path of your sales funnel? Essentially, you need to give your followers a compelling reason to leave Facebook, and ideally, take additional action.

One way to cut through the noise is to run Facebook ads. However, if you don’t have the budget or faith that ads will work for your business, don’t fret. Building a sales funnel without ads can still be effective and a great jumping-off point to test the conversion of different posts before investing in ads.

Here are some examples of the types of posts that can drive traffic off of Facebook to your middle funnel.

In this post, Zappos draws attention to a new line of products and includes a link that leads to more information.

If Facebook users click on the provided link in the post, it takes them to a landing page that includes a call to action (CTA) to make a purchase.

As another example, this Facebook post offers a showcase of menu items in next week’s HelloFresh shipment.

The CTA here isn’t to subscribe to HelloFresh but rather to entice viewers with what they could be having for dinner. As a bonus, an offer is displayed on the page.

4 Types of Organic Middle-of-Funnel Content to Model

You may be wondering, “Why not just direct Facebook fans straight from a post to my online store?” Because, as one might say on a first date, “You’re moving too fast.”

Nurtured leads typically make significantly larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. So don’t be so quick to take traffic from the top to the bottom of the funnel. Use middle-of-funnel strategies to cultivate prospects, priming them for the next stage of your funnel.

In a traditional sales funnel, where marketing efforts are like the net that fills the top of the funnel, the middle of the funnel is where sales show up to the party. This can be in the form of a landing page filled with testimonials, persuasive bullet points, and catchy taglines.

Here are some ideas for Facebook link posts in the middle of the funnel:

• Link to a basic sales page with info and a CTA: This is great for selling a specific product or service. The CTA can link to a subscription form or a shopping cart.
• Link to a quiz: Gauge the knowledge level of a prospect by having them answer a series of questions. To illustrate, an HVAC company may ask a few questions about the danger of dirty ducts. A low score could prompt a sales call or a “Request a Quote” form.

• Link to a contest or giveaway: Although contests and giveaways may not be the best sales tools in and of themselves, they’re ideal for attracting and engaging online traffic. Hosting a contest or giveaway is the perfect hook for driving traffic off of Facebook and to your entry form. With the collected entries, you’ll have leads to add to your email list to use for further marketing.
• Link to a blog post, guide, or resource: For certain businesses, free content is the perfect gateway to selling better content. Consultants and other experts can drop a few bits of free advice in a blog post or guide with a primer to subscribe, purchase, or hire their services for the valuable expertise.

#3: Analyze Organic Facebook Content and Landing Page Performance to Optimize for Conversion

The bottom of your funnel is decision-making time. It’s that crucial moment where your Facebook follower could become a paying customer or patron of your business.

This part of the funnel is largely based on the work the top and middle of the funnel did to get them to this stage, but there are still measures you can take to make sure you don’t lose momentum when the prospect is faced with the decision to convert.

If the bottom of your funnel includes an entry form, whether it’s to make a purchase or schedule an appointment, make sure the form includes the minimum number of fields needed. A lengthy entry form is an absolute conversion killer.

There are additional strategies you can implement at the bottom of the funnel to nudge those visitors to customer status. To visualize this, if you’re a shoe retailer, when a consumer adds a pair of shoes to their shopping cart, you could display a discount code offering half off the purchase of a second pair.

To understand the customer conversion process and bring to light any problem areas that might be causing prospects to drop off along the way, it’s essential to consistently analyze the performance of your organic Facebook content and the sales funnel landing pages.

As the chief evangelist of what you do, it’s clear to you why your business should be the number-one choice for shoppers but relaying that sentiment to potential customers can be a challenge. Worse yet, you may not even be aware that parts of your sales pitch aren’t sinking in.

Taking a magnifying glass to your funnel will help reveal its weak spots, especially if you’re familiar with the benchmark behaviors of those passing through your sales process.

For instance, note the number of clicks each Facebook post is getting in relation to the clicks on your CTA. If you were to add a short video to the landing page showing your service technicians in action or happy customers’ testimonials, does anything happen to your conversion rate? Do CTA clicks go up or down?

Or maybe you need to make some tweaks to your appointment scheduling form. If you make it shorter, do conversions go up? If so, you know that your entry form was causing more prospects to drop off.

Changes like this can help you understand the impact of your landing page on the conversion process and areas where you can improve it.

Pro Tip: As prospects drop off of your funnel, there’s always an opportunity to re-engage them. If you were able to capture an email address along the way, make sure to follow up with email marketing. Keep prospects aware of upcoming promotions, send discount codes, and announce new products.

If the visitor ends up abandoning the sale, make sure to trigger an abandoned-cart email—10.7% of abandoned carts can be recovered through a follow-up email.

The beauty of a Facebook audience is that it will always be there for you to call on. Continue to post on Facebook with the intention of driving traffic through your conversion funnel.

Conclusion

A sales funnel is an effective way to drive traffic from the stage at which prospects become aware of your business to the stage at which they decide to purchase. Developing and fine-tuning a sales funnel helps you understand the parts of your sales process that cost you conversions.

Your Facebook audience is primed and perfectly positioned to start the journey along a sales funnel because they have a genuine interest in your business. Use posts with incentives and CTAs to drive traffic off of Facebook and into the next stage of your funnel. That next stage could include content such as a landing page with a sign-up form, blog post, guide or eHow book, giveaway, quiz, or contest.

Make sure to keep a watchful eye on clicks and bounce rates so you know where your sales funnel needs to be tweaked to continually boost conversions.

For those who don’t convert, keep the conversation going. Continuously engage your Facebook audience, leveraging the resource you’ve put so much work into cultivating.

What do you think? How do you attract and convert people with organic Facebook content? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

More articles on Facebook marketing:

• Discover how to promote short-term sales with organic posts and paid ads on Facebook.
• Learn how to solve four common Facebook marketing problems.
• Find five effective tips to increase the chances your Facebook leads will become customers.

Post credit: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-create-facebook-organic-sales-funnel/

Do you use social media to promote your consulting services? Wondering how to attract and engage prospective customers?

In this article, you’ll discover a strategic plan you can model to convert prospects into qualified leads and customers on social media.

Why You Need an Engaging Sales Funnel on Social Media

In the world of digital marketing, consultants and funnels should go hand in hand. With no tangible products, consultants have to communicate the benefits of their services to justify the price. They can’t simply show a product image or rely on the first emotional reaction.

The simple reason that consultants need a funnel in addition to a website or social media branding is to gain the trust of their clients. With trust-based niches like accountants or financial advisors, people don’t jump on board in just a few minutes; they weigh their options. And while they’re doing that, they’re receiving messages from other consultants.

If you want to stand out in the competitive consulting niche, you have to act differently from the hundreds of consultants who connect with people on LinkedIn and send the sales pitch 5 minutes later. Your sales funnel should be designed to generate inbound leads instead of chasing after uninterested prospects.

Educating your customers and building a two-way conversation can help you create something called an “engagement funnel.” You increase the commitment at every stage of the funnel. Start with a micro-commitment, followed by a bigger step, and build trust and reciprocity along the way. Ask people to engage with your posts, offer to answer one question on social media, and you’ll help them overcome their fear.

Now let’s look at a funnel framework you can model to take care of the main elements of your marketing—awareness, interest, demand, and action—so you can land your ideal clients on autopilot.

#1: Use Your Ideal Customers’ Pain Points to Define Your Positioning

Because consulting is a competitive niche, it’s important to research the market and clearly identify your unique selling proposition (USP). This is the foundation of your marketing campaign so you need this to create a strong message. Your USP will help guide the social media messaging that will resonate with your ideal clients.

Of course, you first need to decide who you want to work with and attract to your business. Despite a common misconception, you can’t work with just anyone. For starters, people need to have the money to hire you. Plus, they have to be motivated enough to take action within a reasonable timeframe.

Post credit: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-convert-more-prospects-on-social-media-5-step-plan/

Looking for a way to increase customer retention? Are your customers using Facebook?

In this article, you’ll discover how to strategically use a Facebook group to nurture customer relationships.

Why Repeat Customers Are the Most Valuable Customers

Attracting new customers for your business can be a costly exercise, but once you’ve converted them, they become incredibly valuable. By cultivating and nurturing long-term relationships with your customers, you create continued opportunities for referrals and leads, foster loyalty, and generate ongoing sales. For businesses, Facebook groups are a great way to do this.

Facebook groups are designed to bring people together online in a way that’s not easily replicated by other channels. Creating your own group gives you an opportunity to develop an engaged virtual community around your products or services and communicate directly with your customers. If you’re successful in developing a group that your customers not only want to be part of but also actively use, they’ll hopefully in turn become advocates for your brand.

Here are five no-cost ways to boost customer retention using Facebook groups.

#1: Make Your Facebook Group Easy for Customers to Find

Facebook groups can be a valuable tool for nurturing customer relationships and keeping people coming back for more but obviously they don’t hold any value until your customers actually join your group.

To make it easier for customers to find your group, you can create a custom URL just like you can with Facebook pages. To do this, go to your group and click Settings in the left navigation.

In the Customize Group section on the right, click the pencil icon next to Web Address. Then type in the custom URL you want to use.

Pro Tip: You can only customize your Facebook group URL if your group has fewer than 5,000 members so it’s worth doing this in the early days of setting up your group.

Once you’ve created a custom link, there are numerous ways to share it to encourage customers to join your group, such as:

• Include the link in your purchase confirmation emails or post-purchase email sequences.
• Add the link to your team’s email signatures.
• Direct customers to your group via your digital products, including downloadable PDFs or courses.
• Include a card in your product packaging that directs customers to join the group.

Customers are loyal to the companies that treat them well. Inviting them to be part of your community and engaging with them directly shows you care and builds loyalty and trust.

#2: Restrict Facebook Group Access to Customers Only

To set up your Facebook group for success right from the beginning, give it a clear name and description. This will help prospective members know what the group is for and be able to determine if it’s a good fit.

You’ll also need to decide if you want your group to be public, private, or secret. Here are the pros and cons of these options:

• A public group is far more accessible so it may grow quickly. However, with no barriers to join, it can be less exclusive and targeted to your audience. It may also require much more moderation from group admins, which can be time-consuming.
• A private group strikes a good balance between exclusivity and accessibility. The group is still searchable but new members are required to send a request before they’re granted access.
• A secret group has more hurdles to join, significantly limiting the group’s size and restricting the community feel that Facebook groups are best known for.

Once you choose the privacy setting for your group, you need to decide how new members can join. While you could automatically approve any new members, setting additional requirements for new members will help you retain a level of control and keep membership to a like-minded group.

Facebook lets you ask questions to validate a potential member’s eligibility, as well as limit members based on their geographic location, whether they’re friends with a group member, and how many years they’ve been on Facebook.

Controlling access to your group will help you create a positive environment that members will enjoy and keep them coming back. This will not only help you grow your group but also increase positive associations for customers with your brand in general.

Ask Questions to Pending Members

To ask questions to pending members, click on Membership Questions in the left navigation of your group. Then on the right, click the Add Question button and type in your first question. You can ask up to three questions.

When you’re finished adding questions, slide the toggle in the Group Rules section to make it a condition of entry into your group for members to answer these questions.

The Official Peloton Member Page Facebook group limits membership to existing or potential customers by asking if prospective members already own a Peloton product or are interested in purchasing one. This screening question helps ensure the group is made up of people who share a common interest, making the content more valuable to them.

Establish Group Rules

To set the standards of your Facebook group and establish expectations from members, create a clear set of rules that new members must agree to when they join the group.

To set up rules, select Group Rules in the left navigation and then click Get Started on the right. You can opt to use Facebook’s example rules and/or write your own.

Your group rules don’t have to be harsh. Instead, they can help set the tone for the group and establish what members can and can’t do; which will help prevent conflict among members and create a better experience for everyone.

#3: Share Content That Enhances the Customer Journey

As humans, we’re drawn to the allure of exclusivity and you can cultivate that in your Facebook group by regularly sharing high-value content that can’t be accessed elsewhere. Your group members are likely to be your most loyal customers or fans, and by providing insider content that’s both valuable and free, you’re rewarding their loyalty.

Examples of this type of content are Facebook Live chats with special guests, free daily workouts, bonus recipes, early access to new products or services, exclusive promotional offers, and giveaways.

You also may want to take advantage of the following Facebook group features to enhance the content you share with your community.

Share Course Content and Resources in Facebook Group Units

Facebook’s Units feature for groups lets you add value to online course content for members. To access this feature, you must change your Facebook group type to Social Learning.

To do this, go to your settings and find the Add Extra Features section on the right. Click the pencil icon next to Group Type and choose Social Learning. At the bottom of the Add Extra Features section, click the Add button to add the Units tab to your group.

Now you’re ready to create your first unit. Go back to the home page for your group, select the Unit tab, and click Create a Unit. Then type in a unit name and publish either a post or quiz.

If you want to add an existing Facebook post to a unit, click the three dots in the upper-right corner of the post and select Add Post to Unit. Then choose which unit you’d like to add the post to.

The Instant Pot Community Facebook Group uses the Units feature to share cooking tips with members. The units not only encourage members to use their Instant Pot but also help them progress from cooking basics all the way through to advanced skills.

Share Important Documents on the Facebook Groups Files Tab

The Facebook Groups Files tab is another tool to share exclusive content with members. Accessible from the group’s main menu, the Files tool allows group owners to upload documents, images, video, and audio files.

The Official Kajabi User Group uses the Files tool to share important documents in an easily accessible way.

Mark an Important Post as an Announcement

To ensure important posts and valuable content don’t get buried in a sea of contributor posts, you can mark them as announcements, which will pin them to the top of your Facebook group feed. Simply find the post you’d like to pin as an announcement, click the three dots at the top right, and select Mark as Announcement.

By providing high-value content that’s exclusive to Facebook group members, your customers will feel rewarded and see you’re going above and beyond, which will in turn increase their loyalty to you.

#4: Use Your Facebook Group as a Customer Service Channel

When your customers need assistance, they don’t want to be put on hold at a call center. They want to connect with your business in a way that’s authentic and convenient for them. Because so many people already use Facebook, a Facebook group can be another customer service option for your business.

In your group, you can communicate directly with customers and give them links to your customer service channels such as website chats or customer support pages. For easy access, be sure to include links to these in your About section.

If you want customers to communicate with you via your Facebook group, let them know by maintaining an active presence and promptly responding to customer posts and questions. Clearly communicate the best way for customers to contact you, whether it’s via Facebook Messenger or a comment in a post.

If you don’t want your Facebook group being used as a customer support tool, include obvious links so customers know where to go for product and technical support.

The beauty of Facebook groups is that often members will answer each other’s questions without admins or moderators having to lift a finger. And by responding to members on the Discussions tab, all members can see the conversation so you may be answering another customer’s question at the same time.

Your Facebook group is a good place to post frequently asked questions (FAQs) about your products or services. You can publish a post with your FAQs and keep it pinned to the top of your feed (by marking it as an announcement) or upload your FAQs using the Files tool. This will make the information easy to access so customers don’t have to hunt for it.

Pro Tip: Uploading video tutorials about your products or services to your group can help reduce the need for customer service responses and follow-ups, and provide added value to group members at the same time.

According to a global study by Microsoft, 56% of respondents said they stopped doing business with a company because of a poor customer service experience. By making your Facebook group part of your customer service offering, you give customers an opportunity to connect with your business in a personal and convenient way. This helps ensure they have a positive experience with your brand, which will make them far more likely to be a repeat customer.

#5: Actively Encourage Customer Feedback to Improve Your Products and Services

Your Facebook group is a direct line to your customers so it’s a great way to get to know them better. By conversing with customers or observing their interactions with one another, you can tap into some real insights from the people who know your brand best. Keep an eye on the Discussion feed to monitor interactions, learn about your customers, and ask for feedback.

The Poll tool can also help you do market research or gauge customer feedback on a new product or service. To add a poll to your group, start a new post and then click the three dots at the bottom right and select Poll. Enter your question and then fill out options for group members to select. When you’re done, click Post.

As you work toward developing and nurturing a Facebook group of dedicated customers, the Insights section in the left navigation provides highly valuable analytics about your group content, which aren’t easily accessed elsewhere. Here’s a rundown of what you’ll find:

• Growth: Your membership growth over time.
• Engagement: How members have engaged with your posts.
• Membership: Your top 10 contributors ranked by posts and comments. This section also includes demographic information on age, gender, and where most of your customers are based broken down into country and city.
• Units: How members interact with your Units tab, including how many have been completed by members.

You’ll be able to see the best days and times to post in your group, as well as your top-performing content type. These insights will help you create more engaging content in the future and provide the best possible Facebook group experience to engage customers.

Conclusion

As a business, your Facebook group gives you an opportunity to connect and engage more intimately with your customers. As a member of your group, your customers can start or join conversations and feel like they’re chatting with their own virtual community. By using key Facebook Groups features and tapping into the valuable insights they provide, you can nurture and strengthen your relationships with existing customers and keep them coming back for more.

What do you think? Which of these features do you use with your Facebook group? Do you have any tips of your own to offer? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

More articles on marketing with Facebook groups:

• Find tips for using Facebook Groups features including Badges, Units, Subscriptions, and more.
• Discover how to run a pop-up Facebook group for business.
• Learn the unconventional way to grow a Facebook group with Facebook ads.

Post credit: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-use-facebook-groups-to-keep-customers-5-ways/

Let’s start off by taking a quick glance at the definition of the word “intuitive” presented on Dictionary.com:

Using or based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning: instinctive.

At the same time, Cambridge provides us with this definition:

Based on feelings rather than facts or proof: an intuitive approach/judgment. Most people have an intuitive sense of right and wrong.

Based on these dictionary definitions, intuition is associated with a gut instinct or feeling that allows us to make decisions with no conscious proof of reasoning. While it may serve us well during various life situations, does our intuition really function to provide us with unconscious guidance when relating to digital interfaces? In reality, the intuitive behaviour that designers strive to create must rely on using familiar design patterns that the users have experienced before. In this context, an intuitive design interaction is not grounded in unconscious reasoning, but from a feeling of familiarity.

As a UX designer, how many times has a client or stakeholder said to you “It needs to be intuitive”. While this is a common request or even a requirement for an interface or software app design, it’s not really something that is easy to measure, or even define.

Most of us have had a gut feeling or an instinct about a decision or an outcome. I have had intuitive feelings about my teenage daughter where I just feel like something bad has happened. I’m not always right (thankfully), but it still feels like a gut impulse tapping into my emotions. If this is an example of how intuition can behave for us in a particular circumstance, it is hard to imagine having these same kinds of instinctive feelings when interacting with an interface.

The truth is, what is intuitive for you or your client, would probably not be intuitive for your mother, for example, or even for their clients. An interface can feel familiar if you (the user) have experienced a similar interface or interaction before, and it is this familiarity that is often referred to as intuitive.

For example, the first time I saw that non-descript hamburger menu on a mobile app, it didn’t intuitively call out to me and say “Tap on me, I’m a menu!”. It was only through tapping around that I discovered that those three bars when tapped gave me a menu. Now, when I see a hamburger menu, I know what it does. Not intuitively, but because I’ve done it before. Nothing instinctive about that.

Here is an example of the ubiquitous hamburger menu.

As another example, take a simple registration form on a mobile app where you need to enter your email address to receive email updates. Because we understand that you need to tap into the field and start typing, it makes sense and is a simple interaction. We’ve all done it many times before. But if my father were trying to use this, he probably wouldn’t understand that you need to tap into the field and start typing. How would he know, unless someone gave him step by step simple instructions.

In an article published by Jeff Raskin, most famously known for starting the Macintosh program at Apple in the late 70s, he says:

“It has been claimed that the use of a computer’s mouse is intuitive. Yet it is far from that.”

When I was teaching Pagemaker (Adobe’s InDesign® predecessor) classes back in the 90s to corporate employees, one action by one of the students in the class still makes me chuckle. I asked the participants to use the mouse to click on the OK button on the screen. One woman picked up the mouse and clicked it on the screen. We can’t imagine anyone doing this now because we have learned how a mouse works, but this demonstrates that it is not an intuitive device.

We know that intuitive design isn’t a thing, but we also know that familiarity with certain types of interactions that we have experienced before are easier to understand. For those users that are even slightly tech savvy, we can make use of already existing and familiar interface patterns to base our design decisions on. These users will most likely recognize these previously established patterns in our interface design, referred to as design patterns. According UI Patterns, design patterns are recurring solutions that solve common design problems.

What Are Design Patterns And Why Are They Important?

Design patterns are important because they provide recognizable interactions so that users spend less time trying to understand how to interact.

Reducing time and effort for users will create a better user experience and minimise the time spent on achieving an outcome. For UX designers, the benefits are in the time saved by not having to reinvent a proven design component.

Below is a pattern template table that provides a structure for defining or identifying patterns, originating from the authors of the book Design Patterns. Although this was originally aimed at software developers, most of the criteria are relevant to UX designers.

To explore the idea of design patterns further, below are some examples of common design patterns as found on the UI Patterns website. This site is a great reference tool for designers to help recognize existing patterns for use in your design process. While there are too many design patterns to include here, I chose the following patterns as ones I have used over the years.

PASSWORD STRENGTH METER DESIGN PATTERN

This pattern provides the user with both instruction and feedback on their interactions.

A wizard is another common design pattern that you may have encountered. It’s often used for form-based interactions where the user needs to complete a predefined sequence of steps. The wizard structure is used to direct the user through each section of the process.

WIZARD DESIGN PATTERN

Wizards are used when you want to guide a user through a series of steps to achieve a single goal. The pattern below indicates where the user is in the process, a summary of completed steps on the right, contextual help, and a CONTINUE button to move to the next step in the process. All these components as commonly used in a wizard pattern support the users interactions by providing context of what they’ve done, what step they are at, and what to do next.

CALENDAR PICKER PATTERN

This pattern is used when the user needs to add in a date or dates to complete a task. It’s important that a date could also be entered in a text field if this is a more efficient or preferred way to do so. In this example, a calendar icon indicates that there is a calendar drop down, which is a commonly used pattern. Calendar widgets like this don’t always work well when you have to choose a birth date unless you have the ability to change the year easily.

FORM DEFAULTS

Form defaults can be used to pre-fill certain form fields to match a typical user selection. It creates a quicker and easier way to complete a process. This travel site has prefilled data for dates based on the current date, and also the number of passengers.

NAVIGATION TABS

Navigation tabs are commonly used to break up content into distinct categories and to visually indicate what content you are viewing. The example here demonstrates a content rich website with the first tab selection displaying the subcategories and a third level below.

When you are implementing an existing design pattern in your design, it’s all about using the pattern to create context, as well as familiarity for the user. You may need to adapt any existing pattern to provide this context, as described for the calendar picker widget.

We’ve explored the pitfalls of “intuitive design” and how we can mitigate this with design patterns. So if we utilize common design patterns to reduce the cognitive load for users, how do we introduce new design patterns when we are designing something fresh and innovative? Let’s look at this concept by investigating this in the context of emerging technologies.

Why Design Innovation Can Be Risky

Any design that is new or unfamiliar to a user will create a learning curve that we as designers strive to minimize or eliminate altogether. How do we balance the need to innovate quickly, while still providing a solid, contextual experience that makes sense to our users?

By considering the business outcomes, carrying out enough user research to ensure a good market fit, and user testing your design flow with the intended audience, we can ensure that our design solution hypothesis can be validated as much as possible. This helps to mitigate the additional risks inherent in any product or service design execution. Ideally, we can design to incorporate interactions that measure the users level of comprehension and allow them to personalize their path to achieve their desired outcomes in an unknown environment.

Innovation With Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is innovating all the time, but organisations still manage to create a good user experience with these advancements. For example, Pinterest’s AI is used to understand the intention behind a simple search to deliver highly personalized results. According to this article in Wired, 80 percent of users are more likely to make a purchase if their experience is personalized.

Below is an example of a search for “vegetarian”. Pinterest uses an AI engine to return a whole lot of related topics to allow discovery and displays them as tags across the top of the page.

AI is fast becoming integrated into many products and services. AI relies on big data and can be used to create interventions or notify the user to take a specific action (or not). This can create a more passive experience for the user as previously manual tasks are automated behind the scenes.

For example, a spam filter that is used in your email account automatically moves suspicious emails into a junk folder, without any user intervention required. Google has been using AI and rule-based filters for years, but continuing innovation now sees the ability for Google AI to recognize those weekly newsletters you may not be interested in moving them straight to the spam folder. The Google spam filter can now identify and respond to individual preferences.

Where to from here? With technology advancing at a rapid pace, let’s explore how interfaces may evolve in the coming years.

The Future Of Interfaces

If interfaces don’t provide natural interactions for humans, what can? Speaking is our natural communication tool and advances in technology have seen speech recognition devices come into our homes and our lives.

It’s no secret that large design driven software developers, such as Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft are all investing in speech recognition and natural language technologies. Advances in this technology could see us relying less on interacting with interfaces for our desired outcome. Personalisation and context is the key, although it means that our devices will need to use our data to learn about our habits and desires to provide a truly personalized experience.

Picture a world where we can simply talk to our device and ask for what we need, and better still, we can be asked for or given what we need at exactly the right time by our device. Wait, isn’t this what Siri already does? Yes, but there is so much further to go.

Bill Stasior, Apple’s former Siri chief, says that the next advancements to virtual assistants will see improvements to the understanding of how people naturally speak.

“I think everyone learns what commands work with the assistants and what commands don’t work with the assistants. And while that’s improving very rapidly right now, I think there’s still a long way to go.”

— Bill Stasior

Although there has been major advancements in the use of natural language processing since 2011 when Siri was first released, we will see it become more mainstream and more advanced across multiple industries such as health and education over the coming years. This could be life-changing particularly for older people that are not tech-savvy.

For instance, imagine an older person who needs medical attention simply talking to their device to arrange a doctor’s visit. Or the patient is given medical advice based on their medical history and current symptoms. Imagine someone suffering from mental health issues being able to talk to an artificial intelligence bot for advice or to just to relieve loneliness.

There is already an array of “virtual assistants” that have been designed for the home market that use speech recognition technology. Below is an image displaying the “smart speakers” that are readily available for the consumer market.

Although speech recognition channels may not require a typical user interface, they still require a design process to create an usable outcome. The diagram below illustrates conversational AI touch points as described in this article by Deloitte Digital.

In order to design effectively for speech recognition tools, Deloitte suggests that the following aspects need to be considered:

• The business objective and outcomes.
• Carrying out testing, and tuning. The algorithm needs to account for pronunciation across different geographical locations, natural pauses in conversation, and pitch and pace that may convey emotion.
• Consideration for the given scenario, rather than attempting to design a broader outcome.
• Ongoing iterations and improvements. By focusing on a clear goal, designers can continue to enhance their voice assistants to be more human sounding with each new iteration.

What Does All This Mean For The Common User Interface?

Will the pervasiveness of natural language recognition technologies see the death of the user interface as we know it? While no one can accurately predict the future, the fact remains that we are still visual creatures, and we still need to see things as part of our learning process. Research shows that the human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text, and 90 percent of information transmitted to the brain is visual.

For example, can you imagine having to make a purchase decision on a clothes item by listening to a description of it rather than seeing an image of the item? As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and in many instances an image is a much more powerful way to convey meaning. While we could still specify what we are searching for by speaking, in many scenarios we would expect to see an image as part of the response. And what if we didn’t know what we were looking for, we would still need the ability to browse through the available options.

Below is a typical example of an e-commerce site where images are an integral part of how we make purchasing decisions.

Another recent technology that is becoming more pervasive is Augmented and Virtual reality. Let’s explore what it means and how it is applied.

What About Augmented And Virtual Reality?

Then there is the world of augmented and virtual reality. Augmented reality is the integration of digital elements into a live camera view commonly used on a mobile phone, and virtual reality is an fully immersive experience in a digital world typically using a headset. Applications of these technologies have already been applied to areas such as education, retail, training, navigation, entertainment, health and enterprise, and the future applications are limitless.

For designers, it’s a new and exciting world that can involve creating new design standards. This article from Toptal describes the main considerations for designers venturing into this space. Firstly, the design moves from the 2D world of interfaces into 3D design, where an understanding of spatial design and UI elements is required. There are new input elements for users that may involve gestures, eye movements, and voice which are very different from the standard 2D interactions that we as designers are familiar with.

The image below illustrates an example of how augmented reality can be used in retail scenarios. Here, the customer is able to virtually try on clothes without the need for a physical change room.

Conclusion

We know that intuitive interfaces are difficult to define, design patterns are important, and natural speech, AR and VR technologies are advancing at a rapid pace. With the continued innovation of artificial intelligence and its integration with speech recognition, AR and VR, we will see increased personalization as our software learns about us and in turn, assists us in our interactions. As designers, we can learn to adapt our design solutions to fit the context of these emerging tools.

While the future of the interface as we know it is uncertain, the interface as a tool is going to be around for a long time to come. As designers, we need to ensure that we can design and importantly, test our designs to validate the market fit and usefulness. Here’s to a world where speech recognition, virtual reality and interfaces work seamlessly together to provide us with constantly enhanced life experiences.

Post credit: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/09/intuitive-design/