Day: October 30, 2024

WordPress 6.7, slated for release on November 12, is packed with new tools designed to enhance design flexibility and streamline site management. The sleek Twenty Twenty-Five default theme leads the update, offering adaptable styling that’s perfect for any site, whether running a personal blog or a complex content hub. This release also brings an upgraded…

The post What’s Coming in WordPress 6.7: New Default Theme, Better Font Management, and More! appeared first on WP Engine.

They’re out! Like many of you, I look forward to these coming out each year. I don’t put much stock in surveys but they can be insightful and give a snapshot of the CSS zeitgeist. There are a few little nuggets in this year’s results that I find interesting. But before I get there, you’ll want to also check out what others have already written about it.

• Josh Comeau digested his takeaways in a recent newsletter.

Oh, I guess that’s it — at least it’s the most formal write-up I’ve seen. There’s a little summary by Ahmad Shadeed at the end of the survey that generally rounds things up. I’ll drop in more links as I find ’em.

In no particular order…

Demographics

Josh has way more poignant thoughts on this than I do. He rightfully calls out discrepancies in gender pay and regional pay, where men are way more compensated than women (a nonsensical and frustratingly never-ending trend) and the United States boasts more $100,000 salaries than anywhere else. The countries with the highest salaries were also the most represented in survey responses, so perhaps the results are no surprise. We’re essentially looking at a snapshot of what it’s like to be a rich, white male developer in the West.

Besides pay, my eye caught the Age Group demographics. As an aging front-ender, I often wonder what we all do when we finally get to retirement age. I officially dropped from the most represented age group (30-39, 42%) a few years ago into the third most represented tier (40-49, 21%). Long gone are my days being with the cool kids (20-29, 27%).

And if the distribution is true to life, I’m riding fast into my sunset years and will be only slightly more represented than those getting into the profession. I don’t know if anyone else feels similarly anxious about aging in this industry — but if you’re one of the 484 folks who identify with the 50+ age group, I’d love to talk with you.

Before we plow ahead, I think it’s worth calling out how relatively “new” most people are to front-end development.

Wow! Forty-freaking-four percent of respondents have less than 10 years of experience. Yes, 10 years is a high threshold, but we’re still talking about a profession that popped up in recent memory.

For perspective, someone developing for 10 years came to the field around 2014. That’s just when we were getting Flexbox, and several years after the big bang of CSS 3 and HTML 5. That’s just under half of developers who never had to deal with the headaches of table layouts, clearfix hacks, image sprites, spacer images, and rasterized rounded corners. Ethan Marcotte’s seminal article on “Responsive Web Design” predates these folks by a whopping four years!

That’s just wild. And exciting. I’m a firm believer in the next generation of front-enders but always hope that they learn from our past mistakes and become masters at the basics.

Features

I’m not entirely sure what to make of this section. When there are so many CSS features, how do you determine which are most widely used? How do you pare it down to just 50 features? Like, are filter effects really the most widely used CSS feature? So many questions, but the results are always interesting nonetheless.

What I find most interesting are the underused features. For example, hanging-punctuation comes in dead last in usage (1.57%) but is the feature that most developers (52%) have on their reading list. (If you need some reading material on it, Chris initially published the Almanac entry for hanging-punctuation back in 2013.)

I also see Anchor Positioning at the end of the long tail with reported usage at 4.8%. That’ll go up for sure now that we have at least one supporting browser engine (Chromium) but also given all of the tutorials that have sprung up in the past few months. Yes, we’ve contributed to that noise… but it’s good noise! I think Juan published what might be the most thorough and thoughtful guide on the topic yet.

I’m excited to see Cascade Layers falling smack dab in the middle of the pack at a fairly robust 18.7%. Cascade Layers are super approachable and elegantly designed that I have trouble believing anybody these days when they say that the CSS Cascade is difficult to manage. And even though @scope is currently low on the list (4.8%, same as Anchor Positioning), I’d bet the crumpled gum wrapper in my pocket that the overall sentiment of working with the Cascade will improve dramatically. We’ll still see “CSS is Awesome” memes galore, but they’ll be more like old familiar dad jokes in good time.

(Aside: Did you see the proposed designs for a new CSS logo? You can vote on them as of yesterday, but earlier versions played off the “CSS is Awesome” mean quite beautifully.)

Interestingly enough, viewport units come in at Number 11 with 44.2% usage… which lands them at Number 2 for most experience that developers have with CSS layout. Does that suggest that layout features are less widely used than CSS filters? Again, so many questions.

Frameworks

How many of you were surprised that Tailwind blew past Bootstrap as Top Dog framework in CSS Land? Nobody, right?

More interesting to me is that “No CSS framework” clocks in at Number 13 out of 21 list frameworks. Sure, its 46 votes are dwarfed by the 138 for Material UI at Number 10… but the fact that we’re seeing “no framework” as a ranking option at all would have been unimaginable just three years ago.

The same goes for CSS pre/post-processing. Sass (67%) and PostCSS (38%) are the power players, but “None” comes in third at 19%, ahead of Less, Stylus, and Lightning CSS.

It’s a real testament to the great work the CSSWG is doing to make CSS better every day. We don’t thank the CSSWG enough — thank you, team! Y’all are heroes around these parts.

CSS Usage

Josh already has a good take on the fact that only 67% of folks say they test their work on mobile phones. It should be at least tied with the 99% who test on desktops, right? Right?! Who knows, maybe some responses consider things like “Responsive Design Mode” desktop features to be the equivalent of testing on real mobile devices. I find it hard to believe that only 67% of us test mobile.

Oh, and The Great Divide is still alive and well if the results are true and 53% write more JavsScript than CSS in their day-to-day.

Missing CSS Features

This is always a fun topic to ponder. Some of the most-wanted CSS features have been lurking around 10+ years. But let’s look at the top three form this year’s survey:

• Mixins
• Conditional Logic
• Masonry

We’re in luck team! There’s movement on all three of those fronts:

• A new CSS Functions and Mixins Module draft was published in late June after the CSSWG resolved to adopt the proposal back in February. (Read our notes.)
• The CSS Working Group (CSSWG) resolved to add an if() conditional to the CSS Values Module Level 5 specification. (Read our notes.)
• There are competing proposals for how to forge ahead with a CSS-y approach to masonry layouts. One is based on the CSS Grid Layout Module Level 3 draft specifcation and the other is a fresh new module dedicated to masonry. Apple has planted its flag. So has Chrome. Let the cage-match continue!

Resources

This is where I get to toot our own horn a bit because CSS-Tricks continues to place first among y’all when it comes to the blogs you follow for CSS happenings.

I’m also stoked to see Smashing Magazine right there as well. It was fifth in 2023 and I’d like to think that rise is due to me joining the team last year. Correlation implies causation, amirite?

But look at Kevin Powell and Josh in the Top 10. That’s just awesome. It speaks volumes about their teaching talents and the hard work they put into “helping people fall in love with CSS” as Kevin might say it. I was able to help Kevin with a couple of his videos last year (here’s one) and can tell you the guy cares a heckuva lot about making CSS approachable and fun.

Honestly, the rankings are not what we live for. Now that I’ve been given a second wind to work on CSS-Tricks, all I want is to publish things that are valuable to your everyday work as front-enders. That’s traditionally happened as a stream of daily articles but is shifting to more tutorials and resources, whether it’s guides (we’ve published four new ones this year), taking notes on interesting developments, spotlighting good work with links, or expanding the ol’ Almanac to account for things like functions, at-rules, and pseudos (we have lots of work to do).

My 2024 Pick

No one asked my opinion but I’ll say it anyway: Personal blogging. I’m seeing more of us in the front-end community getting back behind the keyboards of their personal websites and I’ve never been subscribed to more RSS feeds than I am today. Some started blogging as a “worry stone” during the 2020 lockdown. Some abandoned socials when Twitter X imploded. Some got way into the IndieWeb. Webrings and guestbooks are even gaining new life. Sure, it can be tough keeping up, but what a good problem to have! Let’s make RSS king once and for all.

That’s a wrap!

Seriously, a huge thanks to Sacha Greif and the entire Devographics team for the commitment to putting this survey together every year. It’s always fun. And the visualizations are always to die for.

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State of CSS 2024 Results originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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Looking for some scary tales to tell around the campfire (or perhaps a circle of blinking routers) this Halloween? We've got you covered. Here are three real horror stories from the world of tech and science that will make you wish humanity had never left the stone age.

Ever had a wild night, only to realize the next day that you lost something really important? The U.S. Air Force can relate. Since the end of World War II, at least three nuclear weapons have been lost by the United States and have never been recovered. Two of them were on board a B-47 bomber that disappeared without a trace over the Mediterranean Sea in 1956. Another might be much closer to homea proud 7,600-pounder that vanished near Savannah, Georgia, in the 1958 Tybee Island accident. And yes, these bombs could still be functional.

Thats just the tip of the iceberg. At its peak, the Soviet Union stockpiled approximately 45,000 nuclear weapons. Since then, the Russians have lost track of at least 100 suitcase-sized bombs (how handy!) as well as several nuclear submarines. At least you dont have to worry about them if you dont live near the coast

But even when not lost, the worlds most annihilating weapons aren't always treated carefully and the list of accidents involving nuclear bombs that almost caused devastating harm is equally terrifying. In total, 32 broken arrow incidents (= accidents involving nuclear weapons) have been recorded by the U.S. military since the 1950s. For example, in North Carolina, two 3.8 megaton H-bombs dropped after a plane crash in 1961. One bomb's parachute deployed, the other hit the ground unchecked near Goldsboro. Only a single safety switch prevented its detonation. Oh, and then there was that time in 1983 when a malfunctioning Soviet satellite indicated an all-out nuclear attack launched by the U.S., and an automatic counterattack was only prevented by the officer on duty, who decided the warning must be a false alarm. Good call, comrade?

As for the lost bombs? We can only wonder where they are and if they will ever resurface. Whether slumbering in the depths of the oceans, frozen in eternal ice, or sitting in the back of the van of some guy whos been shopping on the dark webthey could surprise us anytime. Consider stocking up on some Potassium Iodide pills for those trick-or-treaters!

Ever had someone spike your drink at a party? The CIA can relateexcept they were the ones doing the spiking. Between 1953 and 1973, they ran a program called MKUltra, turning thousands of unwitting Americans into guinea pigs for psychedelic experiments. Think your government would never secretly dose you with LSD? Think again!

The CIA wasnt just experimenting in hidden underground labs (though they had those too). They were running "experiments" in hospitals, universities, and even brothels across the U.S. and Canada. In one particularly wild operation, they hired prostitutes to lure men to CIA-run "safe houses" where they were dosed with LSD while agents watched through one-way mirrors, sipping martinis and taking notes. The operation was, unironically, called "Midnight Climax" (yes, really). Talk about a bad trip!

The program didnt stop at LSD either. They experimented with everything from sleep deprivation to psychological torture. At Montreal's Allan Memorial Institute, Dr. Ewen Cameron (funded by the CIA) tried to "de-pattern" his patients minds using electroshocks, drug-induced comas, and endless loops of recorded messages. Many of his victimswho had checked in for minor issues like anxiety or postpartum depressionsuffered permanent damage. Then there is the story of Frank Olson, a U.S. Army biochemist who worked for the CIA. In 1953, his colleagues secretly slipped LSD into his drink during a work retreat. Nine days later, he plunged to his death after jumping through the closed window of a New York hotelthrough drawn shade and curtains. Suicide? Accident? Murder? We might never know. The CIA Director Richard Helms ordered most MKUltra files shredded in 1973. Only a fraction of the files survived and were declassified in 2001.

How many people were unknowingly dosed, shocked, or manipulated? Well never know for sure, thanks to that convenient document-shredding. But here's a spine-chilling thought: these are just the experiments we know about. Sure, the CIA wouldn't legally be allowed to conduct such operations today, but maybe grab a drink tester while you're stocking up on those Potassium Iodide pills!

The scariest story I saved for the end. Kids these days, with their AirPods and Spotify, will never understand the true technological terror that was... the Microsoft Zune. Gather 'round, children, as I tell you about one of the darkest chapters in consumer tech historya tale so frightening, it makes the Meta Quest look like a fairy tale.

The year was 2006. Apples iPod was dominating the music player market when Microsoft decided to enter the ring with what looked like a brown brick that had been cursed by an ancient deity. Yes, you read that righttheir flagship color choice was brown. Not sleek white, not glossy black, but brown. Like your grandfathers 1970s kitchen appliances or, worse, the uniforms of the guys he fought against 30 years earlier. But the horror doesnt end with the aesthetics. The Zune came with its own proprietary software that made iTunes look awesome (and thats saying something). Imagine trying to sync your music, but instead of it just working, your device enters a state where your precious music collection becomes trapped in a format that only works with... you guessed it, the Zune.

Then there was the incredibly creative social feature called Zune Social, which let you "squirt" songs to other Zune users nearby. Yes, you read that right, they actually used the word "squirt" in their marketing. The catch? The received songs would self-destruct after three plays or three days, whichever came first. It was like Snapchat for music, except nobody wanted it, and nobody was around to receive your "squirts" because NOBODY ELSE HAD A ZUNE!

The horror story reached its climax on December 31, 2008, when every single Zune 30GB model in existence simultaneously crashed due to a leap year bug. Imagine thousands of people waking up on New Year's Eve to find their precious brown bricks had turned into actual bricks.
The Zune lived (or rather, stumbled around like a zombie) until 2011, when Microsoft finally put it out of its misery. Total sales? About 2 million Zunes compared to the iPods 300 million. Thats not a market sharethats a rounding error.

But perhaps the scariest part of this story is that somewhere out there, in forgotten drawers and dusty attics, thousands of Zunes still exist, waiting... Their brown cases slowly fading, their batteries quietly leaking, their proprietary software forever haunting the digital graveyard of tech history. Legend has it that on quiet nights, you can still hear the faint echo of a marketing executive whispering, "squirt me some Jonas Brothers..."

So, next time you complain about having to charge your AirPods, remember the brave souls who endured the Zune era. And if you ever find one at a garage sale, run. Run far, run fast. Some tech is better left in the past!

P.S.: If you think this was bad, wait until you hear about Windows Vista...

Whether you’re designing a simple website or building complex web applications, security needs to be a priority from day one. Cyber threats like data breaches, cross-site scripting (XSS), and SQL injections are becoming more sophisticated, targeting every weakness they can find. 

Fortunately, various security tools exist to help developers and designers safeguard their projects and ensure users enjoy a seamless and secure experience. This article will explore essential security tools that should be part of every developer’s toolkit.

1. OWASP ZAP

OWASP ZAP is an open-source tool that identifies vulnerabilities in web applications. It scans for security weaknesses like SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and authentication flaws. OWASP ZAP offers automated and manual testing options, making it useful throughout the development lifecycle. Developers can also integrate it into their CI/CD pipelines, catching vulnerabilities before they reach production.

By using OWASP ZAP early and often, development teams can adopt a proactive approach to security, preventing common attacks from slipping through the cracks. It also provides detailed reports that guide developers on mitigating issues, ensuring every code change aligns with security best practices.

2. Burp Suite

Burp Suite is a powerful tool designed for web application security testing. It provides developers with tools to inspect HTTP requests, manipulate data, and simulate attacks. Burp Suite’s automated scanner detects vulnerabilities, while its manual tools allow security experts to perform deep-dive testing on complex issues.

The platform’s modular nature makes it easy to customize testing processes. With features like Intruder for brute-force testing and Repeater for request manipulation, Burp Suite offers flexibility for both automated and manual testing. These capabilities help developers address logic flaws, broken authentication, and access control issues that automated scanners might miss.

3. VPN

Remote work becoming the new norm, VPNs are essential for developers who need secure access to servers, platforms, and databases from various locations. A reliable VPN ensures that online activities remain encrypted and private, helping prevent data leaks and unauthorized access. By using industry-standard AES-256 encryption and specialized protocols, VPNs provide a secure option for accessing sensitive environments—even on public Wi-Fi.

VPNs can also mask IP addresses, allowing developers to test web applications from multiple regions without compromising security. With a global network of servers, VPNs offer access to geo-restricted content and tools, enabling seamless and secure workflows regardless of the developer’s location. For example, services like AstrillVPN offer features tailored for developers, enhancing both privacy and functionality across diverse use cases.

4. Nmap

Nmap is a well-known tool for network discovery and auditing. It helps developers identify open ports, running services, and network misconfigurations that attackers could exploit. Nmap’s comprehensive scans offer insights into the entire network infrastructure, making it easier for developers to secure their systems proactively.

Using Nmap during the early stages of development ensures that potential entry points are identified and secured before launch. It’s also a valuable tool for periodic security audits, keeping infrastructure resilient against evolving threats.

5. Acunetix

Acunetix is a web vulnerability scanner that fits perfectly into DevOps workflows and offers continuous security monitoring. It automates the detection of vulnerabilities like SQL injection, XSS, and broken authentication and generates detailed reports for quick remediation. Acunetix supports CI/CD integration, making it a great fit for teams practicing agile development.

This tool stands out for its speed and accuracy, which helps developers keep up with tight release schedules while ensuring robust security. Its seamless integration into development environments allows teams to detect issues without slowing their workflow.

6. Wireshark

Wireshark is a go-to tool for analyzing network traffic and troubleshooting security issues. It provides deep insights into how data travels between a web application and its backend systems, enabling developers to detect bottlenecks, data leaks, or malicious activities. Wireshark captures and inspects data packets in real-time, allowing teams to identify and respond to anomalies quickly.

Wireshark ensures that communication channels remain secure and efficient for developers working on complex web applications. Its robust filtering options allow users to pinpoint specific traffic flows, making it an indispensable tool for network analysis and security debugging.

7. Metasploit

Metasploit enables developers to adopt an attacker’s mindset by simulating real-world cyberattacks. It provides a library of known exploits that can be used to test applications and systems, helping teams assess how well their defenses will perform under pressure. Metasploit’s penetration testing framework is essential for anyone serious about security, as it gives developers a clear understanding of their application’s vulnerabilities before malicious actors can exploit them.

8. Web Application Firewalls (WAFs)

WAFs act like gatekeepers, monitoring incoming traffic and blocking anything that looks suspicious. By filtering HTTP requests, tools like AWS WAF protect against the most common web attacks, including SQL injection and XSS. For developers managing high-traffic websites or online platforms, WAFs ensure that malicious traffic never reaches the application’s backend, maintaining performance while keeping attackers at bay.

9. Secure Coding Practices and Code Reviews

Secure coding practices are the foundation of any secure web application. Developers should sanitize inputs, use parameterized queries to prevent SQL injection and apply access control mechanisms to restrict unauthorized access. Embedding security principles into the codebase from the start ensures that vulnerabilities are minimized.

Regular code reviews, both automated and manual, are essential to catch security flaws early. Developers can also use Static Application Security Testing (SAST) tools to identify vulnerabilities during development, keeping code secure throughout the project lifecycle.

10. GitGuardian

GitGuardian is a crucial tool for developers working with code repositories. It continuously scans repositories for exposed credentials, such as API keys, tokens, or passwords that may have been accidentally committed. With GitGuardian, developers can avoid the risk of attackers exploiting leaked secrets, ensuring that sensitive information stays protected. It also provides real-time alerts, enabling teams to act when potential exposures are detected immediately.

11. Snyk: Manage Open-Source Vulnerabilities

Snyk specializes in finding vulnerabilities within open-source libraries and dependencies. Modern web applications rely heavily on open-source components, so Snyk helps developers identify and patch vulnerabilities early. It integrates with DevOps tools, offering continuous monitoring to ensure dependencies remain secure throughout development cycles.

12. Security Audits and Continuous Testing: Stay One Step Ahead

Regular security audits and continuous testing play a crucial role in safeguarding digital environments. By incorporating automated testing tools alongside thorough manual audits conducted at regular intervals, organizations can swiftly identify and address emerging risks. This proactive strategy not only aids teams in adhering to established security standards but also serves as a preventive measure, ensuring that minor security concerns do not escalate into significant incidents that could jeopardize sensitive information or disrupt operations. Such diligence fosters a culture of security awareness and resilience within the organization.

13. Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)

Two-factor authentication is a simple yet powerful way to protect accounts from unauthorized access. By requiring users to provide two verification forms, like a password and a code sent to their phone, 2FA ensures that attackers can’t gain access even if passwords are compromised. Developers should implement 2FA wherever sensitive data or user information is involved, adding an extra layer of security to the application.

14. Regular Security Audits and Continuous Testing

Security isn’t something you set up once and forget, it requires continuous monitoring and improvement. Regular security audits help identify vulnerabilities introduced through updates or changes in the infrastructure. Continuous testing ensures that applications remain compliant with security standards and are ready to face new threats as they emerge. With automated scanning tools and periodic manual testing, developers can avoid potential risks and maintain a strong security posture.

In today’s digital landscape, web security is essential for developers and designers building everything from simple sites to complex applications. This article explores top security tools, including OWASP ZAP, Burp Suite, and GitGuardian, that help identify vulnerabilities, secure sensitive data, and protect against cyber threats like SQL injection and cross-site scripting. By integrating these tools into development workflows, teams can ensure a seamless, secure user experience and maintain robust defenses against evolving threats. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting, these tools provide the foundation for building safer, more resilient web applications.

The post Essential Security Tools for Web Developers and Designers appeared first on CSS Author.

Every generation is different in very unique ways, with different habits, views, standards, and expectations. So when designing for Gen Z, what do we need to keep in mind? Let’s take a closer look at Gen Z, how they use tech, and why it might be a good idea to ignore common design advice and do the opposite of what is usually recommended instead.

This article is part of our ongoing series on UX. You can find more details on design patterns and UX strategy in Smart Interface Design Patterns 🍣 — with live UX training coming up soon. Free preview.

Gen Z: Most Diverse And Most Inclusive

When we talk about Generation Z, we usually refer to people born between 1995 and 2010. Of course making universal statements about a cohort where some are adults in their late 20s and others are school students is at best ineffective and at worst wrong — yet there are some attributes that stand out compared to earlier generations.

Gen Z is the most diverse generation in terms of race, ethnicity, and identity. Research shows that young people today are caring and proactive, and far from being “slow, passive and mindless” as they are often described. In fact, they are willing to take a stand and break their habits if they deeply believe in a specific purpose and goal. Surely there are many distractions along that way, but the belief in fairness and sense of purpose has enormous value.

Their values reflect that: accessibility, inclusivity, sustainability, and work/life balance are top priorities for Gen Zs, and they value experiences, principles, and social stand over possessions.

What Gen Z Deeply Cares About

Gen Z grew up with technology, so unsurprisingly digital experiences are very familiar and understood by them. On the other hand, digital experiences are often suboptimal at best — slow, inaccessible, confusing, and frustrating. Plus, the web is filled with exaggerations and generic but fluffy statements. So it’s not a big revelation that Gen Zs are highly skeptical of brands and advertising by default (rightfully so!), and rely almost exclusively on social circles, influencers, and peers as main research channels.

They might sometimes struggle to spot what’s real and what’s not, but they are highly selective about their sources. They are always connected and used to following events live as they unfold, so unsurprisingly, Gen Z tends to have little patience.

And sure enough, Gen Z loves short-form content, but that doesn’t necessarily equate to a short attention span. Attention span is context-dependent, as documentaries and literature are among Gen Z’s favorites.

Designing For Gen Z

Most design advice on Gen Z focuses on producing “short form, snackable, bite-sized” content. That content is optimized for very short attention spans, TikTok-alike content consumption, and simplified to the core messaging. I would strongly encourage us to do the opposite.

We shouldn’t discount Gen Z as a generation with poor attention spans and urgent needs for instant gratification. Gen Zs have very strong beliefs and values, but they are also inherently curious and want to reshape the world. We can tell a damn good story. Captivate and engage. Make people think. Many Gen Zs are highly ambitious and motivated, and they want to be challenged and to succeed. So let’s support that. And to do that, we need to remain genuine and authentic.

Remain Genuine And Authentic

As Michelle Winchester noted, Gen Zs have very diverse perspectives and opinions, and they possess a discerning ability to detect disingenuous content. That’s also where mistrust towards AI comes into play, along with AI fatigue. As Nilay Patel mentioned on Ezra Klein Show, today when somebody says that something is “AI-generated”, usually it’s not a praise, but rather a testament how poor and untrustworthy it actually is.

Gen Z expects better. Hence brands that value sincerity, honesty, and authenticity are perceived as more trustworthy compared to brands that don’t have an opinion, don’t take a stand, don’t act for their beliefs and principles. For example, the “Keep Beauty Real” campaign by Dove (shown below) showcases the value of genuine human beauty, which is so often missed and so often exaggerated to extremes by AI.

Gareth Ford Williams has put together a visual language of closed captions and has kindly provided a PDF cheatsheet that is commonly used by professional captioners. There are some generally established rules about captioning, and here are some that I found quite useful when working on captioning for my own video course:

• Divide your sentences into two relatively equal parts like a pyramid (40ch per line for the top line, a bit less for the bottom line);
• Always keep an average of 20 to 30 characters per second;
• A sequence should only last between 1 and 8 seconds;
• Always keep a person’s name or title together;
• Do not break a line after conjunction;
• Consider aligning multi-lined captions to the left.

On YouTube, users can select a font used for subtitles and choose between monospaced and proportional serif and sans-serif, casual, cursive, and small-caps. But perhaps, in addition to stylistic details, we could provide a careful selection of fonts to help audiences with different needs. This could include a dyslexic font or a hyper-legible font, for example.

Additionally, we could display presets for various high contrast options for subtitles. This gives users a faster selection, requiring less effort to configure just the right combination of colors and transparency. Still, it would be useful to provide more sophisticated options just in case users need them.

Support Intrinsic Motivation

On the other hand, in times of instant gratification with likes, reposts, and leaderboards, people often learn that a feeling of achievement comes from extrinsic signals, like reach or attention from other people. The more important it is to support intrinsic motivation.

As Paula Gomes noted, intrinsic motivation is characterized by engaging in behaviors just for their own sake. People do something because they enjoy it. It is when they care deeply for an activity and enjoy it without needing any external rewards or pressure to do it.

Typically this requires 3 components:

• Competence involves the need to feel capable of achieving a desired outcome.
• Autonomy is about the need to feel in control of your own actions, behaviors, and goals.
• Relatedness reflects the need to feel a sense of belonging and attachment to other people.

In practical terms, that means setting people up for success. Preparing the knowledge and documents and skills they need ahead of time. Building knowledge up without necessarily rewarding them with points. It also means allowing people to have a strong sense of ownership of the decisions and the work they are doing. And adding collaborative goals that would require cooperation with team members and colleagues.

Encourage Critical Thinking

The younger people are, the more difficult it is to distinguish between what’s real and what isn’t. Whenever possible, show sources or at least explain where to find specific details that back up claims that you are making. Encourage people to make up their mind, and design content to support that — with scientific papers, trustworthy reviews, vetted feedback, and diverse opinions.

And: you don’t have to shy away from technical details. Don’t make them mandatory to read and understand, but make them accessible and available in case readers or viewers are interested.

In times where there is so much fake, exaggerated, dishonest, and AI-generated content, it might be just enough to be perceived as authentic, trustworthy, and attention-worthy by the highly selective and very demanding Gen Z.

Good Design Is For Everyone

I keep repeating myself like a broken record, but better accessibility is better for everyone. As you hopefully have noticed, many attributes and expectations that we see in Gen Z are beneficial for all other generations, too. It’s just good, honest, authentic design. And that’s the very heart of good UX.

What I haven’t mentioned is that Gen Z genuinely appreciates feedback and values platforms that listen to their opinions and make changes based on their feedback. So the best thing we can do, as designers, is to actively involve Gen Z in the design process. Designing with them, rather than designing for them.

And, most importantly: with Gen Z, perhaps for the first time ever, inclusion and accessibility is becoming a default expectation for all digital products. With it comes the sense of fairness, diversity, and respect. And, personally, I strongly believe that it’s a great thing — and a testament how remarkable Gen Zs actually are.

Wrapping Up

• Large parts of Gen Z aren’t mobile-first, but mobile-only.
• To some, the main search engine is YouTube, not Google.
• Some don’t know and have never heard of Internet Explorer.
• Trust only verified customer reviews, influencers, friends.
• Used to follow events live as they unfold → little patience.
• Sustainability, reuse, work/life balance are top priorities.
• Prefer social login as the fastest authentication method.
• Typically ignore or close cookie banners, without consent.
• Rely on social proof, honest reviews/photos, authenticity.
• Most likely generation to provide a referral to a product.
• Typically turn on subtitles for videos by default.

Useful Resources

• Designing for Gen Z, by Designlab
• Designing For Gen Z (Case Study), by Michelle Winchester
• Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation, by Paula Gomes
• Shopping Habits For Gen Z, by Sara Karlovitch
• 10 Gen Z Insights To Improve Your CX, by Telus
• Millennials vs. Gen Z Expectations, by Zendesk

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Before I start writing a memo, I take some time to hype myself up. This bit of internal communication will be read by my peers, my boss, and likely my boss’s boss. Getting the language right is essential, and every word counts.

Unlike an email, memos typically go out to your entire department or everyone at the company, so knowing how to format a memo is just as important as what you write. No pressure. (Well, maybe some pressure.)

In this post, I’ll share my experience writing memos, tips from my HubSpot peers, and best practices for using AI throughout the process. From there, I’ll showcase stellar memo examples and a template to help you create your own.

Table of Contents

• Memo Definition, Types, and Parts
• When and How to Write a Memo
• Best Practices for Formatting a Memo
• Memo Examples and Templates

Memos are versatile. Businesses can use memos to relay information involving newly updated policies, changes in procedure, important milestones, or necessary employee actions, such as attending an upcoming meeting or convention.

On the other hand, communities can use memos to tell people within it about public safety guidelines, promote various events, and raise awareness on subjects that affect their lives.

I often find myself writing memos when there are significant changes to my program at HubSpot. Perhaps we’re implementing a new workflow, reorganizing the structure of our team, or sharing insights from a project we just completed. 

Memos denote importance, so I only write them when I have important updates to share that impact multiple stakeholders.

Types of Memos

When I do have those important updates to share, I like to consider the type of memo I’m writing before I get started. For your reference, here are four of the most common types of memos:

1. Informative Memo

Also known as announcement memos, these make up the bulk of most memos I’ve seen. The goal is to communicate new information to your audience.

Sample use cases: To state changes in policy, company news, and new processes or to welcome new staff members

2. Request Memo

Request memos are designed to make a request and get a positive response. When writing request memos, I’d focus on using persuasive language and include stats or numbers to highlight why a ‘yes’ is the right answer.

Sample use cases: To request a new purchase from your company or to authorize professional learning or volunteer opportunities

3. Confirmation Memo

I think of confirmation memos as a paper trail to make sure key stakeholders have a record of discussions. When writing confirmation memos, specificity and clarity should be your number one goal.

Sample use cases: To document conversations or clarify ambiguity to avoid misunderstanding down the road

4. Directive Memo

If I need to communicate how to do something to my audience, I’d write a directive memo offering detailed instructions that are easy to follow.

Sample use cases: To share how to implement a new process, comply with new requirements, or complete necessary tasks

The main difference between all of these memo types is the purpose behind the writing. However, regardless of purpose, every memo is usually made up of the same component parts.

Parts of a Memo

What are those parts, you ask? Here’s what I include in just about every memo I write: 

• Heading: This section specifies who the memo is to (your audience) and from (you or your department), and it includes the date and a subject to describe what it’s about.
• Introduction: This is your opening paragraph that highlights the purpose of the memo and provides an overview on what the memo is about.
• Background: Here, you want to provide clear, specific context around the problem you’re aiming to solve.
• Recommendations: This is where you’ll list the specific tasks or milestones you plan to complete in order to address the problem you’ve identified.
• Discussion: This is the meat of your memo sandwich — it’s where you’ll justify your recommendations with supporting details that map back to your problem statement.
• Closing: This section creates space for a call to action for your readers. What do you want them to do after reading your memo? State that here.
• Necessary attachments: This is where you can include any supporting documents to back up your research and recommendations.

I’ll show you how I build out each of these elements in our how-to shortly. In the meantime, here's more on memos from the HubSpot marketing team:

When to Write a Memo

I default to writing a memo when I need to communicate new information in a way that's more formal than an email.

However, memo purposes stretch far and wide.

“Memos serve a variety of purposes, but generally speaking, they either pitch or propose something new, consolidate information into one place for the sake of alignment, or explain or clarify information about a project or program,” says Hesterberg.

You might write a memo in the following scenarios:

• You have a new policy, and you need to explain it to your audience.
• Sharing important company updates and information.
• Announcing new staff members or promotions.
• Confirming details of a discussion to get everyone on the same page and create a paper trail.
• Teach or tell people how to do something.
• Requesting something and justifying why it matters.

There are lots of possibilities out there. In a nutshell, if you have something you need to share, a memo might be the answer.

Onto the how-to.

You can put together a memo in a few short steps, and you can even use AI to help.

To give you an idea of how each step is formatted, I’ll write an example memo, break it down for each step, and include tips for incorporating AI along the way. 

My example memo will be an internal announcement for a writing training session.

1. Start with your heading.

No matter what kind of memo I’m writing, I always include a heading. In this section, I note who the memo is to, who it’s from, the delivery date, and the subject of the memo.

I’d recommend starting off all of your memos with this formatting:

TO:

FROM:

DATE:

SUBJECT:

Your subject line should be short, attention-grabbing, and give readers a general idea of what the memo is about.

“The headings you use should be descriptive enough that your readers can infer what they'll get in each section,” suggests Kaitlin Milliken, senior program manager at HubSpot. “Cut the cute language and keep your headings very tactical.”

I always make sure the tone of my subject matches the seriousness of the subject matter and my organization’s communication style. I love a witty opener, but it won’t be right for every memo.

Testing It Out

Here’s how this would look for my example memo about a writing training session:

Simple and to the point.

2. Write your introduction.

Remember, you want your memo to be brief and information-packed. Your introduction should be an efficient use of space. 

Here, I highlight the main issue or problem that your memo aims to resolve along with the intended solution.

"The beginning of any memo should state a clear purpose of what the memo will cover,” says Karla Hesterberg, director of content marketing at HubSpot. “Depending on the subject, this could be as simple as an overview of a statement that establishes the need for a new investment. The more simple and straightforward, the better."

This is actually a reality that I personally struggle with. As a writer, I want to include those eloquent phrases and thoughtful transitions that sound great when read aloud. 

However, I need to take a different approach to writing memos. I try to remind myself that my introduction should just summarize the purpose of the memo in two to three sentences.

Testing It Out

Using Hesterberg’s tip, here’s how I’d write the introduction for my memo:

You can also use generative AI tools like ChatGPT to help summarize the purpose of your memo. In fact, this is one of my favorite ways to use AI — to condense and recap information.

Here’s an example.

Prompt I used: I'm writing a memo to announce a new training session for writers on my team. The training session is on how to use AI in your writing process without losing the human touch. Write an introduction to summarize this announcement and highlight the importance of this training. Keep the summary brief, around 2-3 sentences, and keep it conversational.

Output:

While I like my original version better, this would be helpful to use as a starting point — especially if I was in a time crunch.

3. Provide background on the issue.

Remember, memos go out to a wide group of employees. Not everyone reading your memo will have the same background that you do as the writer.

You’ll need a section to explain any necessary context that folks need to know before going forward.

So, what do you put in? I asked Basha Coleman, one of the best memo writers on my team. Coleman is a principal marketing manager on HubSpot’s audience development team.

Coleman says she includes a section at the top of her memos that cover the following:

• The situation
• The impact of the situation
• Recommended solutions

“This gives stakeholders the need-to-know info right away in case they don’t have time to read the whole memo at once,” Coleman says.

Beyond that, I like to link to other important documents that provide context on a topic.

That could be a related memo from a different team with more information, a news article that you're directly responding to, or a relevant dashboard that showcases the issue.

You don’t want this section to be long. However, if folks are interested in learning more, you’ve just given them the power to do so.

Testing It Out

Based on Coleman’s recommendation, here’s how the background I’d include as context for the new training:

Could AI help here? Alana Chinn, Marketing Blog editor at HubSpot, shared her thoughts on using AI in this section:

"Since I have the most context about the situation and impact, I probably wouldn’t use AI in the background section," she says.

"Tools like ChatGPT probably aren’t going to know which information is the most important to highlight for my audience. But if I did, I’d use AI to organize, summarize, or provide structure around my thoughts."

Bouncing off of this and following Coleman’s format, I'd suggest outlining the situation, the impact of the situation, and your recommended solutions and asking ChatGPT to summarize those details into a few short paragraphs.

4. Outline action items and timeline.

Depending on the purpose of your memo, you may have action items for employees to complete or provide a timeline of when changes will take place.

For example, they may need to complete a task or provide information by a certain deadline.

Of course, if no action is needed on the employee’s behalf, you can leave this section out. But when action is required, here’s what I’m including in this section:

• When employees can expect changes to go into effect
• What changes have already been made and what to expect in the future
• Deadlines they need to adhere to

Pro tip: Whenever I’m developing a timeline, I avoid just creating a paragraph with dates interspersed throughout. It’s harder to read that way.

“Don’t be afraid to use visual cues in your memo, like tables, heading colors to display hierarchy of information, charts, and graphs. These can keep a memo brief and skimmable,” suggests Coleman.

Milliken agrees. In a recent memo on building a thought leadership program, she included tables that laid out each step her team would take, more details about what was needed, and when it would occur.

“I also included an infographic of a pipeline to show the stages of the project and how long each would take proportionally,” she says. “This makes it easier to visualize a timetable than just skimming chunks of text.”

Testing It Out

Here’s a sample table I created to demonstrate.

In terms of using AI for this section, I’d ask my favorite generative AI robot to help me brainstorm appropriate tasks and map action items to a timeline.

Here’s an example.

Prompt I used: Give me 2-3 action items for attendees of a quarterly writing training session that highlights how to use AI tools in writing, and map them to a 6-week timeline.

Output:

I would then take this output, customize it for my team, and add any relevant details based on our internal workflow.

5. Justify your reasoning.

Whenever I have to communicate a request or anything new that could ruffle some feathers, I always try to make my case by offering a rationale as to why it’s so important.

“Think about your target audience and try to anticipate areas where they might ask questions, have concerns, or need more clarity,” says Hesterberg. “Try to re-read as someone who doesn't have all the context you have to identify areas you need to build up.”

Remember, as the memo writer, you’re an expert on the subject. You may need to ask a manager or a peer to review your memo with a skeptical eye. Where do they have questions? What needs additional justification?

From there, you can strengthen your case. For me, this often includes featuring statistics as to why it’s critical and urgent to make a change.

“Keep in mind that data is super powerful but must be presented in a way that enhances the narrative rather than confusing it,” says Amanda Sellers, a blog strategy manager at HubSpot.

For example, the phrase “58.97% met the benchmark and 10.26% far exceeded the benchmark” is clunky. Instead, Sellers suggests writing,”Our strategy is working nearly 70% of the time."

The first example is unwieldy, Sellers notes, referring to a methodology that a broader audience is less likely to care about.

Meanwhile, “the second audience demonstrates the more important thing: why that methodology was important and what you can take from it,” Sellers explains.

Testing It Out

To justify the importance of the quarterly writing training session, especially in conjunction with AI tools, I’d add this data point in my memo:

Tools like ChatGPT can also be great for pulling external data to justify your approach or the reasoning behind your memo.

Here’s an example.

Prompt I used: Provide 2-3 data points about the importance of a quarterly writing training on AI tools.

Output:

Big time saver if you let AI do some of the digging for you.

6. Soften any blows.

Sometimes you’re making a big change that could be seen as controversial or making bold statements where people might feel slighted. In instances like these, I like to soften things with a well-placed caveat.

For example, with the rise of AI, you might be communicating a new company policy related to using AI.

You could soften the blow by sharing that it hasn't been an issue for most people, but it’s important to have a clear policy in place for handling it.

Testing It Out

Let’s say my memo took a different position regarding AI for writing. Here’s how I’d format my memo to soften the blow:

AI can also help here if you’re not sure how to mitigate concerns about a particular issue presented in your memo.

Here’s an example.

Prompt I used: Provide language to address concerns that writers may have about using AI in their writing. Note that we have a strict AI policy in place to help guide this new process. Keep it brief, 2-3 sentences.

Output:

Not bad.

7. Communicate urgency.

Any time my memo pitches something new or timely, I make sure I explain why the change is urgent and why it’s important that we move now.

“The best way to do this is to explain what we’re at risk of losing if we don’t take action here,” says Hesterberg.

For pitch memos, Hesterberg suggests telling readers why this problem is important and why people should care. For explanatory memos, she recommends explaining what the information in the memo will be used for.

Testing It Out

Here’s how I’d add urgency to my memo about the training session:

This is relatively straightforward, so I won’t tap AI in for this.

8. Include a closing statement.

When crafting my closing statement I think about the information I really want to reinforce. For example, are there any specific contacts readers should reach out to for questions? If so, I’ll include them here.

“A conclusion that just reiterates your main points is boring and likely to be skipped,” Milliken says. “End on your most compelling points. You can either reassert urgency or discuss the resources you need to be successful.”

Milliken often closes on the support her team requires to find success. That could be additional financial resources, a champion within leadership, or more time to establish the change.

Testing It Out

Here’s how I’d wrap up my memo with Milliken’s suggestions in mind:

And from the AI perspective, I’d recommend using a prompt similar to the one we used for the introduction to close things out.

9. Review and proofread before sending.

This step may seem like a no-brainer, but it‘s important to review your document before sending it out. Memos are meant to inform readers of upcoming changes and relay important information.

As a writer, I know I don’t want to risk causing confusion with a typo or misstatement.

“Memos often have a broad audience, so you'll want to craft a narrative that is easily understood no matter who is reading it,” says Sellers. “That means telling a persuasive story, getting to the point quickly, anticipating questions, and cutting jargon to find the simplest way of saying something.”

Testing It Out

I usually ask a coworker to review my memo or use an editing tool like Grammarly or Hemingway to review and proofread.

Here’s an example of Grammarly editing my memo and making suggestions for improvement:

Chinn also says, “I love using AI to proofread my work. As a writer, this is one of the use cases I tap AI for the most. Asking ChatGPT to provide a grammar or tone check, to look for spelling errors or other inconsistencies, or to simplify complex ideas are all quick and easy ways to finalize my content.”

I mean, who says you can’t use AI as your personal peer editor?

10. Create audio or video aids.

Once the memo is written, I like to give it one last pass. What would make the message even more clear? Should I work with the creative team to build an infographic? Should I amplify the document over our email channels?

Now that I’ve invested the time, I want to make sure my message is heard.

Coleman often creates a recording with a deck, highlighting the most important points in the document.

“Including video summaries of my memos with Loom is helpful for accessibility and busy stakeholders who like to listen to updates while working on other tasks,” she notes.

Testing It Out

For the sake of time, I won’t create any visuals for my fictional memo.

But another easy way to do this would be to present the memo to your team or relevant stakeholders, record that presentation via Zoom or Microsoft Teams (if remote), and circulate it as a visual learning aid for the future.

Two birds, one stone kind of deal.

Best Practices for Formatting a Memo

Now that you know what types of memos there are, what elements to include in your memo, and how to write one, I have a few overarching formatting best practices for you.

Cater to your audience.

Before you start writing your memo, consider who your audience is. Understanding who will read your memo will help you tailor your message, tone, and CTA for that audience.

Pamela Bump, head of content growth at HubSpot, suggests considering the following questions.

"Are the leaders you're writing for busy executives who want a quick one-pager focused on the most need-to-know information?” she says. “Or are the readers more inquisitive and interested in soaking in all the information they can get?”

Make it skimmable.

Milliken recalls a time when she wrote a memo that wasn’t skimmable.

"When I was asked to write my first memo, I created a document with huge walls of text,” she says.

“My manager gave me great feedback, encouraging me to use charts and graphs throughout the document. That makes total sense to me now. No one wants to read a huge string of lengthy paragraphs, but they'll definitely skim a table.”

To make your memo easier to read, use headings and separate paragraphs to break up new thoughts or talking points. You can also add tables and graphs to create a visual break when it makes sense.

Milliken adds, "Bullet points are your friend. They create breaking points throughout your document and keep information easy to digest.”

Be mindful of length.

The length of your memo depends on the type you’re writing. Generally speaking, a memo is one or two paragraphs long. But the length can vary if you’re writing an informative memo versus a request memo.

If your audience is interested in learning, an informative memo can provide more detail, while a request memo should be brief and to the point.

“If you're unsure, go for a shorter 1-2 page document, but link it to another page or dashboard with further data, context, or information that they can dig into if they choose,” Bump suggests.

Don’t shy away from AI.

Jessica Shee, tech editor & marketing manager at M3datarecovery.com says, “Memo writing can be streamlined by using AI tools like ChatGPT to help with content development, particularly for sections that are routine or involve a lot of data.”

Shee continues, “I would use it to jot down basic concepts, clarify important details, and make sure formal language is understood. AI is also useful for recommending structural changes, enhancing grammar, and proofreading.”

And I agree. AI is a great memo writing tool for time-consuming sections or simple tasks like proofreading and editing. I wouldn’t use it to write an entire memo, and Vaibhav Kamble, CEO at CloudOptimo echoes that sentiment:

“While AI can significantly enhance the efficiency and quality of memo writing, it's important to remember that human judgment is crucial for adding personal insights and ensuring the memo aligns with organizational goals and values,” Kamble says.

“The combination of AI assistance and human oversight leads to more polished and effective communications.”

Memo Examples

Different industries or situations will require slightly different memos. My memos are going to look a lot different than the memos coming out of a law office, for example.

Pro tip: Certain memos will need to be longer or shorter, others may not have a timeline, and some will have extensive background info. You should always change the format of your memo to fit the message you want your employees to receive.

I pulled together three examples of what that might look like.

Launch Delay Memo

The objective of this memo is to announce that the launch of a product will be delayed. The introduction includes the new date, so a timeline or long overview isn’t necessary.

This format of this memo could be applied to other situations where a simple, but important, change is occurring.

What I like: The launch memo provides readers with insight into product launch delays, which can alleviate some frustration that customers or employees may otherwise feel if they were not informed.

Other date changes, promotions, milestones, or product announcements could also utilize this format.

Building Update Memo

There are logistical aspects of a business that concern your employees but don’t necessarily involve their work. This memo depicts an example of a kitchen remodel in the office. It’s a bit of an inconvenience but not one of a large magnitude.

What I like: This memo demonstrates a business's understanding of the impact that renovations can have on employees and shows respect and consideration for their needs.

This memo format could be applied to other building updates, work-from-home days, or other widespread but minor announcements.

Community Memo

Celebrations, events, theme days, or other fun things for your employees can also be communicated through memos.

Community memos like this example are generally shorter because they don’t require much background information or many details.

What I like: This memo has clear directions on where to find the event taking place, something which would’ve been less effective if it only included the floor number.

Memos of this nature should include a summary, date, and location at a minimum.

Business Memo Template

If you’re writing a business memo, take it from me — HubSpot's free business memo templates are a fantastic way to help you streamline your work.

The document gives you a framework that sorts your memorandum into subtopics to help employees better digest the information and understand what's expected of them after reading it.

Download This Template

And here’s another business memo template I use for times when I want to provide a quick write-up — via email, for example.

MEMORANDUM

TO:

FROM:

DATE:

SUBJECT:

I'm writing to inform you that [reason for writing the memo].

As our company continues to grow … [evidence or reason to support your opening paragraph].

Please let me know if you have any questions. In the meantime, I'd appreciate your cooperation as [official business information] takes place.

Let’s walk through the business memo format in more detail.

Business Memo Template Format

The standard business memo template format is designed to effectively communicate your message. A memo should disseminate the necessary information in a way that is easy for a mass number of employees to digest.

An accurate subject line will alert them that this memo is relevant to them specifically. And beginning with an executive summary allows recipients to understand the general message before they dive deeper into the details.

The background information offers context to the message, and the overview and timeline should answer questions that are likely to come up.

Header

In your header, you‘ll want to clearly label your content “Memorandum” so your readers know exactly what they’re receiving. As previously mentioned, you‘ll want to include “TO”, “FROM”, “DATE”, and “SUBJECT.”

This information is relevant for providing content, like who you’re addressing and why.

Paragraph One

In the first paragraph, you‘ll want to quickly and clearly state the purpose of your memo. You might begin your sentence with the phrase, “I’m writing to inform you … “ or ”I'm writing to request ... ”

A memo is meant to be short, clear, and to the point. You'll want to deliver your most critical information upfront and then use subsequent paragraphs as opportunities to dive into more detail.

Paragraph Two

In the second paragraph, you‘ll want to provide context or supporting evidence. For instance, let’s say your memo informs the company of an internal reorganization.

If this is the case, paragraph two should say something like, “As our company continues to grow, we've decided it makes more sense to separate our video production team from our content team.

This way, those teams can focus more on their individual goals.”

Paragraph Three

In the third paragraph, you‘ll want to include your specific request of each employee — if you’re planning a team outing, this is the space you'd include, “Please RSVP with dietary restrictions,” or “Please email me with questions.”

On the contrary, if you‘re informing staff of upcoming construction to the building, you might say, “I’d appreciate your cooperation during this time.”

Even if you don‘t expect any specific action from employees, it’s helpful to include how you hope they’ll handle the news and whether you expect them to do something in response to the memo.

Boom. I think I’ve hit all the memo-related points, so I’ll take us home.

Write your memos to the point.

I’d argue the main difference between a memo and just an email is not the level of complexity. It’s the size of the audience.

A memo can be simple or intricate as long as it effectively communicates your message and is relevant to the receiving group of employees. And, the message itself should be clear and concise, no matter which memo format you use.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in October 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

As a content marketer, a website audit is vital to my work.

An analogy I like to use is that optimizing an existing website for search engines without conducting a thorough audit is akin to steering a boat without a rudder.

It’s directionless, at the mercy of the wind and waves (or in this case, algorithm changes).

In this post, I’ll cover what a website audit is, the different types of audits, how to conduct an audit, and ways to use information from an audit to improve your SEO and conversions.

I’ve also spoken with some SEO consultants and specialists who’ve shared actionable tips, which you’ll find interspersed in the article.

Table of Contents

• What is a website audit?
• The Benefits of a Website Audit
• How to Conduct a Website Audit
• Types of Website Audits
• Assessments to Make When Auditing Your Website
• Website Auditing Checklist
• Website Audit Example

Before I dive into the things you should keep an eye out for, let me go through some of the different types of audits you can perform.

Types of Website Audits

Here are a few common audits among marketers.

1. Competitive Website Audit

A competitive website audit tracks your competitors and their online strategies to help you see what opportunities your brand could be missing out on.

Essentially, a competitive audit allows you to see what’s working for other companies in your market so that you can incorporate those tactics into your own strategy.

Start by performing a SWOT analysis on a competitor’s website. In a SWOT analysis, you track the website’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

For example:

• A strength could be that their website is easier to navigate than yours.
• One weakness could be that their website has slower page loading times.
• Opportunities could be items or tools missing from their website that you can add to yours to give you an edge.
• A threat could be that their website ranks higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) than your own, resulting in your site losing leads.

During this audit, also consider the tools and software they are using to streamline their processes. This can help you discover new ways to run your site more efficiently and make it more accessible for consumers.

2. SEO Link Audit

This type of audit processes the links pointing to your website to find potential issues or opportunities in your backlink profile. By evaluating your links, this audit will help optimize your site to rank for your target keywords.

Link audits consider the URL source, domain, and anchor text to see if value and equity (called “link juice”) are being passed on to your page. This will gauge how much a link is helping or hurting your website's visibility in SERPs.

Links from well-respected websites are much more valuable than links from smaller, less well-known sites.

To perform an SEO link audit, start by gathering all of your link data. You can do this with Google Search Console by entering your domain and then clicking on “Links to Your Site” under “Search Traffic.”

From there, you can download the latest links and create a link audit spreadsheet. Afterward, you manually evaluate your links by paying attention to factors like anchor text, IP address, and page content.

You can also use tools like Ahref's backlink checker to take the guesswork out of analyzing the value of the links you gathered.

3. Lead Conversion Optimization Audit

A lead conversion optimization audit analyzes a website’s conversion issues and opportunities. In this audit, you’ll need to analyze how traffic is coming to your website and where it’s coming from.

Google Analytics is an excellent tool for this step. Knowing where your traffic is coming from will help you better understand your audience’s behavior and will help you optimize your site’s content to suit their needs.

Speaking of content, you’ll also need to analyze the content on your website. Make sure the content is helpful, informative, and up-to-date.

Is the latest information about your business uploaded to the site and easily visible? Does your content contain keywords and phrases to boost its ranking in SERPs?

Outdated or irrelevant content can hurt conversions and hurt your SERPs ranking.

Other aspects of your website you need to observe are:

• Forms. Do your forms collect enough information to contact a lead?
• Checkout process. If you notice a lot of shopping cart abandonment, customers are likely having issues with the checkout process on your website.
• Design and layout. Are CTAs clear and visible? Is the copy too small and difficult to read? Is the website easy to navigate?
• Overall user experience. Are there any sources of frustration for visitors to your site?

Pro tip: Veruska Anconitano, an international expansion consultant, recommends the following: “Use behavior flow reports in Google Analytics to find drop-off points. To identify this, look at where users exit most frequently in the flow or where they loop back to a previous page.

Once you’ve found these areas, adjust your CTAs, page design, or content to reduce friction. For example, if users often drop off from a product page, consider simplifying the checkout process or adding more trust signals like reviews or guarantees to keep them engaged.

This approach tackles both SEO and conversion by refining the user experience at critical stages.”

4. Social Media Audit

Your brand’s online performance can also be impacted by social media. If your social media presence isn’t pushing more traffic to your website, then it’s time to conduct a social media audit.

To start the audit, create a list of all your company’s social media accounts. Do some extra digging to make sure you don’t miss any you’re not aware of, such as accounts started by other departments.

From there, go through each account to determine if they’re all consistent with the company’s branding — using the same images, logo, tone of voice, etc.

Then, you’ll need to evaluate each page’s performance. What kind of content performs the highest, and which content type performs the lowest? Are these pages being updated frequently?

Finally, use information from the evaluation to better understand your audience and optimize your social media to engage them. You’ll then be able to update your social media strategy to further delight your audience, more effectively attracting them to your website.

5. SEO Website Audit

While an SEO link audit analyzes the links associated with your website, an SEO website audit evaluates all the factors that can impact your site's performance in SERPs. This includes links but also extends to other aspects such as keyword usage, content, metadata, page speed, user journey, and video optimization.

It‘s possible to conduct an SEO audit on your own, but you’ll likely get more thorough answers in less time by employing an agency.

To perform one by yourself, I would start by understanding the purpose of the audit. Next, crawl and analyze your website using software. Here are some tools to choose from when conducting an SEO site audit (you can mix and match based on your needs):

• Google Search Console (free)
• HubSpot’s website grader (free)
• Ahrefs (paid with certain free tools)
• Semrush (paid but can avail a free trial, also comes with certain free tools)
• SE Ranking’s website audit (paid but can avail a free trial and is more affordable, also comes with allied free tools)
• Screaming Frog SEO Spider (limited free use)

Next, assess:

• Technical SEO. This includes insights on crawling, indexing, security, page speed, Core web vitals, site hierarchy, among others.
• On-page SEO. This includes content (review keywords targeted, content quality/depth, search intent, heading structure, images, videos, CTAs) and user experience.
• Off-page SEO. This includes backlinks, domain authority, and local SEO.

Pro tip: If this is your first site audit, I recommend you start with a free tool (or a free trial of a paid tool) along with Google Search Console to get your feet wet and keep expenses low.

6. Data Privacy Audit

A data privacy audit verifies that you’re following applicable data privacy laws and ensures you’re creating a safe space for website visitors. Search engines look for privacy-related pages when determining whether a website is high-authority.

For example, Google’s primary goal is to serve the best and most trustworthy content to users from reputable sources. Sites that comply with data privacy requirements will most likely be viewed as more authoritative than those that don’t have these essential legal policies.

To conduct a data privacy audit, determine what personal information your site collects from visitors, identify the laws you must follow, list all cookies your site uses, and create and publish website policies to meet legal requirements.

Most websites need a:

• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy
• Consent Banner
• Terms and Conditions Agreement

While you can create these on your own, it’s much easier and more efficient to use managed solutions, like a privacy policy generator.

To take the guesswork and hassles out of privacy compliance, use a reputable generator vetted by a legal team and data privacy experts.

It should also include clauses that meet compliance requirements outlined by the most common data privacy laws.

Now that I’ve covered a few different audits you can conduct to improve your website, let’s discuss the perks of an audit.

1. You can compare your website to your competitors.

Conducting a website audit will allow you to compare your website to your competitors. You can analyze how well you’re ranking against competitors for keywords and determine potential new sources of revenue.

You can use tools, like HubSpot's Website Grader, to perform an audit on your competitor’s websites to gather more insights. You can learn how your competitors are attracting visitors and see how they’re garnering conversions.

Ultimately, this will help you brainstorm new tactics and strategies for your site.

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2. You can improve your SEO.

With a website audit, you will be able to identify any missed SEO opportunities and remedy any misguided or poorly executed SEO pitfalls (e.g., keyword stuffing, exact match anchor text links, etc.) throughout the content of your website.

An audit will also allow you to refocus your SEO efforts on users first and search engines second. This will safeguard you from constantly chasing changes to search ranking algorithms, meaning you won't be applying misguided practices just to show up at the top of the SERPs.

Pro tip: One great tool that can help keep your SEO details organized is HubSpot’s free On-Page SEO Template.

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3. You'll optimize conversion rates.

Website audits also enable you to re-evaluate the effectiveness of your website in terms of lead generation and conversion.

As a result, you’ll be able to spot any previously overlooked opportunities to convert visitors into leads by adding relevant CTAs, as well as identify deficiencies in your landing pages so you can optimize them to boost conversions.

Pro tip: Learn more about CTA selection to optimize the CTAs on your website.

4. You can optimize your website performance.

Website audits usually evaluate a site for its content and technical performance.

As a result, an audit will give you a chance to inspect the robustness of your website’s technical framework and infrastructure.

It will also evaluate how friendly your website is to search engines and determine how easy it is for users to navigate your website to find the content they are looking for.

5. You can identify issues early.

Finally, a website audit finds issues that are hurting your SEO and conversions such as broken links, hidden content, and long page load speed times. Identifying these issues will help you address problems that are diverting traffic.

Assessing both the content and technical aspects of your website will open up opportunities to drastically improve the traffic and conversions your website generates.

Now that I’ve gone over what a website audit is and why you should do one, let's look at how to conduct one.

1. Run the website URL through a site audit tool.

I’d start with a website auditing tool to help analyze how my site is performing. This can help test various important facets of a site and then provide specific recommendations.

2. Find technical errors.

Technical errors like ones related to performance, SEO, mobile, and security, can negatively impact a customers‘ experience on your website. If I notice visitors aren’t staying on a site for long, or I see a lot of abandoned shopping carts — a website audit is a great way to find out why.

3. Analyze design and UX.

How is the website design working for visitors and customers? Some software have heatmaps showing what parts of a site design draw the most attention. This type of analysis helps communicate how the overall design and user experience impact visitors.

Pro tip: Raquel González, SEO consultant and CEO/Founder at MintyConnect, recommends doing some hands-on work too: “While auditing tools are valuable, they may overlook critical UX elements. Complement their analysis by personally navigating the entire website. This hands-on approach reveals non-functional elements and user journey issues that automated tools might miss, ensuring a more thorough site evaluation.”

4. Assess website content.

An audit also helps me evaluate website content such as blogs, landing pages, product/service pages, among others.

During an audit, I’d want to know how the current pages are stacking up, identify areas of improvement, and ensure that the content targets readers at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

Going deeper, I’d also look at meta descriptions and review image alt text. Additionally, I’d ask: “Is my content ranking well in search engines?” and “Is my on-page SEO and performance aligned with my traffic numbers?”

5. Create a website audit report.

Creating a website audit report that clearly communicates the site issues found (and what to do about them) is an easy job when you have the right tools.

There are a number of choices available, and HubSpot’s Website Grader is one of the most user-friendly. It quickly and automatically generates a report after entering the web address you want to have crawled along with an email address.

For those with more technical experience, Semrsh’s Site Audit Tool is a very thorough reporting option, but getting started for free does require jumping through a few hoops.

You would need to create an account, answer some questions about yourself, and choose to skip a trial in order to create the free audit report.

Their in-depth report can look overwhelming unless you’re coming to the game with some technical chops.

Whichever reporting product you choose, it should provide a clear display of important website categories — such as SEO performance and the effectiveness of your security measures — and then list the individual issues along with recommended fixes.

Having a full website audit report in your hands enables you to start making improvements yourself or to efficiently send the information to the appropriate teams within your organization.

Pro tip: Preeti Gupta, B2B SaaS SEO consultant and founder of Packted, shares the following advice: “When presenting an audit report, I find it important to prioritize the recommendations based on the input you collected. I do this as simply as assigning priority to each task based on the resources it will take, the impact it will have, and more.”

Assessments to Make When Auditing Your Website

First, go ahead and enter your website into HubSpot's Website Grader — this will give you a general overview of your website's strengths so you can gauge your focus on each of the assessments that follow in this article.

Check out HubSpot's Website Grader

How'd you do? Got an idea of which website audit benefits you need the most? Here we go!

1. Website Performance Assessment

In the first part of your website audit, I’d focus on how users navigate your website — from your homepage to blog posts, to landing pages, and any related content in between.

Make a list of the pages on your website and ask yourself the following questions to evaluate them for optimization opportunities:

Is your website optimized for maximum usability?

The more visitors you can attract to your website, the more opportunities you'll have to generate leads and, ultimately, customers. But only if your website performs well.

Just having a website does not guarantee results. As part of determining the overall efficiency of your website, your audit should check to make sure your site is designed with your visitors in mind.

The design and overall navigability of your website should correspond with what a person would come to the site to seek out, such as more information on a business-related topic, resources, product/pricing information, testimonials, etc. This will largely depend on your individual business.

The main goal here is to make it easy for people to get the information they‘re looking for. As a result, you’ll likely see conversion rates improve on their own.

To audit your website for usability, consider the following questions:

• Are all the main value propositions of our business easily accessible via our main navigations/menu items?
• Do we have a simple yet intuitive website design and page layout? Make sure pages aren't too cluttered; littered with ads, CTAs, or links; or void of internal links altogether.
• Are your conversion paths and/or shopping cart or checkout processes intuitive? Are there a ton of distractions along the way that could be creating friction for your site visitors?

Consider doing some user testing with members of your target audience to ensure you‘re effectively surfacing the content they’re looking for and that they find it easy to navigate to the parts of your website they're interested in.

How is your website's overall speed?

Are there excessive page sizes or long page load and server response times? Does your site go down frequently? Site speed can be impacted when image files are too large or HTML and CSS needs to be cleaned up.

Ultimately, fast-loading and optimized pages will lead to higher visitor engagement, retention, and conversions. To quickly check a web page's load time, download MozBar, a toolbar by Moz that you can attach to your browser for simple page analysis every time you visit a website.

2. SEO Assessment

Optimizing the performance of your website is crucial to holding onto visitors, but the above questions aren't the only ones I’d be asking.

It’s also crucial to audit the content you‘re publishing to ensure it’s actually solving your visitors' problems.

Is your website content high quality?

As you evaluate your content for quality, think about it from your target audience’s perspective:

• Did this information leave me satisfied?
• Did it answer all of my questions?
• Does it give me all the resources relevant to this topic?
• Do I know what to do next?

Keep in mind quality content should appeal to the interests, needs, and problems of your buyer personas. Present them with interesting and well-written content. Always aim to leave the reader with immediately actionable next steps such as calls-to-action or links to resources.

Is your website search engine optimized?

Make sure all your web pages are following on-page SEO best practices. To audit your content for on-page SEO, conduct a keyword analysis in which you do the following:

• Consult your analytics to review keyword performance. Which keywords are giving you the biggest gains in traffic and leads?
• Assess how well you're factoring keyword performance into your content strategy. How much relevant content are you adding to your website to target those keywords?
• Review basic on-page SEO elements like URLs, page titles, meta descriptions, and copy. Make sure keywords are included where relevant.

Pro tip: To help you conduct an on-page SEO audit of your content, check out this blog. You can also download our free On-Page SEO template.

3. Conversion Rate Assessment

While high-quality, search-engine-optimized content is a great way to boost your traffic numbers, it's what happens once those visitors are on your website that really counts.

This is where optimized calls-to-action (CTAs), marketing offers, and landing pages play a major role in the performance of your website.

Not only do they offer you opportunities to capture visitors' information so you can follow up with leads, but they also keep your visitors engaged with your content and your brand.

To audit your website for maximum conversion potential, I’d ask the following questions:

• How many marketing offers do I have in my content arsenal to gate behind landing pages?
• Do I have a variety of marketing offers that appeal to all my different buyer personas?
• Do I have any landing pages/conversion forms on my website to begin with?
• How optimized are those landing pages?
• Do I have conversion opportunities for visitors in varying stages of the funnel?
• Am I using CTAs effectively? Am I missing opportunities to include CTAs on various pages of my website?

Pro tip: Erica Ylimäki, growth marketer at Trustmary, recommends the following: “Check for bulk optimization options for conversions … Some examples include aiming for a simpler conversion (such as getting visitors to sign up to a newsletter instead of getting them to register to your software) or trying out a new CTA placement (exit intent popups, above the fold, below the fold). In our case, adding a hero CTA to blog posts has been especially effective.”

4. Technical Assessment

Once you‘ve addressed the three primary goals of a website audit, it’s time to loop in a developer or someone from your IT department for a technical evaluation. You could also hire an outside agency — just be sure to do your homework first.

Keep in mind that there may be some carry-over from the three assessments above — website performance, SEO, and conversion rate. The technical evaluation, however, addresses all three to maximize the user experience (UX).

Here's what I’d be looking for in the technical assessment stage of your website audit.

Is your website design responsive?

Does your website have a responsive design? Meaning, is it a mobile-friendly website?

Smartphone usage worldwide has grown exponentially, and it’s important for websites to be compatible with the rising demand.

Is your website error message free?

Are response code errors popping up all over your website where there shouldn't be any? Calling out 302-, 404-, and 500-level response codes can be useful to tell users that something's wrong.

However, having this happen is also an indication that someone isn't cleaning up broken links and, as a result, leading users to dead ends. Find those error messages and clean up your broken links.

Are your website URLs optimized?

Does your site have URLs of excessive length due to keyword stuffing? Do they contain session IDs and/or include tons of dynamic parameters? In some cases, these URLs are difficult for search engines to index, resulting in lower clickthrough rates from search results.

Does your website have too much Flash or JavaScript?

Identify areas of your navigation that are entirely Flash or JavaScript. Search engines have challenges with reading and accessing these, which could prevent your site from getting indexed.

These elements also present problems from a usability perspective. Visitors are often looking for a very specific piece of information when visiting your site. If they have to sit through a 10-second visual introduction before they can find your hours of operation, you’re going to have a pretty frustrated visitor on your hands.

Is your site structure optimized for search engines?

We already talked about site structure as it relates to accessing content and usability for users, but it's also important to make sure your site structure is optimal for search engines. If pages on your site are not internally linked to other pages on your site, those pages are less likely to be indexed.

Are you defining how your web pages are crawled and indexed by search engines?

This can be done through various methods that include everything from robots.txt files to sitemaps. These tools help you guide search engines toward your website’s most useful content.

Robots Meta Tags or robots.txt Files

The robots meta tag lets you use a granular, page-specific approach to controlling how an individual page should be indexed and served to users in search results. These tags should sit in the <head> section of a given page.

The robots.txt file, on the other hand, is a text file that allows you to specify how you would like your site to be crawled. Before crawling a website, search engine crawlers will generally request the robots.txt file from a server.

Within the robots.txt file, you can include sections for specific (or all) crawlers with instructions (“directives”) that let them know which parts should or should not be crawled.

Public and XML Sitemaps

Your website should also have public and XML sitemap files. The public sitemap is one that users can access to review the pages of your site, like the index of a book.

The XML sitemap is for search engines to review pages that get added to your site, all in one place. The usual location of a sitemap.xml file is www.domainname.com/sitemap.xml.

The XML sitemap is something every website should have. It offers an opportunity to tell Google and the other search engines which pages on your site you want to be crawled and indexed.

While search engines don’t guarantee they will abide by your sitemap, anecdotal evidence has proven time and time again that XML sitemaps help provide insurance that your pages are found, and found faster — especially if your sitemap(s) dynamically update your new web pages.

Are you defining the canonicalization of content?

The canonicalization of your website content is your final major technical consideration. To gain more control over how your URLs appear in search results — and to minimize issues related to duplicate content — you need to pick a canonical (preferred) URL as the preferred version of the page.

You can indicate your preference to Google in a number of ways. One such way is to insert the canonical tag (rel=“canonical”) in an HTTP header of a page.

Be sure to have someone check that the canonical tag is properly implemented across the site by making sure it points to the correct page, and that every page doesn't point to the homepage.

Website Auditing Checklist

Before getting started, I’d use this basic website auditing checklist to review certain necessary elements of a site’s performance.

Website Audit Example

To pull all this together, I decided to run a website audit on one of my favorite bloggers, Christina Galbato.

Take a look at the image below. This website is performing well. SEO and mobile are scoring very high. The main areas for improvement for this site would be performance and security.

But, “What does this mean?” Well, let me dive in a little deeper. In each section, the website grader lets me know what I’m (or in this case Christina) is doing well and what could be improved upon.

Then, the grader gives recommendations to improve the site overall.

Next, there’s a table that helps compare the current site to the recommendations.

Wrapping up the Website Audit

At the beginning of the auditing process, I asked the important questions: “How am I doing?” and “How does my website compare to those of my competitors?”

Now, as I complete the audit, I’ll know the answers to those questions — and I’ll have actionable steps to improve my website, thus making it more competitive.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in April 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Good marketing is always about the customers, period. That’s the most important lesson I’ve learned from all my wins and losses as a marketer.

To launch successful marketing campaigns, you must know every detail about your audience — their goals, aspirations, pain points, and more. And building buyer personas is a good place to start.

I brainstormed with the team and curated 40 buyer persona interview questions to survey your audience and create accurate personas.

Once you have the data, use our free buyer persona template to share your findings with the rest of your company.

Table of Contents

• Why conduct buyer persona interviews?
• 3 Key Benefits of User Persona Surveys & Interviews
• 40 Best Buyer Persona Questions

Why conduct buyer persona interviews?

A buyer persona (or user persona) is a fictionalized representation of your target customer. It essentially gives you an overview of your buyers’ preferences, pain points, motivations, and more.

But even though buyer personas are fictional, you need real-life data to base each persona on. It has to represent your actual customers’ needs and aspirations accurately. That’s where buyer persona interviews and surveys will help you collect data to design these personas.

I use buyer persona surveys and questionnaires to gauge my audience's needs.

My ideal starting point is choosing a sample group from my customer base. I’ll then share the survey with these participants to comprehensively understand their goals, challenges, jobs to be done, and more.

If you lack the resources to conduct a survey, I recommend using a market research platform like Qualtrics to conduct panels and interviews with your chosen participants.

Once you’ve decided whom you’re going to survey, you can pick specific questions to collect data related to:

• Demographics such as their age, education, occupation, and income.
• Psychographics such as their habits, beliefs, behaviors, and preferences (like shopping preferences).

This information can benefit businesses and brands looking to convert leads, personalize the customer experience, and improve their bottom line.

Here’s a buyer persona example to show how it works. I created this using HubSpot’s free Make My Persona tool.

3 Key Benefits of User Persona Surveys & Interviews

Buyer personas eliminate guesswork from your marketing strategy. These personas tell you the exact problems and aspirations of your target audience.

As a result, you can make data-driven decisions and launch campaigns tailored to your customers’ preferences. I rely heavily on buyer persona surveys to get a pulse of my audience and design accurate personas.

Here are some benefits I’ve experienced from asking the right persona questions.

1. I captured more high-quality leads.

Knowing your customers’ typical challenges and needs helps create campaigns that truly appeal to them. By discovering your target audience’s habits and challenges through persona interviews, you can accurately tailor your sales and marketing campaigns to the users most likely to buy from you.

2. I personalized the customer experience.

Personalizing the customer experience is one of the best ways to stay top-of-mind for potential customers and win their business.

Customers will be more likely to buy from you if they feel like you’re speaking directly to them. You can know them better through persona interviews and recognize their concerns. As a result, it becomes easier to create personalized messaging and connect with them at a deeper level.

3. I improved my bottom line.

Buyer personas can significantly improve your bottom line by maximizing lead generation and driving conversions. These personas will also inform your strategy to deliver a positive and targeted customer experience.

The result? Higher customer retention and brand loyalty.

Pro tip: Build a laser-focused content marketing strategy to generate top-of-funnel interest in your brand. Check out the free content marketing training resources in the HubSpot Academy to build your content strategy today.

Download our free buyer persona template here to learn how to create buyer personas for your business.

Download Now

Questions About Their Personal Background

Knowing your buyers’ backgrounds gives you crucial insights into their interests, upbringing, communication style, and other preferences.

In my experience, understanding personal background gives you some much-needed cultural context to positively influence your target buyers.

This is your opportunity to ask buyer persona interview questions related to their education and work experiences, demographics, and personal interests.

Here are some questions I include about buyers’ personal interests:

1. What is your educational background?
2. Share how your career path led you to your current role.
3. Where are you located? How does that influence your work?
4. What is your preferred style of communication?

Questions About Their Company

I always collect information about the company where my target buyers work.

This can include data about the company size, business goals, and challenges faced. This data gives me specific insights to tailor my communication for each buyer based on their work environment.

Besides, when you know the necessary details about your persona's company, like the number of employees, you can quickly outline the fields for your landing page forms.

Here are some questions I include about the buyers’ company:

5. What industry does your company operate in?
6. How big is your company in terms of revenue and number of employees?
7. What are the primary goals your company is trying to achieve this year?
8. What are the major challenges your company faces in the current market?

Questions About Their Role

The importance of your buyer persona‘s job depends on the product or service you’re selling.

If you‘re a B2C company, you may simply consider this information as another way to better understand the nuances of your persona’s life.

If you're a B2B company, this information becomes more crucial. Think about the many moving parts for a B2B buyer — are your personas working at a managerial or director level, and are they well-versed in the intricacies of this industry?

Experienced buyers will need less education than someone at an introductory level, who may need to loop in other decision-makers before making purchasing decisions.

Here are some questions I include about buyers’ roles:

9. What is your job title, and how long have you been in this position?
10. What are your primary responsibilities?
11. What does a typical day look like in this role?
12. What knowledge and tools do you use in your job?
13. What are the biggest challenges you face in your day-to-day work?

Pro tip: Try to make these persona interview questions as close-ended as possible. This will bring more objectivity in your buyer personas, and you can quote specific data points about each persona’s role.

Questions About Buyer Goals

Identifying buyers’ goals and motivations is important to define specific outcomes for your messaging. I use this data to identify the key benefits to emphasize for each type of buyer.

You should know what success looks like for your buyers. Understanding their notions of success will help you position your product/service as a more relevant offering. Besides, knowing how buyers measure success will help you demonstrate the specific value they’re looking for.

Here are some questions I include about buyers’ goals:

14. What are your main objectives when considering a product or service like ours?
15. How does your team or company define success for purchases like this?
16. What would make you a champion for the product internally?
17. Are there specific KPIs you need to meet with this purchase?
18. How do you measure success in your role specifically?

Questions About How Buyers Learn

If you're going to market and sell to these personas, you need to understand how they consume information.

I typically start by collecting information about their required upskilling at work. You can also explore their preferred learning formats, like detailed reports, blog posts, short videos, and podcasts. Ask relevant questions to identify their trusted learning sources, whether it’s industry experts or research platforms.

Your goal should be to understand their learning style entirely. Here are some questions I include about buyers’ buying journey:

19. What type of content or resources do you prefer to learn more about a concept?
20. Where do you typically find information to help you make buying decisions?
21. What publications and thought leaders do you follow for industry insights?
22. Do you attend any industry events or conferences for learning?
23. Which communities and social networks do you participate in?

Pro tip: I recommend doing independent research to learn how your target buyers learn before framing these questions. You can identify and explore the most popular resources and communities for your buyers. This way, you can skip the obvious questions and focus on collecting more meaningful information.

Questions About Their Shopping Preferences

You should understand your buyers' evaluation process when making a purchase.

Before buying a product, you need to get a behind-the-scenes look at their analysis. Ask about the avenues they use to find information, such as online searches, review websites, network recommendations, and more.

If you can anticipate the objections your persona will have, you can be prepared for them in the sales process. You will also be able to educate them in your marketing collateral to help allay fears right away.

Here are some questions I include about buyers’ shopping preferences:

24. Describe a recent purchase from start to finish.
25. How do you typically find, research, and evaluate vendors or products?
26. What factors are most important when making a purchase decision?
27. How do you prefer to interact with potential vendors?
28. What makes you trust a brand enough to purchase from them?

Questions About Values

Your buyers’ values are central to purchasing decisions. You can stand out among sellers by showcasing your commitment to the core values your buyers believe in. I’ve observed how this value alignment can also win buyers’ trust in the long term and build loyalty.

Here are some questions I include about buyers’ values:

29. What values or ethics guide your buying decisions?
30. What would make you loyal to a brand over time?
31. How important is it that a company aligns with your values?
32. Are there social or environmental issues that you prioritize when choosing products?

Questions About Pains and Challenges

Buyers’ pain points are a critical part of your personas. When you know their problems and challenges, you can offer specific solutions that resonate with them. It makes your pitch unique and shows you’ve done your homework.

Plus, it’s good to understand the solutions they’ve tried in the past, but they didn’t work. You can empathize with them and present your offering as a better alternative to eliminate all frustrations.

Here are some questions I include about buyers’ pain points:

33. What are the biggest challenges or pain points you face in your role?
34. How are these challenges affecting your ability to meet your goals?
35. Have you tried solutions in the past that didn’t work? What were they lacking?
36. What would solving these challenges mean for your business or role?

Questions About Their Environment

A buyer’s environment typically involves their work setup and the industry they operate in.

Knowing these details makes it easier to identify their priorities and fit your offering in their preferred context. For example, remote workers will focus on greater collaboration, while in-person employees may need better equipment.

I always include some of these persona interview questions to understand market trends and shifts in my buyers’ space.

Here are some questions I include about buyers’ environments:

37. How does your work environment impact your buying decisions?
38. How does your company adapt to shifts in the market or industry?
39. Are there any market trends or external factors influencing your company’s strategy?
40. What tools or technology do you currently use? Are there any limitations impacting your performance?

Pick the right buyer persona interview questions.

Building buyer personas can help you create a customer-first marketing strategy and tailor your messaging to their goals and aspirations. I use buyer personas to prepare the groundwork for every campaign I launch.

After creating dozens of buyer persona surveys and interviews, I’ve handpicked these buyer persona interview questions. Use these to survey a small sample of your target audience and collect crucial data to define your buyer personas.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in October 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Today, we bring you a unique collection of calligraphy brushes for Procreate and Photoshop that are ideal for everything from wedding invitations and branding to social media graphics.

Whether you’re a professional calligrapher, a designer, or someone who simply loves creating beautiful lettering, these brushes offer the perfect blend of traditional calligraphy charm and modern digital convenience.

With the right brush, you can easily craft stunning hand-lettered artwork, logos, invitations, and more, all from your iPad or computer.

This collection features a variety of calligraphy brushes designed to mimic real brushstrokes, ink, and pen textures, giving you the freedom to explore different styles—from classic script to modern lettering.

Each brush set is tailored for a seamless digital experience, allowing for precise control and smooth flow that feels just like working with traditional tools. Have a look.

Procreate Calligraphy Brushes

Twentyletter – Procreate Calligraphy Brushes

This Procreate calligraphy brush pack offers a range of 20 smooth, easy-to-use brushes ideal for crafting calligraphy lettering for logos, illustrations, and more. Convenient for users of all skill levels, these brushes can be seamlessly imported into your Procreate brushes panel via Files App, transforming your iPad into a versatile digital art studio.

Procreate Monoline Calligraphy Brushes

This is a set of over 15 brushes specially crafted for the Procreate app. They offer a wide range of colors and neat effects like neon and rainbow in each stroke, making it the perfect tool for design, lettering, digital art, logo creation, and social media. These user-friendly brushes are compatible with Procreate 5X and earlier versions.

40+ Procreate Calligraphy & Lettering Brushes

This Procreate calligraphy brush pack provides a diverse variety of styles and textures for use in the iOS app, including lettering, calligraphy, ribbon, shawl, Japanese, modern, monoline, signature, spray, fire, and shadow brushes. It is important to note that these brushes are not compatible with Photoshop or other applications.

Firstype – Procreate Lettering Brushes

Firstype Procreate calligraphy brush set is specifically designed for beginners using the iOS app, Procreate, and contains over 20 different types of brushes including Calligraphy, Watercolour, and Blackletter. They are great for expanding your skills in lettering, calligraphy, and typography design. The package also includes six guides for lettering.

10 Procreate Lettering & Calligraphy Brushes

Another versatile set of Procreate calligraphy brushes perfect for digital lettering artisans. From refined calligraphy to playful lettering, these Procreate brushes provide a broad spectrum of possibilities, allowing your creative expression to flow effortlessly.

Procreate Blackletter Calligraphy Brush

This is a creative Procreate calligraphy brush set that has been carefully crafted for lettering artists seeking to merge the analog and digital realms.  The set comes with six uniquely designed brushes, enabling you to create vivid lettering designs, posters, flyers, and more with remarkable authenticity.

10 Lettering Brushes for Procreate

A useful Procreate brush pack for anyone interested in calligraphy. With ten distinct, smooth brushes, you can transform your iPad into a canvas for beautiful lettering. This means you get to enjoy the freedom and versatility of Procreate Brushes while achieving stunning lettering effects easily and efficiently.

Procreate Chalk Lettering Brushes

This is a unique set of Procreate calligraphy brushes designed to replicate the distinct texture of chalk strokes. They offer a wide variety of chalk brushes including coarse chalk, wet chalk, dusty chalk, and chalk eraser. Ideal for lettering and blackboard-like illustrations, they’re perfect for creating educational content, cafe menus, decorations, or lettering artwork.

Procreate Blackletter Calligraphy Brush 2

A fantastic Procreate calligraphy brush set for digital lettering enthusiasts. This versatile brush set enables users to effortlessly create analog-style artwork digitally using iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. Whether it’s calligraphic designs, posters, or flyers, these handmade, high-quality brushes offer a limitless scope for your creative expression.

Procreate Lettering Brushes

This is a diverse set of brushes exclusively designed for Procreate. Their simplicity makes them a great choice for both beginners and professionals. Excellent for various tasks such as font creation, lettering, logo development, and even designing stationery, the pack includes textured, monoline, calligraphy, and signature brushes. Compatible with Procreate 5 and prior versions, they are ready for you to enjoy.

Dry Marker Brushes for Procreate

An exceptionally curated set of 15 high-quality, original brushes designed for diverse styles and effects. Ideal for crafting quotes, lettering, fonts, and graphics, these brushes also come with a bonus Procreate-specific calligraphy brush. The set, which requires an iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, and Procreate App to use, is designed solely for Procreate.

Photoshop Calligraphy Brushes

45 Calligraphy Photoshop Stamp Brushes

This calligraphy brush pack offers a unique touch to any digital project. They’re compatible with all versions of Photoshop and feature a high resolution of 2500 pixels. These versatile brushes are not simply tools, but creative assets that can bring a special charm to photos, print templates, and social media content.

Inktober – 44 Photoshop Brushes Pack

The Inktober Photoshop brushes pack is an eclectic set of ink brushes designed for digital artists. Inside you’ll find a diverse range of brushes perfect for line art, calligraphy, painting, as well as specialized effects like spray, wet edge, and grunge. It imitates numerous painting styles, from pen drawings to Chinese art, and includes 15 bonus textures.

50 Calligraphy Photoshop Stamp Brushes

A versatile calligraphy brush pack perfect for a variety of projects. These high-resolution brushes (2500 pixels) can be used as clipart or decorative elements in print and web-based designs, as well as on posters and cards. Included is a selection of 50 unique brushes in .ABR format and 50 isolated .PNG images.

45 Underline Photoshop Stamp Brushes

Enhance your projects with this underline Photoshop stamp brush pack, compatible with all versions of Photoshop from CS2 to CC. With a generous size of 2500 pixels, these high-resolution brushes can be a game changer in adding ornamental value to photos, print templates, and even social media content.

Illustrator Calligraphy Brushes

Illustrator Hand Lettering Brushes

This Illustrator brush pack is perfect for those who find hand-drawn typography a tad challenging. These tools are excellent for both calligraphy and drawing. Each brush has a unique texture which mimics real-life brush strokes and can be adjusted in terms of color, thickness, and length. The set includes a whopping 74 brushes, each grouped and named for easy usage.

Japan ProBrush – Illustrator Brush Pack

Japan ProBrush is an Illustrator brush pack ideal for creating Japanese-style calligraphy. This pack, compatible with Adobe Illustrator CS3 and above, features 39 high-quality digital, ink, and Asian calligraphy brushes. Included in the pack are 14 ProBrush Japan Brush, 14 ProBrush Japan Digital, and 11 ProBrush Watercolor REALISTIC brushes, providing professional designers, illustrators, and artists with versatility and precision in their digital creations.

Free Calligraphy Brushes

Free Valentine Calligraphy Photoshop Brushes

This is a collection of creative calligraphy-style stamp brushes you can use in Photoshop to craft romantic typography designs for Valentine’s Day greeting cards and various other designs. The brushes are free to download.

55 Free Calligraphy Photoshop Brushes

This free calligraphy brush pack for Photoshop includes 55 different brushes for crafting unique calligraphy lettering for your design projects. It’s free to use with commercial projects.

Free Unique Calligraphy Brushes for Photoshop

A collection of 15 unique calligraphy brushes for Photoshop. This bundle includes multiple styles of calligraphy designs to make your lettering designs look more authentic.

Free 26 Underline Tail PS Brushes

This is a collection of underline and tail brushes for Photoshop. You can use these to add a creative and decorative touch to your graphic designs. There are 26 different brushes included in this pack.

Free 20 Calligraphy Alphabet Set PS Brushes

This is a free calligraphy brush pack for Photoshop that includes the alphabet in calligraphy style. You can use this brush pack to craft beautiful calligraphy lettering without any prior experience in calligraphy art.