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Ever click on a website, take one look and say “Hm, that’s going to be a no” while you look for the exit button?
For me, it’s usually because of three reasons: the site looks outdated, crowded, or hard to navigate.
Bad design can keep your target audience from gaining any interest in your brand.

That’s why it’s important to understand the key design principles that will help you draw your audience in, keep them on the page, and generate conversions.
Here’s an easy guide on a specific design principle: visual hierarchy. We’ll cover all the elements that contribute to visual hierarchy and look at good and bad examples.
Visual hierarchy affects what you look at and focus on in a design, whether it’s an image, graphic design, or web design. It’s a key player in ct (i.e., how information is organized and displayed for easy understanding and navigation) and can greatly impact the user experience (UX).
When thinking about visual hierarchy, you want to ask yourself a few questions:

What do we want to draw attention to?
What actions do we want our users to take?
Where does the eye naturally go to and where do they land?

Asking these questions will help you use the principles outlined below to create a clear visual hierarchy.
What constitutes bad visual hierarchy?
When it comes to visual hierarchy, there’s a golden rule: If every element appears important, nothing will seem important.
Visual hierarchy serves as a way to rank the information you’re consuming. If there is no way to differentiate between the elements, that is considered poor hierarchy.
Take this example:

On the left, there’s a lot much going on. The two main elements are the same size, there are many different colors. It makes it hard to know where to look. Your eyes glaze over everything, creating some uneasiness and lack of direction.
On the right, your eye is automatically drawn to the main blue box on the left, then naturally goes to the elements on the right before landing on the orange call to action (CTA).
A poor visual hierarchy:

Confuses the user.
Makes it unclear where to look.
Creates a bland design.

Instead, create a visual structure that facilitates understanding and guides the user.
1. Consider reading patterns.
When designing, you want to note your target audience’s natural eye patterns.
Across all cultures, we read top to bottom. However, there is some variation in how we read horizontally. Western cultures tend to read from left to right, while some Semitic and Indo-Aryan languages, such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Urdu are read right to left.
With this in mind, it impacts how we scan and understand designs. For instance, Western users usually follow an F or Z reading pattern.

Knowing this information will help you design projects that convert, particularly in landing pages.
2. Users notice bigger elements more easily.
Size plays an important role in visual hierarchy. It’s one of the main ways to rank elements in a design.
Take this example from Netflix.

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The first thing you’ll read when looking at this image is “Unlimited movies, TV shows, and more.”
Then you’ll read the next line, and then the next before you explore the other elements on the page.
Size signifies importance. The bigger an element is, the more attention it draws, and then more likely you’ll look at it first.
As you design your webpage, consider what you want your audience to look at first and use that to guide your strategy.
3. Color and contrast draw the eye.
The second principle to keep in mind is color.
We know that color can evoke emotion and can have certain cultural and social connotations. Just look at logos by industry, and you’ll notice a trend. Food brands tend to have reds and yellows, while financial institutions tend to be in blue.
In design, color is great at drawing attention.

In the example above, you’ll see that the elements that stand out the most are in orange. It’s only after looking at them that you’ll scan the other elements on the page.
On a website, you can use this to draw focus to your CTAs.

In the example below, the CTA that stands out the most is in the middle. The brand likely wants users to choose this option. The other CTAs are still visible but muted compared to the orange.
To create the most visual impact with color, use it sparingly. That will make the elements stand out more, as seen in the above example.
4. White space creates emphasis.
White space refers to the empty space within a design.

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Sometimes, there is a desire to fill the space with as many elements as possible. However, this goes back to the concept of importance: If they all seem equally important, none of them are perceived as important.
This is why adding white space to your web design is key in pulling in your visitors.
Apple is also well known for its use of white space.

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The brand offers a simple user interface, which creates more emphasis on the elements on the page. Apple’s use of white space also reflects a brand’s identity.
5. Proximity and repetition create unity.
When you put several elements together, it tells the user the concepts are related.

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This design offers many examples of proximity.
Take the elements under “Master The Basics.” By having these boxes all grouped closely together, the visitor can understand they fall within the same category.
The same goes for the icons under “Follow Us.” If the icons were all spread out randomly on the page, it would be difficult for users to understand their purpose.
If you’re not sure how to group certain elements, you can employ certain UX research strategies, such as card sorting, to group elements based on your audience’s expectations.
Examples of Good Visual Hierarchy
1. Visme.co

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Visme.co has a striking pop-up that encourages users to sign up for their newsletter.
The brand successfully uses white space, color, size, and contrast to make key elements stand out. You’ll also notice that the elements are designed following the Z-pattern, making it more likely that users will convert.
2. Studio 8AD

In designing their website, this brand leverages white space to focus users’ attention on three key elements: the image and the two CTAs located on the bottom left.

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3. Predominantly Black

This brand offers a great example of proximity to create visual hierarchy.
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By organizing all products under the main title and leaving little space in between, visitors quickly understand that these products fall within the same category.
Visual hierarchy is all about ranking your elements by order of importance. Once you narrow down what you want to focus on and consider your audience’s needs, you can create designs that produce the desired impact.

Instagram has been around for 11 years.
While the app was initially meant for still images, content creators and everyday users can now share photos and videos in various forms, like Story posts, Instagram Reels, and longer-form videos on IGTV.
Although there are many content types to post on the app, simply leveraging one of the options isn’t enough to find marketing success on the platform. This is because, no matter how high-quality the content you share, the Instagram algorithm determines what succeeds on the app and what doesn’t.
While Instagram doesn’t disclose all the factors that the algorithm uses to assess content, they have released general information about what the algorithm looks for. In this post, we’ll explain everything you need to know about the algorithm to succeed on the app, from the factors that play into it and tips and tricks to use to make sure your content doesn’t go unnoticed.

As a business, unless you’re entirely reliant on paid ads, it’s essential to understand how the algorithm works and what you need to do to ensure that it favors your content and shows your posts to your target audience.
Below we’ll explain how the Instagram algorithm works and the factors it assesses when surfacing your content in news feeds.

 
How does the Instagram algorithm work?
If you’re a frequent Instagram user, you may have heard people say something like “Bring back reverse chronological order!” when talking about the algorithm. What they’re referring to is when Instagram showed the most recent posts at the top of someone’s feed and older ones at the bottom.
It was great for creators and Instagram users because, at some point, your post would be at the top of all of your followers’ feeds, so they would be guaranteed to see it.
However, in March 2016, the algorithm changed. Instagram said, “People miss, on average, 70 percent of their feeds. As Instagram has grown, it has become harder to keep up with all the photos and videos people share. This means you often don’t see the posts you might care about the most.”
It’s no longer a question of when you post, but a variety of factors that we’ll discuss below: relationship, timing, frequency, following, usage, interest.

 
Instagram Algorithm Factors
Relationship
Perceived relationships are the most important ranking factor.
The algorithm prioritizes sharing content with you based on the relationships you have with the accounts you follow. The more you comment, like, and interact with an account on Instagram, the more likely you will see their content, and see it often.
The algorithm also notes people you direct message, accounts you search for, and photos you’re tagged in.
The relationship factor applies to brands as well. If a consumer regularly likes your content and interacts with it, repeat engagement will make your posts shown to them more often and closer to the top of their feed. This means that it’s essential for you to inspire engagement in your content, which we’ll discuss further below.
Timing
Although feeds aren’t chronological, the algorithm still wants users to see the most recent and relevant posts, especially from accounts that you have a stronger, established relationship with.
Timing just means that you’re not as likely to see a post from three weeks ago as you were before 2016.
You can leverage this factor to your advantage by using your profile analytics to discover the best time to post on Instagram, helping you meet your followers when they’re most active on the app and more likely to engage.
Frequency
Frequency refers to how often a user opens the Instagram app.
Frequent users will see a more chronological feed, but those who seldom open the app will see posts most relevant to their interests and relationships since last opening the app.
Following
Following many people means that the algorithm has more content to choose from when surfacing posts in a feed. When this happens, they prioritize relationships, engagement, and perceived interests.
Again, this factor emphasizes the importance of generating a relationship with your audience, encouraging engagement, and posting at the right times.
Usage
The usage factor is similar to frequency, as it relates to how much time is spent on the app.
Those who do quick browsing sessions will see what the algorithm determines to be the day’s highlights based on the factors mentioned above, while those who spend more time on the app will see a more significant number of posts.
Frequent browsers may even run out of content to see, at which point the algorithm will suggest new posts and accounts based on your interactions and engagement history.
Interest
Instagram makes many content recommendations, so a portion of the content users see is based on the app’s understanding of their interest in specific topics.
If it detects that you always like, comment, and interact with posts around similar topics, you’ll see those posts first. Users who engage with content similar to what you post are also more likely to be shown your posts, and vice versa.
While not a direct factor that Instagram has noted as an algorithm factor in 2016, engagement does play a significant role in the algorithms process.

 
How Instagram’s Algorithm Uses Engagement
In addition to all of the above factors, engagement plays a significant role in how the Instagram algorithm prioritizes and surfaces content to users. The most important engagement metrics are comments, likes, shares, and video views.
Here is a breakdown of how engagement factors into the algorithm:
1. When you first post a photo, it’s shown to a small percentage of your audience.
2. Instagram measures how quickly that photo is interacted with, i.e., comments and likes.
3. Instagram compares the engagement that your post gets to other content you’ve shared at similar times and days. For example, is your post from today at 10 am getting more or less traffic than your post from last Monday at 10 am? The app compares to similar times to ensure accuracy when evaluating your engagement metrics, especially since certain times bring better results.
4. If your photo attracts a lot of engagement, Instagram will show it to a higher percentage of your audience and maybe even share it on explore pages.
5. If your post continues to attract engagement, your photo will stay at the top of your audience’s news feeds and reach more people. If it doesn’t attract a lot of initial attention, less of your audience will see your post.

 
Instagram Algorithm Update 2021
The 2016 algorithm update was almost a complete overhaul to how the algorithm works, so it is the most notable, publicized, and confirmed by Instagram.
Unfortunately, since then, Instagram doesn’t always make it public when they’ve changed the algorithm. So, if you notice changes to your engagement and reach, it is most likely not the result of an algorithm change but most likely due to the app’s growth.
There are so many accounts on the platform, and as people follow more and more users, competition on the app grows. It becomes more difficult to quickly generate a significant amount of engagement, which in turn impacts how, where, and when your posts are shown in your audience’s feed. This is one of the many reasons why it’s important to monitor your Instagram analytics.
Instagram Algorithm Recent Changes
That being said, the most recent update to the algorithm as of 2021 is the removal of like counts on people’s photos.
The update hasn’t yet been made available to all Instagram users, but it would effectively remove a total like count from a user’s photo and instead display only the usernames of people that have liked the post. Users who post a photo still have the option to see the number of likes a photo has received, though. Instagram is making this update because they believe it will do numbers to diminish bullying on the app and protect users from being influenced by social pressure that says they need to get a certain amount of likes on their posts.

 
How to Get Your Posts Shown Higher on Instagram
Although there is not much you can do to beat the algorithm, or so to speak, there are ways to get your posts shown higher on Instagram.
Post when you know your audience is most active.
Like all social media platforms, one of the easiest ways to generate immediate engagement is to post content when you know your followers are most active, as they’re already browsing the app and ready to see what you have to offer.
To get this information, you can use the native Instagram Analytics tool available to all users with business accounts or another option like Marketing Hub. 
If you’re new to the app, it will be challenging to get this information right away, so come back to this tip after you’ve spent enough time on the app to get valuable, actionable analytics.
Post content you know your audience likes.
Again, use your analytics. Understand the content that your audience engages with the most, whether it’s high-quality product photos, behind-the-scenes content, or Instagram Reels. Use this to your advantage, and continue creating content that they enjoy as they’re more likely to interact with something they like.
Use business-relevant hashtags.
Hashtags are a great way to signal to the algorithm about your content, which can help surface your profile to audience members interested in the hashtags you use.
Don’t overload your hashtag use, but aim to use them in all of the content you share on Instagram, from Stories to IGTV to photo captions.
Encourage engagement and interaction.
Interaction on your profile will come naturally, but encouraging engagement and interaction with the content you share can be valuable in getting the algorithm to work for you.
Create engaging captions that entice users to comment on your posts, ask for likes and shares, and be in conversation with those who interact to inspire loyalty and entice them to return.
You can also place interactive elements in your Instagram Stories, like polls, stickers, and emojis. The benefits of this are twofold, as your customers will be interacting with your content, and you’ll also learn more about their interests and desires based on the responses they give.
Stay consistent.
One of the most important things to do to take control over the algorithm is to stay consistent on the app. Develop an Instagram-specific posting schedule, and stick to it.
It’ll help you stay continuously active on the platform, which allows your followers to continuously engage with your content, which helps the algorithm learn more and more about your account. The more information they have, and the more engagement they see, the higher you will be on your followers’ feeds.

 
Instagram Story Algorithm
Instagram Stories appear at the top of a user’s feed.
The Stories algorithm prioritizes timeliness, and you’re most likely to see the most recent stories from the accounts you engage and interact with the most. The accounts that the algorithm thinks you have the strongest relationships with will always have their Stories shown before all other stories.
For businesses, this means that it’s essential to maintain an active presence on Instagram Stories and to encourage engagement within your Stories, like polls and asking questions.

 
Instagram Explore Algorithm
The feed algorithm and Explore page algorithm are relatively similar, as they both show content that Instagram thinks you’ll be most interested in based on your previous app activity. The main difference is that feed content features accounts you’re familiar with and following, while the Explore page is content from new accounts.
You can think of it like this: if one of your favorite things to do on Instagram is watch food videos, your feed will display content from the accounts with food videos that you interact with the most. Your explore page would also contain food videos since the algorithm knows you like them, but you won’t follow those accounts already.
The explore page is based entirely on interests, so, as a business, it’s important to share content related to your brand and utilize elements that would tell the algorithm who to show your content to, like relevant hashtags.
Succeeding on Instagram is not just about posting content regularly. You also need to understand how the algorithm works and leverage its makeup to your advantage. While changes to the algorithm will always happen, staying on top of the trends will help you ensure that you’re prepared for them when they do.

With almost 4 billion people worldwide currently connected to the internet, there has never been a better time for businesses to include blogging in their marketing strategy.
Not only does blogging drive website traffic and promote your products and services, but it also helps you build trust with your potential customers.
In this post, we’re going to highlight the many benefits of blogging for business and how you can get started with creating relevant content that drives inbound links and traffic to your site.
Let’s get started.

The Benefits of Blogging for Business
One question many people ask after starting a business is whether blogging is worth it in 2021.
Short answer: Yes! And here the reasons why we say so.
1. It helps drive traffic to your website.
Raise your hand if you want more website visitors. Yeah, me too.
Now think about the ways people find your website:

They could type your name right into their browser, but that’s for an audience you already have. They know who you are, you’re on their radar, and that doesn’t help you get more traffic on top of what you’re already getting.
You could pay for traffic by buying an email list (don’t you dare!), blasting them, and hoping some people open and click through on the emails. But that’s expensive and, you know, illegal.
You could pay for traffic by placing tons of paid ads, which isn’t illegal but still quite expensive. And the second you run out of money, your traffic stops coming, too.

So, how can you attract new traffic or readers to your site? You can through blogging and optimizing your site for search engines.
Here’s how it works.
Think about how many pages there are on your website. Probably not a ton, right? And think about how often you update those pages. Probably not that often, right?
Well, blogging is a great way to solve both of those problems.
Every time you create and publish a blog post, it’s one more indexed page on your website, which means one more opportunity for you to show up on the search engine results page (SERP) and drive traffic to your website in organic search.
We’ll get into more of the benefits of blogging on your SEO a bit later, but it’s also one more cue to Google and other search engines that your website is active, and they should be checking in frequently to see what new content to surface.
2. You can repurpose blog content for social media.
Blogging for your business also helps you get discovered via social media. Every time you create a new article, you’re creating content that people can share on social networks — Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest — which helps expose your business to a new audience that may not know you yet.
Blog content also helps keep your social media presence going.
Instead of asking your social media manager always to create brand new content for social media (or creating that content yourself), your blog can serve as that repository of content.
You’re strengthening your social reach with blog content and driving new website visitors to your blog via your social channels. Quite a symbiotic relationship, I must say.

3. It helps convert traffic into leads.
Now that you have some traffic coming to your site through your blog, you have an opportunity to convert that website traffic into leads.
Like every blog post you write is another indexed page, each post is a new opportunity to generate new leads.
The way this works is straightforward: Just add a lead-generating call-to-action to every blog post.
Often, these calls-to-action lead to things like free ebooks, whitepapers, fact sheets, webinars, trials, or basically, any content asset for which someone would be willing to exchange their information.
To be super clear for anyone unfamiliar with how traffic-to-lead conversions work, it’s as simple as this:

Visitor comes to website
Visitor sees call-to-action for a free offer
Visitor clicks call-to-action and gets to a landing page, which contains a form for them to fill in with their information
Visitor fills out the form, submits information, and receives the free offer

If you scroll down in this blog post, you’ll see a call-to-action button.
In fact, 99.9% of the blog posts we publish have call-to-action buttons, and yours should, too. That is how you turn your website traffic into leads for your sales team.
Note: Not all blog readers will become leads, and that’s okay. No one converts 100% of the people who read their blog into leads. Just get blogging, put calls-to-action on every blog post, set a visitor-to-lead conversion rate benchmark for yourself, and strive to improve the benchmark each month.
4. It drives long-term results.
The best business blogs answer common questions their readers and customers have.
If you consistently create valuable content or articles for your target audience, it’ll establish you as an industry leader or authority in their eyes.
Can you imagine the impact of sending an educational blog post you wrote to clear things up for a confused customer? Or how many more deals a salesperson could close if their leads discovered blog content written by their salesperson?
“Establishing authority” is not a vanity metric as concrete as traffic and leads, but it’s pretty powerful stuff. You can use it to measure sales enablement.
Because at the end of the day, that’s what many of your blog posts are.
Think about it:

Suppose prospects find answers to their everyday questions via blog posts written by people at your company. In that case, they’re much more likely to come into the sales funnel trusting what you have to say because you’ve helped them in the past — even before they were interested in purchasing anything from you.
Prospects that have been reading your blog posts will typically enter the sales funnel with more knowledge of your products and services, your place in the market, and your industry. That makes for a far more productive sales conversation than one held between two relative strangers.
Salespeople who encounter specific questions that require in-depth explanation or a documented answer can pull from an archive of blog posts. Not only do these articles help move the sales process along faster than if a sales rep had to create the assets from scratch, but they position the salesperson as a helpful resource to their prospect — thus helping to build trust.

5. Blogging helps with link building.
Inbound links or backlinks are among the 200 factors the Google algorithm considers when ranking a site on its search engine result page. Many experts and small business owners also believe backlinks to be the 3rd most crucial factor in search engine optimization.
Although generating inbound links is essential, 41% of SEO experts say link building is the most challenging part of search optimization.
When you create articles that are not only valuable to your potential customers but also to other companies that your audience sees as industry leaders, it’d be easier to gain relevant links.
Links for authoritative websites serve as a vote of confidence or recommendation from other websites. And it signals to Google that you’re trustworthy and an expert in your industry.
Another benefit of backlinks is that they help you build your domain authority, which helps improve your overall discoverability in search engines.
6. It drives long-term results.
It would be fantastic if you could take a trip to Hawaii, go to the gym, and sleep for as many hours as you want, and still be able to drive traffic to your site.
Good news, though! That’s what blogging does — primarily through search engines.
Here’s what I mean:
Imagine you sit down for an hour on Sunday to write and publish a blog post. Let’s say that blog post gets you 100 views and ten leads on Monday. You get another 50 views and five leads on Tuesday as a few more people find it on social media, and some of your subscribers get caught up on their email and RSS. But after a couple of days, most of the fanfare from that post dies down, and you’ve netted 150 views and 15 leads.
It’s not over.
Since that post is now ranking, it means that for days, weeks, months, and years to come, you can continue to get traffic from that blog post. So while it may feel like day one or bust, in reality, blogging acts more like this:

So while you’re hitting your snooze alarm, surfing in Hawaii, and pumping iron, you’re also driving traffic and leads. The effort you put in yesterday can turn into hundreds of thousands of views and leads in the future.
What’s more, you can monetize your blog content in many creative ways. Business models such as affiliate marketing mean you can generate an income from blogging on just about any topic — from makeup and beauty to camping and motorcycles.
There’s a wide variety of affiliate programs out there where you can generate an income from referring people to relevant products and services.
When it comes to blogging, most of your sales will likely come from your older articles.
More than half of the traffic generated each month on the Hubspot blog comes from posts published in previous months. They come from old posts.
The same goes for the leads generated in a current month — about 90% of the leads we generate every month come from blog posts published in previous months. Sometimes years ago.
We call these types of blog posts “compounding” posts. Not every blog post will fit into this category, but the more evergreen blog posts you write, the more likely it is that you’ll land on one of those compounding blog posts.
In our research, we’ve found that about 1 in every ten blog posts end up being compounding blog posts.

To me (and hopefully to you), this demonstrates the scalability of business blogging.
While you might not see immediate results, over time, you’ll be able to count on a predictable amount of traffic and leads for your business without any additional resource investment — the work to generate that traffic and those leads are already done.
If you’d like to learn more about the long-term impact of blogging and how to reap even more benefits from the blog posts that are ranking in organic search for your business, check out this article, “The Blogging Tactic No One Is Talking About: Optimizing the Past.”
7. It helps you share company news.
Another benefit blogging affords every big, and small business is a medium to share their company news and stories.
Blogs can contain not only articles but also news that highlight what a company is up to.
Have you hired a new content marketing manager? Share it on your blog.
Interviewed online marketing and industry experts? Post it on your blog.
Have a brilliant case study that showcases how your products and services help customers? Tell your audience about it on your blog.
Are you hosting a local fair or trade show? Drum up attention for the even through your blog.
Not only does sharing company news on your blog humanize your brand, but it also helps your audience see that you’re not always about selling.
Secondary Benefits of Business Blogging
There are other reasons businesses might want to blog, but I think they’re smaller and stray from the core benefits of blogging.
For example, I love to use our blog to test out extensive campaigns on the cheap before investing a lot of money and time into their creation. I also love to use our blog to help understand our persona better.
And while this shouldn’t be their primary use, these are all significant usefulness of a business blog, but they’re secondary benefits to me.
How to Start Blogging for your Business
You’ve seen the benefits your business blog can get you — more traffic, leads, authority, and a better relationship with your audience. And you’re undoubtedly itching to get started.
But how?
Our guide on how to start a successful blog has everything you need.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in November 2020 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

When it comes to the important elements of an email, lots of brands and professionals underestimate the power of their signature. Your email signature tells your recipients who sent the message, of course, but it also lends legitimacy to your content and/or your request. And if you really take the time to do it right,…
The post 10 Ways to Take Your Email Signature to the Next Level appeared first on Benchmark Email.

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