• SOP Library
  • APOLOGY LETTER TEMPLATE FOR COMPANIES

    Uh-oh…Something happened in your business and it’s time to apologize. Even if it’s not your fault it is important to let your users know that you care about them and that you’re doing your best to right whatever wrong has happened.

     

    Sometimes this happens when you’re working with a 3rd party service and they make a mistake. You still need to take responsibility for what happened because at the end of the day, your users are trusting you to provide them with good service and take care of their needs.

     

    When you discover something unfortunate happened it’s best to get ahead of the wave of support emails that might come in by being quick to release an apology letter to describe to your users the details about what happened.

    infographic for damage control action plan

    COMPENSATING FOR A MISTAKE IN YOUR BUSINESS

    As an apology to your loyal customers you might want to offer them something for free.  If you have a subscription service that was suddenly not available to your users, you may want to offer them a free month of service or a discount on another product that you offer.

     

    If you have a blog and your blog was down over the weekend, you might want to offer them a freebie PDF or e-book. Although problems with your site or online services are a serious thing, you might want to try and be light-hearted about it and slightly tongue and cheek and offer them a “How Not to Let Your Website Crash” PDF based on what you’ve learned from the incident.

    PREVENTING ERRORS IN THE FUTURE

    It’s all about building brand loyalty. You want your users to trust. Even if you think most of your users will not even be aware of the problem, you still an use it as an opportunity to gain trust. Being totally transparent about what happened can make your company appear more personal instead of being just a faceless corporate structure that your users may imagine your company to be.

     

    When writing an apology letter, it’s best to have one person address your audience as themselves instead writing it from team’s perspective. For example, use the real name of somebody working in the company to sign the letter instead of signing it as “The Blah-blah-blah Team”.  

    MISTAKES ARE OPPORTUNITIES TO GAIN TRUST

    This is also a good opportunity to reassure your loyal customers that you and your team will try and prevent this kind of issue from happening again. This also makes you open to customer feedback and may help you find additional customer concerns that you may not be aware of.  

    The SOP Template provided includes suggestions for what you should add in your letter. Some sections to include might be a question and answer portion where you consider what a user might be asking about with regards to the incident. For example, What happened to cause this issue?, Why didn’t it get fixed earlier?, and What will you do in the future to prevent this thing from happening?.

    Blog post image apology letter template

    BE PREPARED FOR FUTURE MISTAKES

    Use this letter as an opportunity to remind your users that there are people behind the scenes who care about their interests and are on their side. Even if you haven’t had a problem happen with your business before, you may want to download a copy of this letter anyway just so that you can put it into your own SOP for the procedures that you will take when something like this happens. That way you are ready to go should an incident arise and you’re not scrambling around trying to think about how to deal with it.

     

    In fact it’s very important to have this kind of emergency plan in place. You should know who will handle the users and what responsibilities each person has in order to solve the problem. You may even want to discuss with the rest of your team about potential issues that they foresee happening in the future that you may not have thought of. Cover as many bases as you can so if something like this happens, you will be ready.

    You might want to go even further than this to prepare yourself by adding this apology letter into your email manager, such Convert Kit and then should the situation arise, all you’ll have to do is fill in the details and send it out.

     

    We hope you’ll never have to use this letter and that your business will run flawlessly, but should an error occur, we hope this letter helps you maintain and even gain more trust with your users. Get the letter template sent to your inbox by filling in your email. Cheers!

  • Design
  • EASILY FIND PROBLEMS IN YOUR WEBSITE UX

    You might have a good understanding about your target audience, but you can’t know know how a real user will view respond to your website unless you’ve had one test it out. Even if you’ve agonized over every detail, perfecting the layout and choosing your images carefully, there will always be some unexpected issues.

    Stepping back and watching somebody else look over your website can give you incredible insights into the potential usability problems or confusing information on your site. This kind of testing is addicting- once you realize how quickly you can gather valuable feedback this way, you won’t want to stop testing. The website testing plan example available for download above makes it easy and fast to gather information that will be of immediate value to your business.

    If you’ve been working on your website for a decent amount of time, everything on the site may seem obvious and easy to use from your perspective. The only way to see it from the point of view of a new user is to get someone who hasn’t seen it before to take a look. You’ll be surprised at what you’ve missed that can easily be fixed or improved.

    how to user test your website

    CAN I GET MY FRIENDS TO UX TEST?

    Ideally the person who looks at your website should have no connection to your project as this may influence their opinions and thoughts about the design and user experience. If the person has no vested interest in your project, you will likely get more real and honest feedback. Your friends may be hesitant to nitpick through your project.

    Someone who has no knowledge or understanding of your project will give you clear insights into how a normal user will feel when coming across your site. A person who is completely unfamiliar with what you do should be able to tell by looking at your website what your company does without any additional explanation.

    ux test your target market

    Do user testing with people in your target market, making sure to include a range of ages and backgrounds so that your feedback is more complete. You can experiment with a few testers from outside your target market as well. These people will likely add further insights about your website user experience.

    KEEPING COSTS LOW WHEN TESTING YOUR WEBSITE

    Keep in mind that your friends might sugarcoat their experience with your website so as not to offend you. It’s better to find a neutral party who can analyze your site from a real user’s perspective. Conducting user testing doesn’t need to be expensive. Using the SOP provided above, you can ask anyone in your target market without any special skills to conduct this test. You can find freelancers on websites like Fiverr (non-affiliate) or Upwork (non-affiliate) to do this test for you.

    Using third party platforms like Fiverr or Upwork can also be beneficial because the users testing your site may have backgrounds in design or user experience themselves. These freelancers have probably worked on a multitude of other websites and are aware of what does and doesn’t work, especially when it comes to design.

    how to choose your color palette

    If you tend to favor a certain color palette in your personal taste, it may help you to see those colors through the eyes of another person. You might find that some color schemes distract the reader from the actual content or make it more difficult for the reader to use the website.

    You may not have considered that some of your users might have some kind of color blindness which would make it difficult for them to distinguish between different shades of certain colors. You want to make sure that your colors don’t ultimately make it more difficult for someone to use your website properly. At the end of the day, you want to deliver your message clearly and with as few obstacles as possible.

    Take time throughout your development process to periodically do user testing. This will help guide your user experience as well as help you to avoid wasting time on unnecessary features and designs. Use the SOP at the top of this blog post to get started with some basic user testing.

  • SOP Library
  • INSTRUCTIONS FOR UX TESTING YOUR APP

    User testing your app is a critical way to evaluate the design, content and usability of your application. Even if you don’t have a large budget for market research, you can still gain valuable suggestions and ideas while discovering errors and potential confusing sections of your app just based on a few user tests.

    If you have been working on the development of an app for a long time, it’s very easy to ignore or miss small mistakes in the design. You may not realize that there is a flaw in the app’s navigation. For this reason, you should ideally have the user testing completed by someone who has never seen the app before. There are plenty of websites out there that offer free and paid user testing. You could also have friends test your app, however you should be aware that these people may be somewhat biased. Even if you have a small budget, try to have at least one person who doesn’t know you user test the app.

    You may be able to watch while someone is user-testing your app. This can give you some amazing insights into your app’s user experience. In this case, it’s extremely important that you keep silent and simply watch. Your instinct may be to help them if they have questions or issues, but try your best not to interfere with the testers’ experience. Hold your tongue and don’t give out any hints- let them figure it out. After all, you won’t be able to help your real users when they download the app themselves.

    You can gain so much insight if you watch as an impartial and silent observer as your user-tester navigates through the app. Even just watching the way that their fingers move on the screen, or how long it takes them to navigate from one screen to another is extremely helpful in streamlining your design.

    User-testing isn’t a one time event. It should be done on a regular basis and it should be consistent from version to version. You should strive to ask similar questions to one batch of reviewers versus another so that you can compare how your app has improved or deteriorated over time.

    For those of you who have never asked someone to user-test your app before, the SOP download above includes an explanation of the test and a set of suggested questions you can ask your user-tester to answer about your app.

    You can give your tester the SOP directly and ask them to follow the step-by-step instructions. When they finish the SOP, they will follow the directions and give you back a short report including information ranging from issues about navigation to their opinion on the design and colors used in the app.

    Before having someone take part in a user-test, you might want to set some specific goals for what you intend to gain from the test. For example, you may want to ask them to complete a specific task in your app, such as creating an account or editing a photo. Keep in mind what the main goal of your app is. Are you trying to generate revenue? Are you more interested in building your membership database? You can customize the SOP by adding a few of your own requirements.

    The ideal test will also include a user who is part of your target market. If your app is a game for children ages 10 to 14 you should try to find some kids who will can test app. Try to find at least a few user-testers that fit your target market’s profile, as those are ultimately the people that will be using your app.

    Ready to get started? Even if you have no experience with user-testing, it’s a super simple process to collect this data using the SOP provided at the top of this post.

  • Content Creation
  • Format a WordPress Blog Post Using the Visual Editor

    Although there are many website hosting platforms out there, we use WordPress for many of our sites both professionally and personally, and even use it for this site! You can use WordPress for free (!), or buy your own domain and host your website with WordPress. 

    “It’s probably the easiest and most powerful blogging and website content management system (or CMS) in existence today.”iThemes.com

    The visual composer, or WYSIWYG editor found on the pages and posts on WordPress resembles that of a word processor. Similarly to writing on Microsoft Word or Google Docs, any formatting that is done on screen will be the same as when the document is printed or published online. You can see what the finished post will look like, while you are editing it, which can make it easier and more convenient to work on. Most of the formatting can be completed by simply highlighting the text you wish to format and clicking the relevant button in the menu, which makes it perfect for beginners to blogging or WordPress.

    WHY SHOULD I USE THE WORDPRESS WYSIWYG EDITOR?

    If you’re new to WordPress, using the WYSIWYG editor is the easiest way to create new pages or blog posts for your website. Following these simple steps can really help turn your valuable content into reader friendly blog posts.

    It doesn’t matter how good your content is, if it’s not formatted correctly, your readers may be turned off and not return to your site. Spending some extra time to create an aesthetically pleasing and logical format for your content is really important to get your readers to stick around (and keep coming back).

    FORMATTING YOUR BLOG POST USING THE WYSIWYG EDITOR

    One of the first steps in our SOP, is to make sure you add headers. These are a practical addition to the format of your blog, in order to separate your content into logical sections, create digestible chunks for the reader and also make it more visually appealing.

    Very few people enjoying reading large chunks of text, and it’s possible that long prose will scare off your readers. If you think about a newspaper, the columns are often long and narrow so that the reader’s eyes can easily jump from one part of the text to another without losing their place. They’re also peppered with images or videos. Since blog posts are generally scanned and sometimes not read in details, having headers to separate your content will make it easier for the readers to move through your blog post with ease.

    Including headers in your blog posts are also good for SEO, but that’s another SOP Template!

    Another great way to make it easier for your readers to view your blog post is to use bullet points or numbered points to break up chunks of text.

    Yes, that’s another great way to split up your text. We all know how much people like lists. Let’s be honest, we’ve all had a guilty peek at those “10 reasons to leave your boyfriend” list-type posts that are plastered all over your social media news feeds!

    As an alternative to spammy titles to attract the attention of your readers, you can use bold text. Use it sparingly however, as too much bold text is like shouting “Hey! Hey! Read my blog post!” at your readers and can look a little desperate.

    Another great way to make it easier for your readers to view your blog post is to use bullet points or numbered points to break up chunks of text.

    On the WordPress WYSIWYG editor dashboard, there’s a button called the ‘toolbar toggle’. Clicking this button will open up another row of buttons and functions that you might not have seen previously, such as adding colour to your text, or entering a special character.

    One of the default features of the visual editor is ‘Add Media’. All you need to do is click the ‘Add Media’ button and import your own photos, documents and GIFs. You can also see a gallery of images you’ve already imported into WordPress. It’s a good idea to give your images clearly defined names before you upload them so that you can easily find them using the search bar.

    When it comes to video, you should never directly add them into WordPress, as the file will be too large. You’re better off using a video hosting platform such as YouTube or Vimeo to upload your video first, and then paste the video link into your WordPress blog post or page. If you have lots of videos on a YouTube channel, there are plugins available that will automatically pull any existing and newly uploaded videos from YouTube and add them to a ‘library’ on your website or blog.

    You will instantly see your video once you’ve pasted the video link onto your post using the visual editor.

    One thing to remember with your images is to make sure you get lots of space around them to keep your blog posts looking clean. Bear a similar thing in mind with your text content, and create spaces between paragraphs or sections of text to make it easy-to-read. White spaces will prevent your reader from being bombarded with huge blocks of text and inevitably leaving your blog post unread.

    Although many of you will be using your blog to promote products and paid features, it’s best not to use too many links within your blog posts. Try to only link relevant words, and keep the linked text short. Lots of links within your blog will begin to make it look ugly and too much like a bad advertisement!

    While you may want to format your blog post really beautifully to match your personal style, it’s best to keep your format consistent across your website, making sure that aspects such as hyperlinks are a standard colour and font types compliment each other. Choosing an easy to read font type, will ultimately give your reader a more comfortable reading experience and allow your content to come through without distractions.

    Also consider using a size 12 or 14 font to make sure that your readers don’t need to squint to read your article. Before you publish your post make sure you do a thorough grammar and spell check of your article. Luckily, WordPress has a built in spellcheck.

    To make sure the grammar and structure of your article is acceptable, you can outsource this to a freelancer with editorial skills. Alternatively, you can use a great tool, Grammarly. You can download the desktop app and the chrome extension, that will automatically check your blog posts for grammatically errors.

    Don’t forget to save your blog post as a draft, and click view post to see what your blog post will look like before you publish it to your site. If you see a mistake, just go back to the post and make the changes. You need to save again to see any changes. When you’re happy with your post, hit the publish button and your blog will appear in your blog feed on your website.

    You can use this SOP Template to format your own blog posts using the WordPress WYSIWYG editor, or pass it on to your freelancer if you outsource your blog posts.