Introducing a simpler, more discoverable Blog

Introducing a simpler, more discoverable Blog

You may have noticed that our blog looks and behaves differently than before, and that’s because we have quietly launched our new blog for a little over a month now.

Our team has worked very hard to improve its overall reading experience. It’s now more responsive and mobile-friendly so that contents are more discoverable, interactive, and easier to find. With over 300 stories to date, it’s our goal to help you find what you came looking for and then leave with extra nuggets of tips, strategies, and insights.

Here are some of the significant changes we’ve made to enhance your viewing experience.

Search Anywhere, Anytime

Our main focus was to rebuild the search engine from the ground up so that you can easily find what you’re looking for and discover more from our collection of stories, playbooks, and guides.

During our research, we discovered a frequent detractor where blog searches often force the user to leave the current page to start a new search, and the results also don’t appear until you hit enter. We realise the experience can be cumbersome and uninspiring.

Search Auto Suggestion
For days where you may not know what to look for, the search will automatically recommend feature keywords to get your brain juices flowing. Open up the search, wait for a few seconds without typing and see for yourself.

We built our search to enable you to start a discovery anywhere and anytime. We want to complement your exploration without breaking your flow and to encourage you to use the search often, not only to find a specific story but also to explore potential insightful ones.

Try this: Click on the search icon right now on the top right corner (in mobile, open the hamburger menu on the top right), and begin typing away. You’ll notice how search results immediately appear and dynamically change as you continue refining your keywords.

We believe that search can be an integral part of your overall experience, where you can seamlessly transition from searching to navigating our menu, categories, and tags.

Improved Navigation, Categories & Tags

Our goal is to reduce the number of times you click on the back button. We know that too many back button clicks mean that we brought you to the wrong place, so we enhanced the flow of our navigation menu and redesigned our categories and tags view.

For our navigation, we added drop-down menus, so you know what to expect from each link. There are also popular destinations as bookmarks to help you get to where you want, faster. It also follows you wherever you go, so you’re just a few clicks away from your next inspiration.

We’ve seen many blogs that make their categories and tags pages look like an afterthought. The layout is typically an endless list of results, which makes them challenging to navigate. We were guilty of that in the past too, so we improved on this experience dramatically.

Firstly, we unified the browsing experience for categories, tags, and search so that it’s elegant and straightforward. Secondly, we leveraged our stunning custom graphics to develop grid cards, creating an enjoyable flipping experience which you might find similar to Pinterest or Instagram feeds. Last but not least, we added sorting capabilities, so you can fine-tune the results.

Introducing Stories (formerly Articles)

You might have noticed that we now refer to our blog articles as Stories. That’s because we changed how our content flows on the page.

We reimagined how the design and contents flow while staying true to the original minimalistic look. The top left corner conveniently displays the category and relevant tags for the story, in the event you wish to browse other related stories.

How to View All Stories
If you ever feel compelled to browse our entire collection, click on the Recent Stories title near the top of our homepage. You can click on most titles, and they’ll lead you to the destination.

We also added several new features to it. There’s a reading duration as well as a reading progress bar. A breadcrumb trail is there to help you get a table of contents overview and for when you want to jump to a specific section of the story.

Within the story content, you’ll notice visual enhancements that will improve your reading experience, such as our SMS templates. You can now easily copy and paste it for your next campaign by clicking an icon. That’s just the start, so keep an eye out for more!

Lastly, we’re making strides in enhancing the quality of our content, with more in-depth series, narrative storytelling, videos, motion graphics that aim to educate and inspire. For example, our recent Work From Home (WFH) four-part series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) aims to share our culture and lessons our company has learned through authentic storytelling.

It is a constant journey to deliver the best possible content and experience to you.

Immersive Guides

We redesigned some of our most popular guides, such as The Beginner’s Guide to SMS Marketing, Australian SMS E-Course, and Industry Verticals. They are some of the most popular content to date, so we gave it some extra love.

We wanted them to have an immersive experience that’s different than our blog stories. The goal is to make reading more focused, visual, organised, and fun.

A lot of emphases is put on the navigational experience as many of you often re-visit the guides for inspiration. Therefore, we created breadcrumb trails for each section so it’s easily accessible. Jumping between chapters is now more convenient.

Stay tuned for more guides refreshes to come.

Clap if you’re a fan

Ever enjoyed reading a story so much that you wanted to let us know? In the past, we had a Facebook Like integration, which only allowed you to like a story once.

Now with claps, you can show your appreciation up to 50 times per story if you enjoyed it. Best of all, they no longer require a Facebook login. It is entirely anonymous.

Claps will also determine the popularity when ranking stories as getting the story featured on Editor’s Pick and search engine more often.

Make your votes count, and we thank you for your appreciation!

At Burst SMS, we refine our products and services by listening and learning from our customers. This is just the beginning, as we’ve got more to come. What do you think? What would you guys like to see next? We’d love to hear your thoughts.