October 7, 2022

Oct 7 2022

Building an MVP: Steps and Benefits

Building an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is the first and most crucial step of creating a new digital platform. Before wasting your precious time and resources on developing all features and finished designs for your product, you should validate your idea. For that, building an MVP is the right solution for you.

If you’re thinking about building an MVP, we’re all ears and more than happy to help! Book a consultation with us and let’s discuss your goals.

In this article you’ll read about:

What is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?

A digital product MVP is a UX/UI design and development method introducing it to the market only with its core features. It has enough functionalities and design solutions to get the attention of its target audience and customers and test the business model’s profitability.

Whether you’re planning to build up a platform from scratch or thinking of creating a new functionality/feature, building an MVP first will be on your side. It’ll help you to see and measure how your users react to it and what they think about your idea.

So the concept is quite straightforward: think of what would be your completely finished digital product as a whole. Then take away everything that wouldn’t be absolutely necessary for it to work or to serve its primary purpose. That will be your MVP.

Values and Benefits of Building MVP

First and foremost, the sole purpose and benefit of building an MVP can be different for a business, its users, or a design teams.

Generally, it’s beneficial when you’re planning to build something rather complex. Because this way you’ll be able to test the first and core version of your product. And with testing, you can launch something validated and valuable for the market without spending a lot of money.

But let’s see the benefits in a bit more detail.

Business value of an MVP

The most important business values and benefits of building an MVP:

Save time and money
Validate an idea or value proposition
Test core features and user needs
Launch as early as possible
Attract customers at the earliest stage

You’ll also have the opportunity to test and measure the first version’s performance. Building an MVP will help to see if you need any changes or iterations in its current state – meaning your can already test your value proposition before putting more effort into additional features, designs, and development.

Benefits of an MVP for the users

For your users, an MVP helps to get familiar with the core idea of the whole application, website, or web application. Users tend to enjoy products that are not too complex or overwhelming with too many features and options to choose from.

So there is a great chance that building an MVP first will also serve the user’s needs better. They can get familiar with it more easily and most likely will keep using it with more features and designs added later.

Benefits of an MVP for design teams

As for UX/UI designers and UX researchers, building an MVP is about creating a bridge between business goals and the user’s needs at the earliest possible opportunity.

They need to figure out the most essential features for the users. And how to offer solutions for these needs with the MVP. Meanwhile, design teams also need to keep in mind the product’s primary purpose and business objectives.

A business either works with its internal product team or can join forces with an experienced UX agency like UX studio. We support all sizes of companies and businesses building an MVP and have impactful and successful platforms.

When we work with our clients, our main goal is to build the strongest MVP possible. Our designers and researchers work closely together with stakeholders and developers to make sure that every party’s – including the user’s – needs are met and the early launch is successful.

Our team has all the experience and knowledge you need to build your MVP. And we always take the extra mile to make your product as successful as possible. Want to know how we collaborate with businesses? Book a free consultation with us and let’s get to know each other!

Until then, let’s go through the most important know-hows and best practices for designing an MVP.

What to Do Before Building an MVP

For an early-stage product definition and MVP, the very first step should always be to create a strategic UX/UI design roadmap. It helps you think through the project plan and see it as a whole in its timeline. A roadmap includes what tasks you and your team have and when those tasks are due.

When creating a roadmap, there are four main phases you need to keep in mind for an MVP plan:

Preparation and Discovery – to gather valuable data and insights before making design decisions
Ideation and User Journey – to map out your user flow and platform architecture.
Prototyping and Testing – to validate your ideas and solutions
Launch – to release your product to the market

Steps of Building an MVP

Sure, it seems like a waste of time when you could just go and create your product in one sitting, but trust us, you won’t regret building an MVP.

Any product, digital or otherwise, that is not subjected to extensive ideation, research, prototyping, testing, and validation is almost guaranteed to experience later problems that could have been prevented.

With product ideation, research, prototyping, testing, and validation, you can avoid issues that could come up later. Which are, to be honest, usually complicated and expensive to fix.

So let’s see how you can successfully build an MVP:

1. Do market and competitor research

When you’re building an MVP or any other digital platform, looking around your target market will help to position your service.

Analyze your industry,
Study the target market,
Check your competitors, and
Find a competitive gap.

All-in-all see what and how the market does, how penetrated it is, and what problems your product could solve.

Ultimately, you need to offer a unique solution to your future customers. And, of course, stand out from your competitors with it.

2. Create a value proposition

A value proposition reflects the value your services or platform can deliver. Creating one is pretty tricky. It needs to be as simple as possible yet expressive. It has to tell your customers why they should try it, buy it, and commit to it. It’s your unique offer to your audience.

When you work and ideate on your value proposition, you should focus on three main areas:

What does it do?
Why would it be useful for its users?
What makes it unique?

Core features should be aligned with your value proposition – but not only that. Users should instantly understand what they will get and how your product will serve their goals and needs. Even before they start using any of its features.

3. Know your users and their needs

Understanding your users and their needs is crucial in 2022. They’ll be grateful and loyal to your brand if you can meet their expectations. And loyal customers who stick with you are pretty profitable in the long term.

But what’s the best way to know more about them? Of course, via UX research. Talking with them, listening to them, and getting information about their opinions, expectations, and experiences. That’s how you’ll get from assumptions to validated data.

The most important steps for this in UX research are:

Create an assumptive persona(s) that describes your ideal target users, their most important attributes, and motivations
Find people who fit your set criteria list
Create a script that includes the questions you’d like to ask
Have in-depth interviews with them for qualitative data
Send out surveys to get quantitative data
Analyze your insights to validate your assumptive persona.

This step-by-step process will help you validate your value proposition, develop better features, and design solutions for your future customers.

Good products are best built with data-driven approaches that back up your hypotheses.

At UX studio, we always make sure not to skip this part of any collaboration or product design development process, as this is a crucial part of a good and well-functioning platform.

Drop us a line if you would like us to help you understand your users and audience better!

4. Create a User Journey for your MVP

Before jumping into designing screens one by one, make sure to create a user journey first.

A user journey will be the path your users will go through using your digital platform. It starts when they open your platform and ends at the point when they reach their goal or finish their task.

Your users’ path includes several small steps toward their ultimate goal. And a user journey can help you map out these steps. Each step gets some kind of emotion out of the users — for example, excitement to start something or confusion when not understanding a function.

create a costumer journey for your MVP — Check out how we collected valuable insights (including creating a user journey) that helped GoTRG make data-driven design decisions.

When creating a user journey, you need to make sure that it reflects your user’s needs. Offers a solution that will ease their pain points. In an ideal user journey, all steps and functions should be intuitive and easy to understand.

5. Prioritize features

Features are tools that get users to reach their goals. Every feature belongs to a bigger functionality. Map out what functionalities and features your audience will need. Knowing your value proposition, user pain points, and user journey can help you with that.

But what are functionalities and features? Imagine that you’re on an e-commerce website. You’ll need to go through a couple of steps to buy a product. For example, reviewing products and filtering based on your preferences. This is a functionality. In this functionality features will help you to go through and ease the review and selection process.

You can categorize features into these main groups:

High priority,
Medium priority, and
Low priority

You should focus on the high-priority category when building an MVP. With this in mind, you will be able to deliver only must-have features for your early launch.

6. Prototype, test, repeat

Before deciding on final designs, you can test your ideas with a clickable product version. This way, you’ll quickly get early feedback from actual potential users. During these testing phases, you’ll get actionable insight on what to improve, how to change some solutions, or what to keep.

At UX studio, we always encourage an agile way of thinking and working. With an agile design approach, you break down your process into more digestible design cycles. In each cycle, you focus on 2-3 features and functions. This process will allow you to deliver and develop faster.

The main advantage of any agile method is constant iteration. With iterations, you can test the changed version again. Repeating these steps will guarantee that you will make data-driven design decisions.

7. Launch your MVP

Congrats! You reached the end of the first part of your MVP project. It’s not a small task to manage building an MVP. Take a moment and enjoy the fruit of your labor.

Based on your research, tests, and interviews, you have a clear idea if your MVP fills the gap for your user’s need. Now you just have to soft launch it to get more feedback and measurements before moving on to additional features.

But soft launch is another story for another article.

Why choose UX studio for building an MVP?

At UX studio, we’re a trusted choice for building MVPs. We’ve worked with many startups and industry leaders worldwide, like Google, Netflix, and Zignaly.

Still not sure? Let’s talk! We’re happy to help you figure things out.

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Oct 7 2022

How To Lower Average Cost Per Click via @sejournal, @navahf

Average cost per click (CPC) is top of everyone’s mind – the lower the CPC, the more clicks you can fit into your budget.

There have been several questions about how to lower average CPCs. Today’s Ask An SEO comes from two readers, Muhammad and Raghvendra, who ask the following two questions:

1. How can we reduce our keyword CPC? Keyword is triggering on $15, but I have a low monthly budget. Can you please guide me on how I can control CPC?

2. How can we lower the average CPC of any keywords? For example, the CPC of ‘interior design Institute’ is Rs. 71, but I am getting an average CPC Rs.102 in my search campaign.

This post will review strategies to lower average CPCs and evaluate average CPCs.

How To Lower Average CPCs

It’s important to remember that an auction dictates the average CPC.

The price you pay directly results from what you and your competitors are willing to bid.

The most direct way to control what you bid is with manual bidding. However, doing that forfeits the over 60 signals that go into automated bidding.

Instead, consider opting for different variants of keywords. This can mean bidding on “attorney” vs. “lawyer.” It can also mean bidding on misspellings.

A typical budget buster is bidding on the same concepts in multiple campaigns or ad groups. Before bidding on an idea, make sure you’re not entering the same auctions with that concept.

For example, if you bid on the keyword “dog walker near me” in a campaign targeting Boston and another campaign targeting New York, you would not be driving up your auction price.

If you bid that keyword concept targeting the exact location, it would cause duplicates. Duplicate keywords drive up average CPC.

Why Are Some Average CPCs So High?

Some verticals will have higher average CPCs because of the services offered. Location and cost of living can also influence CPCs.

Setting realistic expectations for the average CPC is essential.

Too low, and you won’t budget enough to get reasonable ROI (return on investment) from your marketing. Too high, and you’ll allow your campaigns to get complacent.

As more and more accounts shift to automated bidding, building in time for new campaigns to find their keyword champion is essential.

Sometimes it makes sense to opt into more expensive keywords because they represent higher value.

For example, investing makes sense if you know your best customers search a certain way and tend to transact at a specific time.

On the other hand, cheap clicks for the sake of cheap clicks might clog the budget and make it so you don’t have fuel for those prime prospects.

Balance efficiency with pragmatism, and your account will perform well.

Final Takeaways

The most significant contributing factor to increased CPCs is competition.

Make sure you’re not accidentally bidding against yourself, along with setting reasonable expectations for the competitiveness/value of keyword concepts.

Have a question about PPC? Submit via this form or tweet me @navahf with the #AskPPC hashtag. See you next month!

More resources:

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

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Oct 7 2022

Current Trends in Email Marketing: Tips & Pitfalls – Ep. 288 via @sejournal, @lorenbaker

Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to reach your audience. However, staying up-to-date on the latest trends is crucial to avoiding common mistakes.

Jay Schwedelson, the founder of SubjectLine.com, joins me on the SEJShow to discuss subject line techniques you should be testing, key tips for conversions, and pitfalls to avoid.

You’ll discover new options to stay ahead of the curve and how to make the most out of your email marketing.

You’re not going to get more business by sending less. That’s not the way it works. You need to send more. Marketers think they send too much, but they’re just not sending relevant stuff. –Jay Schwedelson, 6:50

Technology has changed in the last five to seven years, and the reason you go to the inbox versus the junk folder is not because of the content. It’s not because of the words or symbols that you’re putting in your subject line. It’s because of your sending reputation. It’s because of the engagement, the opens, and the clicks you’re generating with the people in your database. Your engagement is the reason you’re going to the inbox or not. –Jay Schwedelson, 8:58

You go in the junk folder because you have a bad sending reputation. You have no engagement. The misconception of spam trigger words hurts marketers because they’re trying to write subject lines, not utilizing the words that all marketers know to work the best –things like free or expires. –Jay Schwedelson, 9:47

[00:00] – About Jay.
[03:02] – What is the Guru Conference?
[08:15] – Common email myths.
[11:10] – Does purging & getting unsubscribes help with ratios?
[15:24] – Email triggers words that are not okay.
[19:24] – Using emojis in subject lines.
[23:13] – What are Friendly Forms?
[26:01] – Importance of personal names & avatars.
[29:10] – How important is a subject line in outreach emails?
[33:15] – How personalized can we get with email marketing?
[37:10] – How important is it to get the CTA above the fold?
[40:25] – Holiday email marketing tips.
[45:24] – How to avoid getting into the promotions folder of Gmail.

Resources mentioned:

Guru Conference – https://guruconference.com/
Subject Line – https://www.subjectline.com/
Outcome Media – https://outcomemedia.com/
Inside Scoop – https://jayschwedelson.com/

Email marketing here at SEJ is one of our cores. It’s one of our most significant pillars in terms of marketing. –Loren Baker, 4:57

You don’t have to get any negative repercussions from an unsubscribe. You get negative repercussions from spam complaints which only occur if you’re doing some sketchy stuff. –Jay Schwedelson, 12:44

If they’re going to unsubscribe, they will never buy anything from you. So, therefore, they send the offer because they’re looking and waiting for something. –Loren Baker, 5:46

For more content like this, subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/searchenginejournal

Connect with Jay Schwedelson:

Email marketing expert Jay Schwedelson is one of the best in the business. Founder of the #1 rated subject line grading tool, Subjectline.com, he’s evaluated over 15 million subjects and helped 200 thousand marketers send out their message effectively!

Also, as the President and CEO of Outcome Media, Jay has helped some of the most iconic brands in the world to become even more successful. With his innovative solutions, he knows what it takes for your business to soar.

Connect with Jay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schwedelson/

Connect with Loren Baker, Founder of Search Engine Journal:

Follow him on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/lorenbaker
Connect with him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorenbaker

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Oct 7 2022

Learn SEO: A Blueprint From Beginner To Advanced via @sejournal, @lorenbaker

There isn’t a standard way to learn search engine optimization (SEO). Ask anyone working here at SEJ how they started in SEO, and you’ll get lots of different stories.

It can be frustrating because if your business has any online presence at all, you need to know at least some SEO.

Maybe you’ve just launched that amazing new website and want Google to rank you on the first page.

Or maybe your existing website isn’t getting the traffic you want. Or you just want to start a new, in-demand career.

Whatever the reason you want to learn SEO, you’re in the right spot.

Right now, some of you are probably a little bit intimidated. All this talk of search algorithms and keyword research and reciprocal links sounds complicated.

Relax, despite all the technical jargon, SEO isn’t that hard to learn, even for a complete beginner. You just have to be willing to put in the time and effort.

This article will give you a step-by-step blueprint you can follow to build your SEO skills from scratch or enhance your existing knowledge.

And while we can’t promise you a top ranking in Google, we promise that if you do the work, you’ll see results.

Your Guide To Learning SEO

Before we dive into the first step on your path to becoming an SEO Jedi, let’s take a quick look at what exactly we mean by search engine optimization.

According to Google’s developer’s guide:

“Search engine optimization is the process of making your site better for search engines.”

In other words, it’s figuring out exactly what changes you need to make to your website to make it more relevant to search queries.

The elements of SEO fall under two main categories: on-page and off-page.

As you might expect, on-page SEO elements are the parts that are on your website. These include:

Crawlability and indexability, i.e., how easy it is for search engines to find and map your content.
Content quality and keyword usage.
Usability factors such as loading time and responsiveness, known as Core Web Vitals.
Mobile responsiveness.
E-A-T: expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.
Images.
Tags.

Off-page SEO elements, on the other hand, are the ranking factors that come from outside your domain. This primarily focuses on link building and getting other high-quality websites to link to your content.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s dive into the step-by-step process of mastering SEO.

Step 1: Master The Basics

One of the best things about Google is its extensive amount of available information. While they won’t give away the secret sauce of what exactly drives its algorithm, the search engine giant is surprisingly forthcoming about what does and doesn’t get factored into rankings.

And even better, they’ve provided an extremely helpful SEO starter guide for people just starting in the field. This is a high-level view of how search engine optimization works, including definitions of common terms and the basics of getting ranked.

If you’re starting your SEO education completely from scratch, this is the perfect place to start.

It will tell you how to get your site on Google, the best ways to control crawling so the search engine can find your content, and indexability, which will help it understand what your content is about – and what sort of queries it will be a good fit for.

Every year at SEJ, we produce multiple ebooks on various SEO and digital marketing topics. One such ebook is our SEO For Beginners Guide, a comprehensive starter guide and how-to for many common SEO tasks.

Step 2: Dive Deeper Into The Technical Side

Once you feel confident that you have the fundamentals of SEO down, it’s time to move on to more technical concepts.

Once again, Google has provided several excellent resources for your educational purposes.

One good spot to further your education is the webmaster guidelines for maintaining your site’s SEO. It can help get you started with intermediate to advanced techniques for boosting your ranking or dealing with other SEO issues.

This includes information on how to deal with duplicate content and canonical pages, using robots.txt files to tell Google which pages to crawl and index, building and submitting sitemaps, and other ways you can help Google better understand your site.

Depending on what type of content you have on your site, you may need to use different strategies to maximize its exposure.

For example, videos are a popular form of content requiring extra SEO work to ensure they rank as highly as possible.

If you’re using anything outside of plain text (and you should be – no one wants to scroll through a wall of text), make sure you check Google’s content-specific guidelines.

Step 3: Create An SEO Process

By this point, you hopefully have a reasonably good understanding of what SEO is and how it works.

And now, it’s time to put that education into practice by developing and implementing your very own SEO process.

If you’re working on an existing site, the very first thing you need to do is perform an SEO audit. This is a fairly extensive undertaking, but once again, Search Engine Journal to the rescue!

We’ve created an ebook that will walk you through the entire process of evaluating your current SEO efforts using a helpful checklist.

After you’ve understood where you stand now, it’s time to build a strategy. If only there were another helpful ebook you could use to guide you through that process – oh wait, we have one.

This is a step-by-step guide (plus a template) to building your year-long SEO strategy, with month-by-month guidance to help you measure results and improve your rankings.

And regarding monitoring performance, Google Search Console gives you a ton of analytics and information you can use to improve site traffic. It would greatly behoove you to become familiar with this tool.

Step 4: Optimize Your Content

It is impossible to overstate how important your website’s content is. Content is what drives people to your site, encourages them to take action, and is the entire reason for your site to exist in the first place.

So, after you’ve done the backend, technical and strategic work necessary to boost your ranking, it’s time to focus on your content.

Your content strategy should have been a big part of your overall strategy, as discussed in the last step, but this is where the rubber meets the road.

This is where you’ll create the keyword-rich (but not overstuffed) copy, build a solid structure that’s easy for bots and humans to read, and improve your overall content experience.

For detailed information on how to perform this, watch this webinar.

Step 5: Build Your Backlinks

This has been touched on already, but it warrants its own step.

Your incoming links tell Google a lot about how trustworthy your site is.

For example, if you fall for one of those link farms, pay-per-link scams (which, of course, you never would), Google will probably ignore those links.

On the other hand, if the Chicago Tribune is directing people to your page, Google may well view that endorsement in a good light and consider that link valuable.

But how exactly do you build links? Did you really expect us to ask that question and then not have another great ebook that answers that question in-depth?

Download and read this for everything you need to know about building and maintaining a fruitful link-building campaign.

Step 6: Don’t Forget About Humans

With all the technical parts to search engine optimization, it can be really easy to forget about the primary purpose of your website: to provide value for actual people.

And lest you think Google search is entirely comprised of a variety of computer programs, don’t forget actual humans are verifying the algorithm’s work.

These people are known as Search Quality Raters. They follow an extensive guide to determine how well Google search results meet the needs of the querier and evaluate your pages’ quality.

So, always keep that in the back of your mind – that even with all the title tag and image optimization and responsive design work you’ve put in, at the end of the day, SEO is all about people.

Step 7: Never Stop Learning

Whew, that was a lot. Now you can just sit back and relax, enjoying your new title of sixth-degree SEO black belt, right? Not even a little.

Search engine algorithms are constantly undergoing changes.

Some of these are so small you won’t notice, while others make a big change in the kind of returns queries generate. And this constant state of flux means the last thing you can do is rest on your laurels.

But where do you go from here?

Luckily, there is a vast ocean of SEO resources out there, including this very website, where you’ll find all the news, as well as regular updates and blog posts on a variety of topics related to search engines.

But we’d be remiss if we didn’t tell you about some of the great online courses to help you take your search engine optimization skills to the next level.

For your convenience, we’ve provided a select list here, and you can check out some of them in more detail in this post about SEO certifications.

Free SEO Courses For Beginners

Coursera’s Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals: This 13-hour, 4-module digital course (created by the University of California, Davis) is designed to help you understand how search algorithms affect organic search results. It covers everything from building an effective strategy to analyzing and optimizing your existing website.

Ahrefs’ SEO Training Course: This program, presented by SEO tools software provider Ahrefs, consists of 14 lessons split into four modules, comprising two hours in total length. It will teach you the fundamentals of SEO, including how to perform keyword research, technical SEO, and link building for beginners.

Shopify’s SEO Training for Beginners: The ecommerce platform Shopify offers a 30-minute course designed to help online entrepreneurs get up to speed on the fundamentals of SEO fast. This course will give you a repeatable framework you can apply to help improve your business’s search engine ranking.

Yoast’s SEO for Beginners Training: Another SEO tools provider, Yoast’s beginner’s course in SEO features two hours of instructional videos, PDF files, and quizzes to train you in what you’ve learned.

WP Courses’ Intro to Search Engine Optimization: This free course is designed to teach you how to improve your site for both search engines and human visitors. It covers the basics of SEO, including performing keyword research, creating great content, and optimizing your site for maximum ranking and traffic.

Bruce Clay SEO Training: Bruce Clay is known as the programmer of the first webpage analysis tool. Now, he runs a search marketing company (Bruce Clay, Inc.) that provides a wide range of digital marketing services. This online course will teach you how to improve your website’s ranking with an emphasis on E-A-T. It includes more than 15 hours of instruction across 48 videos.

Next.js’ Introduction to SEO: This text-based course offered by production framework Next.js provides a quick, four-page overview of SEO. It covers search systems and robots and web performance topics, emphasizing using them alongside Next.js.

Hubspot’s SEO Training Course: This short course offers free certification and focuses on the business impacts of SEO. With six lessons built around 22 videos and three quizzes, it uses Hubspot’s blogging strategy as its core example when explaining how SEO works.

Intermediate To Advanced SEO Resources

Got the fundamentals down and are ready to move on to more advanced topics? There are plenty of great resources out there, including:

Semrush Digital Courses: Online visibility and content marketing SaaS provider Semrush has put together one of the best libraries of SEO content available anywhere. These free lessons, which generally run one hour in length, are hosted by various experts and cover nearly every aspect of digital marketing you can think of – including a dozen on search engine optimization.

Ahrefs’ Advanced Link Building Course: This 14-lesson course can be completed in under two hours. It’s designed to equip you with strategies for building links at scale – that go beyond traditional backlinking tactics. It will teach you how to structure and distribute outreach emails, validate campaigns, and manage your link-building team more effectively.

Coursera’s Advanced Search Engine Optimization Strategies: This free 25-hour course focuses on technical, mobile, and social strategies for improving your website’s traffic. It will teach you more advanced SEO skills like improving site architecture, evaluating competitors, and developing global strategies.

LinkedIn Learning: Formerly Lynda.com, the educational portion of the social networking site LinkedIn offers a variety of SEO topics, from beginner to advanced. It offers a free trial but then costs $19.99 per month for unlimited access. LinkedIn Learning has 86 SEO-related videos, many of which specialize in one particular aspect, for example, SEO for ecommerce sites or structuring data for web crawlers.

Advanced Technical SEO: A Complete Guide: You didn’t really think we were going to make this list and not include another of our ebooks, did you? Maybe we’re biased, but this free downloadable ebook will teach you everything you need to know about technical SEO, including finding the best hosting company, structuring your site to be web crawler-friendly, and best practices for pagination, alongside a wealth of other useful information.

Google Analytics Academy: While strictly speaking not an SEO course, if you’re serious about SEO and improving your skills, this certification is well worth earning. This free course will help you better understand the content and digital marketing industry while ensuring you get the most out of the tools the search engine giant makes available.

Stay Up To Date And Get Optimizing

As you can see, there’s quite a lot that goes into search engine optimization. And even experts are learning new things every day.

Hopefully, by this point, you’ve learned a bit about SEO basics and where to learn more about them.

And after you’ve perused some of the linked materials, then it’s time to put your new knowledge into action.

Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see results immediately – remember, search engine optimization is a marathon, not a sprint. Sometimes, it can take months for your changes to start showing up on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Just remember, this is a constantly shifting environment, and what worked yesterday may not work today. This is partly because of shady SEO specialists who gamed the algorithm through things like keyword stuffing and article spinning (i.e., recreating content with different words).

But the main reason you must stay on top of SEO is Google’s unending quest to provide better, more relevant results.

Currently, this means focusing more on search intent than keywords, but who knows what it will mean tomorrow?

The only way to stay on top is to keep working once you get there. Because if you kick your heels up, it won’t be long before your hard-earned ranking goes away to a harder-working, savvier optimizer.

Don’t ever stop learning, and now get out there and get to the top of search results!

More Resources:

Featured Image: fizkes/Shutterstock

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Oct 7 2022

Text Formatting: Is It A Google Ranking Factor? via @sejournal, @mirandalmwrites

Several HTML elements format text to help website visitors and search engine crawlers easily identify important portions of your content.

But can these elements have an impact on your rankings in search?

Continue reading to learn if text formatting is a Google ranking factor.

The Claim: Text Formatting As A Ranking Factor

You can use HTML elements to format text in various ways; for example:

Bold text using .
Indicate strong importance, seriousness, or urgency using .
Italicize text using .
Indicate emphasis and meaning using .
Underline text using .

and differ from and , as the former indicate semantic importance while the latter are styles that indicate how the words appear on the screen.

That is an important distinction we’ll dig into later.

Some believe that using HTML elements to highlight specific words for Google can directly impact how the webpage ranks for those keywords.

But are they right?

The Evidence For Text Formatting As A Ranking Factor

Google’s Matt Cutts seemed to indicate in a 2013 Google Search Central video that HTML text formatting is a ranking factor.

Or did he?

A viewer had asked, “In terms of SEO, what is the difference between tag and tag for emphasis on certain words of text?”

Cutts noted that he had answered this question before, in 2006, and didn’t think the answer had changed.

“Back then, whenever we checked, and were treated the exact same in terms of ranking and scoring and how they’re indexed and all that sort of stuff.

Likewise, there’s also the and the that stands for italics, and those were treated exactly the same.

You could use either one, and it wouldn’t make a difference in terms of Google ranking.”

A Google patent awarded in 2014 also suggests that ranking algorithms give bolded/italicized text extra weight:

“One existing document quality measurement technique calculates an Information Retrieval (IR) score that is a measure of how relevant a document is to a search query.

The IR score can be weighted in various ways. For example, matches in a document’s title might be weighted more than matches in a footer.

Similarly, matches in text that is of larger font or bolded or italicized may be weighted more than matches in normal text.”

Of course, not everything that Google patents get used in algorithms.

[Discover:] More Google Ranking Factor Insights

The Evidence Against Text Formatting As A Ranking Factor

In the earlier-referenced video, Cutts is saying Google treats the two types of HTML elements the same from a ranking perspective.

He doesn’t say whether they impact ranking at all. It could be that they equally have no impact.

Google has never confirmed or denied HTML formatting as a ranking factor.

In the Google developer documentation style guide, Google offers advice on HTML and semantic tagging. Specifically, you shouldn’t use HTML elements for visual formatting.

“The element indicates emphasis, not italics as such. Don’t use it to italicize something that isn’t meant to be emphasized; instead, use for non-emphasis italics.

The element indicates strong importance, not bold as such. To bold a word that doesn’t merit strong importance, use the element.”

This suggests that tags like and are important for understanding pages.

John Mueller responded to a tweeted question about bold text in particular in 2017, but again, the response is somewhat ambiguous and open to interpretation:

“You’ll probably get more out of bolding text for human users / usability in the end. Bots might like, but they’re not going to buy anything.”

Many on-page factors have diminished in importance since the early 2000s.

But here’s what logic tells us: If you want to rank for a term, simply using that word in your content and then making it bold (or italics, or bold and italics) every single time you use it won’t be enough alone to elevate it in the rankings.

Mueller, in 2021, confirmed that text formatting could help both users and bots see what you want to stand out on a page.

“It’s essentially semantic HTML – make it easy to recognize (for bots & users) what you think should stand out on a page. Titles help, headings help, highlighting within text helps (like bold, or strong, etc), tables for tabular data, lists as lists, etc.”

But in the following tweet, he also confirmed it would not help with rankings.

“These things don’t make your site rocket up in rankings, but especially with regards to understanding pages better, small things can help. Think of it more as giving relative guidance within the page; if you have 5 ‘SEO-points’, what should they be used for on this page?”

In a Google SEO office hours from the same date, Mueller discussed an argument on whether bolding parts of your paragraph could boost your SEO.

After referencing the Matt Cutts video from 2012, he explains that semantic HTML allows you to give more meaning to a part of the page with proper markup.

“So usually, we do try to understand what the content is about on a webpage, and we look at different things to try to figure out what is actually being emphasized here. And that includes things like headings on a page, but it also includes things like what is actually bolded or emphasized within the text on a page.

So, to some extent, that does have a little bit of extra value there in that it’s a clear sign that actually, you think this page or this paragraph is about this topic here.

And usually, that aligns with what we think the page is about anyway. So it doesn’t change that much. The other thing is that this is, to a large extent, relevant within the webpage.

So, if you go off and say, well, I will just make my whole page bold and then Google will think my page is the most important one, then by making everything bold, essentially, nothing is bold because it’s all the same.

Whereas, if you take a handful of sentences or words within your full page where you say, this is really important for me, and you bold those, then it’s a lot easier for us to say, well, here’s a lot of text, and this is potentially one of the most important points of this page. And we can give that a little bit more value

And essentially, what that kind of goes into is everything around semantic HTML where you’re giving a little bit more meaning to a page by using the proper markup for the page. And from our point of view, that’s good. It helps us to understand the page a little bit better.

So, if you want to simplify it to a one-word answer, does bolding important points on a paragraph help the SEO? Yes, it does. It does help us to better understand that paragraph or that page.”

Text Formatting As A Ranking Factor: Our Verdict

As you can see, text formatting can affect how search engines determine the most important content on a page.

But, it’s unlikely that bolded content on a page will be the element that moves you above competitors in search results.

Even so, proper markup will help users and search engines find the most important points of your content.

You can learn more about text-level semantics and how to appropriately use these elements in the WHATWG Community HTML Living Standard resource that Apple, Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft provide.

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

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Oct 7 2022

Google to launch Helpful Content Update to diversify search results

It’s probably no secret that the search results for many topics on Google don’t give you the best results. Many topics are highjacked by high-paying ad buyers and companies with big budgets to write over-optimized SEO content at the expense of readability and user experience. The result is frustration for the searcher. Google is aware of this and is trying to diversify the search results with a new Helpful Content Update.

What is going on?

If you’ve been following our industry for a while, you have noticed many articles popping up over the last couple of years describing the death of Google search. If you haven’t, read The Open Secret of Google Search in The Atlantic, or the Google Search is Dying post, which went viral earlier this year. You’ll quickly discover that some topics’ search results are unusable and unhelpful. This is not a good look for Google.

SEO companies and marketing agencies have pumped out over-optimized SEO content for years, spamming the search results with average to bad stuff, describing the same stuff over and over to please the search engine — not searchers.

Of course, optimizing your content isn’t a bad thing. We’ve been telling you to improve your content for years. But there’s a difference between optimized and over-optimized. There are people out there spending huge amounts of money to spit out mediocre content at scale just to try and game the system. Now, with the rise of AI writing tools, it is getting even easier to do this.

Investing in the future

Google has been investigating ways to make the search results better and more welcoming for new — and better — voices. They’ve been cranking out patents for proposed improvements to their algorithms, like the information gain patent that looks at what documents have in common to find something that stands out from the commonness.

Google also invested heavily in its understanding of language and the use of AI. With language models MUM and BERT, Google has excellent tools to uncover and understand the content that otherwise would be left by the side of the road. It should distinguish better between content written to manipulate the search results and high-quality, unique content written to please searchers.

Now, it’s time for Google to combine its insights and launch a new addition to its algorithms with the Helpful Content Update. Combined with the recent Product Review updates, this aims to bring expert content to the forefront. This update has the potential to really shake things up.

What is the Helpful Content Update?

The Helpful Content Update is part of a more significant project at Google aimed at getting more diversity in the search results. Google describes it as uncovering more original, helpful content for people, written by people. Google’s Danny Sullivan said, “our testing has found it will especially improve results related to online education, as well as arts and entertainment, shopping, and tech-related content.”

Google aims to reward content that gives readers a satisfying experience and demotes content written only to please search engines. For this, Google not only looks at the quality of a particular piece of content on your site to determine its value but also at what you do on the rest of your site.

“This update introduces a new site-wide signal that we consider among many other signals for ranking web pages. Our systems automatically identify content that seems to have little value, low-added value or is otherwise not particularly helpful to those doing searches,” Google says.

In addition, “Any content — not just unhelpful content — on sites determined to have relatively high amounts of unhelpful content overall is less likely to perform well in Search, assuming there is other content elsewhere from the web that’s better to display. For this reason, removing unhelpful content could help the rankings of your other content.”

What does this mean for you?

That depends! You might be in trouble if you’ve also been pumping out low-quality content to get high rankings. Our advice has always been to write high-quality, unique content that makes a difference for searchers, not search engines. Still, it will not be good enough if you’ve been writing what everybody else has been writing.

It’s going to be even more important to be unique and to write high-quality stuff. For some topics, E-A-T will increasingly have a voice in what expertise and trustworthiness means and how this will be viewed.

An important thing to note on this Helpful Content Update is that it is site-wide. This means that, even if you have a perfect cornerstone article for your main topic, low-quality content on other parts of your site may keep it from ranking highly. This might make it necessary to improve the rest of your site by upping the quality of your content or by removing low-quality stuff. Of course, your route depends on what you want to achieve.

Google shared a handy list of questions you can ask yourself to validate your strategy:

Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find the content useful if it came directly to you?
Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge (for example, expertise that comes from having actually used a product or service, or visiting a place)?
Does your site have a primary purpose or focus?
After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?
Will someone read your content leave feeling like they’ve had a satisfying experience?
Are you keeping in mind our guidance for core updates and for product reviews?

How can you check and improve your content for this update?

What can you do to improve your content or make a balanced decision on deleting stuff? Google shared a helpful list of questions to ask yourself when looking at your content. Answering yes to any of these questions should be a red flag. You can find it in Google’s post on the Helpful Content Update, but we’ll share it below for posterity:

Is the content primarily to attract people from search engines rather than made for humans?
Are you producing lots of content on different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results?
Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics?
Are you mainly summarizing what others have to say without adding much value?
Are you writing about things simply because they seem to trend and not because you’d write about them otherwise for your existing audience?
Does your content leave readers feeling like they need to search again to get better information from other sources?
Are you writing to a particular word count because you’ve heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don’t).
Did you decide to enter some niche topic area without any real expertise, but instead mainly because you thought you’d get search traffic?
Does your content promise to answer a question that actually has no answer, such as suggesting there’s a release date for a product, movie, or TV show when one isn’t confirmed?

The Helpful Content Update will roll out soon

Google announced that the Helpful Content Update will roll out for the English-speaking world starting next week. Google will keep us up to date on when it’s done rolling out the new update.

Edwin Toonen

Edwin is a strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he spent years honing his skill at The Netherlands’ leading web design magazine.

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Oct 7 2022

Yoast SEO Premium 19.2: A new inclusive language analysis — in beta

Non-inclusive language excludes people based on beliefs, gender, sexuality, or health, while inclusive language uses better alternatives to words that people might find harmful. Making your content inclusive helps you to reach a broader audience. But while writing, it is surprisingly easy to exclude people by accidentally using the wrong words. While inclusive language has always been important, it is getting more important for SEO daily. That’s one of the reasons we are launching a new inclusive language analysis in Yoast SEO Premium 19.2.

How does inclusive language help SEO?

If you want your pages to be found, you need to use the language your audience uses to search. So as language and society evolve, so must your writing and content. You probably also don’t want to alienate people who might engage with, convert, buy from, link to, or share your content!

Even Google comments on the use of inclusive language in your content:

If you write anything for SEO, internally or publicly, please watch our for inclusive language. It doesn’t take much work, and you might not get it right all the time, but taking steps to get better matters too. https://t.co/IWKYHGUpQH

— 🌽〈link href=//johnmu.com rel=canonical 〉🌽 (@JohnMu) September 7, 2022

But what is inclusive language? According to Wikipedia,

“Inclusive language avoids expressions that are considered to express or imply ideas that are sexist, racist, or otherwise biased, prejudiced, or denigrating to any particular group of people (and sometimes animals as well). Inclusive language aims to produce content that is accessible and credible to the widest possible audience. What inclusive language actually looks like varies based on standards in education, religion, and publishing.”

With the new inclusive language analysis in Yoast SEO Premium, we’re enabling you to attract a wider audience and reduce the risk of alienating people from your content. We’re also helping you make the web a better place by promoting content that makes everyone feel included and recognized, regardless of their diverse identities.

The inclusive language analysis is opt-in, so it won’t be activated by default. It’s your choice to use it to write inclusive content for your audience. You can activate it by going to Yoast SEO > General > Features and toggle the inclusive language analysis to on.

It’s also good to remember that the other analyses won’t change if you choose not to use this new feature. Also, we’re releasing it in beta, but that’s not because the feature is not done — because it is –, but because we want your feedback to make it even better! If you don’t have Yoast SEO Premium yet, now might be a good time to get it.

Activate the inclusive language analysis in Yoast SEO > General > Features

Keeping an eye on the inclusiveness of your language

What is and isn’t inclusive can be hard to figure out as a writer. Especially when you are not part of a minority, it’s tough to stay on track to keep your language inclusive. Non-inclusive language is broad and ranges from gender to race and from age to physical and mental health.

As we’ve been giving you writing advice for years, it only made sense for us to dive deeper into this topic to help you figure out what to write to keep your content inclusive.

Our team of linguists used the inclusive language expertise of Maxwell Hope from the University of Delaware to develop this feature. Together, they extensively researched the topic and created a vast list of non-inclusive terms and inclusive alternatives for those. We made an intelligent analysis that considers how you use the terms. It guides you using inclusive language and signals where you might have used non-inclusive words.

For instance, rather than talking about obese people, it might be better to use terms like has/have a higher weight; higher-weight person/people; person/people in higher weight body/bodies; heavier person/people. Or, when using dated terms such as retarded, which have come to take on a derogatory nuance, you’ll get alternative suggestions such as uninformed, ignorant, foolish, irrational, or insensible.

Of course, we have described the things we’re looking for in-depth in our help documentation on inclusive language:

The inclusive language analysis is only available for the English language for now. We have almost 200 terms in our database, and we’re actively maintaining and expanding that list. If you have feedback on the list or the workings of the assessment, please get in touch with us!

Example of feedback you might get using the inclusive language assessment in Yoast SEO Premium

Inclusive language analysis is in beta

We’re launching the inclusive language analysis in beta, and we won’t activate it by default. If you want to try it out, head to the settings of Yoast SEO and activate the new feature. As the feature is in beta, we are actively improving it, and we’re listening to your feedback on how to make the most of this new feature.

As always, there’s more to an update than a new feature. In Yoast SEO 19.6, we’ve also done a lot of bug fixes and performance enhancements. Read on to find out more.

Significant performance updates in Yoast SEO 19.6

We have users with sites in all shapes and sizes — from sites with just a couple of pages to huge ones with an enormous amount of custom code and large taxonomies. Usually, it’s not hard to keep a small site performant, but that’s harder when your site gets more complex.

The same goes for Yoast SEO; sometimes, the plugin’s performance suffers when encountering extreme situations. In Yoast SEO 19.6, we fixed two issues that hindered the plugin from performing well on sites with particular set-ups and large taxonomies.

One issue concerning the performance of the link suggestions in particular situations. On some sites, those requests would take ages to load and clog up servers. It took some time, but we’ve now fixed this issue.

The other issue concerns the performance of the Yoast SEO fields in the editor. It fixes a performance issue in the meta description, SEO title, and social meta field editors, which could occur when using large amounts of custom fields.

Both fixes should make Yoast SEO make performant in more complex situations.

Update now!

Yoast SEO 19.6 and Premium 19.2 are out today. In these releases, we’ve introduced a brand-new inclusive language assessment in beta and significant performance improvements for more complex websites.

Edwin Toonen

Edwin is a strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he spent years honing his skill at The Netherlands’ leading web design magazine.

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Oct 7 2022

The UX design trends that will shape the industry 2022

After the pandemic brought about a series of changes within UX as an industry, last year other factors left their mark as well. Economic and social contexts shaped the bigger part of the UX trends coming up in the field. Whatever 2020 brought, things went to an entire new level in 2021.

This makes it a good time to take a step back and consider bigger questions.

What’s happening in UX design? Are we doing the right things? What’s really important to us, as UX professionals? How can we make change happen? And how can we make sure it’s a change for the better?

UI design vs UX design trends

We shouldn’t ask those questions only when we’re thinking about how to create products and interfaces that are relevant in 2022. If you’re looking for ideas for that, I highly recommend 2022 UI trends.

No doubt that it’s important to keep our products and our visual language updated for the 21st century. However, it’s also important to go beyond the UI and think about the craft of UX in 2022.

So, we should also ask those questions about the UX design industry overall. Those answers will shape a lot of how we create and the conditions under which we create.

What can we look forward to in the industry? What are the underlying UX trends for the following year?

Yet, to understand where we’re going, we need to understand where we’re coming from. Before we dive into the future, let’s take a look at the year that’s passed.

2021 UX trends

Most of the predictions for 2021 revolved around tools and rethinking UX around remote. Yet the reality was totally different. If, in 2020, a lot of things came to a standstill in UX because of the pandemic, 2021 was at the complete opposite. Things gained momentum as businesses opened up after the pandemic in a lot of areas.

The first important UX trend for last year was the Great Resignation. The Great resignation is the name given to the ongoing economic trend when a lot of people were voluntarily quitting their jobs (source). While the Great Resignation had the biggest impact on hospitality and travel (source), tech was also affected. Burnt out and tired by the uncertainty of the pandemic, a lot of designers and engineers switched jobs. They were looking for better conditions, flexible hours and better pay. (source) To be more accurate: 31% of those working in the tech sector looked for better opportunities last year between July and September, according to a Wired article.

In a way, the Great Resignation highlighted another important UX trend: the demand for UX professionals, especially experienced ones. A CNN Money report predicts that the demand for UX will grow by 18% until 2025. (source)

Another important UX trend was the influx of junior UX professionals in the market. For a lot of people, UX seems like the perfect career path – especially given the higher pay that these offer (source). The entry barrier doesn’t seem that high either. Just take a bootcamp or a course and you’re ready to start applying for positions in the field. Supported by the demand for UX professionals, bootcamps and foundation courses have grown even more in the past year. Besides already-established programs provided by GeneralAssembly or CareerFoundry, Google also launched their own UX design course last year on Coursera. In less than a year, the program got more than 370,000 enrollments (source), with a lot of students completing it. And that’s Google’s course alone.

The third UX trend that marked 2021 was the increased focus on accessibility and inclusivity (source). A lot of the UX design content published last year focused on these topics and how designers can bring these more into their work. Making design available to everyone, no matter the race, age or abilities has been one of the key UX trends for 2021. By making design accessible and available to everyone, UX professionals can create a better world, making sure that everyone has equal opportunities and experiences. In this sense, design has become one of the channels to fight against and eliminate racism or bias and one of the ways to ensure we’re moving forward to a better world.

Besides the focus on inclusivity and accessibility, design systems were another important UX trend in 2021. UX design is slowly maturing and we can see this in improvements in the way of working. Up until a few years ago, designers were building screens individually, without a lot of sync between them and without a common library of guides, rules and elements. Right now the growing tendency is towards working with a system of components. This has multiple benefits. First, it ensures consistency throughout the design and different platforms. Second, this allows designers to focus more on problem solving instead of screens and aesthetics.

Now let’s take a look at the 2022 UX trends.

UX trends 2022

Given last year’s developments, there will be some UX trends that will continue in 2022. The focus on accessibility and inclusivity is definitely going to continue. While this year we might not see big surprises, there are still some UX design trends to keep an eye on. And there are also underlying needs in the industry which should help make UX design better for both professionals and businesses.

1. UX education

Given the high number of juniors in the market and the increased demand for UX professionals, UX education should be one of the most important UX trends in 2022. But UX education needs to be considered from two perspectives.

On the one hand, the newcomers to UX need great resources to be well prepared for the job market. Bootcamps are often not enough or give a shallow introduction to UX. Considered the fast food of UX education (source), bootcamps sometimes leave students with a very superficial understanding of UX and of the methods involved. In turn, this can become problematic when students join the workforce and start working. Good, reliable UX education that goes beyond the basics will be very important.

On the other hand, companies and senior management would also benefit immensely from a good UX education, even if it’s just basic. Even if companies are actively recruiting UX professionals, it’s often clear from the job descriptions that the positions are not really UX. Job openings which include heavy emphasis on visual design or data analysis as responsibilities for the positions can be a red flag that the company does not actually do UX (source).

A basic UX education would be necessary to make sure that companies are establishing UX the right way. Also, from a business perspective, senior and upper management would need a basic understanding of UX and the design process. That would help tremendously. Designers wouldn’t need to explain every step of the process and they could work in a more organized manner. Understanding basic UX methods and the process would make it easier for other roles as well, knowing when to integrate designers and researchers in the process. While there are some companies that are already doing that, they tend to be the exception and not the rule. Also, tech companies are the outliers – not the usual example.

The need for more quality UX education is something we can confirm working in this field. We see it on both sides – in the applications we receive for the open positions and in the challenges we sometimes encounter on projects.

To make sure that UX has a future in which methods are applied properly, UX education should also be a major focus in 2022 so business can get the most of UX.

2. Increasing UX maturity

Another UX design trend that we should see in 2022 could be an increase in UX maturity inside companies. That UX trend could be one of the results of a good UX education. However, it should also be a natural consequence of what’s already happening in the industry. More professionals are joining the market and at the same time, more and more companies are opening UX positions.

As more companies are embracing design and user experience, they will need to – sooner or later – figure out how to properly integrate UX into existing processes. Introducing UX inside a company is the first step. Making sure there are good processes in place will help them make the most of what this discipline has to offer.

Establishing a good UX collaboration with other departments like marketing, customer support or sales will be crucial here. If UX is not an integral part of how a company works and how it builds its products and services, UX cannot work properly.

However, until the average company reaches a good UX maturity it will take some time. And a lot of education. This requires a bit of a fundamental change in how companies do things, as well as buy-in from leadership at all levels inside companies. However, this is a big change and it will take time and iteration.

Conversely, companies that already have a good UX process in place will strengthen theirs. They already have a head start in this, but to continue being competitive and attractive to UX-ers, they will need to do more. As some companies strengthen their UX processes, they will hopefully lead the way so others can follow.

3. Continued focus on accessibility & inclusivity

Also, a UX trend that will definitely continue in 2022 as well is the focus on accessibility and inclusivity. Last year just scratched the surface, bringing accessibility and inclusivity into discussion, making designers and their stakeholders aware of these topics.

This year will probably continue that to the point of turning these into basic UX skills. Also, from a social perspective, design needs to be inclusive and accessible to help eliminate bias and racism.

4. Working with new technologies

Additionally, new technologies become more stable and widely available. For example, AI, machine learning models are becoming more stable and reliable and also more accessible. However, for these and for any new technologies to be actually useful, they need to be integrated in a way that actually enhances the user experience and in a way that actually provides value for the user.

Take the blockchain, for example. It’s been available as a technology for a few years now. Also, quite a few companies have started developing their own blockchain to experiment with the technology. There are products that currently use this technology – like ProofofTrust for example. However, there’s still a long way to go before the blockchain makes it into the lives of everyday users.

When it comes to working with new technologies, the role of designers will change a bit. Instead of focusing on visuals, the focus on the big picture will be more important. Where the technology comes in, how it will be used and how it will actually benefit the users instead will be key points that designers need to consider before jumping into the visuals. Overall, designers will need to make these technologies easy to understand and find a way to employ them so that they actually bring value for users.

To sum up this year’s UX trends…

2022 will probably continue where 2021 left off. Making design accessible and inclusive for everyone, making sure that well trained professionals and businesses have access to a good UX education are going to be very important for the future of the industry. If done properly, there will definitely be an increase in the UX maturity of companies and of the industry as a whole.

And as new technologies develop, UX professionals need to learn about these so they can properly work with them. AI, VR, blockchain – all these are technologies with the premise of improving life and experiences for users. UX professionals need to find out what will be the best way to integrate these to create smooth experiences for the users.

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Oct 7 2022

5+1 Tech Trends You Should Consider in 2022

More focus on behavioral data

Gartner predicts that by 2025, over half of the global population will be subject to one or more IoB programs. But what’s the Internet of Behaviors? IoB analyzes existing technologies and algorithms such as location tracking, health monitors, or IoT device usage and connects the data to real-life events.

Data obtained by IoB is then analyzed in terms of behavioral psychology. Obviously, debates on ethics and privacy are pending, but keep in mind that IoB has already been existing for a while now.

Back in 2013, Google Now was capable of giving you a heads-up to leave for work, based on your commuting routines, current, and past locations, your calendar, and even real-time traffic conditions. If traffic conditions were suboptimal, Google gave you an estimation on how much you’ll be late for work and instructed you to leave to avoid being late.

This aspect of the service required a lot of regular analytics and a great deal of behavioral data mining. Since then, we are using many more IoT devices. Tech companies will squeeze behavioral data out of them to advance intelligent algorithms like virtual assistants, or feed data into a brand new marketing frontier.

This will open up a lot of debate on AI data ethics and raise a lot of privacy concerns since IoB’s only purpose is to influence human behavior, while the intention of companies and organizations is not always clean as a whistle. The future ahead of IoB isn’t clear either, but strong data security policies and strict privacy governance are steps towards an ethical improvement in digital life.

IoB could make health apps and devices become more precise, providing an even more positive impact on wellbeing, homes could improve further environmentally, and self-driving cars could become safer.

Like it or not, the Internet of Behaviours will gain more attention from everyone in the following years, and it will be interesting to follow the developments.

Remote working and virtual congregation

It’s been almost two years since businesses and organizations suddenly had to jump into the deep end of the pool to transform from on-site to remote operations. Many companies adapted well and realized a maintainable future for working from home, providing remote work options to employees post-COVID as well. We’ve already seen a lot of improvements for remote work toolsets and technologies in the last two years, but we are far from perfection. Remote working continues to have a big impact on current tech trends.

5G gained a lot of momentum lately, and this year we can expect significant improvements in home networks in terms of speed and reliability. Internet providers might even market remote work-oriented packages containing extra lines and routers with corporate-level security.

Cloud-based productivity and co-working tools surged in the last few years. Miro and Mural became very popular in remote teams, and last year Figma entered the digital whiteboard market too with the release of FigJam.

This year we might see more services inspired by relaxed work environments: Virtual breakrooms will provide a recreational space for connecting with your co-workers. Services like Teemyco, Reslash, or Wonder will help maintain spontaneous interactions and collaborations for fully remote organizations and potentially make many formal communication channels less relevant for co-workers. Create offices and rooms, move between them, bump into colleagues virtually in a casual experience.

In case your team is not fully remote you might face different challenges. New video conferencing services, like Around can help hybrid teams collaborate better by reducing background noise, eliminating echo caused by multiple people being in the same room and minimizing the so called “Zoom fatigue” by cropping the background and showing the participants in floating bubbles instead of taking over the whole screen.

Apple also released a new feature called Center Stage in their 2021 lineup of iPads, which uses the Ultra-Wide camera and machine learning to change the way you participate in video calls. As you move around, it automatically pans to keep you centered in the frame. When others join in or leave the call, the view expands or zooms in. This enables a more natural and casual video calling experience and apart from FaceTime a variety of third-party apps, like Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams already support it.

Folding screens: the newest technology trend in phone design

The fundamentals of how a smartphone looks and works has barely changed in the last decade, but it seems like there is a new emerging tech trend in phone design as phone manufactures are definitely trying to make folding screens a thing.

While you might have seen foldable phones for a while now, starting with Samsung launching its Galaxy Fold in 2019, a lot of progress has been made in the last years, with companies like Xiaomi, Oppo, Huawei, Motorola and even Microsoft launching their interpretation of how a phone with a folding screen should work.

Of course the spread of this new form factor does not only depend on the manufacturers, but also on the users and other participants in the market, but it seems like Google also sees the potential as they have a dedicated segment for Foldable devices in their new Material Design 3.

With prices of folding phones decreasing, new companies joining the competition and new devices seeming to have less rough edges, we think in 2022 you’ll definitely see more foldables.

Local computing: The beginning of the end

One of the top tech trends for this year is going to be distributed computing. Distributed computing systems consist of components located on different networked computers, which communicate & coordinate to run as a single computer to achieve one common goal.

Scalability and redundancy are the two major benefits of distributed systems over centralized ones. If one machine doesn’t work, you always have another one that can provide the same services, and this does not need to be expensive.

If we look closely, distributed systems are not only an engineering problem but a UX one too. Even though computers are virtual, one cannot ignore the consequences of real-life challenges.

Cloud gaming platforms will also put less focus on conventional computation this year. Cloud gaming will definitely grow in 2022, going by the number of tractions eSports has got from 2021. Audiences watched over 8.21 billion hours of content across all live-streaming platforms in Q3 2021, which can certify that gaming and streaming, is continuing to grow even more this year.

With the help of this technology, you will be able to use a remote device to play games over the cloud in high fidelity. The remote server does all the heavy work while your home device receives streaming video and sends input commands. Essentially, cloud gaming is like a video streaming service, but way more interactive.

A lot of different companies are racing to become the Netflix of cloud gaming, the major players being Google Stadia, Nvidia GeForce Now, Xbox Cloud Gaming, PlayStation Now and Amazon Luna. All of them have a different game library, business model and target audience. For example Stadia sells games individually, and offers free games and 4K streaming for Pro subscribers only, Amazon Luna and Playstation Now offer a rotating game library for a monthly subscription, while GeForce Now allows you to stream your own PC games to other devices.

Some of these services are not limited to web browsers or phones either. If you own a recent LG TV you can already try both Stadia and GeForce NOW on it, as they have arrived to the LG Content Store at the end of 2021, and Samsung is also planning to include them in their 2022 lineup.

As fancy as it sounds, there are still some hiccups that need to be dealt with. A major one is latency, which is the amount of delay between the user’s inputs and the moment they take effect can affect gameplay — especially in fast-paced FPS games. This not only affects the user experience of the service but also questions the durability of the technology.

Another hiccup is the bandwidth requirement. If you’ve got a bandwidth cap, slower internet, or both, odds are you’ll need a better internet plan or improved connection to stream games.

Google’s own cloud streaming service, Stadia, recommends minimum speeds of 20Mbps for 1080p gaming at 60fps, jumping up to 35Mbps for 4K 60fps for a consistent gaming experience. Stadia also has a feature called “Crowd Play” which lets you go from watching your favorite streamer on YouTube to jumping into the game if that streamer lets you join in.

AR’s new home: E-commerce

AR has been in some weird limbo for years now. You can experiment with it by catching Pokémons or by trying out a few goofy Instagram filters, but it feels like AR’s footing in business toolsets wasn’t very firm.

One area where AR has numerous opportunities is the retail sector. There are a few already realized use cases, like store mapping. Store mapping can give you on-screen directions, while you hold up your phone, to help you find what you’re looking for. AR can also be helpful for trying out products before buying them. IKEA and Target already experimented with this, allowing you to place your preferred sofa in your living room virtually on your phone, and place and order if the furniture fits your taste and environment.

Giants like Apple are also heavily invested in AR: their keynote presentations has been filled with AR demos for years now, and their latest Pro iPhone and iPad models are equipped with LiDAR sensors mainly to perfect AR accuracy, enabling retail companies to adapt and utilize AR advancements like improved motion capture and people occlusion. They are also rumored to be secretly working on an AR/VR headset.

The newly released spatial audio and dynamic head tracking features, available in new Airpods models, also points towards the company’s commitment to AR. Spatial audio and dynamic head tracking uses the gyroscope and accelerometer in the ‌headphones‌ and the iOS device to track the motion of your head and your ‌device’s position, comparing the motion data, and then remapping the sound field so that it stays anchored to your device even as your head moves. This makes you feel like the sound comes from your device, even though you’re wearing headphones.

Metaverse became one of the biggest buzzwords lately, following Facebook’s recent rebranding to Meta and Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that the company’s plan is to build a “metaverse”. But what is exactly the metaverse? Broadly speaking it’s a combination of numerous technologies, like virtual reality, augmented reality and eye tracking, used to create a virtual world for rich user interaction, mimicking the real world. Though it does not necessarily have to be only accessible through VR or AR, but also via computers, phones or game consoles. The metaverse could also include a digital economy, where you can create, buy and sell things.

While it does not exist yet, companies like Microsoft and Facebook already speculate that it will become the new place to play games, work with remote colleges, meet with friends, buy clothes or even study. Blurring the line between the physical and digital life. While it’s still not clear what the metaverse will turn out to be in reality, it’s definitely among the biggest future tech trends.

No-Code Development

If you’d ask a product designer or a product company what are the hottest tech trends, they’d certainly mention the no-code revolution at some point. There are a lot of new platforms that allow anyone to build and deploy their own websites or products, without having to write a single line of code, and they’ll gain even more relevance in the upcoming years. These tools can help product teams to test ideas quickly, create high-quality products in a short period of time, while also keeping the budget low.

There are three major platforms gaining momentum these last years, Bravo Studio, Webflow and Bubble.io, each focusing on solving a different kind of problem. In case what you need is a high quality website, you should check out Webflow, a website builder trusted by companies like Hellosign and Bonsai. If you need to build a web app or a mobile application Bubble.io could be your answer. If you’re looking for something that allows you to launch your product to the App Store straight from your design tool, then Bravo Studio is what you’re looking for. If you’d like to learn more about these platforms check out our dedicated article about the No Code Revolution.

Final thoughts

Machine learning will be more focused on behaviors and product design will eventually need to take this into account. Even though vaccines and even booster shots are getting distributed, it’s fair to assume that isolated work is not going away anytime soon. Still, evolving technologies will ease the negative aspects of it, ambitiously attempting to make it more popular in a post-Covid world.

The appearance of the folding screen technology will lead the first truly significant innovation in the smartphone industry in years, and you’ll definitely see a lot more devices that can fold in one way or another. 5G is spreading, and with internet speeds getting better and latency decreasing, cloud gaming platforms will make playing Triple-A games increasingly more convenient and accessible. Even if you only have a smartphone.

While the so-called Metaverse is not at our doorstep just yet, big companies see a huge potential in it, and are making steps towards archiving it. We still don’t know what it will look like, but one thing is sure. AR and VR will become an increasingly more important part of our everyday life.

Learn more about current and future trends in UX/UI

Want to know more about the UI trends of 2022 and what are the things that people love? Read our article about UI trends 2022.

Wondering what could be UX design trends of 2022? A new design language? Or chatbots? These are cool things, and many people will list them as the hot UX design trends of 2021, but we think there have to be more out there. Here are our ideas about UX trends for 2022

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Oct 7 2022

How to run a product meeting and nurture your team culture

The way they do the meeting will tell you everything.

Who speaks at the meeting? How do they make decisions? What do they talk about? Is it technical details, customer insights or revenue and money? Do they talk about tasks and deadlines or blurry visions about the future? Are there debates or ideation sessions?

None of these are good or bad, but these signs can help you evaluate the culture of the team.

If you are the leader of a product team, running your regular product meeting is one of your most important responsibilities. The way you run these meetings will go a long way, it will define the culture of your team.

The topics you discuss will tell your team what’s important, and people will naturally pay more attention to those things. The way you discuss different topics will set the tone about how people will work together and solve problems when you are not there.

Run great product meetings and your culture will thrive.

Advice from the legendary Bill Campbell

Bill Campbell was a legendary coach who worked with some of the biggest product leaders in the tech industry. He coached people like Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

In the book Billion Dollar Coach his coachees play tribute to him by sharing their experience working with Bill. I was super excited to read this book, as it gives you a little look inside how these great teams work.

The biggest surprise reading this book was how much attention Bill paid to seemingly mundane details like running a meeting. He often visited the meetings run by these super powerful tech executives and spent time making sure they become better in running them.

“To Bill, being an executive of a successful company is all about management, about creating operational excellence. … You have to think about how you’re going to run a meeting — he told a group of Googlers in management. … So when we met Bill in our weekly coaching sessions, what we discussed first and foremost was management: operations and tactics…. What were the current crises? How quickly were we going to manage our way out of them? How was hiring going? How were we developing our teams? How were our staff meetings going? Were we getting input from everyone? What was being said, what wasn’t being said? He cared that the company was well run, and that we were improving as managers.”

It was the Bill Campbell book that inspired me to start tweaking our product team’s meeting structure. I tried out many things until I found what works best for us.

In this blogpost I will share how we run product meetings at UXfolio. We are a team of a designer, two developers, a marketer and me as a product manager. It is a cross-functional product team responsible for one single product together.

What I share here is not suitable for everyone and I strongly encourage you to experiment and come up with what works best for you, instead of copying everything blindly. I hope this piece will give you some inspiration.

Check-in: my favourite social flavor

Like it or not, meetings are social gatherings. Obviously we don’t like to have too many meetings, and we hate it when they last waaaay too long, but we need them not just to sort out operational issues, but to build social connections.

Great leaders usually keep a tight schedule during product meetings, so the best social moments usually happen organically before or after the official meeting time. That doesn’t mean you can’t spend a great 5-10 minutes of your meeting to socialize.

The best time to do that is at the beginning, as it will set a friendly mood, and help everyone to arrive.

We have our product meetings on Monday and we start these meetings with a round of weekend fun facts. We go around one-by-one and everyone shares a fun fact about their weekend. This helps us to get to know each other better, and we often laugh a lot during this part of the meeting.

With our leadership team of UX studio we meet every Wednesday, so I modified this question to “What was the best thing that happened to you since last Wednesday?”. To this question people can share work-related and personal stories as well, and we frequently hear examples of both.

I heard from other leaders who ask their team what was the biggest win as a check-in and with this question they provide a well-earned brag-time for everyone. For me it’s a bit too much about performance, but I can imagine it works well in certain teams, where it’s more difficult to get people talking about their personal life.

Don’t waste time with reporting and task management

Many people imagine meetings as an occasion to share progress and discuss tasks. Everyone should tell what they did and discuss what to do next. I couldn’t disagree more with this structure.

I think the precious meeting time should be kept for things you can do online asynchronously. I want to spend time with deep discussions about the most important topics, and not with listening to someone’s todo list from last week.

To avoid reporting during the meetings we do it on Slack. Everyone should send a short list to our common channel a few hours before the meeting.

The structure:

What did you do last week?
What do you plan to do this week?
Topics you want to discuss with the team

Before the meeting we read these short reports so everyone arrives prepared and we know what’s going on. During the meeting we only go through the topics people suggested. We have more time for topic discussions, as we don’t spend time with reporting and task management.

It’s super important that any team member can suggest topics to discuss, so in a product meeting many things come up from engineering topics to design and marketing. People are actively encouraged to bring up topics on product meetings.

Just because we don’t do task discussions on product meetings, that doesn’t mean we don’t talk about our progress or what’s next. We actually talk a lot about progress and next steps, but when we talk about progress we talk about team or product progress, and not individual progress. When we talk about what to do next we talk about product roadmaps and not individual team member’s tasks. Once we have a clear roadmap of the bigger features we want to build it’s up to each team member to figure out what they need to do to make that happen.

Highlighted recurring topics

Besides the topics team members bring, we have a few recurring topics we go through every week:

Design of upcoming features: the designer walks us through the screens of the features she is designing and we discuss them. It’s great for the designer to get feedback and it ensures everyone sees the new designs as they evolve and not just the final version. These discussions ensure developers know why the new features are designed in a certain way.
User test highlights: although our designers send detailed reports about the weekly user tests to our Slack channel, I think it’s super important, so they also sum it up in 1-2 minutes at our weekly product meeting. Many times it happens together with the design walk-through, so we can discuss the design and the user feedback at once.
Usage numbers and user generated content: if we recently released a feature our designer shows us some numbers about the usage and some screenshots about the content users created with the new features. This helps the team to iterate and learn together what worked and what did not.
Support summary: the support person of last week sums up the most frequent support requests.
Roadmap: during all these discussions many ideas come up about what to build or change in the product. We keep track of them and at the end we review together the roadmap and decide on what to do and how to prioritize things. As a young startup product we usually have only short roadmaps fixed for the upcoming few weeks and it is reviewed every week.
Housekeeping: at the end of the meeting we have a few recurring housekeeping topics to quickly discuss, like who will be the support person that week (yepp, we all do support time-to-time), who will attend a user test (an other thing we all do), and what will our team report to the rest of the company.

I use these recurring topics to shape the team culture, as all the team members have to participate in these discussions weekly and talk about customer insights, new designs and setting priorities. I’m super proud that these are the topics we talk about the most.

Other teams might have other culture-defining topics (a team building an API probably doesn’t want to look at UI designs that often), but it’s always useful for team leads to figure out what they want their people to talk about the most.

These recurring topics also help me to lead with context. Seeing as the new designs is born week-by-week help engineers to know why we do certain things. Getting regular updates about user tests, support requests and user generated content helps everyone in the team to emphasize with our customers. Prioritizing together also helps to make sure everyone understands what’s important and why.

Engagement boosters

I like to work in teams where people are really engaged (who doesn’t?) and I use a lot of little tactics to make this happen.

As you can see people can suggest topics, and we use most of the time on each meeting to discuss those. We also set priorities together so everyone has a seat at the table, they can have a word when we make important decisions.

Even though I’m responsible for the meeting and its structure and I attend all our meetings, I don’t run any of them. We go around and every week someone else is running the product meeting. This helps me to turn everyone into the “owners” of the meeting and feel more responsible for everything we do.

An example: our product meeting agenda

We have a doc with the general structure of our meetings which people can use as a guideline when it’s their turn to run the meeting. Here is a short summary of that doc.

Check-in: weekend fun facts (5 mins)
Design summary and discussion: show and discuss new designs, share user test highlights, show user generated content or analytics numbers (30 mins)
Topics suggested by team members (30 mins)
Roadmap (10 mins)
Housekeeping (5 mins)

Cadence and length

We have a product meeting each week, and it usually lasts for one and a half hours.

I know, it’s long.

It’s just not long enough to break it into two, and it contains only important discussions. As I said I like our product meetings to be a place for deep discussions, and that needs time.

The length of our product meeting depends on the difficulty of the things we work on. When we have a hard problem to solve sometimes it lasts longer, when everything is simple and easy we usually finish the meeting in about an hour.

It also helps that we have been doing this meeting structure for a long time now and everyone knows how to do it well. If you would add all these topics to your agenda it would last way more than 90 mins for you, so if you start tweaking your meetings, I would advise to change one thing at a time.

Obviously many of our challenges are not solved during one single meeting, so you can imagine that we have topics we come back to week after week. This helps to keep the meetings short, as we just have to discuss the next steps and everyone knows the context already.

I can imagine there are teams who don’t need a weekly meeting. In bigger corporations where things move slowly it might be enough to have a product meeting every other week.

Summary

So to sum it up in 3 points:

Use your meetings for important discussions
Use recurring topics to shape team culture
Make sure everyone is engaged with letting people set the agenda, run the meeting and make decisions together

Meetings seem to be mundane and easy, but they can have a huge impact if you use them well. I hope this piece was useful and you got some tips you can try with your own team.

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