hi everyone I'm Armina a UI UX designer and I'm Ita chief
marketing officer at Ucraft an online website builder, but we're not going to
be speaking about website builders today actually we are going to be speaking
about the art of user onboarding when it comes to UI UX design particularly in
our constantly changing global environment, but there can't be any
onboarding without a proper UX so let's discuss it for a bit
we know that the term itself was invented in the 1990s but did you know
that as a concept UX has actually existed a long time ago and by long I
mean centuries, a good example of this is ancient China with their feng shui
philosophy, now feng shui as all of you might know means arranging your
surroundings in the most optimal and aesthetic way creating harmony between
the individual and the environment, yeah and also ancient Greeks played a huge
role in this by incorporating economics into the design process of their
surroundings, now even back then UX was considered to
be the interaction between the people and their environment but how did those
people of the old time like in ancient China or Greece actually know how to
behave in those environments that were created specifically for them, I mean
despite how user friendly a new concept may seem every new thing needs to be
explained in an understandable way so that the user can get what's going on.
But before that word starts with the beginning so it all started of course
with the World Wide Web when websites were made exclusively for
browsers and then when w3c came a new standard was set to code all websites in
HTML and CSS now back then designers started prototyping their
information in tables creating structural data now those tables can be
considered the parent concept of modern huge design back then those applications
were very simple like many many functions and admittedly look very bad
but gradually they evolved and with this evolution modern UX appeared and
everything became more complicated for our users so let's take an example of a
dictionary so when you start to learn a new language you constantly need to look
up at the dictionary to check on the new words like the definition of them and
how to properly use them in a sentence and the same applies to modern uux it's
not enough to put somehow a logical icon inside your app or product you also need
to cover it up with useful tips on how to use it and how to benefit from it now
this is where one of the most important aspects of modern UX design comes in
let's talk a bit about globalization now despite what many may say the lines
between cultures are not becoming more blurred in fact those differences are
more important than ever and this is not only observed in the IT I mean even in
our day to day interactions we can see it for example even the process of
handing over a business card varies from culture to culture now especially if we
want to move to different markets before starting any onboarding we need
to make sure that our UX is customized to the to the countries specifically in
other words we need to localize now let me list a few key elements that are
greatly influenced by cultural perception first is visual design the
most basic one my one might say let's divide it into two categories symbolism
and colors now symbolism symbolism varies from culture to culture and each
culture attaches their own meanings to those symbols I mean there have even
been cases when historical events have altered those meanings
the same goes for the colors especially in their metaphorical sense for example
the color white symbolizes purity in the Western countries but for the eastern
ones it actually means grief and mourning
number two is navigation now it needs to be clear and intuitive for all users and
we always need to take into account that the manner and preferred way of
communication varies from culture to culture
now the most basic example of this is the direction we read and write in up
and down left to right right to left and number three is how we process the
information now there are two proven ways of this there is holistic and
analytical holistic is often found in eastern countries is when the users tend
to scan the whole page prior to forming any sort of opinion in this case our UX
needs to be neutral without distracting the user and the analytical which is
most often found in Western countries it's when the users actually focus on a
single element rather than the whole picture in this case the UX needs to be
much more structured with emphasizes on the element we want the users to focus
on now once we get through these three points of course it's always scary to
change your product and adapt it to a new culture but there is simply no
running away from country-specific design especially if we want to conquer
a foreign market and when it comes to creating multilingual websites all you
need is necessary tools at time it's you craft we created both multilingual and
multi-run which are great for those countries
where there are several official languages for example you are you have
an online store and you have your audience in US and in Canada so in the
US there are two official languages English and Spanish and in Canada there
are again two official languages English and Spanish and you want to show them
different content you want to show them different products different currencies
so with you crafts multi-regional support you can easily show your
Canadian users their English and French version of a website and to American
users their version of English and Spanish and it's not just the language
you craft actually allows you to change the whole UX of a page depending on the
audience it's created for think it's better to have certain type of products
for one country and hold different ones for another go ahead want to try
different icons try it think it would be better to have different visuals
everything is possible thanks to you crafts geolocation visibility settings
now taking all of this into account let's see how we can personalize user
onboarding yes so at last we came to our topic the art of user onboarding and I
would like to introduce here our growth hacker in us so what does she do she
finds out what needs to be improved in the Builder while also providing our
users with lots of different useful information regarding the tool so it
might seem random but we really wanted to show who is behind the onboarding
process at you craft and that's exactly how it should be the user needs to know
that there is a person behind us and not just a machine forcing you through a
process so every month in asunder' team help to analyze you crafts user base
which works what remains unclear and what needs to be improved and the first
thing we realized was that our users need a product towards desperately liked
and I don't mean the tours that appear during the registration but after that
for more advanced and complicated features that appear within the product
so we gathered frequently asked questions from our support team and
creates its question specific product tours inside you craft
and of course it creased our customer loyalty and eventually
sales now remember first impressions are the key we must always evolve and
improve our onboarding process and we must always keep in mind that the
customer needs constantly change this is where we introduce another good method
of onboarding which is tooltips if we are creating a new function even if
we're now going to make a product tour out of it we must always make a tooltip
and when creating that tooltip we must always consider the language and the
geolocation let's say we're creating a set function for a specific country in
that case we need to only notify the interested party so the next step is
email onboarding at you craft we completely redesign it keeping in mind
all the different kinds of users and writing personalized and most
importantly useful messages for them avoiding any hint of spam content so
email marketing is still an impressive tool to communicate with your clients
during the every step of the consumer lifecycle whether you are a thriving SAS
company or an up-and-coming small business and we think that email
marketing is more than just click and send so when a user sees an email in
their inbox they should constantly tell that it's from you like the tone of
voice should match your overall branding as colors and graphics so alongside with
tooltips and email onboarding localization of content is also highly
important so we've spoke about this earlier on about the cultural aspects so
for example most businesses are starting their businesses with only one version
of a website like I mean uux and only one language but as soon as your
business starts to grow you we don't want to avoid the people that
don't speak your native language even if it's English so for example at you craft
we coasted on English for a while but then we've decided to add our user
onboarding and russian and armenian since we're based in armenia and also
we've translated our websites and those languages and we are still continuing
that process we now are translating our website into several languages and
yesterday we pushed live our new japanese version which is available at
GPU crapcom so go on and check it in conclusion user onboarding is not
just a cool trick that we can use it's actually a necessity we need to keep in
mind that the era we're living in the technology is constantly evolving and
our applications are becoming much much more complex and the need to localize
becomes more in order to improve and go to other markets and this makes we add
new few new features constantly and users get constantly confused I mean you
cannot just dump a user on a dashboard and expect him to figure things out in
his own usually they'll just leave this is why onboarding is absolutely
essential you craft has essentially combined the classical ways of user
onboarding such as product tours tool tips email announcements and customer
support and configure them to match each individual buyer persona so we
understand that there's a lot to perfect but at least we're on their way there
and even if we think that our builder is simple we understand that mmm some users
might feel lost at certain points and let me tell you this even if you have
the simpliest product on the market it will seem simple to you because you've
created it and your UX might be also basic because you know it like the back
of your hand but that thoughts are deceitful because it's not about you
understanding of the product it's about the users understanding
so thank you thank you