The Mobile Spoon

Imagine you walk into a barbecue party and just when you’re about to grab a beer and sit down with some old friends - the party host jumps at you, gives you a long tour around the house, brags about the renovated pool, forces you to try out all the appetizers, and introduces you to his neighbors that you’ll never see again.  I call this phenomenon " the host syndrome ”. The host syndrome happens when the host tries too hard to impress the guests and make them aware of the efforts made to arrange the party and appreciate things nobody cares about, usually resulting in the exact opposite.  Like many  cognitive biases , the host syndrome creates a blind spot that turns the host into an annoying creature. This phenomenon can be found in software products too. For example, product creators (AKA the hosts) often push their product features too aggressively, causing their guests (AKA the users) to feel uncomfortable and lose interest.  Let me walk you through the hosts' me...

Designing forms has always been a challenge. No matter if we're working on a simple onboarding form, lead scoring or a KYC form, UX is always a concern: how many fields should we have? what completion rate should we expect? Do we really need a phone number or can we get away without it?  So as a service to my future self, here are some useful insights and statistics about form completion rates , taken from different studies.  What is a good form completion rate? The average landing page has a conversion rate of 2.35% , with top websites converting roughly 11.5% of visitors. A report from WishPond , involving 146 landing pages found some different numbers: 64 B2B landing pages showed an average of 13.28% conversion rate 80 B2C landing pages showed an average of 9.87% conversion rate Abandonment rate varies between industries:  Travel:  81%  abandonment rate  Nonprofit:  77.9%  abandonment rate  Finance:  75.7%  abandonment rate...

Here's a second guide for boosting your UX writing skills and improving your product's microcopy. If you haven't read my first guide - make sure to check it out  here .  1. Bite-sized text blocks instead of lengthy sentences There are always words to remove and ways to simplify your sentences.  2. Less is usually better You don't have to wrap every UI element with a descriptive text.  Use common UI designs and users will find their way around.  3. It’s not about YOUR product. It’s about THEIR benefits Don’t describe what your product can do for them, explain what they (your users) can gain by using it. 4. Play hard to get  We all suffer from " the host syndrome " - that uncontrollable urge to promote every feature in our product so people realize how great it is. Only problem is, nobody cares.  Users are suspicious and impatient. An excess of data will overwhelm them and turn them off.  So instead of bloating your product with too much information...

  Hey everyone!  They say an evening at home is a great opportunity to summarize 10 of your most popular posts, so I gave it a try.  So here's a collection of 10 guides that were published here, at the mobile spoon, and are packed with tons of UI/UX and product tips.  Enjoy!  1.   The definite guide for writing and designing text in mobile apps This guide includes 40 rules that will help you avoid common pitfalls when working with text: layout, alignment, spacing, fonts, microscopy, UX writing, and more.  2.   How to design data tables that don't suck Every product has some data tables (in main elements or in the admin stuff) and yet, there are probably more bad examples than good ones.  To avoid the common issues - I've created this 20 rules guide for creating user-friendly data tables and grids . Most of them are pretty easy to implement.  There’s nothing special about this guide, except it’s totally superior to all existing...

I've been summarizing a lot of tips for improving conversion rates, leveraging cognitive biases in UI design , and UX writing  best practices.  Here are 30 rules for designing high-converting call-to-action buttons.  Included in this guide: general guidelines, design tips, UX Writing, cognitive biases worth knowing, and dark-patterns to avoid. Enjoy!  General tips: 1. Be consistent with your messaging Remember this: conversion rate optimization is not about optimizing a certain step, it's about optimizing the entire funnel.  Be consistent with your messaging and set the right expectations across the entire funnel: your ads, your landing page, your App Store product page , etc.  Without a consistent message, your users will feel misled and bounce.    2. Focus on the user Nobody cares about the internals of your product. Focus on what’s matter the most for the users: the bottom line, the benefits, the outcome.  3. Aim to establish trust...

Some readers have complained that my posts are getting too long. Well, you’ll be happy to know that I black-listed all of them (they won’t bother us again), but for the sake of making a point, this post will be a short one: Sign-up forms... Conversion rates... You want to collect the user’s name... Should you go with a single “full name” field or split it to "first name" and "last name"? My answer is: split it (see? told you it will be short). The answer is: to split.  Here's why: Why you should use a single name field:  For the sake of the sport, here are the reasons to use a single "full name" field: Better user experience - things go faster when using a single field. More fields = more friction (unless, of course, you want to create some friction on purpose ).  Prevent confusion - having one name field eliminates confusion in some places (and cultures) where  the name is handled a bit differently  (i.e in Japan, Korea, ...

In product design, friction is usually the “bad guy”: a conversion killer that prevents users from getting things done and accomplishing their goals.   Friction is that thing that causes anxiety , confuses the users, slows them down, or distracts them from doing what they originally wanted to do or what the product wants them to do.   Friction is usually bad for business.  Unless... it’s done intentionally... There are situations where friction can help the product (or the business) perform better.   Users might still feel frustrated, but “good friction” is usually something that’s planned to achieve a certain goal that is more important than good user experience.   So when can friction be a good thing?   Here are 6 legitimate examples (followed bu some illegitimate ones):  1. Filtering unwanted users Short sign-up forms lead to higher conversion rates and more users, but sometimes you just don’t want “any...