The Manifest Names Create Ape as one of the Most-Reviewed Global Product Design Agencies

UX has great power to either help or mislead the user.

At CreateApe, we often talk about how important it is to gain the user’s trust. Companies should want users to feel good about their websites by helping them seamlessly and safely accomplish their goals.

But when money enters the picture, some web designers prioritize numbers and sales over the user’s convenience. This leads to deceptive practices that manipulate users into bogus agreements that cost them their privacy — and often their money.

These practices are called dark UX patterns, and it’s when user experience turns into user exploitation.

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Avoid These 5 Common Dark Patterns

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Forced Continuity

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How many of us have signed up for free trials and then never canceled them? It can end up costing the user several hundred dollars a year without them ever noticing. Companies ask you for credit card information to protect their assets and ensure they don’t keep giving out free services.

The problem happens when the user doesn’t know when their trial is over and they get charged without a warning. Or when companies make it blatantly difficult to cancel.

Combat this by making it easier for the user to opt-out of the free trial before charging them. Send a notification that the trial period is ending, and don’t bury cancellation links in giant walls of text.

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Privacy Zuckering

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We know, we’re just as annoyed with the lack of transparency around data mining as you are. Remember when Mark Zuckerberg went to court over Facebook privacy breaches? Well, now he has a UX dark pattern named after him.

This term was coined by UX designer Harry Brignull in his online guide to dark patterns. He defines this as the practice of tricking the user into giving up more of their private information than they normally would with jargon-y language in Terms of Service agreements. They take advantage of our tendency to scan without reading the fine print to lead us into giving out sensitive information.

The good news is that many online platforms became much more transparent about collecting our data after this incident (mostly to avoid legal action, but that’s still worth something). There is now an expectation that the user is made aware when their data is collected.

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Trick Questions

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In UX, the words on your page are just as important as the visual elements. And some designers deliberately try to confuse their users to get them to agree to something they don’t want.

Trick questions are often layered, using clever wording or double negatives to create cognitive dissonance. Sometimes they make it impossible to opt-out of mailing lists by lumping everything in with Terms of Service agreements.

At the end of the day, clarity is key. The user’s consent matters — and tricking users creates an ethical dilemma that goes against the principles of UX. The user should always have agency and designers must create that sense of agency with clear, unambiguous messaging.

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Misdirection

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A distracting design could be completely harmless, or it could have an ulterior motive. Many dark patterns utilize some form of misdirection by guiding the user’s attention to a specific place to distract them from something else.

Think of a time you bought something expensive online and the website tried to add some unnecessary insurance. Did you think there was no way to get around adding insurance? Or did they hide the option to skip insurance somewhere else on the page?

Misdirection is easily avoidable in UX with color theory, minimalist designs, and grouping related options closely together in the interface. Always remember that your user should be able to complete their goals easily, without distraction.

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Hidden Costs/Fees

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Everyone knows there are taxes and shipping charges that make the checkout cost more than the advertised price. That’s not where the problem is.

The problem is when websites tack on unnecessary hidden fees at the last stage of check out. How expensive has a delivery or small cart fee made your online takeout order? These types of fees vary in cost, but they can start to add up after a while.

Let your users know about any additional charges at the first stage of check out. If they go through the entire process to see their order is way more expensive than initially anticipated right before they place it, they’ll leave feeling frustrated with the experience.

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So Why Is This Important?

While the results from dark patterns lead to short-term gratification, the user will eventually catch on and there will be no foundation of trust to build off of. It’s a vicious cycle that leads to companies finding new ways to digitally dupe their users.

At the end of the day, it’s best to bank on honesty and follow UX best practices.

Businesses are spoiled for choice when it comes to resources to create a website. Between free templates and a huge range of hosting platforms, almost anyone can create a website for their company.

The DIY method seems like the easiest solution, but will it set you up for long-term success? Will your brand stand out against a jungle full of custom, user-approved digital products?

Call us biased, but UX/UI design is well worth the investment because of its ability to bring in users and keep them coming back for more. According to this article from medium.com, UX design has insanely high ROI rates (some as high as 301%)!

Users also agree about the power of UX because it benefits them as much as the business. In fact, 3 out of 5 users agree that a positive user experience is more influential than marketing or advertising.

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If you’re interested in seeing how UX design can help your business, but don’t have the resources to create a website yourself, don’t panic! That is where we come in.

Digital agencies like CreateApe have both the services and expertise you need to redesign your digital product or create an all-new website from scratch. Leave your project with us—and we’ll deliver something that your company and your users can be proud of!

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CreateApe's Resources to Create a Website

• Research
• UX/UI design
• Website development
• Branding
• Marketing
• Copywriting
• Video
• Digital Products
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Benefits of Hiring a UX Agency

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We’ve talked ad nauseum about the financial benefits of UX design and how it affects customer satisfaction, so let’s take a step back and look at how an agency improves the product itself.

Free website templates are great for building personal websites or portfolios, but professional companies need something more substantial.

Free website templates usually have restrictions that can negatively impact the business (and the user experience by extension).

The Drawbacks of Free Website Builders

• Page limits
• Limited storage
• Limited features
• No customer support outside contact forms
• No custom domain name
• Advertisements/company branding
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Your branding means more to your users than the free website builder’s logo. Competing brand identities on your page can confuse and distract the user. It also just looks less official.
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Benefits of a Professionally-Built Site

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UX/UI design is so much more than just the website. It covers everything from discovery to new products and features post-launch. It also tells you everything you need to know about your users and how to keep your brand moving forward in the competitive market.

Let’s say you’re a healthcare provider that needs a professional website for patients to book appointments. CreateApe can build as many pages as you need, design appointment portals and insurance features, create a chatbot for customer support, claim an original domain name, and conceptualize a unique brand identity from scratch.

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The result is not only a fully-functional website but a more valuable brand and products that set you apart from your competitors.

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How CreateApe Builds Sites

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CreateApe is a full-service agency, meaning all your resources to create a website are in one place! No matter what stage of development your product is at, we can step in and fill in any gaps you need to get it finished.

Let’s walk through the typical process we take to create a website from the ground up.

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Our UX Process

Jungle Guide: 

UX design is heavily reliant on research to understand your industry, your business, and (most importantly) your users. We start each project with a robust research phase so we can bounce ideas off each other and find solutions that work for the users.

If we’re redesigning an existing website, we’ll look at your Google Analytics to understand your website traffic and user behaviors. We also do a HotJar evaluation to see where users are most active or dropping off.

If we’re creating a website from scratch, we skip this phase and move straight to competitive research and user interviews. Research is important for both kinds of projects because the UX design should be built around your data and findings. 

Without this research, you have no idea who your users are, what they want, or what drives them away from a website. You also need to understand who you’re up against so you can make your product better. We’re here to help you navigate this process from beginning to end.

The Jungle Guide, CreateApe’s signature UX evaluation, help you ask all the right questions in the discovery phase and lay the groundwork for a perfect product! Read more about CreateApe’s Jungle Guide in our UX Strategy Blog! 

UX/UI Design:

Once we have research and strategy to guide us, we can start building your future site! We start with wireframes, which are like blueprints. We can determine how many pages we’ll need, where content lives, and site navigation.

By creating this primitive structure, we can focus more on creating logical user flows instead of being distracted by aesthetics. A nice hierarchy of information that will help the user quickly accomplish their goals is what we’re after.

That being said…looks are important! Who said you had to sacrifice style for substance and vice versa? Our UI designers take those wireframes and ramp everything up into a high-fidelity mock-up.

We'll take your branding elements and use them to create visuals. For example, where will logos be placed? How will we use your color palette to guide the user through the interface? What sort of icons will we use? Etc.

Website Development:

Once we finish with the designs, we turn everything over to our full-stack development team. Our front and back-end developers can handle everything from code creation to interaction design to deliver a fully customized digital product.

Whether or not you have a development team on staff, our team can guide you through the development process from beginning to end into whatever framework you choose. Much like our UX/UI process, every solution we create goes through vigorous user testing and QA.

Leave it to us to make sure everything on the user-facing side of your site works as intended. If you’re creating a project from scratch or need to bring someone on to improve the performance of your existing site, CreateApe is your all-in-one web development resource. To read more about hiring a website development team, check out our blog!

Launch:

Our job isn’t over once we launch your MVP. When you bring us on as your UX partners in crime, it’s just the beginning!

Once your product is in front of your users, we’ll help you perform regular website maintenance to ensure everything is search engine friendly and working like it’s supposed to. This means updating software, fixing broken links, optimizing load speeds, stress tests, updating certificates, plugins, and theme updates.

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You’ll also have our full creative team at your disposal depending on your needs. If you need to add a new page, redesign a contact form, create a new product video, or write a conversation-starting blog post, you can call on your friendly team of UX apes and we’ll swing into action!

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What can CreateApe Help Me With?

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At CreateApe, we’re so much more than just website design. We’re advocates for your users within your business goals. We’ll stop at nothing to find solutions that work for you and your users.

In the spirit of going above and beyond web design, our expertise extends further than UX/UI. Anything creative you can think of to take your site to the next level, we can do it. Our design team is staffed by wizards in their field that can take your ideas from concept to reality.

When you hire CreateApe for a project, you have all these resources to create a website at your disposal.

CreateApe's Services

• UX Research - Understanding your competitive market, your users, and their nuances.
• UX Design - Building end-to-end flows that help users and business owners accomplish their goals.
• UI Design - Designing visuals to boost the brand’s identity and strengthen the user experience.
• Website Development - Creating highly-customized code for your product across multiple devices.
• Branding - Conceptualizing a unique personality and visual identity to set you apart from your competitors.
• Marketing - Promoting your brand and digital products with personalized campaigns and collateral.
• Video - Telling your brand's story by scripting, animating, and editing video content.
• Copywriting - Communicating on your behalf by developing a unique voice and tone to guide your users.
• Digital Products - Whether you need a website, app, ebook, or landing page, our apes can make your vision a reality.
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So, How Do I Build My Perfect Site?

There’s an abundance of resources to create a website available to you, but will they really give you the results you’re looking for?

If you have an idea for a digital product or a clear business goal, a UX design agency (*cough* like CreateApe *cough*) can help you figure out those pivotal first steps to get off the ground. We’ll help you figure out exactly what you need to reach your goals and connect you with the resources to get you there.

So, whether you need a fully-customized product, strategy, or specialist to help create your website, drop us a line!

Still not sure about starting your project with CreateApe? Check out our UX/UI design case studies to hear our success stories.

CreateApe, the digital product design team you know and love, has emerged victorious with not one, but two prestigious awards from Clutch.

Clinching the Clutch Champion and Clutch Global awards catapults us into the top 10% of service providers on the trusted B2B platform. This is a clear sign that our creativity and innovation are a force to be reckoned with in the digital design domain.

Clutch Global Award: Conquering the Digital Jungle

The Clutch Global Award recognizes CreateApe's excellence in digital product design among Clutch’s worldwide user base. Like a wild ape swinging effortlessly from tree to tree, our team's agile solutions and client satisfaction have reached new heights around the globe. 

This award celebrates our ability to navigate the complexities of the digital landscape, delivering top-tier design solutions with a universal impact.

Clutch Champion Award: King Of User Experiences

The Clutch Champion Award is our golden banana, symbolizing our reign as a leader in the digital kingdom. 

Our 50+ 5-star reviews illustrate CreateApe’s unparalleled success and drive to consistently exceed client expectations. We’re truly humbled to be acknowledged for our commitment to powering impactful user experiences, one product at a time.

Hear Us Roar: When Our Clients Succeed, We Swing Higher

At CreateApe, our values are the vines that anchor us in the jungle of digital innovation. When users are happy and clients feel empowered, it’s just more motivation for us to push the envelope and leverage technology to its fullest.

This mantra is woven into everything we do, propelling us to create transformative experiences that equip our clients with everything they need to thrive in the digital jungle. Our success intertwines as strategic partners, and these awards affirm the efficacy of our approach.

A colossal 'thank you' resonates through the canopy to our incredible clients. Your trust and collaboration are the compass guiding us through the brush. To our talented team, you are the true colony rulers, venturing deeper and deeper with each project to find meaningful solutions.

The Next Expedition

CreateApe is excited to explore new territories, push boundaries, and take our creativity to new heights in 2024. The digital jungle is teeming with new possibilities, and we look forward to the next challenge.

The Clutch Global and Clutch Champion Awards are not just milestones, they’re badges of our reliability and determination. We’re proud to be your jungle guide and we're ready for the next journey through the great outdoors.

Want to work with the Clutch-approved masterminds of the digital wilderness? Start a project with us today!

A competitive market is a jungle, especially for digital product design agencies waiting for their next big project.

Surviving the wild isn’t enough for CreateApe. In today’s market, thriving is the name of the game — and we want to be the guide that helps our clients become king of the Jungle!

But success as a digital design agency doesn’t come overnight. Even the best agencies in the world have ups and downs. What matters is that if you get knocked down, you get back up again (cue “Tubthumping” by Chumbawumba).

No project is without flaws, but CreateApe powers through them by developing innovative UX strategies that benefit the business and the user. Let’s just say our approach hasn’t gone unnoticed.

CreateApe’s CEO Alessandro Fard was recently named a Top Agency Expert by Rise 25, a B2B service using podcasts to increase a company’s ROI. In the article, Rise 25 spoke with Fard about launching an agency from the ground up and the importance of remaining true to your vision.

When starting a design agency that emphasizes business and UX strategy, it’s crucial to define the goals and values that set your business apart from competitors. This helps new companies carve out a niche that guides their services and growth as an organization.

Fard also noted that failure is to be expected early on — it’s just a part of life. You may encounter a client that doesn’t understand the value of design strategy or needs more for their project than you can accommodate. 

Recognizing your strengths as a designer/agency is key, and remaining faithful to your brand and design philosophy will protect your reputation despite the pitfalls of getting your business off the ground.

“Even businesses have growing pains,” says Fard, “So learn from your mistakes and recover quickly to maintain trust and authenticity.”

CreateApe’s agility and strategizing prowess have earned us several accolades in the B2B space — and we’re honored to be named a Top Agency Expert by Rise 25!

Are you ready to give your users a satisfying experience tailored to your brand and business goals? Our user-obsessed approach leads to solutions that are always customized and optimized. Start a project with us today!

We’re heading into the second quarter of 2022 with not one, not two, but FOUR awards from The Manifest. Talk about bringing home the bananas!

The Manifest doesn’t monkey around when it comes to small businesses. As an excellent hub for news and resources, we’re thrilled to be included in their list of “California’s Best Recommended B2B firms for 2022."

CreateApe ranked #13 in “Most Reviewed Web Development Companies,” “Most Reviewed Design Companies,” and “Most Reviewed Digital Agencies”—and #4 in “Most Reviewed User Experience Companies in Los Angeles.”

The rankings are based on the number of new reviews and recommendations left on Clutch.co over the last 12 months. So shout out to our awesome clients for helping us receive this recognition!

We’re always happy to be rewarded for our hard work as a team, but we’re even happier knowing we were great jungle guides for our partners over the last year. We’re more excited than ever to help businesses swing to new heights in 2022.

Want to see what CreateApe can do for you? Read about our services or drop us a line!

In true CreateApe fashion, our digital product designers are ending 2022 with a bang!

Clutch, the leading B2B marketplace for businesses, announced their top-ranking global creative and design agencies. And guess who made the list?

That’s right…your friendly neighborhood apes placed 8th out of all the digital product design firms IN THE WORLD! Read the full report.

This is no small feat for us. CreateApe began as a small collective of UX/UI pros handling website design and development. But in 2022, we’ve evolved into a multi-skilled team of international digital product designers taking on large-scale projects across multiple industries.

Do we plan on pumping the breaks next year? Absolutely NOT! Big things are waiting for us above the treetops.

“Last year’s growth was pretty robust. This year we’re hoping to continue to grow at a more sustainable pace to make sure the qualities that make us stand out in the agency space are front and center.” Said CreateApe CEO Alessandro Fard.

Our UX strategy and design approach has helped us take new and existing products from just an idea to fully formed, user-friendly experiences for companies big and small. But don’t just take our word for it. Hear what our clients have to say about the CreateApe experience.

This isn’t our first award from Clutch, and it certainly won’t be our last. Every time a happy client walks away with a new digital product in hand, it supports our theory that continued success comes from true collaboration.

“I think that the award reinforces the foundation of our policy of treating our clients like partners. What we’re learning is that when our clients are successful, we can also be successful.” Said Fard.

So, got any big plans for your company in 2023? Maybe a website redesign, a brand-new app, or a full-fledged SaaS system?

Leave it to one of the fastest-growing teams of digital product designers on the planet (and maybe the galaxy) to put your plans into action. Start a project with us today!