Instagram filters are one of the most popular features on social media. Currently, there are 500 million, and growing, active users on Instagram, most of whom are millennials. According to statistical data, one-third of these users use the online medium to buy something or the other. Here is another data – videos, on Instagram, lead engagements by at least 21.2% in comparison to stills or carousels.

Digital marketing experts such as Neil Patel suggests, businesses must leverage a new feature as soon as it launches. Instagram AR filters are currently the goose that lays the golden eggs, and this has been proven to be a successful feature. A good example was McDonald’s Christmas marketing campaign, where they created an Instagram Christmas AR filter to engage with their target audience, not only was this feature fascinating to look at, but it was also fun to interact with. Back in the day, when the competition was comparatively low, brands could still bide their time in regard to a digital campaign. Today, a business must pounce upon a new enhancement as soon as it launches before it blows up and becomes noisy. Businesses must make a mark before the noise hits!

Many brands have already created cool Instagram filters that users can find and download from the Effects Gallery. It goes without saying that this is one of the most effective marketing strategies as far as digital advertising is concerned. When a netizen uses a filter created by your brand, axiomatically, your brand name pops up on his/her story/feed, which is how you acquire visibility.

But hold on, now there is an even better way!

Imagine you have your own clothing line. Now, if you want to take full advantage of your digital presence, what would you do other than creating an appealing catalog of clothes? Write good product descriptions? Have them displayed on models?

Your customers are regular people with different body types. And we would all agree that nothing beats trying out an outfit yourself. Using these new AR Instagram filter, you can create augmented reality, which would allow a visitor on your page to try out the outfit herself/himself, enhancing customer experience dramatically.

This is just one basic example. However, any business can fit its offerings or products to unique filters that bring the customer in. You can even fit seasonal advertising ideas to exclusive and cool filters, such as a Halloween-themed make up range or accessories. See, there could be a plethora of ideas.

IKEA is one of the most favored companies in the world because it aims to enhance customer experience before anything else.

Open an account on Spark AR Studio to get started. Choose an effect. You can upload a 3D asset, after which you may customize the movements of the graphic. Test and publish. The AR filters appear right beside the ‘Series’ icon denoted as a ‘smiley’. Your followers can click on the ‘smiley’ to check out the filters and use them – that’s creating brand awareness 101! If you are not sure about creating your own filters, delegate the task to an expert Instagram filter creator. What more, this tool is free! So, you get a potential outreach for your brand without spending any money.

Instagram/KOL is a great strategy to enhance your marketing game. If you can get Instagram influencers to try out your filters and share those with their followers, the ball is in your court! You’ve won half the battle.

Make the most of the tool that allows you to create virtual realities with your products. Connect with your customers at an immediate level. Promote them on Instagram because, with these, you can build engagements in real-time as opposed to just garnering likes. Use AR filters to be visible for a reason.

UI/UX plays a significant role in any brand’s success. It can help you reach new heights but only if you deliver a good service. This article takes you through the latest UI/UX trends and its benefits to help you understand it better.

What is the difference between UX and UI design

Both mobiles and desktops have a majority of digital users onboard and both the platforms have their own significance. For instance, desktops serve the purpose of quick access to web pages and mobile phones are ideal for creating engagement. Aesthetic graphics and engaging content must be on point while designing a digital presence but another important thing that most of the designers overlook is good user experience and interface. But what exactly is UI and UX?

What is UX?

UX is the abbreviated form of User Experience and it is based on the idea of creating a system that provides the users with the best experience. It aims at turning your customers into loyal customers by offering a positive experience to them. UX is accountable for a user’s journey through the mobile app or website which eventually becomes the deciding factor for the success of the business.

What is UI?

UI is an abbreviation used for User Interface and it’s the way using which users can interact with any mobile application. User interface design for mobile applications focuses on delivering easy, enjoyable and effective interactions between users and the application. In IT, User Interface refers to any device that allows the users to interact with monitors, screens or mobile devices. The primary goal which UI aims for is to provide the best interaction possible.

What are benefits of UX/UI

1. Encourages the use of interaction: Creating content is not a hard task. But creating content that people would like to interact with, is the real challenge. Be it in the form of text, images, advertisements, or call to action, everything must lure the user. There are several techniques to encourage user interaction such as producing the content that appeals to the targeted audience. It can also be about personalised features based on consumer behaviour or things they like. People prefer a software that has consistency in design, is predictable, and comfortable to use.

 

2. Generates loyalty: A good user experience can create customer loyalty for your brand. An application or website that offers easy functionality and backed by great service will make your users use it again and again. The designer can create a Customer Journey i.e. CJM Map to achieve it. It will help the designer to map the entire journey of the user through the website or the mobile application. This journey must be thoroughly tested to make sure that a user’s interaction with the product is as smooth and easy as possible. It’s more like putting the design team in the shoes of the user and thinking from their perspective.

 

3. Generates recommendations: An interactive user experience design is the key to encouraging word of mouth recommendations i.e. it should be good to an extent that the users can’t stop talking about it. A well-designed site or application with the ease of use, offering great features and usefulness will encourage people to tell others about the service. A part of user experience is meant to make sharing easy and a free recommendation from a user itself is way more impactful than a paid advertisement.

 

4. Reduces development costs: A stellar user experience helps you keep a project within budget by lowering development costs along with extensive user research, prototyping, and usability testing. By doing this, you can ensure that development time is targeted on the areas of functionality that matter. This focused approach helps you create better initial design specs, reduces the risk of feature creep, and provides more relevant content. It greatly erases the need for last-minute redesigns and enhancements.

 

5. Reduces internal costs: User experience is an end-user focused approach that concentrates on the design and development, keeping in mind what users want and not what developers think they want. It not only saves money on development costs but it also helps businesses to wisely use their internal resources. For instance, the design will help you identify the products liked or wanted by people. This would help the sales and marketing department to put their efforts on profitable products instead of putting it on the less profitable ones. Moreover, it reduces the need for manual intervention and hence reduces the support costs eventually.

 

What are latest UX/UI trends

 

1. Animation: It makes web pages or mobile applications more appealing to users as it connects with the customers more than any other design. This tool is getting popular amongst the designers as it allows them to create a positive impact on the users. Earlier, we used to have flat logos, icons, buttons, etc. but now they are getting replaced with animated buttons, icons, and even logos.

 

2. Digital illustrations for the web: Custom digital illustrations are trending in the field of UI and UX. These digital illustrations are generally used on web interfaces and add colours, designs while making the information more evident and interesting. They are widely used by blogs and service websites to beautify their website and present sober information in a modern and fancy way.

 

3. 3D designs: It helps you create more impactful design and it’s already being used in many games and movies with high functionality. A combination of animation and 3D is going to be the next trend in UI and UX.

 

4. Split Screen: The idea of using two screens simultaneously appeals to a lot of users. It not only looks cool but also allows you to gather more information at the same time.
5. Voice UI: Voice assistants like Google Home and Alexa have taken over the entire digital world of virtual assistants. People use these services widely to get most of their work done irrespective of its origin i.e. small or big. Performing tasks using your voice is a lot more convenient than operating a device with buttons and making it do the same.

 

NDN Group build a chatbot with personality for hotel group

At NDN Group, we help our clients map out UX/UI to understand their customers, define customer experience journeys and innovate with a strong focus on customers’ needs and awe-inspiring insights about them. From user personas and customer journeys to content strategy, wireframe to website and app design, we help our business clients tell their stories and engage with customers for scaling businesses.

NDN Group’s digital consultancy, New Digital Noise, has been helping a global hotel group to develop an AI-powered chatbot with persona and personality traits, thereby creating immersive and fascinating experiences to its customers. The bot can help guests make suite booking and restaurant reservations as well answer questions on thrilling entertainment and hotel facilities.

To create persona and personality for the bot, our team has gathered insights to understand more about the hotel group from its brand persona, daily operations, gaming and entertainment facilities, world-class dining experience and luxurious and bespoke services offered to customers.

Creating a chatbot conversation flow and putting to the test

Our UX/UI team has arranged empathy sessions for the hotel to learn their customers genuine needs. With our five-stage process – Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test, we empathise with the targeted customers through researches, interviews and sharing. We understand customers’ emotional needs, discover human touchpoints and garner insights on the needs of customers in different segments. Our team has created solid solutions to address users’ needs and built a prototype chatbot for testing/validation to excel to entire UX process.

Also, we have embraced six core human needs – Certainly, Variety, Significance, Love, Growth and Contribution – in the process. Then we have clearly defined the background, personalities, tone of voice and manner of the bot.

In the development of the chatbot script, we imagine how the AI-powered chatbot talks to customers based on its persona.  Based on conversational diagram, we have imagined the bot talking to customers in real time when writing scripts. We listened to characters or people who are similar to the bot persona. We try to avoid dead ends and leaving the user hanging. It mimics what we would hear from a concierge in the luxurious hotel. Finally, we have developed a prototype for the chatbot and fine-tuned scripts. We have interacted with the bot to excel its dialogue flow and make it immersive to customers, ensuring that the bot is helpful and meet customers’ needs and expectations.

Conclusion

Our User Experience/User Interface design services are thoughtful, engaging, user–centric. We work with our clients to define their business goals, and every industry is different. The trends of UX and UI have changed a lot and it will continue to do so. But one thing which doesn’t change with time is the quality of UX and UI. To derive better results and satisfy your customers, it is important to offer them an outstanding UX/UI services. Drop us a line at info@ndngroup.com to learn more about how our UX/UI services fit your business needs.

A form of internet marketing that is forever becoming more and more popular for business owners is PPC (pay per click) advertising. PPC is a model of internet advertising in which the advertiser displays adverts, on search engine results pages, that are linked to pages of their website. Every time the ad is clicked the advertiser pays a small fee to the search engine. Now, this might seem unfair to the advertiser but if that click (which could cost $1) results in a converted sale (of say $100) then it’s money well spent.

The real appeal of PPC to businesses comes from the model itself. The auction style system only allows the most relevant ads to be shown to customers, meaning your advert is only being shown to customers who are already interested in your products or services.

A PPC campaign starts with you linking keywords to your specific ads. Because the whole PPC system is built on keyword relevancy you, the advertiser, have more control over who sees your adverts. This makes PPC advertising more controlled than older advertising methods. Couple that with full control over account budget and quick ROI and it’s easy to see why many businesses are putting more money into PPC advertising.

In a word, yes. The world of PPC can be broken down into 4 kinds of Ads and one (to all) will be relevant for your business and customers:

– Display advertising – Ads shown on blogs and other relevant websites

– Search advertising – Ads shown on search engine results pages

– Product listings – Shopping ads shown for specific product searches

– Remarketing – Ads shown to customers who have already visited your site in the past.

After your initial keyword research, you’ll want to research into the searching and buying habits of your customers online. This will determine what types of ads to use; maybe you just need search ads or product listings. Maybe a combination of 2 or 3 types would be really effective. With PPC advertising you have complete control of over your budget, how much you spend and where you spend it. You also have control over which types of ads you use and when, where and for how long you use them.

Let’s take a look at an example.

Let’s say you’re a supplier of mountain climbing equipment and wanting to expand your internet marketing prospects with PPC advertising. How about you run some product listing ads so those customers looking to buy climbing equipment by searching by name or brand can see the items you have for sale. Your ad will appear with a name, picture and price and will link them straight to the page on your site where they can purchase the product.

Now, lets see how to target those customers who are just browsing. A display network campaign will show an ad and link to your site to those customers browsing other related content. Perhaps they’re reading an article on “The 10 best mountains to climb in the world” and your ad is right there at the side, advertising low prices and quick delivery. Maybe they’re on a booking site ready to book this year’s climbing holiday. Wouldn’t it be great to have a link to your site so they could quickly buy those necessary supplies? PPC advertising makes this possible.

As with most forms of advertising, PPC advertising can be hard to get right first time. Contact us today to get yourselves on the way!