Following the opening of our new office in Madrid, we have received interest and quite a few questions about the location or the reasons behind this expansion. In this interview format with our founder and CEO, Pierre Gaulis, we cover the main questions related to this event.

When did you open this new Madrid office?

Although we have announced the office opening only recently, we actually opened in January 2023.

Tell us about the process leading up to the opening. How did the idea come up?

Opening this office was actually an overdue project.
We had been thinking about it for a few years prior to COVID, but it was postponed because of the pandemic. As soon as we could resume international travels in 2022, we took the opportunity to get this project back on track.
We started working on it at the end of 2022 and we finalized the opening in January 2023.

The idea behind this office actually dates back a few years, as we have always been working for international companies, mostly between Japan and Europe, the idea of having capabilities in Europe made sense.
We did have a representative office in Switzerland for the past 7 years, but the ambition there was never to be anything more than a sales office. On the other hand, we realized the benefits of having a fully-capable production office in Europe similarly to our Tokyo HQ for our clients. It got us thinking, and that’s how the idea came up.

Why did you decide on Madrid specifically? Were there specific reasons?

We wanted to have an office that can serve as a European office - it could have been in any large European capital. Another strong candidate was Milan, Italy.
We decided on Madrid because it’s a very vibrant and up and coming European capital.

There is a big budding tech community and network, and very promising profiles for the future. There are also very good universities people graduate from as well.
It is also well-connected to the rest of Europe transportation-wise, with infinite possibilities with cool local businesses too.

I also have personal affinities with Madrid, having attended IE Business School in 2012, so we also already had some established network there we could leverage.

Are you currently hiring for the Madrid office?

Yes, we are currently hiring for engineers (Developer positions).
It is possible that we consider hiring for other positions, but development is our priority.

How do you manage the different timezones between Tokyo and Madrid?

One of the roles and benefits we’re getting with both an office in Tokyo and Madrid is having people working on Japan time, and people working on Europe time. 
It extends to almost a full day the level of support we can bring to projects and clients for round the clock monitoring and service.
Of course we have to make sure we communicate well so that the two teams can work together as best as they can.

What are the main goals and benefits of opening this new office?

As mentioned, we first hope to first provide round the clock support for projects and clients. But also, we hope to get closer to more international multinationals from Europe and/or work more efficiently with them.
Currently, members in the Madrid office currently work on the same projects together with Japan, we are also hoping to develop local business and work with leading Spanish companies over time.

Of course, we will also be able to better support projects for Japanese companies who wish to go abroad to Europe in particular, in that perspective we have recently joined the Spanish Chamber of Commerce in Japan to engage directly with the community.

Is there any particular Spanish brands that you would imagine working with in the future?

In terms of companies we can think of, based on CREAM’s experience as natural fit we would be firstly looking at fashion brands such as ZARA, Desigual, Mango… or luxury brands such as Massimo Dutti, Lladró, Loewe…to name a few. To be honest since this opening was mostly capabilities driven, we have not been able to scout the market really. We are looking forward to working with any Spanish-linked type of companies either locally or globally.

How about if some team members want to move to another office abroad?

Indeed, thanks to this added location we’re hoping to provide more international mobility to our team members - for example, if members of the Japanese team wish to work temporarily or permanently to Europe, and vice-versa.
In general such exchanges speak very well to our DNA and positioning being the team of choice for all things digital across Europe and Asia.

What languages do you use on a daily basis? Will the Madrid office be a purely Spanish-speaking team?

In general, the people and companies we work with being international, they are mostly capable of working in English. But as we can see in Japan, it is sometimes good to speak the local language for more efficient communication.
We currently have Spanish-speaking members in Madrid who can help for local communication if needs arise but this being said, we assume that most of the day top day operations will keep on happening in English regardless of the location.

CREAM’s Madrid Office Opening: Behind the Scenes | CREAM Digital Transformation Studio

CREAM’s Madrid Office Opening: Behind the Scenes

After about ten years as loyal users of Wordpress, we decided that now would be the right time for CREAM to walk the walk and migrate to a headless infrastructure. If you need a run down on what headless means and brings to the table, check out this article.

The objective is two-fold: first, migrate our current company website to benefit from all the advantages that headless bring. Second, and while we are at it, make a numerical, analytics-based case for the same transition to headless that we are regularly preaching and executing on behalf of clients.
Below are our findings and insights of this before/after comparison but first here is a bit of context:

From an overly-edited, heavyweight Wordpress...

For around ten years, the CREAM website and online portfolio had been running on Wordpress. Despite two full redesigns and trying everything both pre-built and fully custom, using Wordpress for over ten years made us very aware of its potential and limitations, especially as newer, more modern technologies started popping up in the landscape.

While our dev team felt held back by the outdated PHP-based architecture or by the dependencies relying exclusively on Wordpress and its third-party plugin developers, our marketing team also gradually felt that the heavy machinery that was provided was simply not a good fit for this website.

Lastly and perhaps most importantly, the low performance associated with Wordpress and similar CMS combined with the ever increasing weight that Google’s algorithm attributes to such factors when ranking sites finished to convince us.

Headless sounded like a MUST DO spring cleanup for CREAM and it was time for Wordpress to go...

...to a blazingly fast headless architecture!

As the main actors of this transition, we empowered our dev team to pick the tech stack for the new website headless implementation.

The new CREAM website runs on Vercel, using Prismic as a headless CMS solution and a React front-end layer. This cherry-picked modern stack allowed us to drastically improve our development efficiency compared to older tech used by monolithic architecture. We also were able to set up proper development environment, enabling easier testing phases.

As an additional technical benefit, headless also lets us spread out and delegate the responsibility of our website’s security to more layers. In short, because there are more potential entry points to our database, that are also spread out onto different services, all protected by their own security system, our website becomes a lot more protected against potential ill-meaning attacks.

Using a headless CMS like Prismic also allowed us to build exactly the front-end layer, content blocks and customization options we need - and nothing more! Our CMS back-office offers a simplified, straight to the point interface that feels much clearer than before.

Clearly though and as expected the biggest improvement of going headless was about the website performance. We managed to raise our Google Lighthouse Performance score by about 30 (!) points and SEO performance by almost 10 points.

As a cherry on the top, we also set up the website as a progressive web app (PWA):  you can install the CREAM website on your mobile device for it to look and act similarly to a native app. 
While this virtually does not bring much interest for an agency portfolio website, it is however a great addition for websites that rely on the many benefits of PWA. As an example, installing an e-Commerce website as a PWA on your device allows you it to load content while offline, making sure customers have a Shakira-smooth purchase experience: wherever, whenever.

Fair to say that switching to headless improved the CREAM website greatly at both increasing performance and delivering a richer experience. While we already knew what to expect from this migration, we hope this makes for a great case for anyone still hesitating on making the jump to headless. Whether you are already decided or still thinking about it, contact us to talk about it.

Moving to headless and bottom line: Relating our first-hand experience of transitioning the CREAM site to headless and quantifying the resulting tangible benefits.

Moving to headless and bottom line: Relating our first-hand experience of transitioning the CREAM site to headless and quantifying the resulting tangible benefits. After about ten years as loyal users of Wordpress, we decided that now would be the right time for CREAM to walk the walk and migrate to a headless infrastructure. If you need a run down on what headless means and brings to the table, check out this article.

From WordPress to Headless: the complete before/after performance comparison  | Blog | CREAM Digital Studio

From WordPress to Headless: the complete before/after performance comparison

“Headless” has been on everyone’s mind for the last couple of years in the digital ecosystem - and let's admit it, it has not been evident to truly grasp what it is all about.

As of today though, headless is slowly becoming that new MUST HAVE that cannot be ignored any longer by professionals of the industry. There is something for everyone in headless, whether you are developing, designing, selling or managing anything on the web.

We are breaking down the basics of headless in the article below, to help you understand and embrace its potential.

A web solution is called headless when the front-end (here, the head) is decoupled from the back-end (the body). Headless implementations aim at breaking away from the traditional CMS or e-Commerce solution’s stacks and structures by removing the front-end part of the stack.

Within a headless environment, you can freely design, develop, scale and maintain your front-end layer outside of your CMS or e-Commerce boundaries, using the technology of your own choice. No need to stick to heavyweight themes, specific programming languages or outdated architectures anymore!

Any headless solution is, at its core, made of a back-office, in which owners can create and manage their content. It is then fed into an API - allowing you to call for your content over the cloud to inject it into your independent front-end layers. This allows for notable speed performance improvements as the content loads over the cloud instead of being stored in one heavy monolithic architecture.

Headless architectures allow teams to independently build back-end and front-end ensuring minimal impact on each part, setting a smoother development workflow and more maintainable products in the long run.

Benefit of going headless #1: Greater freedom to build and evolve

Traditional CMS websites have a tethered front-end and back-end architecture, all connected in one single block. Headless solutions, on the contrary, separate front-end from the back-end experience, allowing teams to independently manage and maintain each layer while limiting the impact on each other’s operations.

Monolithic solutions are also built with their own specific tech stack, that you cannot break away from. As an example, working on a Wordpress website will lock you into developing with PHP, the same way Shopify front-ends are powered by their Ruby-based Liquid framework... The same goes for the third-party plugins and themes used to customize and enhance such websites.

A headless architecture, by decoupling the experience, not only lets you pick your preferred programming language for your front-end layer, but also allows you to select the services of your choice for each back-office layer (CDN, frameworks, CMS, e-Commerce platform, third party apps...). But because headless structures are generally language-agnostic, it enables you to pick not only the technology of your own choice, but also to go for modern stacks that will offer you the best optimization possible for your specific needs. This flexibility makes your websites more scalable and more compatible with smart integrations!

Overall, it means that while traditional CMS and one-fits-all solutions are faster, easier and cheaper to set up and get onboard with, the lack of flexibility for updates and maintenance will get more difficult to work with as your business grows with time.

Headless solutions, although they require more technical effort and time to set up each individual layer and connect them together, are built to last in the long run. Building exactly what you need to run your website and nothing more allows for lighter updates and maintenance workload.

Benefits of going headless #2: Increased performance & PWA readiness

One of the major arguments playing in favor of headless architecture is the improved speed and performance you can achieve on your website.

Monolithic solutions using a fixed stack are also very rarely optimized for more than one channel - as an example, most out-of-the-box coupled e-Commerce solutions are not built for optimal performances on mobile phones. Factors like slow page loads due to heavy images or excessive calls to third-parties will make it harder for your visitors to keep navigating until the end of the checkout process.

By going headless, not only will your website run on the latest and most up-to-date modern technologies, but the decoupled front-end interface will allow you to efficiently feed your content into a wide range of channels. Build for desktop, mobile devices or smart watches, and power everything from one single back-end experience!

Headless websites can also be PWA-ready, meaning they can behave the same way as native apps on any mobile device. PWA can cache content to enable the best speed performance on page load for slow Internet connections. Your visitors and customers can experience a cross-platform fully-branded and streamlined experience on your website, on all their devices!

Benefits of going headless #3: Rich experiences and higher conversion rates

Decoupling front and back ends enable you to build rich(er) merchandising features and take your e-Commerce business to the next level. Take a multi-market global e-commerce set up for example, versions of a similar front end base can be tailored beyond just alternative languages and currencies, enabling thorough localization to maximize offer/market fit.

Making your headless e-Commerce website as a progressive web app (PWA) also provides a lighter checkout experience, fast product page loads for a fully optimized e-Commerce experience, taking your customers smoothly from A to Z from any device, anywhere.

On a more operational technical level, a decoupled headless architecture also means your data layer can be handed over and maintained by different teams, allowing you to leave it up to the experts! Look for example at our partner Occtoo who takes care of  PIM, OMS  or CRM layers to provide tailor-made realtime APIs for efficient communication between back-end and front-end.

Most modern e-Commerce solutions allow you to go headless, whether you go for Salesforce Commerce Cloud, BigCommerce or Shopify - depending on your needs, the volume of your sales or the size of your development team. As an example, Shopify Headless provides you the full potential of Shopify as an e-Commerce back-end solution, while breaking away from their Ruby-based Liquid front-end stack.

In this ever more realistic scenario of headless e-commerce we recommend you ask about CREAM's partner Shogun Frontend. Shogun Frontend pre-packages a Rich Frontend Experience, a CMS and much more in one front-end package making building headless e-Commerce stores more accessible and efficient than from scratch.

We recommend looking into headless, if your website or e-Commerce store...

...requires heavy customization and/or rich merchandising, to unlock the full potential of modern solutions and technologies to build exactly what you need, and break away from any constrains set by monolithic environments

...receives heavy traffic, or generates high sales volume, to maximize performance and resulting conversion rates in turn leading to improved sales

...is multi-market and needs true localization - because headless makes multiple language, currencies and market-specific features and content creation easier

...is mostly or heavily accessed on mobile-devices, as headless allows you to build your website as a PWA to behave as efficiently as a native app on any mobile device!

Discover the thrilling evolution of our website as we leap from WordPress to a headless setup for our very own CREAM platform!  Check out this article. 

If you are still not sure whether headless is for you, reach out to our experts at CREAM and we will do our best to help you understand the full possibilities of this new technology.

Breaking down the basics of headless implementations to help you understand and potentially embrace this promising modern way of building digital solutions. 

Breaking down the basics of headless implementations to help you understand and potentially embrace this promising modern way of building digital solutions. “Headless” has been on everyone’s mind for the last couple of years in the digital ecosystem - and let's admit it, it has not been evident to truly grasp what it is all about. We are breaking down the basics of headless in the article below, to help you understand and embrace its potential.

What is Headless and who is it for? Definitions and Main Benefits | Blog | CREAM Digital Studio

What is Headless and who is it for? Definitions and main benefits

Plans, features, compatibility… picking the right e-Commerce platform is hard!

While Shopify makes it easier for businesses to open online stores with no need of extensive development skills, the reality is a bit more complex. Not only does Shopify offer different types of regular plans but also proposes Shopify Plus, a more advanced edition of their standard version. Since the differences between Shopify and Shopify Plus quickly comes down to technicalities, it can sometimes be somewhat confusing to determine which one would suit your business best.

But fear no more! We have put together this guide specifically to help you decide between Shopify and Shopify Plus, so let’s start by asking the right questions…

…whether in sales volume, people or traffic!

This is the first and easiest question to ask when determining which of Shopify or Shopify Plus suits best your business.

Long story short, while Shopify offers a range of plans (Basic Shopify, Shopify and Advanced Shopify), that we will jointly refer to as “Shopify standard”, catering to a lot of different stores types and sizes, it is best used for small to mid-size businesses. Its monthly usage fee ranges from $29 to $299, mostly depending on the size of your team.

As a logical extension to these starting plans, Shopify Plus goes beyond Advanced Shopify both in terms of offer and price to cater to enterprise type of businesses.

With a minimum flat rate of $2,000 a month for smaller stores selling less than $800,000 per month, or 0.25% of your monthly sales volume beyond that, Shopify Plus is definitely on the pricier end. Smaller volume selling companies might want to opt for a more accessible Shopify plan before transitioning to Plus, although, as we’ll see, it is not just about cost but also about the many benefits that Plus brings.

With a Shopify standard plans, you can create between 2 to 15 staff accounts for your store. If this is not enough for your business, consider upgrading for Shopify Plus, as it allows unlimited staff account creation.

Shopify Plus comes with the advanced Organization admin panel, allowing you to manage multiple stores in one place. Shopify Organization lets you oversee your stores analytics and live performance, as well as manage users and stores.
Shopify Flow, enabling you to automate repetitive tasks throughout your stores for a more efficient workflow.

Finally, and for the ones looking at scaling, Shopify Plus raises up the limits for simultaneous API calls and requests from Shopify standard, boosting your store performance for high-volume traffic and transactions.

As a general guidance, if your sales volume is below $1M monthly, and your business does not generate heavy traffic, then Shopify should be enough. 

If you sell over USD$1M monthly and/or your business generates heavy traffic and/or your operations team is rather big, then you might be better using Shopify Plus to its whole potential.

…and if yes, how many markets is your business selling in?

Shopify Payments is available for all Shopify plans, with international payment methods. While this provides the basic features for you to start selling in multiple countries, Shopify Plus takes it up a notch for businesses targeting a wider range of markets and process multi-currency payments.

Along with the advanced Shopify Organization admin panel for store management, Shopify Plus allows you to create up to nine (9) free expansion stores for your site.

Exit the headache behind language switchers for one and only platform: Shopify Plus allows you more flexibility as each one of your markets can have their dedicated store and localized marketing content, design and discounts, and more.

Shopify Plus partners are also available to support you into adapting your expansion stores to a specific market.

Read more about how we supported Kusmi Tea to localize and adapt its store to fit the Japanese market here.

If you are selling in a couple of countries only and do not have specific localization needs, you can probably go ahead with Shopify standard and manage two different stores.

If your business is available in more than 2 countries, require extensive localization and/or a wholesale channel, and you have regional teams dedicated to each market, then Shopify Plus is for you.

How much do you need to customize your store?

While Shopify is making it possible for businesses and non-tech-oriented individuals to setup their online stores with a dev-free approach, it also comes with some limitations you may want to consider.

If your team has the resources and your business requires a 100% branded experience from discovery to delivery, keep in mind that only Shopify Plus allows you to get out of Shopify standard’s checkout bounds and customize your checkout process.

Shopify Plus lets brands not only personalize the design and visual layout of these crucial pages, but also add useful tools such as the possibility to add progress trackers or extra custom fields. It pairs up with Shopify Scripts to also allow additional shipping methods and automated rules -think easy Buy One Get One Free!- and external API calls for 360 degrees customization.

Shopify Plus also comes with Shopify POS Pro and a bundle of exclusive apps such as Script Editor to make your life easier. Wholesale channels add an extra layer to let wholesale buyers purchase from your online store at different prices. As another example, Launchpad makes it easy for you to automate and handle events, such a sales or product drops, in a few clicks.

As mentioned earlier, Shopify Flow also comes in the mix with Shopify Plus with not only a tool for automating repetitive tasks on your store, but also allows you to seamlessly integrate your operations with existing platforms (PIM, ERP, CRM…).

If you do not need any complex customization of your checkout and campaigns, and can function without any automatic connexion to inventory systems or CRM, Shopify is enough.

If your business needs a fully branded experience and requires heavy task-handling whether for stock management, marketing campaigns and more, then Shopify Plus is likely to be made for you.

Still not sure which is the safest option?

As Shopify Plus is an enterprise-level platform targeted for large-scale businesses, it seems only fair that such service would also come with some VIP-level support and resources from Shopify Plus.

The Merchant Success Program is a service that aims at ensuring the best support and care for Shopify Plus clients. It offers not only a 24/7 priority support system, but also tailor-made strategic, growth and scalability specialized support, training and consulting, to ensure you get the most out of Shopify Plus.

While Shopify offers support to all its users via a wide range of contact methods, their team of Shopify Experts and their network of Shopify Partners (like CREAM! ;D), Shopify Plus goes the extra mile by assigning a Launch Engineer to your store. Your Launch Engineer will be specifically dedicated to your store, to guide you through the onboarding and store-building until launch, from setup and migration to third-party integrations.

All the above questions are relevant and not mutually exclusive when determining which Shopify plan would be the best match for your business. All this information might feel confusing and hard to digest, especially for people who do not come from a development background.

Below is a summary of the major differences between all the Shopify standard and Shopify Plus plans, with pricing included:

Determining which option between Shopify standard and Shopify Plus is not an exact science. It involves a wide range of different factors and you may not check all the boxes for an easy answer. Still, we hope this article will help you have a clearer sense of what would be the best for your business.

Whether you need more guidance or you are ready to make the jump, as a Shopify Plus Partner, CREAM is here to help you pick the right plan and launch a kick-ass Shopify store!

The CREAM team put up this special comprehensive guide to help you decide between Shopify and Shopify Plus for your eCommerce business.

While Shopify makes it easier for businesses to open online stores with no need of extensive development skills, the reality is a bit more complex. Not only does Shopify offer different types of regular plans but also proposes Shopify Plus, a more advanced edition of their standard version. Since the differences between Shopify and Shopify Plus quickly comes down to technicalities, it can sometimes be somewhat confusing to determine which one would suit your business best.

Shopify or Shopify Plus: How to Pick the Best for your eCommerce Business | Blog | CREAM Digital Studio

Shopify or Shopify Plus: How to Pick the Best for your eCommerce Business

Digital transformation has become a popular buzzword coined by businesses and organizations that are shifting gears to implement more technologies into their strategy. But what does the phrase truly entail? Read on below to find out more about what digital transformation is and discover how you can kickstart your journey towards digitalization.

Digital transformation is an initiative in which technologies are used to integrate, optimize, and improve existing processes so they become much more effective and productive.

It is more than introducing a slew of new digital services to be used in the workplace. It’s an opportunity for organizations to re-evaluate how things have been done up-to-date, overhaul anything that doesn’t work, and remake key operations from the ground-up.

As the phrase suggests, the initiative should be transformative, with technology as the driver for change to your organization’s strategy, operations, and culture.

Boosted efficiency
Integrate currently separate workflows and automate various tasks to help keep the focus on more important things.

Increased productivity
Foster better collaboration, smoothen communication, and boost engagement using digital in order to maximize productivity.

Improved accuracy
Automation will minimize human errors such as inputting mistakes or simply forgetting to do the job, while also reducing costs.

More insights
Capture data like never before to make better business decisions. Use it to analyze and optimize your products, services, and more.

Heightened brand experience
Utilize digital to make your end-to-end brand experience more convenient, efficient, or cheaper for your customers.

Although many businesses and organizations are beginning to make digitalization a priority, often times these initiatives fail. Why? We have seen that there is a widespread belief held by people that organizations will change just by adopting new technologies. However, it takes more than shifting to digital to transform strategies and cultures that are deeply ingrained.

Let’s take an example. Company A decides to reduce the amount of email exchanges by taking up a chat service like Slack. Though the switch in itself may be a step in the right direction, if operations are not shifted to accommodate this transition, such as asking clients to communicate over Slack instead of email, there will be no fundamental change to the status quo. Moreover, nothing revolutionary will come out of replicating exactly how something was done before, but on a new service. If the amount of email exchanges is a pervading problem, operational changes must be set in stone to address this, not just a switch from email to Slack.

The lesson here is that digital is merely a medium and not what is directly transformative to your organization — operational changes are at the root of all successful transformations. With that being said, digital is a powerful enabler that accommodates radical changes, empowering you to link various processes, connect stakeholders, automate tasks, and gather data like never before. Successful digital transformations thus occur when core operations are fully reworked to take full advantage of digital’s capabilities.

Digital Success Still Comes Down to People

Another common mistake we see in many cases of digitalization is the lack of attention given to people. Stakeholder buy-in is crucial to the success of any digital transformation, since they are usually at the front-and-center of running any operations. Yet, we often see people—their needs, wants, and pain points—completely ignored in many digital transformation initiatives. Whether they are the end-users of the digital tools adopted by your organization or the end-customers of your products and services, if people don’t feel that they derive additional value from the digitalization, your initiatives will sooner or later fail.

This is easier said than done, however, since the greatest roadblock standing in the way of most digital transformations are people; the introduction of digital frightens some, while others are resistant to change. It is therefore extremely important to take a human-centered approach when digitalizing, getting end-users involved whenever possible. The goal is to co-create a brand new way of working using digital as an agent with all your stakeholders, to ensure that they buy in to the strategy while also validating that they feel empowered by the change to better contribute to your bottom line. Remember: attempting to digitally transform without hearing the needs of the people involved will create more issues than it will solve — avoid this mistake at all costs.

We hope this article shed some light on what digital transformation really is and the basic do’s and don’ts when your business or organization embarks on digitalizing. The bottom line is that technology is only the tip of the iceberg of a digital transformation: it all comes down to changing how things are done and appropriating digital in a smart way so operations become more effective and efficient.

Want some inspiration for your digital transformation? Read our success stories to see some of the creative ways we’ve helped our clients embrace digital.

Or, if you want further assistance in kickstarting your transformation, shoot us a message here today!

Learn about what digital transformation truly is and discover how you can kickstart your journey towards digitalization.

Digital Transformation 101: What does it really mean to digitalize? | Blog | CREAM Digital Studio

Digital Transformation 101: What does it really mean to digitalize?

The center of all digital transformations will always be people. That is why it’s extremely important to keep your users at the forefront when creating digital products and services. 

However, putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is easier said than done — your perception will always be limited by your knowledge, experiences, and motivations. This is where user research comes in handy, to get down-to-earth insights to point your products towards the right direction. Below, we will explain the 4 crucial points to look out for when conducting user research to drive any digital product or service to success.

A product or service should be shaped by its users — who they are, how they behave, what their needs and intentions are. Needless to say, these characteristics change per product or service. For example, an enterprise tool planned to be dominantly used by employees in their fifties should consider the possibility of its user’s lack of digital experience and decreasing eyesight, whereas a gaming app targeting children under the age of six may have to stick to visual cues rather than text to navigate and engage its users. Whether through creating personas or interviewing target users (or hopefully both), it is important to begin your process by truly understanding whom your main users are and validating any prior assumptions you have, as to create something that will be relevant to them. Once you have this information, you will be much better positioned to create hypotheses to base your product or service on, rather than flying blindly.

For example, as part of an effort to launch multi-brand fragrance retailer L’Atelier Des Parfums’s operations online, we surveyed some of its existing offline store customers. We learned that most customers didn’t buy the same fragrance twice, and always purchased a different product — an insight we would have overlooked if we didn’t conduct the survey.

A key step to solving any given problem is to discover the root cause. What we usually find is that problems presented on a surface level are often symptoms caused by other, deeper problems — where the base problem is rarely the one identified first. For meaningful impact, we must determine then tackle the root that will help eradicate all other resulting issues.

To get the full picture of what we are trying to solve, we find it a top priority to get all stakeholders involved, especially taking the time to listen to the end-users. Ultimately, if your end-users are unconvinced by the product or service you’ve built to solve their perceived problem, it will never stick.

A good example is an enterprise tool we created for Bvlgari to streamline their processing of after-sales product repair inquiries. Each stakeholder involved in the various points of the after-sales journey had a different stance on what was affecting the efficiency of processing the inquiries. By listening to each stakeholder, we made sure all relevant issues were being addressed and the voice of all users — customers, store staff, and service center members — were properly integrated into the solution.

Is our product or service heading on the right track?

In the previous two points, the focus has been on the benefits of incorporating user research in the earlier phases of product or service development — but its utility doesn’t end there. Now that you’re further down the road, it’s time to user test and validate (or invalidate!) your solution, whether it’s wireframes, prototypes, or existing products. Keep an eye out for how users actually behave when interacting with your product or service, what they are confused by within the experience, and if anything is clearly misaligned with their expectations or needs. Verbal feedback is of high importance, but seeing how people actually use your product will give you the best insights for improvement.

We did just this by conducting user testing, both in-person and remotely for iRobot, in order to identify existing pain points before they completely revamped their website. Among many things, we discovered visitors were having difficulties finding essential product information due to confusing UI elements such as sliders, deterring them from making a purchase on-site.

Repeating this process on a frequent basis is the best way to iterate on your product or service until it reaches it’s ‘final’ form. It saves you a lot of money and time, as well as prevents you from making big, irreversible mistakes.

Finally, once your product or service is shipped, you can continue to user research by gathering information on who your users are and how they interact with your product to further optimize the experience. For example, you can identify issues such as pages with high exit rates on your eCommerce website, which was the case for jewelry brand Pandora. We helped them tackle this bottleneck by improving the clarity of certain pages’ user experience by adjusting its layout.

On the other hand, with proper analytics set in place, you will also be able to identify areas of opportunity such as new demographics trickling in as potential target users. By determining both problems and new opportunities, your product or service can adapt according to the changing needs of your users as well as to the ever-evolving times.

All great digital products and services revolve around the end-user. Putting them at the front-and-center throughout the entire journey of creating a product or service will ensure that you are solving real-life problems in a feasible yet effective way. 
Listen to what your users have to say — it’s that simple.

Make great digital products and services by keeping your end-users at the front-and-center through user research.

The center of all digital transformations will always be people. That is why it’s extremely important to keep your users at the forefront when creating digital products and services. However, putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is easier said than done — your perception will always be limited by your knowledge, experiences, and motivations. This is where user research comes in handy, to get down-to-earth insights to point your products towards the right direction. Below, we will explain the 4 crucial points to look out for when conducting user research to drive any digital product or service to success.

4 Crucial Points to Look Out for When Conducting User Research | Blog | CREAM Digital

4 Crucial Points to Look Out for When Conducting User Research

While accessibility has for a long time been perceived as a splinter in the foot for every graphic and web designer, it has grown more and more relevant as technologies evolved and social topics came to the forefront.

In 2018, accessibility is not about adding a bare minimum of extra features so that your product can be scantily looked at. It now goes beyond designing with disabled users in mind; it also includes designing for users with a wider range of possible devices, with different types of access to the Internet, and even with varying experiences in online browsing, if at all.

Accessibility now goes hand-in-hand with inclusivity and is simply a core part of what we can call good UX design. Here is a list of best practices, going from basic must-dos to more challenging bonus points, that anyone should keep in mind when designing for digital devices.

While this piece of advice is not only true for disabled users, clean pages with limited content can help in various ways. Fewer elements mean more space on your page, which allows for bigger font sizes and pictures or better white-space management for optimal comfort. It is also extremely complicated for screen-reading devices to scan cluttered web pages for visually-impaired users, so prioritizing the content you want to feature on your designs could be a big win for everyone.

A general consensus currently sets the minimum readable font size as 16px on websites, with a line height of at least 125% of the font size – but this does not mean it is forbidden to go smaller! Just remember to mind your visually-impaired users when setting the size and color of your page’s main contents. Consider making up for a smaller font size by using colors with a good text : background contrast! The W3C website page about visual contrast offers a range of online tools to check if your mockups are visually accessible, while browser inspector tools are also very helpful when it comes to color checking.

Another key element about sizing your content: mind the touch-screen friendliness! Small-sized buttons and CTAs are hard to click on for users with big fingertips or simply overlooked. The recommended minimum size for a touch zone is 44x44px for regular screens (non-Retina). Although it does not necessarily mean that all your icons have to be that big: sometimes playing with a tappable white space around your assets can prove itself efficient and more visually balanced too!

There is more to colors than just contrast: some users might also be color blind and not see your design the way you do. An easy solution is to use color combinations that are contrasted enough for color blind users. But we all know we do not always have such control on our product’s UI. Small tip for any type of palette: manage the contrast on your mockups by designing through a black and white filter!

Using text labels, icons and/or feedback micro-animations are also good ways to ensure that all your users know what is going on in your design.

Website performance is stepping a little bit away from UX and UI design but it is not completely unrelated to accessibility. Some users may not live at or use devices with a light-speed optical fiber internet access. Watch the weight of your websites and use tools to improve its loading time and data consumption for slower connections.
Be careful of the size of your images and assets, prioritize your above-the-fold content to allow lazy loading, reduce the number of external scripts and enable some kind of browser caching to improve your website’s performance. Make it easier for geographically isolated users to access your content!

Screen-reader friendliness and navigation

For visually-impaired users relying on screen-reading devices to browse the Internet, it can get quite tedious to navigate complex or close to inaccessible websites by voice guidance only.

Some very familiar pieces of UI design are specifically hard for screen-readers to catch, and for these users to interact with. Avoid using too many drop-down menus, that are hard to use without a mouse, or certain types of photo slideshows and carousels, that are not optimal for screen-reading. Instead, challenge yourself to look for original alternatives!

Taking it a step further, there are now ways to rethink the structure of website source codes without changing its visual aspect. Adding alternative captions to images is a must-do, but reorganizing code snippets in a way that makes sense for screen-readers could also help greatly, powered by the wonders of having CSS as a separate file from the main code structure to handle the positioning of visual elements instead.

You might also want to enable keyboard navigation on your website for visitors who cannot use a mouse. Most browsers make much of the Internet available by pressing Tab or Space on the keyboard, but there are still ways for designers to make it even more user-friendly. An easy example would be adding a contrasted focus state on links, buttons or form elements, so users know exactly where they are reading.

Although we always stick to the principles mentioned above when designing at CREAM, accessibility was of utmost importance when we built a wayfinding application for use on large touchscreen displays at a hospital in Switzerland. The application had to be inclusive of everyone — of all ages, whether they are physically impaired or unaccustomed to technology — since it was going to be mainly used by patients and visitors. From the design of the application itself to the physical hardware casing holding the touchscreen display, we took careful measures to make the experience universally accessible. Learn more about how we applied the accessibility best practices to our wayfinding app here.

A Primer to Web Accessibility for Designers by Nicholas Kramer on Medium

Stop designing for 85% of Users… by Tom Graham and André Gonçalves on Smashing Magazine

Are your digital products and services accessible? Here is a list of accessibility best practices so your user experience is inclusive for all.

4 Tips to Improve Accessibility in UX Design | Blog | CREAM Digital Studio

4 Tips to Improve Accessibility in UX Design

Trends are constantly forming and changing over time, following the organic evolution of technical possibilities and a general change of heart. Spring 2018 has come and a list of new trends have blossomed in the past year. While this is definitely not an exhaustive list to thoroughly check all boxes from, it is a good place to start to know what’s in and what’s out!

Trends come and go in cycles. While we witnessed the transition from skeuomorphism to flat design starting a few years ago, it now seems that going 100% flat is already out. What designers now call “Flat Design 2.0” already began last year but keeps gaining ground. Exit solid colors, say hello again to gradients and drop shadows! Flat-style illustrations are also added on to the mix for vibrant websites and apps with added depth. It is also prepping the ground for micro-animations.

Time to stop playing it safe! Designs are getting more colorful and bold when it comes to palette picking. Instead of sticking to only one branded color palette, brands are now adding a variety of color schemes to their identities. The use of duotones is also getting more and more popular whether on web design elements or photography, combining gradients and vibrant colors as a key ingredient to the new iteration of the flat design.

Illustrations are definitely nothing new in UI design, but the resurgence of flat design has pushed brands to make a statement and market themselves as fun, fresh and friendly. Isometric-style illustrations are especially becoming more and more trendy, finding a good balance between game-like playfulness and strict geometric shapes.

Animations are a massive hit this year! Designers are mastering the art of CSS animations to add more spunk to their work, or are even going as far as tackling video design. Backgrounds and design elements are becoming increasingly interactive as well. They evolve according to the visitor’s use of the website, whether with the help of mouse-triggered events, smooth page transitions or micro-animations. It carefully contributes to storytelling with an added bonus of improved immersion and user experience.

Let’s think out of the box! Website layouts are branching away from classic formatting. Designers are taking more risks by playing with blank spaces and experimenting with positioning. The creative use of geometric shapes, as well as the use of slants and diagonals, are steadily gaining ground to shake the boat of your average twelve-columns website.

Less is more: typography design becomes an illustration of its own! Big and bold fonts are in to convey messages powerfully, made possible by the growing use of web font libraries, CSS3 and SVG and applying the current fad of brutalism and minimalism. There is also a clear sub-trend for bold, graffiti-like handwritten text as well, making designs more human, disruptive and rebellious.

Sources: 22° (Veintidós Grados) (top) The Disaster Artist (bottom)

The trend was already settling in with the rise of smartphone browsing, but it is now official: people access websites on mobile devices more than computers. Websites are now designed for smaller resolution screens, portrait formats and touch devices first before upsizing their responsive layout.

We have heard of accessibility as a keyword for decades since it is one of the core best practices of web design, but the rise of new technologies and mobile devices raise new challenges for designers. It is not about incorporating additional features to make websites accessible to all users anymore. It’s about rethinking the User Experience completely by disrupting the source code itself. We won’t dive into details here, but accessibility is a wide subject. It features a long list of best practices for any good designer to follow to make their work more inclusive.

The list is far from being exhaustive and following these trends does not equal being innovative. It is now up to designers to appropriate what’s hot right now and try to turn it into their own unique work! The possibilities are endless and the trends are always changing. 2018 still probably has a lot of surprises in store for us to discover.

From flat design 2.0 to micro-animations, see what’s in and what’s out in UI/UX design, picked out by yours truly!

UI/UX Design Trends to Look Out for in 2018 | Blog | CREAM Digital Studio

UI/UX Design Trends to Look Out for in 2018

For companies looking to expand abroad, it comes as no surprise that Japan is a very attractive market. After all, the country ranks third in terms of GDP, while also having the third largest consumer market in the world.

However, high hurdles exist in entering and succeeding in the Japanese market, where culture, language, etiquette, and more are strikingly different when compared to the West. This implies that it is not enough to merely translate your global website using a translation tool. A full understanding of local expectations will be absolutely necessary to break into the scene.

Today, we will discuss why localization is extremely important to succeed in the Japanese market and key points to keep in mind when localizing for Japan. If you’re considering to enter the Japanese market soon, or have already entered but struggling still to adapt, read on below.

As an island nation, Japan has historically been and is still relatively isolated to this day. Although the country has opened up its doors more recently with regards to immigration and is slowly becoming more international, English proficiency amongst the population is extremely low. You will find that most people in Japan, even those who have received higher education, can barely understand basic English. In fact, Japan is one of the lowest scoring countries in Asia for the TOEFL iBT English proficiency test, according to ETS. Basically, if your communication is not in Japanese, it will not be understood in Japan, period.

Japanese is a VERY difficult language to master. Aside from the three alphabets used, the close link between the language and the culture of expressing humility makes Japanese truly complicated for those unaccustomed to the country. For example, depending on who you are speaking to or about, you must adapt your degree of “politeness” by using different forms of speech. Unlike English, it’s unfortunately not as simple as adding words like “please” to make sentences more polite. There is a strong adherence to and high expectations for the polite forms to be used correctly in society and especially in the business sphere. Erroneous use is considered highly disrespectful. These forms also make it difficult to nail down the right tone and voice in marketing without sounding overbearingly polite and dry.

To further complicate the issue, Japanese has a completely different sentence structure compared to English and other Western languages. It is therefore painfully obvious when localization is done with the use of translation tools, with translated words still in the sequence of the original language and conjugated incorrectly. Do you use idioms, humor or cultural references in your marketing? Do you use first-person and second-person pronouns? If yes, this will also be a major issue for literal, word-per-word translation because it will make no sense, sound awkward or rude in Japanese. The bottom line: when localizing, don’t overlook the importance of having someone who understands the message in the original language to adapt it into something that resonates better with the Japanese audience while still holding onto the essence.

The Japanese are extremely careful shoppers. For example, they often choose a name-brand product over a cheaper, no-name counterpart believing it ensures quality. Unconfident in dealing with issues if they arise, most stray away from shopping at non-Japanese websites due to their lack of English proficiency. This prevailing wariness can be attributed to the fact that generally, Japan doesn’t allow returning, replacing or refunding except for defective products. Since consumers have one shot at purchasing, they are risk-averse and deviate towards outlets that they know are safe. Thus, providing a secure environment and building consumer trust should be a top priority. Lousy translations or remnants of other languages scattered across the site will be blaring red flags. Additionally, a lack of information will also steer customers away. Most people will try to get as much information to overcome the biggest hurdle of shopping online: not being able to check the actual product. This is one of the reasons why Rakuten is popular in Japan — though visually chaotic, it provides more product photos and in-depth details than the sleeker-looking Amazon. All in all, finding ways to build trust with locals will be the fast-track to success in Japan.

In a new market where your brand is relatively unknown, it’s critical your business gets found. One key way to improve your chances of being found is to have high visibility on search engines when potential leads search for relevant keywords. It goes without saying that in Japan, searches will dominantly be in Japanese. Since SEO is affected by the content on your website, without it being fully and accurately translated, your reach and visibility will suffer. Furthermore, without an in-depth knowledge of the Japanese language, culture, and trends, it will be difficult to tailor an effective SEO strategy that drives traffic and conversions. This is true not only for websites but also for social media where appropriate copies can impact engagement and virality of content.

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