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thedarkmistress16 · 2 years ago

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TS4 Rewatch Rant Analysis

You don’t need to care about my opinion; I don’t want you to. But I want to explain why I’m frustrated about the final product in terms of both within the movie and extending to implications of the franchise. I also want to provide methods to improve or fix the building blocks of this movie as how I see the franchise and how these characters should be treated and developed as someone who’s grown along with these films and rewatched them more than I can ever hope to count. I’d figure I would post this here to get my ideas out there and clear my mind of these thoughts (also writing a fix-it fic is something too time consuming for me rn). I hope, at the very least, that my passionate word vomit is entertaining to someone.

Will be tagging spoilers since this film is still fairly new and I’m not a complete asshole. This will be a mix of analytical criticing and shitposty jokes for the purpose of harsh hyperbole and humor, so a complete mess all around. This is also stupidly long, been in my drafts for a long time so this timing may seem odd, and there is genuine introspection at the tail end of this. I don’t absolutely despise this film or want to run it into the ground, to preface.

I initially had very mixed feelings about Toy Story 4; I couldn’t tell if I liked or disliked it because the characters looked stunning, Bo Peep was different, there were references to previous films scattered throughout, and Woody’s choice had me still bawling a few weeks later when rewatching the scene. It was only after popping in the Blu-ray film in my newly-acquired collection set, understanding commentaries and deleted scenes, and watching other reviews I came to realize what worked and didn’t work for me in the context of the film’s franchise.

To put simply, the positives of this film are it’s attention to detail and overall animation quality (lighting and other effects) and that it’s funny. It seems these two things are unanimous and I do wholeheartedly agree with them. But it’s also why I believe this movie’s existence is to showcase quality with little to no substance. Which is pretty offensive considering the catalog of films that made a fourth one possible had care in tackling problems and characters in an intriguing and consistent way, and these are all stories about toys at their core, which still hold up today for human scenarios. But with Toy Story 4? Having complex and compelling characters with purpose and themes with development? Nah, animation preeettyyyyy and forky funnnyyy lol.

Expand What You Already Know. Or Don’t, I Guess.

This movie likes to forget the foundation it already has and decides to start from scratch, using valuable resources to create new character designs, motivations, backstories, and relationships when most of the work is already done for you. It’s majorly sitting in the RV, realistically doing nothing but taking up space (until the plot says so), yet systematically crippling this movie and the others before it by said existence. These additional toys that are background characters in this film should’ve either had development or a significant purpose in the film more than the ending or random RV shenanigans, or not been included at all because they clutter up the film (and I hate to talk about these characters like this as I do love them but that’s how it is).

In this case, less is more, especially if your main focus is on one to a few characters over the entire cast- being forky, woody, bo, and the new toys. This leads into a discussion of Bonnie having too many toys at this point which is one reason besides a child’s retention rate that results in the neglect of Woody, but the disregarding Woody after Andy’s speech about him meme isn’t the worst issue I’ve come across in this film (and I really don’t blame the girl).

Look How They Massacred My Boy. For Shame.

I didn’t need to rewatch this film again to realize that Buzz was done dirty in this movie. Going as far to say character assassination is amusing, but might not be as true in this sense. Buzz has no reason not to know what his inner voice/subconscious is and it’s occurrence here really undervalues the preceeding movies regarding the character and the thought behind his actions. There is no reason to have Buzz act deluded or ignorant to such common concepts in the world he inhabits as it insults the establishment and progression of his character up to and in Toy Story 4, and I will not blindly accept him as comic relief anymore (that’s what Rex is for and I love him for it).

I am well aware of the people in charge milking Buzz’s deluded state in every Toy Story movie (plus some Toy Story Treats) beacuse it’s funny. I laughed at it too as a dumb kid enthralled by these toys moving, talking, and have personalities. The schmoe and Hawayai jokes are still enjoyable to me, it’s cute. The problem here is there’s more to Buzz Lightyear than just ‘haha silly (deluded) space toy go brrrr,’ and not just in Toy Story 4 does this happen. Buzz Lightyear is tactical, (basically the whole TS2 rescue mission he started, using Rex’s tail to escape the garbage bag and coming up with the caterpiller room transom escape in TS3) intelligent (backed by academy training, shown in his fighting moves, instincts, jargon, etc. in TS1 and relates to last trait) a leader, (steps up into the leadership role in lieu of Woody in TS2 and TS3 or co-lead with him in the TS3 meeting), determined (to save his friends in TS2 and TS3), more emotionally mature than Woody (see all of Toy Story 1 and compare their arcs; Buzz’s turmoil is more self-contained/depricating than Woody’s, as the cowboy decides to take out his jealousy on others and Buzz, almost murdering the space ranger who only ever attacked Woody once and it wasn’t even during his existential crisis), discovering his worth as Andy’s toy and Woody’s friend (relaying Woody’s words back at him in TS2), embracing his role and family, having a crush on Jessie and supporting her through her trauma and fears, and I can go on.

If you want to make Buzz funny without taking away his personality and growth, have more shit like in the sequel, where a toy-savvy og Buzz plays off of those who think they are real like fake belt Buzz. I’m basically asking for the Bootleg Buzz deleted scene here not only because it is stupidly hilarious in concept, but it also lends additional world-building possibilities like a toy’s personal beliefs/perceptions and human/toy dynamics that hasn’t been explored further in this franchise’s film installments (See: Small Fry). Also, having Buzz saying space jargon in the context of his background knowledge always puts a smile on my face and you don’t have to dumb down this character to achieve that. :)

Is This What They Call... A Glowup? Cuz This Ain’t It, Chief.

My main gripe about Bo’s character is that she lost the personality she had in Andy’s house and her alterations go against the established canon of the shepherdess. More specifically, the strong, go-getter Bo Peep the creators are pushing for here doesn’t feel justified as an understandable change in universe because of the decision to portray her as a simpler or less-realized version of her future self in Molly’s room and extensively implies she’s always been or wanted to be a free spirit and leader when she’s never expressed this otherwise. Her new design isn’t as important to complain about in comparison here but I do find it odd and interesting how her eyes were made bigger in her redesign (like doe eyes) yet she’s rougher around the edges and serious personality-wise, whereas her initial design had sharp eyes similar to a human that enhanced her qualities like flirting and sassiness and the idea of porcelain that is smooth but sharp.

Woody’s surprise at seeing Bo all these years later would be much more believable if her personality initially reflected who she is in Toy Story 1 and 2 during the opening flashback; flirty, empathetic, gentle, and a general overseer of the room that watches others take charge to avoid chipping or shattering as she’s made of porcelain and has limited movement by design. Having so much agency and independence in TS4 may subvert expectations, but feels jarring after knowing this context in a back-to-back viewing of all four films. She’s comparatively more bitter, no-nonsense, and world-weary here, which I get because survival and harsh reality of the world, but she should have a lot more chipping than shown if she’s getting as much playtime as she’s boasting and desiring, especially the rough ones as the kids are random (unlike the deleted storyboard version of the playground). This really feels like a different character and I really don’t believe she and her sheep would’ve lasted this long or have this much fluidity, ingenuity, and agency as the movie claims. Some, possibly, but while humans can train and adapt their bodies for flexibility, strength, etc. to survive, toys cannot. They are stuck in their forms and Bo moves slow as per her build and material of which she was constructed, so she can only adapt so much to the rough lifestyle that is being a lost toy that wants to be played with from time to time.

The Lamp Life short tells me she wants more than, well, lamp life, with the intro concept to non-toys coming to life by a child’s imagination in TS4 support this and her possible in canon reason for existence since TS1. But the short is not Toy Story 4 and past Bo never expressed this in past films. She was really just there as a background character for Woody and never alluded to any dislike for her life or any existential crisis due to that initial purpose of being Woody’s girlfriend and nothing else (not even that initially because of Barbie and copyright so supportive side character to be generous). At the very least the creators of this movie could’ve respected Bo Peep in a way that did not completely rewrite her during a time in which the canonical characterization being shown of her is blatantly false (flashback opening scene).

Furthermore, a viewer shouldn’t feel the need to watch a short (Lamp Life) to get the full context behind Bo’s story after Andy because the movie glosses over those details and moves on like no long-time viewer of Toy Story is curious after her “return.” Details which could’ve helped Bo and Woody have a quiet moment to bond and connect over as they share experiences of being lost instead of being treated as an afterthought (Bo’s retelling of her “Lamp Life” to Woody took place after the conclusion of the fourth installment- Woody even says “Oh yeah, what happened after all that time?”- stating he didn’t even think to ask her about her past in detail during the movie at any point and Bo never explains it until someone else brings it up it in the short film- Giggles. This is something that should’ve been addressed way earlier if Bo is supposed to be one of the main characters in the film, hence, this is an afterthought to the creators and a wasted opportunity).

In addition, if they wanted to have Bo Peep undergo a character change that logically made sense, they could’ve lifted over traits from her original self to her lost toy character, such as her flirtiness for ex. Not only was it played for comedy in both the original Toy Story films (mainly concerning her reactions and interactions to/with the protagonists- moving buddy comment with Buzz and contact with and kisses for Woody in TS1 and TS2), it also showed how much she cared about Woody (wanting Woody to see how much Andy misses him in TS1). She was also a little sassy in her expressions and exchanges with Woody, too. Exploring how their relationship was established and/or moments they shared outside of what the audience had already seen for Toy Story 4 would help not only further develop both characters in a reasonable and new fashion, but aid the audience in getting attached to them on another level, thus rendering the couple’s reconnection years later all that more impactful and important. If Toy Story 4 was about the romance of Woody and Bo as old, lost loves reuniting, this movie could’ve really sold me on its existence, considering its content that was never fully realized even with Buzz and Jessie, who are in the awkward, blushing, early phases of dating (they might not even be officially together canonically at this point, and Woody and Bo’s relationship of comfortability would lend a great contrast to this).

It was hella cute to see the shepherdess and the sheriff together and having playful and sweet exchanges in the first two movies. While I understand that time can change a person and how they think of others, especially how memories can be associated with different emotions from introspection and how that person evolves and sees others in different lights, I find it hard to believe that Woody and Bo never once had a kiss on screen in Toy Story 4, nor had any substantial romantic chemistry from either side. It was my understanding in the original films that these two were established as a romantic couple (her existence is to solely be Woody’s girlfriend as said by the original Toy Story commentary) and it is fact that she has kissed him before (again, TS1 and intention to kiss in TS2) and can be seen approaching him to comfort him with words and touches (Woody’s favoritism issues in TS1 and his nerves about cowboy camp going bad in TS2- these moments are cut off by jokes like Potato Head’s comment or Rex’s tug of war with Bo’s sheep, but there’s enough time established with them to be treated as emotionally impactful moments, albeit small).

Woody and Bo being lost toy buddies doesn’t feel nearly as emotionally impactful as a romantic relationship would. Neither character said anything about their past regarding their past romance or even bring it up in Toy Story 4, just reminiscing like they’re old buddies. The most we get is Woody staring at her in two instances (top of the carnival and watching lights in the antique store), and even then it isn’t explicitly said if Woody still harbors romantic feelings or not. Bo commenting on loving Woody’s loyalty after their argument is said when he’s not present, and I don’t think she ever said it to him directly afterwards when they did meet up again, which further hinders their opportunities at expressing their feelings. It feels like one friend-zoned the other off-screen because of how awkward they are around each other and act nothing more than old friends tiptoeing around each other. Buzz and Bo meeting again are arguably more friendly in this way than Woody and Bo are.

The deleted scene of Woody finding Bo again after so long treats their originally established dynamic better than the scene in the film. In that storyboard, both characters have the time to take in and realize who they are seeing as they stare at one other, assess their emotions and memories, and fully act upon those raw feelings in real time as if they are their lost in their own world by embracing. This reunion is cut short but as stated earlier in examples, both characters are given time for this moment to occur organically (within the circumstances), and the insight into Woody’s memories helps visualize his feelings for her through the times spent together, enhancing the quality of the nonverbal aspect of storytelling... or storyboards, in this case.

In comparison to the final film reunion, Woody and Bo have to worry about other kids seeing them move and talk in the playground with their minds already preoccupied with the world around them and toy rules instead of meeting each other again after so long. By the time they get to a safe place to converse, it’s nowhere near as heartfelt and/or important as the encounter should have been and the action of Bo brushing off Woody’s shoulder feels like a visualization of earlier- sweeping a potentially emotional moment under the rug. Not to mention Woody and Bo are in toy mode when they see each other for the first time, preventing the audience from witnessing their first, raw reactions (I can’t explain how good this deleted scene is it has so much potential and I got emotional over pencil drawings of these toys and what it implies and leads to you if it was explored and developed more you don’t understand-). The lack of romance wouldn’t be as much of an issue if their relationship didn’t have an impact on the story’s conclusion and other characters by extension, namely Woody.

Was it Hoes before Bros or Self Before Bros?

I finally understand now why I don’t like the ending of Toy Story 4 and how it made me cry like a little bitch again like the third installment did. It’s upsetting to me because I don’t buy Woody’s decision to stay with Bo and leave his friends and his new kid behind.

I totally get that Woody may have chosen to be a lost toy because he feels no more purpose outside of Andy, and can’t let go of him, and maybe Bo symbolizes a connection to those early and simpler days (even though she’s entirely different now). With that in mind, I do like his self-appointed purpose of guiding forky as his development transitions from wanting to always be the favorite to using that knowledge and humility to help a new favorite toy adjust and understand its role for a kid and accepting that he is still loved regardless at the end of the day and has his family through infinity and beyond. But Woody abandons his new and old family for a new life, throwing out the whole loyalty to your kid aspect and not wanting to see Bonnie grow up. Woody’s decision in TS4 is basically if he stuck with the Tokyo choice in Toy Story 2. I like how TS4 wants to challenge the franchise’s conceptions on toys and their purpose, but it’s also insulting at the same time, attempting to demolish and reconstruct original elements.

Alternate Routes.

After being tossed away by Hannah, either have Gabby Gabby a) realize she doesn’t want nor need a child to play with her to be happy and embrace the lost toy life, or b) double down on her insecurities and blame Woody forever getting her hopes up in the first place, challenging his ideals of a toy’s purpose and sense of loyalty toward a child, becoming an anguished, heartbroken, antagonist going after Woody in anger or stubbornly stewing away in the curio again.

Have Woody realize he doesn’t have to be the favorite or constantly played by his kid as proof he is loved and wanted by Bonnie, possibly overexaggerating his fear of abandonment earlier on. Have him rejoin the toys with a new sense of duty and belonging that is similar to his actions as a lost toy, but watching over forky’s adjustment and staying loyal to his family and friends with Bonnie picking him up and playing with him again similar to the alternate scrapped ending (possibly with his voicebox still removed because that was so heartwarming). This can also lend a nod to Woody’s struggle with being damaged and fixed by Andy in TS2. In TS4, this can be extended to Bonnie not only reassuring Woody she still loves and wants him despite being broken, but even if he’s unfixable.

Let Woody become a lost toy for his re-connection with Bo (emotionally and romantically stronger on both sides) for the “he’s not lost” line and the infinity and beyond line even separated, as let’s say that because he’s found someone he didn’t realize he’s missed so dearly due to fixating on Andy, he doesn’t want to leave her again not knowing if he’ll ever see her again and because he can’t let go of the past (my least fave solution but yes to toy romance and concept of lost toys having a purpose besides playtime meaning in each other awwe it’s too corny).

So... What’s the Point?

It doesn’t help that the movie gets confused about what message it’s really going for - toy independence but also stay loyal to your kid. In the deleted scene intro to “She’s the One” in Toy Story 4, Josh Cooley stated that he wanted to avoid Woody not changing as a character and essentially resetting the movie back to the beginning where Woody stays with Bonnie and the toys, despite him liking this ending which had come close to being very impactful and emotional. The more I think about this clip, the worse it sounds. Woody can absolutely be in the same place and change as a character at the same time, like overcoming his attachment to Andy by being there for his new kid who wrote her name on his boot like Buzz and Jessie, or wanting to continually guide and support forky as Bonnie’s favorite toy from his experience and knowing he is still loved and with the other toys. A movie can end with the characters physically in the same positions as the beginning, but with learned lessons and values that imply or confirm different actions in their future like bettering themselves aka staying true to Woody’s character and lending an interesting contrast to their earlier positions in the film, Josh Cooley. Similar visuals with different context behind them can be very powerful.

I really don’t understand why Josh Cooley and co. didn’t embrace their initial ideas because I would love to see them explored and he clearly wanted to include (at least some of them) in the final product. Editor Lee Unkrich of Toy Story 1 has said it is hard to cut things out in a film that you really love, worked hard on, and feel important to the story and characters. But you have to remove it or feel like you must in case the scene is affecting the film’s pacing/flow, etc. in referencing the Woody and Buzz bonding scene in Sid’s room, which Unkrich regrets shortening in hindsight.

But this also doesn’t mean you should throw every idea you have on the cutting room floor either, especially if it serves the story, characters, or plot in a beneficial way (hopefully all three). Josh Cooley’s Hungry Hippos idea and among other storyboard concepts I’ve expressed here are all really cool ideas and I wish they would’ve been explored as these are hinted at in previous films like Toy Story 3 and the vending machine scene, which can be developed further with the underworld of toys and gambling via board games concept. If you are passionate about what you’re making and have fun with it, the results will be great, something John Lasseter says at the end of the Toy Story 2 bonus features, and I fully believe that the things Cooley and others wanted to do could’ve worked out if they had that same drive to create and entertain while telling an engaging story that aligned with the characters and their journeys.

Seeing the scarce amount of bonus features in the Toy Story 4 bonus disk genuinely broke my heart. I’m not sure if they used practically all their generated ideas in the final film or had close to none in the first place to expand the world and rules of toys compared to the last films, but it’s a damn shame regardless to see little to no creativity in this product that has so much more unexplored potential and creative ideas waiting to be immortalized with the ogs of animation in film besides visual quality. Of course I know that Toy Story as a franchise will come to an end eventually, as “toys don’t last forever,” and another franchise may develop these things better or more extensively with toys or otherwise, but I would’ve appreciated at the very least, to have a Toy Story series that either stopped while it was ahead, or be fully treated with all the passion, enjoyment, and respect it initially had as its creators did while enriching the world and lives of these toys to its full potential.

also,

How dare they break this duo up wtf. To infinity and Beyond? more like my waterhole has been poisoned, snakes are in all my boots, buzz lightyear is not coming to my rescue, and the mission is fucked. smh. truly the end of an era.

#toy story 4 #toy story #toy story 4 spoilers #this rant is so long im so sorry #don't ask me how long this took #i guess ill tag this:#analysis of moi #i wonder if all this text will break tumblr

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sweetsyncraft · 4 years ago

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SweetSyn’s Guide To Etsy

(I will add more as I learn more)

When I officially started my Etsy in 2018, I had no idea what I was doing. I’ve constantly had people asking me what tips I had for getting started. Unfortunately, I told them you needed a following to make sales. Boy was I wrong. SEO is the key. Buckle up, I’m going to learn you a few things. (I’m Texan don’t judge me for that sentence.)

“Search Engine Optimization”, which is the reason when you search for something on Etsy, you see a bunch of bland titles. Being Creative with titles will only hurt you. You need to have targeted, keyword-based titles and tags, to make sure you end up at the top of the food chain.

Listing Titles

This part is long due to the fact that I never knew how important this was.

The best way to do this is to start typing in what you’re selling into the Etsy search bar. Any related autocomplete phrases that are related to the pop-up list, is what should be in your title. (Keyword 1 - Keyword 2 - Keyword 3 - Keyword 4) and so forth. For example, I simply clicked on the search bar and it gave me a list of the current most popular searches. One of them was marble earrings, and the first listing had the best selling badge. Their title was “Handmade Polymer Clay Marble Triangle Earrings | Minimalist Geometric Earrings | Hypoallergenic Surgical Steel Stud | Multiple Size”. The second listing, from another shop, was “Marble Stud Earrings, Marble Jewelry, Round Stud Earrings, Wedding Stud Earrings, Marble Studs, Statement Studs, Minimalist Studs”.

I know how tempting it is to come up with a clever name for your listing, but Etsy doesn’t like that. Putting a long title full of keywords makes it more likely for someone to see your listing without searching through 240 pages. Yes, there were exactly 240 pages of marble earrings. The last one, way at the end was simply titled “Rosé Marble Earrings”. I don’t know about you, but I have no idea how to put that little mark over the ‘e’ when typing on a computer.

The second part of this is being more specific than just ‘marble earrings’. If someone is looking for something more specific than marble earrings they’re going to search more of what they want. This is how you separate yourself from everyone else on those 240 pages. The two listings I found were round studs and the other was geometric triangles. Maybe I hate circles, and I specifically want triangles, so I search “marble triangle earrings”. That’s in the title of the first listing, I’m going to find that listing.

DO NOT PUT YOUR SKU’S IN YOUR TITLES! You will lose sales because of this. Your title is very important, no one is going to be searching “866798Q”

Additionally, Etsy will not show more than one or two items per seller on any given page of search results. That way smaller shops have a bit more of a chance. Make sure you’re targeting different keywords per listing, or you’ll be competing with yourself.

After a few months, go into your listing analytics to see which keywords are getting that listing more views. You may find that your main keyword, or the first few words in your title, isn’t working as well as another one. If something is working better, make it the first part of the title, and you should even more views.

Adding titles in other languages will not help your listing. Etsy automatically translates for other languages.

I’ve seen a few people say that Etsy has changed and that they don’t like ‘title stuffing’. However, that’s not the case in what I’ve seen. The entire first two pages of marble earrings were nothing but long ‘stuffed’ titles.

This is a comment from an admin of one of the Etsy Facebook groups I’m in, he is a social media marketer:

“YES title stuffing is bad and you should not do it, because Etsy & Google do not count that as quality SEO.

However, we must first understand exactly what "Title Stuffing or Keyword Stuffing" really is.

Keyword stuffing is when someone fills a webpage (in this case an Etsy title) with the same keywords they want to rank for, over and over again in hopes that the more times they use the keywords the more relevant Etsy and Google will see their page or listing.”

...

“Now as far as your Etsy title goes you should absolutely use your keywords, but not repeated over and over again, while also keeping a non-robotic tone.

2 examples of title stuffing:

Basically stuffing the same word over and over again.

2. Title stuffing for the maximum keywords: Comfy Baby Shirt, comfortable, for boys, for girls, gifts, cheap, organic, cotton, romper, jumpsuits, newborn, baby clothes

Both of these examples are using spammy tricks to rank high. But this will not work and both Etsy and Google will ignore you.

You want your title to sound fluent and not like a robot while using your keywords.

Also, you want to avoid changing up your titles too much, because your listings SEO needs to season a bit for maximum effectiveness.”

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES

14 elements that will help your product pages get sales. Trust badges & reviews can really make a difference. Also, here’s a really simple explanation of how your descriptions should try to sell the product: “Bridge the gap between features and benefits: A feature is essentially a fact about your product or offer. The benefit mainly answers how a feature is useful for your customer. Tell them exactly “how” a particular feature is useful for them, and “why” they should make this purchase. Product descriptions that bridge the gap between features and benefits can lessen buyer’s guilt and ease the buying decision.”

It’s time for holiday season forecasts! Halloween spending is expected to be steady. While some are predicting up to a 4-5% increase in US November-December retail spending this year, others are worried about consumer debt. There is still “a stubborn wealth gap in the United States that appears to be once again worsening and in fact is "the biggest it’s ever been." The Gini index, a standard economic measure of income inequality, for the U.S. in 2018 was "significantly higher" than 2017, after widening steadily for the last 50 years, according to a Sept. 26 report from the U.S. Census Bureau.” Note that online retailers are finding that the holiday season is less crucial than it used to be, since people shop online all year now. “...the holiday season accounted for almost 24% of all retailers’ sales in the late 1990s, but is closer to 21% today.” Finally, “A late Thanksgiving this year, falling on Nov. 28, means there are six fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas than in 2018. In fact, 2019 is the shortest possible holiday calendar scenario”.[emphasis added by me]

Kansas state tax collection on online sales is in question after the lack of a minimum on revenue or orders is criticized. The dictate kicked in October 1st, requiring any business selling anything in the state to register, which didn’t exempt small businesses as other states have done. This is important - if they manage to apply this tax to even the smallest businesses, and win any court challenges, other states are likely to follow suit.

ETSY NEWS

Etsy released a new stats page last week, which like most things they do these days, isn’t finished yet. You can read the announcement here, and a more detailed explanation here, including a discussion of the conversion rate numbers now provided. [I don’t find those very useful on Etsy, as I find I get a lot of visits that are not from buyers, such as people checking out my SEO.] Also note that there will be a Q & A thread this week in the forum, starting October 14th at 10 am EDT.

When a listing is clicked from any search, there is now a link at the top saying “Back to search results” which only goes to page one of the search on Etsy, not the page you were on. It even does this when someone clicks on your item from a search of your shop.

They made some recent improvements to the buyer app, including integrating shop names into the regular search. No need to tag with your exact shop name! (Mobile & desktop search also work the same way; the app was the last hold out.)

More holiday marketing tips continue to roll out, including this one on merchandising. It includes a list of holidays at the end (although Canadian Thanksgiving was just 5 days away on the date of publication, so that seems to have been a waste of space). Potentially more useful to some of us is the transcript of the podcast on shopper behaviour during the holidays. [includes links to the podcast if you would rather listen] “9% of our buyers do the bulk of their shopping in late December right before the holidays” and “On Etsy specifically, searches around the holidays spike for gifts in conjunction with a descriptor of the recipient. We see searches like “gifts for grandma,” “gifts for boyfriend,” and “unique gift for a friend” spike.” Finally, “In terms of uniqueness, 90% of Etsy buyers would rather give a unique or one-of-a-kind gift.” They also cover some specific research on holiday shopping patterns in the UK & Germany, compared to the US.

There is a new help file on search called Beginner’s Guide to Etsy Search, and while it is up to date, I am not sure why it is needed, when they already have a page (they even link to it) called “How Etsy Search Works”, which isn’t as up to date. If they are planning on releasing new instructions, as they told me months ago, they are going about it really, really slowly.

Etsy Ireland lost money last year, apparently due to the DaWanda deal. “Etsy, whose mission is to “keep commerce human”, faced a wave of criticism from users after designating its business in Ireland as an unlimited liability company in 2015 so that it didn’t have to publicly disclose financial information about the unit. The company has, however, published annual accounts for the subsidiary for both 2017 and last year.”

Meanwhile, free shipping & Etsy Ads have produced quite a stock boost for the main company. “KeyBanc’s comments were echoed by Canaccord Genuity, which earlier this week wrote that the company’s initiatives were driving “robust growth and improving profitability.” Analyst Maria Ripps called free shipping “an important step in bringing Etsy’s platform closer to par” with other e-commerce leaders like Amazon.com Not only will free shipping improve “consumer perception around the platform,” but she estimated that it could add upside of 3%-5% upside to 2020 estimates for both revenue and adjusted Ebitda. The company’s Etsy Ads initiative, she added, “should ultimately attract high affinity customers with strong repeat purchase behavior.” Also, they noted that no major analysts no recommend selling the stock - most say “buy”, with a few saying “hold”.

Etsy partnered with Blackrock Emergency Savings Initiative to help US sellers deal with the financial pressures of self-employment.

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Google’s advice on how to get your category pages to rank well is worth reading: among other things, you shouldn’t keyword stuff.

If you want your content to get the featured “0” position at the top of Google search, you should check out this article on featured snippets, or this Whiteboard Friday from Moz. [video & transcript]

More analysis of Google’s September core update shows that it may not have been as dramatic as the June update, but “your money, your life” (YMYL) sites still seem the most affected. SEMRush said the biggest winners were “DailyMail, eBackPage.com, lasd.org and marionschool.net. The biggest losers were TheFourMusic.com, Monks.org, BraidingClub.com, PascoLibraries.org and RoyalCaribbean.com.au.” Other case studies saw a lot of change in health and medical sites.

Another study states that websites still get most of their traffic from organic search.

If your own website isn’t ranking on Google, there are numerous fixable reasons, although some are more difficult than others.

Google says that HTML sitemaps aren’t necessary to good SEO.

If you are getting less organic traffic to your Patreon page recently, that could be because their SEO team accidentally de-indexed the entire site. It’s been fixed, but it could affect some pages for the next few weeks, if Google doesn’t recrawl you right away.

YouTube is the 4th most visited website, so improving your YouTube SEO can provide a huge boost in traffic.

CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails)

Facebook’s experiment on hiding like counts has rolled out in Australia. (Articles looks at the sociological studies behind this)

Instagram launched an account posting tips for “creators”, which the author notes does not focus on making money off of that content.

They have also expanded their Shopping part of the app, however, which is about making money.

And IG has released a Snapchat challenger called Threads, a standalone app run by Facebook. Techcrunch did a more detailed review & analysis. Right now, it doesn’t have any ads & they say they have no plans to add them.

Hubspot uses their own Snapchat account experience as a case study in how to make Snap work for business. (includes video & step-by-step instructions, if you are new to Snapchat.)

Twitter and Tweetdeck had a bad outage for several hours October 1-2, and it still isn't clear what happened.

If you use Twitter for your business, you should also be using Twitter lists. (I use Tweetdeck to organize mine.)

Now that it is working again, here are the best-performing hashtags on Twitter over the past few years.

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS)

Hubspot’s comprehensive guide to Google Ads is completely up to date for all new developments, and covers search ads as well as ads across Google’s network. [video and text]

They also put out a Facebook ad checklist, with video, text & screenshots.

And they also did a guide to YouTube advertising. [video and text]

Research and ad placement are key to getting better conversion from Facebook ads.

Gen Z (younger than millennials) don’t yet have full purchase strength as a cohort, but they influence buying in their households after seeing ads on Snapchat. Since Gen Z shows the least brand loyalty of any generation, it's necessary to reach them in new ways.

Shopify now has an integration with Microsoft Ads, which include all Verizon properties (Yahoo, AOL). More than 116 million Americans use Bing searches each month in some way.

LinkedIn has improved its ad tools, including audience forecasting.

Quora has improved ad targeting; they say they have over 300 million monthly users.

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING

Advanced tips for site search in Google Analytics can get more out of the data than you thought was there.

Facebook will likely be paying out $40 million to settle a lawsuit for grossly overreporting video watching stats, including video ads.

Google Search Console is now reporting a lot fewer links for websites than in the past; it’s not clear if this is a bug or not.

The Console is now reporting on your videos.

Everything you need to know about Pinterest Analytics.

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS

If you use abandoned cart emails on your website, make sure they are optimized for conversions.

Ecommerce fraud rates are definitely increasing. “... digital goods have seen such an increase in fraud because they often have a streamlined purchase process that requires less information than other items.”

Google launched its new Shopping pages, which is not the same as Google Shopping but is connected to it, and allows buyers to check out on Google rather than retailer websites.

Amazon apparently surveyed Handmade sellers recently asking how they felt about Amazon Handmade.

Will Amazon face consequences in the US for its competitive activities? It’s looking more likely now. “Bloomberg reported in August that Amazon was dropping sellers' products in searches on its site if they priced a product cheaper on rival sites, behavior the news service noted could draw antitrust scrutiny.”

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE

We all have difficult customers occasionally - here are 9 tips on how to deal with them.

While most web browsing happens on mobile, desktop users are still way more likely to buy. They also spend more than mobile buyers.

Gen Z members plan on doing most of their holiday shopping in physical shops this year (just like baby boomers), but many will do research online first. Also, “Forty-two percent of shoppers said that low prices are the top motivator for making purchases and 31% said free shipping was also a shopping incentive.”

Offering fewer options can lead to more sales. (The article has great suggestions on different ways to use this info.)

MISCELLANEOUS

Vimeo app Magisto is facing a class-action lawsuit over holding biometric data without the owners’ permission.

Haven’t heard much about the EU privacy law lately? It turns out that businesses that are GDPR-compliant are more successful than those that are not. The shocker is that only 28% of the companies surveyed were actually completely compliant, so this may be correlation and not causation. Also, the results were self-reported, so maybe not that accurate.

Here’s a decent list of free website builders, but I strongly suggest doing your own research on any that sound good, as the writeup isn’t very detailed. (The Etsy forum is a very good place for some of this research, as you can ask very specific questions of people who probably have similar needs to yours.)

Chrome is going to block embedded content that isn’t from an https site, beginning in December. [if your website isn’t yet https, get on that right away - it is going to become more & more crucial for being seen.]

#cindylouwho2newsupdates #smallbiz #Ecommerce #content marketing #contentmarketing #Social media #stats #analytics #EtsyNews #search engine marketing #search engine optimization #SEO

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simonalkenmayer · 6 years ago

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If you’re keen to know, there’s a study being done currently to see how vegetable amino acids are absorbed in comparison to amino acids from animal-based proteins like way protein and meet.

Difficulty has always been that there is no noninvasive way of determining how much protein is absorbed. All analytics have been done on stool samples which only show how much has been processed and come out at that time. It’s a very imprecise measure of how much is actually physically absorbed. There’s a team currently completing a study using isotopes. Proteins or amino acids are tagged with these isotopes, and their movement through the body is tracked so As to see if there is a significant difference in how bean protein and animal proteins are processed or utilized by the body.

I’ve never said that it was impossible to obtain fully complete proteins on a vegan diet. It absolutely is or they’d all be dead, obviously. What I have said is that it’s more difficult for the body to reassemble a complete set of proteins, because a diverse quantity and variety of foods need to be consumed, at varying levels of absorption. That is why it works as a weight-loss device, because the body taps all available resources to reassemble a complete protein. Also vegetables contain almost no fat, and so the body breaks down fat resources to do the same things it normally would. But what happens when you’ve reached the point of desired fitness?

Should you keep up the vegan diet, even though all the resources your body was using are no longer there? Or should you begin to cycling in meat proteins or whey proteins in healthy, controlled ways?

Analysis on this question is still being done. I have my own personal opinion on it based on my own personal observations and feelings on the topic. I think it is probably a good idea to reincorporate animal based proteins, as that is part of the diet humans evolved eating, according to a number of sciences. Some might argue that the use of animal protein is a more recent development in the lineage of humanity. They be right, however, there is no data that can shed light on the corollary between available protein sources like animals and the rise of civilization-also a recent phenomenon in your evolution. What I’m saying is, there is no way to determine if the more contemporary changes in your genome have anything to do with changes in protein consumption, going from the hunter gatherer type of lifestyle to the farming type of lifestyle. One study was done on Japanese people in the sudden change in the heights statistic. Japanese people as an average of gotten much taller in a very swift period of time. The study concluded that this height difference was caused by more readily available sugar sources. And a shifted begin behaving differently, in a way that is particularly heritable. The world health organization is also collected a great deal of data showing that in the developing countries height has begun to lower particularly in areas that do not have access to specific foods or that have generally poor nutrition.

So is it possible to eat vegan and live? Of course it is or they’d all be dead. But what does it do to the body? That has not been fully elucidated, though I have my own suspicions. The main question is the bioavailability of the proteins to muscle tissue. To be bioavailable a protein Hass to contain specific amino acid structures. I’m not entirely sure that it’s been discerned as yet if specific plant-based proteins contain those amino acid configurations of their own accord, or if the body has to assemble them using other resources or other foods.

What I mean to say is, animal proteins are in the proper configuration is to be used by the human body immediately. The drawback is high levels of saturated fat and cholesterol. However studies on both of those things and how their ads or by the body are still being done and seem to indicate that the source is not the issue. Vegetable based protein may not be as bio available, and so it would be difficult to survive on one specific type. A person may not be able to survive eating only beans, and so must combine beans with nuts and peas in order to obtain the same levels of amino acids that can be configured by the body and turned into a properly structured bioavailable protein. Data on this exists, as I’ve said, but it’s not as good as I would like it to be, it’s not comprehensive. It’s not long term, and frequently uses only small sample sizes and study groups. Also as far as I can tell there’s no genetic component as yet, which to me, is critical. Certain populations absorb proteins very differently, and so there must be genetic components. A person growing up in rural Africa will not process protein from say, a seal, the same way an Inuit does. And an Inuit has a difficult time absorbing the sugars in beans.

Genetic data is critical.

Also, I’d say that if vegans want to tout their diet as a cure all, they surely ought to be the ones on the forefront of the studies to prove it!

*shrugs*

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ganymedesclock · 7 years ago

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I’ve made bitter sort of posts in the past comparing Ulaz and Regris to Narti in terms of fandom reception and I guess what it boils down to, is, every time I go into Narti’s tag I find at least one post that says “she deserved better!” but has very little substance or thought into her character.

And the thing about Ulaz and Regris is both of them were alive for only one episode and in Regris’s case, said very little. He was a guy who got rescued by Keith and then got blown up in an exploding ship. But they’re given a lot more substantial fanwork, people develop entire complex relationships and backstory for them.

I’m not saying you should feel bad if you’re interested in Ulaz or Regris. Rather, my feelings are... it just feels like there’s this very passive acceptance of if Narti’s gone we’ll never see her again, we can’t think of her any more.

This is an incredible inventive fandom full of creative energy and a lot of really talented people. I refuse to believe that we can just give up on a character so easily, especially when we’ve made more out of characters we’ve known so much less about.

Who was Narti? What was her history with Kova, with Haggar, with Lotor, with the other three generals? We don’t even know the other side of her heritage or if her powers are normal for them. There’s so much to explore, and so much we were given. With that in mind, this post turned into a sort of, looking over Narti’s canon because there’s actually a fair bit there.

Of her own team, Narti seems the closest to Ezor- Ezor thinks about how Narti might feel about something even when Narti is not seemingly in the conversation or paying attention. This is noteworthy since Ezor can be rather cruel with others (her pulling the face of the Puigian leader) which suggests Ezor cares about Narti’s feelings quite a bit.

Her comment about “no offense” after she says the Lions on Thayserix would be blind and Narti’s casual body language would also suggest that Narti is not very upset about being blind- if anything, Ezor thinks she might be offended by the idea that being blind makes it easier to take advantage of someone.

Narti is very fond of Kova, as she can be seen stroking him in s3e1 and often carries him on her shoulders. It’s very clear that Kova is not merely a seeing asset to Narti, but a friend and companion. This would suggest Narti is, at least on occasion, sentimental and affectionate towards people she considers closely attached to.

At the same time, this is contrasted by the very obviously callous way that she lets go of both of the Puigian leader and Throk once she’s done controlling them- she basically throws both of them onto the floor.

So Narti is very fond of certain people, and operates on strong emotional bonds- Ezor states that Narti trusted Lotor, not merely worked for him or with him, and this is reinforced that Narti pointedly does not defend herself when he rushes towards her in s4e3.

This lines Narti up neatly with her Voltron counterpart, Pidge, who is a prickly and distant person towards people she doesn’t like or isn’t comfortable with, ranging from irritable and snappy to sardonically amused at their misfortune (as she is in s4e2 with the bomb merchant).

It’s very likely that however Narti chooses to communicate, she only does so with people that she trusts very closely. Given the information-based operating style of Team Sincline, it’s clear that Narti’s associates have no problem understanding her or knowing her feelings, but to others, she can be quite an enigma.

When it comes to expression, Narti does not flex her features to emote. However, she can be noted to on many occasions turn her face to point at people. As Narti’s upper face is smooth, without any scarring or leftover eyelids, it’s an easy assumption that Narti’s blindness is congenital in nature- whether or not this is normal or common for her non-galra lineage, her body did not develop eyes when she was first growing. Thus, she would have been blind her entire life except through the eyes of others.

This would tell us that for Narti, pointing her physical face at others is either a learned behavior for social reciprocity.

This is also seemingly sometimes an indication of interest from Narti, such as during her fight with Pidge and Hunk, when she attacks Hunk, she points her face at Pidge’s position, suggesting her focus is on Pidge.

Narti is both quite strong and incredibly fast, and doesn’t appear to have shown obvious fear or hesitation so far. If anything, there are a few times in both s3e2 and s3e6 where, when fighting an opponent, she moves slowly and languidly or waits for them to ready their defenses before attacking.

This might suggest Narti, like Ezor, has a playful streak and sometimes toys with opponents. Again, as she’s set up thematically as Pidge’s counterpart, for Narti this could be motivated specifically by curiosity- that Narti is more encouraged to play with those who strike her as interesting, or who pose some sort of a challenge- with her main targets for “toying” being the rooftop snipers and Pidge, while with other opponents she is very efficient and does not hesitate.

On several occasions she can be observed to swish her tail without any particular objective, suggesting that she uses it to express herself.

Narti is a competent pilot, and along with Acxa, piloted the comet ship against Voltron, making her one of very few characters that has engaged Voltron directly in mecha-vs-mecha conflict and survived the encounter. Both her tail, and seemingly her toes, are prehensile, and in s3e6, Narti ambushes Throk by dropping down on him from above showing that she is able to climb across ceilings, and, presumably, walls.

Underneath her hood she has small, high-set ears.

Narti’s tactics as an ambusher who often strikes opponents suddenly from behind and the fact that she seemingly does not commonly offer opinions through the avenues available to her would suggest Narti has a tendency towards patience and industriousness- she doesn’t always feel the need to directly intervene or commentate on situations, even though in her setting, it’s clear her voicelessness does not hold her back.

When Narti appears to speak through the Puigian Leader and Throk, she does so in a fairly dispassionate and concise manner. While the Puigian leader adopts a more tense, concerned tone to Throk’s dreamlike indifference, the word choice is similar- both conversations consist basically entirely of matter-of-fact statements that, at least on the surface, appear to lack opinions.

This suggests Narti has a rather analytical mind and tends to evaluate situations, and to speculate a bit, I suspect would voice her emotions, if she does at all, in a very indirect sort of manner, making observations that are tinted with particular feelings.

#voltron legendary defender #vld #Narti #readmore

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unlovedaddict · 6 years ago

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chromsai · 7 years ago

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i didnt want to answer this using the actual ask because since the full, untagged name is there, i just know that tumblr will find a way to get it into its main tag and just out of courtesy to its fans, i don’t wanna be that person.

that said, and out of courtesy to any of my followers that like it, i’ll put my actual opinion under the cut as extra precaution because, again, i dont wanna be that rude ass person.

(long rant ahead tbh)

it’s my least favorite ygo. i mean, setting vr aside for now just to be fair since it’s still not done yet, it is without a doubt my least favorite ygo because its writing is just that piss poor.

tl;dr: it’s a fucking mess of a show, it doesn’t appeal to me, i find it to be (ironically) superficial (in terms of themes and messages), i dont like the decks, character arcs? god they’re wasted, the writing is just a bunch of asspullery nonsense, and “foreshadowing” is actually just spoon fed self-fulfilling prophecies. it’s my least favorite show and it almost made me quit yugioh altogether. but i still don’t discourage anyone from watching it. because maybe it didnt appeal to me or click with me, but maybe it would for someone else, and i’m not afraid to admit that. because people have different tastes.

its characters overall get little to no development, what little development most of them get (like shark and ........i wanna say kaito, but i dont wanna include kaito in here because i think his development was the only one that was actually decent, but idk who else to put here since... most characters didnt actually get development? as/t/ral, i guess?) is completely ruined sooner or later when the plot decides to inevitably asspull. i will admit i did like where shark’s development was going but the fucking moment he was revealed to be na//sh is when his development went completely down the fucking shitter. oh so JUST cuz some “destiny” says you’re “destined” to fight against yu//ma you just... go with what it’s telling you? you don’t even like your own destiny or some of the people you’re working with but... like... just cuz you remembered some memories of your past life you gotta finish the mission? even tho... 1) you didn’t actually want to, 2) you can just talk this all out (seriously this plot CAN be resolved with just talking things out, the card games are notably forced up this plot’s ass), 3) wtf happened to yu//ma being your friend??? you don’t wanna fight him but you will because you must, it’s your destiny?!? what kind of fucking non-explanation is that. fygdshbjkl honestly there are so many more questions that can be asked about just na/csh’s logic for fighting ALONE and i am still left dumbfounded. the amount of utter STUPID going on in this writing is incredible, honestly that i’m left without words.

ze//al’s plot & writing is NECK DEEP in allll that kind of stupid nonsensical logic, literally i could probably go on all night asking so many questions about where the fucking common sense went while writing this show. like i have so many fucking issues with ze//al II’s writing i just don’t understand how people think of it as legitimately good? it was all drama for drama’s sake with no real consequences since everything was reversed back to normal anyway??? fuck, i have less issues with ze//al’s first season and i actually liked it better. but anyway, moving on....

the aesthetic... is ... well before vr, i would say it was horrid, but at the very least ze//al gives us colors... it’s very colorful and the animation is pretty nice, ngl... but do i care? not really. not when i didnt really like almost any of the character designs... IV, Kaito, Mi//sael, and A//lito, Du//be, Rei/Vec//tor’s designs imo are nice... the rest... “what about the other arc//ights or [insert character here]”. no, if i didnt mention them by name just now, i didnt like their design. Yu//ma’s design... it’s... it’s very generic shounen protag. he is definitely, imo, the worst design of all the ygo protags, but i don’t think he’s HORRIBLE to look at. at least not most of the time, anyway. and actually you know what, i’ve never been into alien stuff but As//ral’s pretty, i’ll give him that. i guess perhaps that’s why i didnt like the aesthetic... too... alieny for me (gross, imo....... i just... absolutely hated the Ba//ians).

the little foreshadowing it gives us from the beginning through the end is spoonfed to us, and you literally gotta be foolish to not understand what it means straightaway. not only that, some of it uses retcon as a mechanism to seem like it’s foreshadowing (that fucking door from the first episode telling Yu//ma that he’ll lose his most important thing... and then at the end it turns out it was As//ral?? did Yu//ma not have anything important to him at the time he dreamt of the door??? or like... wtf is this door a prophet or smth or is it trying to make a contract, which is it??? make up your damn mind!!)... so yeah... it doesn’t actually give us any real “foreshadowing” as much as it uses self-fulfilling prophecies...

leading us to my next ironic point: this show is superficial af. as i just said, everything is literally spoon fed to you. literally all of its themes are plainly spelled out to you and laid out on the surface, you don’t really need to actually think to to get its message, and there is certainly no point in digging deep to find richer subtext... because there is none. there literally is none. and you know what? i know this is a very subjective preference; i personally love to delve deep into the symbolic and get analytical with the stories i enjoy because my brain is just naturally curious like that... but... even with a naturally curious brain... i just... no matter how much i try... this show is all bones and no meat. there is an established foundation of a message and it’s nice but it’s... way too straightforward and, as i said, spoon fed for my liking.

if you like that kind of story-telling, that’s completely fine, i get that. we’re not all here to watch YUGIOH, of all franchise, trying to give us some deep, meaningful message. hell, that’s not even the reason why i’ve enjoyed yugioh ever. i’m here for the same appeal that everyone else is here for: teens saving the world with stupid ass card games. but i just strongly prefer when a story, ANY story, shows enormous amounts of attention to detail and hints at deeper meanings in its context that i can use my brain to work around with and delve into. ze//al doesn’t give me even a hint of this. past ygos have, but ze//al doesnt even try. it’s meant for a younger audience tho, even for ygo’s usual demographic, so i get it. but... it’s because of this that i find it so lackluster.

speaking of the card games.... this show literally... has my least favorite decks. i’m not so into the OCG/TCG that i’m an expert about it so i dont wanna delve into something idfk much about, but just... that’s my taste... this show’s decks are terrible for the most part. the card effects are all too particular and disturbingly OP (one OP card after another... it always happens and it always makes the duels a drag to watch, even if they’re just one or two episodes long at the most)... plus... aesthetically... i guess they’re not all terrible, but still none of them wowed me either...

i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again... this show nearly made me give up on yugioh. my logic was “if they’re just gonna keep making ze//al after ze//al, i’m just gonna stop.” thankfully... well i think you know what happened next...

even after all that’s said and done and i’ve pretty much ranted and ripped this show a new one, I STILL DON’T WANNA DISCOURAGE ANYONE FROM WATCHING IT IF THEY REALLY WANNA TRY IT. because i know that maybe this show just wasn’t for me and it didnt click with me, but it might for someone else. i’m not here to tell you that it’s a piece of shit abomination that should never have happened and it should be whipped out of existence and you should go watch something else instead (HUR DUR GO WATCH VANGUARD INSTEAD) . i’m not here telling you what you should and shouldn’t like. if you like this show, that’s awesome. tbqh with you, i still enjoyed some of it and i’m not afraid to admit that. but overall? it was super lackluster and unimpressive, IMO. at best, i’d say it’s forgettable so for the most time i’m just like... “oh ze//al? yeah it happened i guess” and move on without a second thought and let its fans enjoy it as if its the best thing in the world even tho i personally do not see it that way at all.

but again, i’d say watch it and make up your own opinion over it. i think that’s honestly the best course of action for any media that might even slightly interest you. don’t let people spoon feed their opinions to you. this was all MY experience of the show. go have your own.

p.s. (more of my opinion) i LOVE music and soundtracks of things. they’re always also a big factor of my enjoyment of the media i consume. the soundtrack for this show is decent at best. no track really stood out to me (like maybe one did) but for the most part... the soundtrack is just... i wouldn’t say it’s bad, it’s just... again not memorable... not my style... and my biggest gripe is that a lot of the tracks have this pseudo-grandiose feeling to it that just ultimately fall flat and don’t convey actual emotion. it mostly just seems like it’s music for music’s sake. personally, i think good soundtracks should be able to tell a story or convey an overwhelming feeling without the context of its source material being present. i... i just never got that with ze//al’s soundtrack. maybe once, as i said, but... even then i dont remember it.

on a more positive note tho... i have to admit all of the ED themes are really good (Challenge the Game was literally too good for this show, who the fuck allowed this). i’d listen to them way more often if i didnt associate them with ze//al tbh. not a huge fan of any of the OPs tho. no, not even the second OP. like it’s nice for the first few times but then, to me personally, it starts getting really grating and wangsty.

#anon #ask #reply #and tbh this was all very generalized for the show #like i just dont care about it enough to get into specific details

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entrepreneurnut · 3 years ago

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BuilderAll vs Kartra - Which All-In-One Platform Is Best In 2021?

New Post has been published on https://entrepreneurnut.com/builderall-vs-kartra/

BuilderAll vs Kartra - Which All-In-One Platform Is Best In 2021?

Looking for a fair comparison between BuilderAll vs Kartra?

If you’re having trouble choosing between Builderall and Kartra then I’ve pulled each of these all-in-one marketing platforms apart and given my brutally honeys opinion on each.

SPOILER ALERT: Builderall promises to offer more for less.

It does.

However: Does that mean it will help your online business make more sales than Kartra?

Keep reading my comparison to find out.

Kartra vs BuilderAll: Summary

While Kartra and BuilderAll, have a similar set of features, Kartra is the more robust software overall, despite the higher cost. The main reasons include better templates, more comprehensive marketing automation features, and DFY campaigns built by internet marketing pioneers like Frank Kern.

Get Kartra Free Trial

BuilderAll vs Kartra Overview

Here are the main differences between Kartra and BuilderAll:

BuilderAll is more affordable than Kartra

BuilderAll has a Chatbot builder, Kartra doesn’t

BuilderAll has a webinar and streaming feature, while Kartra doesn’t

BuilderAll is more popular with affiliates since the program is almost an MLM scheme

Kartra has a behavior-adaptive marketing which can considerably boost conversion rates with a more targeted message

Kartra has better email marketing tools for automation, and more triggers

Kartra has a help desk that you can connect to all your pages, BuilderAll doesn’t

Kartra has a better selection of templates that are suited for more types of businesses

Kartra has pre-built funnels and campaign templates that renowned marketers like Frank Kern built. Unfortunately, BuilderAll’s are not on the same level

Our Pick

Our pick: Kartra doesn’t only give you access to all the tools you need to run an online business. But it also comes with SUPER-comprehensive marketing automation features to help average business owners like you and me create a marketing machine that’s working on 24/7 auto-pilot.

Try Kartra For 14-Days

Now let’s get into the features and benefits of each of these marketing software features.

We’ll start with BuilderAll and give you a walkthrough of everything it has to offer. Then we’ll delve into Kartra and pick apart the features so you can have a thorough comparison of the two platforms.

More Comparison Articles

GrooveFunnels and BuilderAll compared

GrooveFunnels and Kartra compared

Kartra and ClickFunnels compared

What Is BuilderAll?

BuilderAll started in 2011, but the company behind the tool was founded in 2008 by Brazillian Entrepreneur Erick Salgado. BuilderAll is commonly known as a “cheap ClickFunnels alternative” in internet marketing communities despite it being around for longer.

However, more recently, they have started setting themselves apart from the competition with more features such as their chatbots, streaming tools, or video hosting (BuilderAll 3.0).

Besides that, BuilderAll is also VERY-Known for its affiliate program. When you refer customers, you get paid too. That’s not to say that Kartra doesn’t have an affiliate program – they do, in fact, one of the best in the industry, but we’ll discuss that in more detail later.

Who Is BuilderAll For?

BuilderAll targets online businesses, entrepreneurs, internet marketers, and affiliate marketers looking for an affordable all-in-one tool.

Unlike some of its competitors, it doesn’t have a problem with not charging hundreds of dollars for a large set of features.

Instead, BuilderAll focuses on being affordable, which also makes it quite popular with beginners.

BuilderAll Pros

It’s very affordable

Builderall has a great set of robust features

The tool evolves quickly

It integrates with WordPress, which is excellent for bloggers

It has a Chatbot builder to help you engage customers

BuilderAll Cons

BuilderAll support isn’t very good

The builder feels clunky at times

I don’t like the feel of the templates compared to Kartra

The majority of users are affiliates, which questions how much value there is inside

It doesn’t have as many features as Kartra

What Is Kartra?

Compared to BuilderAll, Kartra is that new kid in school who’s killing it in all the sports games. In this case, I’m talking about internet marketing features here – several of them absolutely kick butt!

Kartra only launched in 2018 but already has one of the most impressive lists of features on the market.

This isn’t a surprise: The people behind this thing, a company, named Genesis Digital, is a well-known player in the internet marketing space.

They’ve also developed software for similar target audiences like EverWebinar, and WebinarJam – which you may have heard of.

Who Is Kartra For?

Like BuilderAll, Kartra is for online businesses, entrepreneurs, internet marketers, and info-product vendors who want to market their business online.

But while BuilderAll focuses on doing everything as affordable as possible, Kartra targets those who want to grow their business to the highest possible point.

It does this very effectively by putting more effort into the marketing automation side of things.

I’ll go into more details on all this in just a few minutes, bear with me 🙂

Kartra Pros

Kartra has some of the best marketing automation features to help you generate more sales

It has a help desk feature to help you provide the best support to your customers

Kartra has some of the best campaigns and high-converting sales funnels templates in the entire industry

Behavior-adaptive marketing on the pages will help you match your message to the visitors’ interests

You get all features on every plan

It has a calendar tool that will help you set appointments, generate leads, and close deals

Kartra comes with detailed analytics and a better CRM lead management system

Kartra Cons

It is more expensive than BuilderAll

It doesn’t have a webinar feature

The builder can feel clunky at times too

BuilderAll Features

Now I’m gonna walk you through BuilderAll’s list of features so you will know exactly what you’re getting for your money.

Cheetah Website Builder

BuilderAll has always had its cheetah website builder. I think the name’s supposed to give you the impression that you can build things super-fast using their page builder.

The builder itself is pretty basic but has a good selection of elements that you can choose from.

Some of the elements include:

Opt-in form

SEO text & (h1, h2, h3, etc. + body text)

Scarcity timers

Images/Videos

When using it, I was satisfied. There wasn’t anything to complain about, apart from the odd lag – and it did the same stuff most other competitors do for about half the price, not bad.

Overall, I think this is BuilderAll’s strongest feature.

Templates

The templates were one of the areas that I wasn’t too impressed with.

The reason?

I just really do get a slight “cheap version of ClickFunnels” vibe from them – but that may just be me.

BuilderAll also seems very internet marketing-focused, and I can’t really imagine a business outside of this industry using the templates.

But, I’ll let you form your own opinion:

Cheetah Funnel Builder

This is a visual sales funnel builder where you can visualize your entire campaign’s emails, pages, etc. – It’s comparable to Funnelytics, but it’s still pretty useful, and I think many marketers would love using this.

Email Marketing Platform

BuilderAll’s email marketing software, called MailingBoss, is not too bad either.

It’s pretty basic compared to most other autoresponders (including Kartra). However, you can still build automation sequences and send newsletters, so there isn’t much to complain about – especially considering the price point of Builderall.

If you were expecting some serious bells and whistles in the automation triggers – I’m afraid this will be a disappointment.

The triggers are very limited (especially compared to Kartra, as we’ll see later):

Link click

Did not click

Campaign open

Did not open

User subscribed

User unsubscribed

The good news is that Kartra does do this much better, as you’ll see in a few minutes in this article.

But if you are looking for a basic autoresponder, BuilderAll’s MailingBoss does the job.

Video Hosting

One thing that I love about most funnel-builders nowadays is that they come with video hosting for your sales pages, membership sites, or wherever you want to use them.

BuilderAll chose to follow this trend – a BIG plus – especially if you’re going to sell online courses.

However, I would love to see a few more tagging options here, though, as they are limited.

That being said, you can add CTAs and text to your videos, which could help conversions.

Blogging Apps + WordPress Integration

Builderall has a blogging app and also directly integrates with WordPress.

I would still not personally use BuilderAll for blog pages simply because you can’t get all your WordPress store plugins to work with it.

The pages you integrate with WordPress are still built and hosted in BuilderAll. Because of this they might be slow, and you can’t make changes to them, apart from the ones that BuilderAll offers.

If you want to, you can use BuilderAll for your landing pages or sales pages that don’t necessarily need to rank well organically in the SERPS.

Checkouts

BuilderAll also has a pretty decent checkout tool, which includes:

Order bumps

Auction Checkout

One-click upsells

Two-step checkouts

Again, this is impressive, especially considering the price point.

BuilderAll Affiliate Management

Using Builderall, you can also create affiliate programs:

Create a tier-1 and 2 affiliate program

The single sale or per recurring affiliate programs

Chatbots

BuilderAll has a unique selling point (USP) that many other competitors don’t have: Chatbots.

The not-so-good news for BuilderAll is that there are alternatives like ManyChat, which do this for only around $10 per month, so this extra feature is unlikely to be a deal breaker for you. Still, it’s a nice feature to have.

However, BuilderAll also has some pre-built funnels, which may make their USP look a little more appealing.

On the highest Builderall plan, it comes with pre-built funnels for different types of businesses and offers. Still, I don’t think it’s going to be a reason to go for Builderall – then again, that’s just my option.

Webinar and Streaming Tool

These are two separate tools, but BuilderAll comes with both a webinar and a streaming tool.

The streaming tool was something that I was pretty impressed with, even though it’s a minor add-on feature.

You can stream to places like Facebook, YouTube, or Twitch from your BuilderAll account, which will make life easier for you.

I know there are endless 3rd party tools that do this, but I still thought it was pretty cool.

BuilderAll Affiliate Program

BuilderAll’s affiliate program is one of the most lucrative out there. You refer customers who, in turn, refer more customers. And you get paid on all those who sign up under you, similar to an MLM. Since this model is very borderline MLM, it attracts a lot of affiliates to use and promote the software.

Is that a bad thing?

Not really, especially if you want to become an affiliate itself and make money with BuilderAll.

However, some might view this negatively because it shows that many users aren’t there for the software – but the affiliate program. But, again, I’ll let you have your own opinion on this.

What BuilderAll Has That Kartra Doesn’t

Here are the features you get with BuilderAll, but not with Kartra:

Chatbots

Visual funnel builder

Better affiliate program

WordPress integration (kind of)

Auction checkouts

Webinars and streaming

While this list of features is nice, most of them are very easy to get elsewhere for not too much money, even if you decide to go for Kartra:

Chatbots? Just add ManyChat for an additional $10 per month.

WordPress integration? Kartra’s kind of got it (more on this later)

Webinars and streaming? Use EverWebinar, StreamYard, or WebinarJam starting from an additional $42 per month

So, it’s not that big of a deal for most businesses out there.

Kartra Features

As you have seen, BuilderAll has set the standard pretty high with their list of features. Let’s look at how Kartra compares.

In my opinion, Kartra is one of the most complete all-in-one platform out there for online marketers, and I think you will soon see what I mean.

Kartra Core Feature: Page Builder and Templates

Kartra’s core feature is its page builder and the templates that come with it. It’s user-friendly and lets you build pretty much any type of page you can think of, and the templates back this up.

Whether it’s a full navigation website or just a squeeze page – Kartra has at least ten templates for every step of your business. The pages are fully customizable, but it uses a block system only to drop elements into a box.

It also comes with all the standard elements like:

Opt-in forms

Count-down timers

Pop-ups

Images/Videos

Behavioral-Adaptive-Marketing

Something unique (and very cool) about Kartra is that it lets you match your Kartra pages to your visitors’ previous behavior.

For example, if they have expressed interest in a certain product (through clicks, scrolls, etc.), you can make your future pages automatically adapt to that. Pretty cool..?

Damn right!

And it’s not just “a cool feature” – it can actually give you a HUGE boost in conversions too.

Embed Your Pages – Anywhere

One thing that I love about Kartra is the ability to embed your pages anywhere.

How?

Using an HTML code that you simply copy and paste. I love that your pages aren’t stuck inside Kartra, and this also counters the WordPress integration that BuilderAll has… So it’s a pretty sweet feature.

If you already have a blog set up on WordPress then you don’t have to worry about trying to also rank additional Kartra pages. Simply embed your Kartra page into one of your WordPress page and rank that page as you would do any other WordPress page on your site.

Checkouts

Kartra, just like Builderall, has some advanced checkouts, including:

Order bumps

One-click upsells

Two-step checkouts

The only area where it misses out is the auction checkouts, but I have never really used them myself, so I can’t comment too much on this.

Membership Site Builder

The Kartra membership site builder is a dedicated platform as it has all the features it needs.

Drip feed content

Several access levels

Advanced analytics

Automated member management

Compared to most dedicated platforms, the only area where it loses is the design.

Email & SMS Automation

Now, this is the part where Kartra gets REALLY SWEET!

Remember where BuilderAll’s MailingBoss kind of disappointed us a little with the lack of triggers and marketing automation?

Yeah, Kartra Mail is the complete opposite!

There are triggers for things like:

When your visitors visit your page

If a lead has watched X% amount of your video

If your customer has requested a refund

If your customer is an active affiliate

Let me give you two really (and I mean really) cool examples:

Example 1: You have a service-based business and you’re building your email list. Months later, one of your leads visits your service pages, and you have a trigger to set up an email campaign if they visit this page to send out an email that offers a free consultation… Boom! Now you have a serious opportunity to close that deal.

Example 2: You’re selling an info product via a sales video (we’ll get to this feature in a few moments), and your lead watches the whole thing… But doesn’t buy. They are CLEARLY interested since they watched the whole video – but the cool thing is that you can have a trigger set up for this and tempt them again using a targeted email.

This is by far one of my favorite Kartra features.

And did I forget to mention, you can do this with SMS too?

There are so many ways you could use this as part of your marketing strategy, I’d actually find it hard to count them all. But I would definitely recommend thinking about all the ways you can use this feature in your online business to your increase sales.

Pre-Built Campaigns & Funnels

As I’ve mentioned at the beginning of the article, the pre-built campaigns and funnels are head and shoulders above what you get anywhere else.

Why is this the case?

Because they’ve not been created by just anyone… You’ll have direct, FREE access to marketing campaigns built by internet marketing legends like Frank Kern.

Besides, you’ll also be able to access the marketplace where you can buy and sell marketing campaigns too.

So if you’re a marketing-savvy funnel wizard… This may be a pretty lucrative income opportunity for you.

Video Marketing

Kartra also lets you host your videos inside of the platform. Compared to BuilderAll, the tool is a little more advanced, and comes with more triggers that you can use to activate your autoresponder.

And you can also use CTAs and headlines in your videos too, which will give you another advantage over your competition.

Affiliate Management

Just like BuilderAll, Kartra gives you a pretty advanced affiliate managed tool.

You can:

Create a tier-1 and 2 affiliate program

Create single sale or per recurring affiliate programs

Use instant payments with Paypal

But where Kartra sets itself apart is that it also lets you create CPA affiliate programs too.

MEANING: You can also pay affiliates for leads they generate (pay per lead), giving you more opportunities to grow your business.

Leads/CRM System

In general, Kartra gives you super-detailed analytics for every feature. Whether it’s email marketing campaigns, video hosting, membership sites, affiliate management – you can SEE everything on a beautiful, easy-to-overview dashboard.

And in general, you can pull up any customer to see all of their actions/history in your business, which I thought was pretty cool too.

Other Features

Other features that are pretty self-explanatory:

Calendar

Forms

Helpdesk software

Integrations & API (we’ll look at these later)

What Kartra Has BuilderAll Doesn’t

Here is a full list of what Kartra has that BuilderAll doesn’t:

Much more comprehensive marketing automation to help you make more sales

Calendar

Helpdesks

Behavior-adaptive-marketing

Much better CRM/Lead management

Slightly better affiliate management

Much better pre-built funnels/campaigns

An affiliate marketplace

As you can see, if you compare this list with the one from Builderall earlier – you will quickly see that the features here are more significant.

Unfortunately, if you want to get these advanced features for Builderall, it will require you to upgrade your entire system.

As you can see, Kartra has a great list or robust features that can go a very long way to help scale your business.

If you still want a more info on this online marketing platform then you can read my detailed Kartra review here.

Integrations

Now let’s take a quick look at the integration differences between Kartra vs BuilderAll.

BuilderAll Integration

BuilderAll has a tiny list of integrations. Of course, it does come with many features, but it’s still quite annoying because you might want to use a dedicated platform in the future, but not be able to.

The main integrations are:

WordPress

Zapier

Integrately

Desktop.com

Pabbly

See the full BuilderAll integration list here.

Kartra Integrations

Kartra has a larger list of integrations, despite not needing a lot of them.

For example, you can integrate directly with email platforms, webinar platforms, payment processors, and more.

Some of the main integrations include:

MailGun

Stripe/Paypal/Braintree/Authroize

Twilio

Google Calendar

Zapier

You also get the Kartra API so that you can integrate with more software too.

See the full Kartra integration list here.

BuilderAll vs Kartra – Pricing Plans

Here’s a breakdown of the pricing plans for these two digital marketing platforms so you can clearly see what you get for your money with each company.

BuilderAll Cost

Get a screenshot from here: https://builderall.com/plans

BuilderAll has more affordable pricing with 3 options to choose from:

The BuilderAll Essential Plan

The BuilderAll Premium Plan

The BuilderAll Funnel Club Plan

Essential Plan – $29.90/mo

Here you get the most basic BuilderAll features at a great price.

Some of the features you don’t get are the dedicated funnel builder, the chatbots & pop-ups, video hosting, and others. It’s pretty much giving you the basics, with some pretty severe limitations.

Premium Plan – $69.90/mo

BuilderAll Premium is the plan where you do get all features, but not the pre-built campaigns.

Funnel Club – $99 /mo ($199 on first payment)

Here, you get all features PLUS:

30+ Messenger funnels

50+ Niche Lead Gen Funnels

50+ Niche Funnels For Agencies

20+ Niche Funnels For List Building

10+ BuilderAll Premium Funnels

300+ Cheetah Strategic Funnels

Special: BuilderAll Premium Funnels

300+ Cheetah Strategic Funnels

Premium Affiliate Automatic Approval

Weekly New Niche Funnels Added

Weekly New Cheetah Strategic Themes Add

Kartra Cost

With Katra, it doesn’t matter which plan you are on – you get all the features besides Kartra agency.

The agency feature is something you only really need if you actually run a digital marketing agency. It will allow you to sell Kartra accounts and manage them for your clients.

Here are the details on the cost of Kartra:

Kartra Starter ($99 per month)

Up to 2500 leads

1 custom domain

15k emails p/m

50 GB Bandwidth

Host 100 pages

Host 50 videos

Sell 20 products

Build 2 membership sites

Add 1 additional team member

Connect 1 helpdesk

Kartra Silver ($199 per month)

Up to 12,500 leads

3 custom domains

Unlimited everything else (Bandwidth, videos, pages, etc.)

Kartra Gold ($299 per month)

Up to 25,000 leads

5 custom domains

Unlimited everything else (Bandwidth, videos, pages, etc.)

Kartra Platinum ($499 per month)

Up to 50,000 leads

10 custom domains

Unlimited everything else (Bandwith, videos, pages, etc.)

Try Kartra For 14-Days

Kartra vs Builderall: My Final Thoughts

The race to the pricing bottom between Kartra vs Builderall has an end, but there is NO LIMIT on how many sales you make. That’s why I’m going to decide that there is a winner in this BuilderAll vs. Kartra battle, and fro me, that winner is Kartra.

I say this because even though you may pay a bit more for Kartra, their robust features will actually help you to make more money, which is why most of us are business owners, after all!

Kartra focuses on helping you convert more, while saving you time – to me, that’s much more valuable than saving a few extra dollars each month.

BuilderAll is a good software tool for beginner marketers, but if you’re really looking to scale up your income then I recommend choosing Kartra.

When you sign up for Kartra, make sure to click the button below to start your 14-day trial.

Try Kartra For 14-Days

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wickedbananas · 7 years ago

Text

How Much Data Is Missing from Analytics? And Other Analytics Black Holes

Posted by Tom.Capper

If you’ve ever compared two analytics implementations on the same site, or compared your analytics with what your business is reporting in sales, you’ve probably noticed that things don’t always match up. In this post, I’ll explain why data is missing from your web analytics platforms and how large the impact could be. Some of the issues I cover are actually quite easily addressed, and have a decent impact on traffic — there’s never been an easier way to hit your quarterly targets. ;)

I’m going to focus on GA (Google Analytics), as it's the most commonly used provider, but most on-page analytics platforms have the same issues. Platforms that rely on server logs do avoid some issues but are fairly rare, so I won’t cover them in any depth.

Side note: Our test setup (multiple trackers & customized GA)

On Distilled.net, we have a standard Google Analytics property running from an HTML tag in GTM (Google Tag Manager). In addition, for the last two years, I’ve been running three extra concurrent Google Analytics implementations, designed to measure discrepancies between different configurations.

(If you’re just interested in my findings, you can skip this section, but if you want to hear more about the methodology, continue reading. Similarly, don’t worry if you don’t understand some of the detail here — the results are easier to follow.)

Two of these extra implementations — one in Google Tag Manager and one on page — run locally hosted, renamed copies of the Google Analytics JavaScript file (e.g. www.distilled.net/static/js/au3.js, instead of www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js) to make them harder to spot for ad blockers. I also used renamed JavaScript functions (“tcap” and “Buffoon,” rather than the standard “ga”) and renamed trackers (“FredTheUnblockable” and “AlbertTheImmutable”) to avoid having duplicate trackers (which can often cause issues).

This was originally inspired by 2016-era best practice on how to get your Google Analytics setup past ad blockers. I can’t find the original article now, but you can see a very similar one from 2017 here.

Lastly, we have (“DianaTheIndefatigable”), which just has a renamed tracker, but uses the standard code otherwise and is implemented on-page. This is to complete the set of all combinations of modified and unmodified GTM and on-page trackers.

Two of Distilled’s modified on-page trackers, as seen on https://www.distilled.net/

Overall, this table summarizes our setups:

Tracker

Renamed function?

GTM or on-page?

Locally hosted JavaScript file?

Default

GTM HTML tag

FredTheUnblockable

Yes - “tcap”

GTM HTML tag

Yes

AlbertTheImmutable

Yes - “buffoon”

On page

Yes

DianaTheIndefatigable

On page

I tested their functionality in various browser/ad-block environments by watching for the pageviews appearing in browser developer tools:

Reason 1: Ad Blockers

Ad blockers, primarily as browser extensions, have been growing in popularity for some time now. Primarily this has been to do with users looking for better performance and UX on ad-laden sites, but in recent years an increased emphasis on privacy has also crept in, hence the possibility of analytics blocking.

Effect of ad blockers

Some ad blockers block web analytics platforms by default, others can be configured to do so. I tested Distilled’s site with Adblock Plus and uBlock Origin, two of the most popular ad-blocking desktop browser addons, but it’s worth noting that ad blockers are increasingly prevalent on smartphones, too.

Here’s how Distilled’s setups fared:

(All numbers shown are from April 2018)

Setup

Vs. Adblock

Vs. Adblock with “EasyPrivacy” enabled

Vs. uBlock Origin

GTM

Pass

Fail

On page

Pass

Fail

GTM + renamed script & function

Pass

Fail

On page + renamed script & function

Pass

Fail

Seems like those tweaked setups didn’t do much!

Lost data due to ad blockers: ~10%

Ad blocker usage can be in the 15–25% range depending on region, but many of these installs will be default setups of AdBlock Plus, which as we’ve seen above, does not block tracking. Estimates of AdBlock Plus’s market share among ad blockers vary from 50–70%, with more recent reports tending more towards the former. So, if we assume that at most 50% of installed ad blockers block analytics, that leaves your exposure at around 10%.

Reason 2: Browser “do not track”

This is another privacy motivated feature, this time of browsers themselves. You can enable it in the settings of most current browsers. It’s not compulsory for sites or platforms to obey the “do not track” request, but Firefox offers a stronger feature under the same set of options, which I decided to test as well.

Effect of “do not track”

Most browsers now offer the option to send a “Do not track” message. I tested the latest releases of Firefox & Chrome for Windows 10.

Setup

Chrome “do not track”

Firefox “do not track”

Firefox “tracking protection”

GTM

Pass

Fail

On page

Pass

Fail

GTM + renamed script & function

Pass

Fail

On page + renamed script & function

Pass

Fail

Again, it doesn’t seem that the tweaked setups are doing much work for us here.

Lost data due to “do not track”: <1%

Only Firefox Quantum’s “Tracking Protection,” introduced in February, had any effect on our trackers. Firefox has a 5% market share, but Tracking Protection is not enabled by default. The launch of this feature had no effect on the trend for Firefox traffic on Distilled.net.

Reason 3: Filters

It’s a bit of an obvious one, but filters you’ve set up in your analytics might intentionally or unintentionally reduce your reported traffic levels.

For example, a filter excluding certain niche screen resolutions that you believe to be mostly bots, or internal traffic, will obviously cause your setup to underreport slightly.

Lost data due to filters: ???

Impact is hard to estimate, as setup will obviously vary on a site-by site-basis. I do recommend having a duplicate, unfiltered “master” view in case you realize too late you’ve lost something you didn’t intend to.

Reason 4: GTM vs. on-page vs. misplaced on-page

Google Tag Manager has become an increasingly popular way of implementing analytics in recent years, due to its increased flexibility and the ease of making changes. However, I’ve long noticed that it can tend to underreport vs. on-page setups.

I was also curious about what would happen if you didn’t follow Google’s guidelines in setting up on-page code.

By combining my numbers with numbers from my colleague Dom Woodman’s site (you’re welcome for the link, Dom), which happens to use a Drupal analytics add-on as well as GTM, I was able to see the difference between Google Tag Manager and misplaced on-page code (right at the bottom of the <body> tag) I then weighted this against my own Google Tag Manager data to get an overall picture of all 5 setups.

Effect of GTM and misplaced on-page code

Traffic as a percentage of baseline (standard Google Tag Manager implementation):

Google Tag Manager

Modified & Google Tag Manager

On-Page Code In <head>

Modified & On-Page Code In <head>

On-Page Code Misplaced In <Body>

Chrome

100.00%

98.75%

100.77%

99.80%

94.75%

Safari

100.00%

99.42%

100.55%

102.08%

82.69%

Firefox

100.00%

99.71%

101.16%

101.45%

90.68%

Internet Explorer

100.00%

80.06%

112.31%

113.37%

77.18%

There are a few main takeaways here:

On-page code generally reports more traffic than GTM

Modified code is generally within a margin of error, apart from modified GTM code on Internet Explorer (see note below)

Misplaced analytics code will cost you up to a third of your traffic vs. properly implemented on-page code, depending on browser (!)

The customized setups, which are designed to get more traffic by evading ad blockers, are doing nothing of the sort.

It’s worth noting also that the customized implementations actually got less traffic than the standard ones. For the on-page code, this is within the margin of error, but for Google Tag Manager, there’s another reason — because I used unfiltered profiles for the comparison, there’s a lot of bot spam in the main profile, which primarily masquerades as Internet Explorer. Our main profile is by far the most spammed, and also acting as the baseline here, so the difference between on-page code and Google Tag Manager is probably somewhat larger than what I’m reporting.

I also split the data by mobile, out of curiosity:

Traffic as a percentage of baseline (standard Google Tag Manager implementation):

Google Tag Manager

Modified & Google Tag Manager

On-Page Code In <head>

Modified & On-Page Code In <head>

On-Page Code Misplaced In <Body>

Desktop

100.00%

98.31%

100.97%

100.89%

93.47%

Mobile

100.00%

97.00%

103.78%

100.42%

89.87%

Tablet

100.00%

97.68%

104.20%

102.43%

88.13%

The further takeaway here seems to be that mobile browsers, like Internet Explorer, can struggle with Google Tag Manager.

Lost data due to GTM: 1–5%

Google Tag Manager seems to cost you a varying amount depending on what make-up of browsers and devices use your site. On Distilled.net, the difference is around 1.7%; however, we have an unusually desktop-heavy and tech-savvy audience (not much Internet Explorer!). Depending on vertical, this could easily swell to the 5% range.

Lost data due to misplaced on-page code: ~10%

On Teflsearch.com, the impact of misplaced on-page code was around 7.5%, vs Google Tag Manager. Keeping in mind that Google Tag Manager itself underreports, the total loss could easily be in the 10% range.

Bonus round: Missing data from channels

I’ve focused above on areas where you might be missing data altogether. However, there are also lots of ways in which data can be misrepresented, or detail can be missing. I’ll cover these more briefly, but the main issues are dark traffic and attribution.

Dark traffic

Dark traffic is direct traffic that didn’t really come via direct — which is generally becoming more and more common. Typical causes are:

Untagged campaigns in email

Untagged campaigns in apps (especially Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

Misrepresented organic

Data sent from botched tracking implementations (which can also appear as self-referrals)

It’s also worth noting the trend towards genuinely direct traffic that would historically have been organic. For example, due to increasingly sophisticated browser autocompletes, cross-device history, and so on, people end up “typing” a URL that they’d have searched for historically.

Attribution

I’ve written about this in more detail here, but in general, a session in Google Analytics (and any other platform) is a fairly arbitrary construct — you might think it’s obvious how a group of hits should be grouped into one or more sessions, but in fact, the process relies on a number of fairly questionable assumptions. In particular, it’s worth noting that Google Analytics generally attributes direct traffic (including dark traffic) to the previous non-direct source, if one exists.

Discussion

I was quite surprised by some of my own findings when researching this post, but I’m sure I didn’t get everything. Can you think of any other ways in which data can end up missing from analytics?

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sourabhdubey007 · 4 years ago

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3 Best WordPress Events Plugins for Better Event Management (Calendars, Ticketing, RSVPs)

If you’ve ever tried to install a calendar plugin you know that it’s not exactly the same as a fully functional events plugin or any event management tool. Calendars display dates of events, while WordPress event plugins offer functions like ticketing, RSVPs, guest management, automated email notifications, booking forms and more.Try a free demo

That’s why it’s so important to think about what you plan on doing with your WordPress calendar.

Do you need to sell tickets for events? Would you like to display detailed information like images, maps, speakers, and payment methods? What about setting up irregular recurring events like a meeting you hold every three months?

In order to achieve some of the more advanced calendar features, a WordPress events plugin is required. What’s great is that you have many options to choose from and the best ones are affordable, powerful, and easy to understand.

Want to know which one you should pick? Check out our curated list of the best event plugins!Mark your calendars…because this guide will give you a whole new way to optimize and plan your events

CLICK TO TWEET

The Best WordPress Events Plugin Options in 2020

Events Manager

WP Event Manager

Event Organiser

All-in-One Event Calendar

Event Espresso 4 Decaf

The Events Calendar

My Calendar

EventOn

Calendarize it! for WordPress

Modern Events Calendar

Amelia

Event Calendar WD

Stachethemes Event Calendar

Tickera

Venture Event Manager

1. Events Manager

The Events Manager plugin offers an excellent free version, but you do have the option to upgrade to Events Manager Pro. The average user won’t need the Pro version, but it does have some great features for the low price of $75.

For instance, the upgrade version gives you premium support, a custom payment gateway, API, spam protection, coupons, discounts, customizable booking forms, and PayPal support.

So, registrations are possible with the Events Manager plugin, but you’ll have to pay the extra fee to start collecting payments with something like PayPal or Authorize.net.

Events Manager WordPress plugin

The backend interface is simple enough for the average WordPress user and when displayed on the frontend, your events calendar can be used for selling tickets, showing a simple calendar, or displaying event details. I like that the plugin integrates with your iCal feed and Google Calendar. You can also utilize some of the widgets for showing locations, full calendars, or individual events.

As for showing your events on the calendar and being as detailed as possible, the Events Manager plugin gives you most features you need without paying any money. For instance, Google Maps can be embedded in the events pages. There is also a tool for creating custom event attributes. This means that pretty much any type of description field is possible, like if you wanted to make an area for the dress code to your event, for example.

Reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars (WordPress.org)

Active Installations

100,000+

PHP Version

5.3 or higher

Features That Make Events Manager a Great Choice:

The Events Manager plugin provides a full event creation and sharing center for free. The main reason you’d upgrade to the paid version if for payment support.

The plugin allows for recurring and multi-day event registrations, along with booking management with approvals and rejections.

You can hook up BuddyPress to the plugin for sharing events in your social network.

The single-day event registration is straightforward, as it includes start and end times and the basic event information.

There’s one feature that lets users and guests submit their own events, which is great for public event websites and smaller organizations run by multiple people.

The plugin puts quite a bit of weight on locations, so you can add Google Maps and set up an area to view events based on their locations.

2. WP Event Manager

WP Event Manager is one of the simpler, lightweight WordPress event management plugins. I see it working for those who want to keep their sites fast and not take up too much space or clutter the backend with too many features.

This plugin might be considered the new kid in the event management space, but it’s a popular plugin with great reviews and even great customer support.

As with many of the event plugins on this list, WP Event Manager offers a free, core plugin, along with the option to buy add-ons to ramp up your operation. Although the interface is sleek and simple, the free plugin’s feature list is quite impressive.

For instance, you receive everything from multilingual translations to frontend forms, and to widgets and shortcodes for searchable event listings.

WP Event Manager WordPress plugin

I’ve also noticed that the WP Event Manager developers have put quite a bit of effort into speed and user-experience–with beautiful caching features, responsive elements, AJAX-powered event listings, and more.

As for the premium add-ons, there’s a long list of them, but here are some highlights:

Google Maps.

WooCommerce Sell Tickets.

Registrations.

Event Alerts.

An Embeddable Event Widget.

Contact Organizer.

Emails.

Sliders.

Google Analytics.

Event Tags.

Reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars (WordPress.org)

Active Installations

8,000+

PHP Version

5.4 or higher

Features That Make WP Event Manager a Great Choice:

The WP Event Manager plugin features a lightweight interface and a beautiful user experience. It has caching built-in, a wonderful search module and a completely responsive design.

The developers are highly responsive and friendly for all customers, even the ones using the free plugin.

You don’t have to pay a monthly fee, or anything like that, for a premium plugin. It’s configured so that you start with the base plugin, then you can pay for some of the add-ons if needed.

Some of the add-ons are free, and the others are still affordable. Many of them go for $39, but I’ve noticed some lower priced ones as well.

The entire calendar area is “AJAXified,” so it’s one of the smoothest browsing experiences on the frontend.

3. Event Organiser

Event Organiser delivers a suitable event management solution for the WordPress environment because of its combination with default custom post types. Essentially, you install this plugin, then choose the right custom post type to maintain the WordPress post format, but gain control of some additional events modules.

Therefore, it’s an intuitive user interface, with the basic features required and some great support for one-time and recurring events. You’ll find several premium add-ons to buy along with this event management plugin. One of them is called Event Organiser Pro, and it offers a booking form customizer, a full management area, customizable emails, and various payment gateways.

You’ll also see some other add-ons that expand the functionality of your free or premium Event Organizer plugin. Some of them include:

Frontend submissions.

Discount codes.

Stripe Gateway.

iCal Sync.

Free add-ons: Posterboard and CSV export.

Event Organiser WordPress plugin

The pricing for each plugin varies, but it seems like the more advanced and feature-packed they get, the higher the pricing. Some of them go for around $15, while others are listed at $50. I enjoy the frontend of this plugin since it provides a basic interface with colorization and interactivity.

You also have multiple formats you can choose from, such as lists or calendar configurations. Showing the calendars and events on your website is done with the help of shortcodes and widgets. So, the average WordPress user shouldn’t have any problems with getting up and running.

Reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars (WordPress.org)

Active Installations

40,000+

PHP Version

Not provided.

Features That Make Event Organiser a Great Choice:

The basic plugin is free and you only have to shell out $50 for the premium version. You might end up paying more for the additional plugins, but the pricing looks reasonable.

The widgets and shortcodes are quite versatile, with widgets or event lists, calendars, and agendas. The shortcodes are shown as event lists or full calendars.

Localization is a strong advantage of the Event Organiser plugin. Dozens of languages have been provided by several contributors.

A good amount of support is provided for developers. For instance, plugin actions and filters are available, along with an API and documentation.

The plugin allows for complex recurring events, so if you have an event going for three days, stopping for one day, then continuing for two more, that’s entirely possible. Something more common would be an event that occurs every two months.

You can create and maintain venues and locations for all events. This includes support for Google Maps, so users come to your calendar and quickly identify which events are in their area.

The post 3 Best WordPress Events Plugins for Better Event Management (Calendars, Ticketing, RSVPs) appeared first on The Coding Bus.

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divinitatem · 7 years ago

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NAME: katy. GENDER: female. EYE COLOUR: hazel. HAIR COLOR: black. (dyed) RELATIONSHIP: .........it’s complicated. ZODIAC: Taurus.

FAVOURITE COLOUR: lapis blue, emerald green, silver. FAVOURITE SEASON: late spring/early summer FAVOURITE FLOWER: crocus, lilac, rose FAVOURITE PLACE: bed is good. FAVOURITE HOLIDAY: thanksgiving, for the food mostly FAVOURITE VIDEO GAME: DA2 FAVOURITE BOOK: uhhhhh just one?! rude. rude. LAST SHOW YOU WATCHED: Bob’s Burgers

WHAT’S YOUR HONEST OPINION ABOUT YOUR MUSE?: he’s honestly not that much of a villain, per se?! but that doesn’t make him a nice or good person, either. he’s ruthless and can be cruel at times, he’s got a lot of blood on his hands, he engages in politics in a very Tevintery sort of way -- but not more so or worse so than anyone in Thedas, including all the heroes (who all have very high body counts!) and he does it because he does genuinely believe in promoting the strength and welfare of his nation. he didn’t seize power just for himself, but because he happens to think Tevinter would be better off with him in power... convenient, that. he’s also absolutely ridiculous, frequently adorable, somewhat hypocritical at times, deeply in love and passionate while also being intellectual and analytical, manipulative and educated, and one hell of a lot of fun to write.

WOULD YOU DATE YOUR MUSE?: oh hellllllllllllllllllllll no. (on aesthetics, yes. on everything else....laughs wildly...)

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVOURITE KINDS OF THREADS?: plotted ones with narrative/character development opportunities for both rpers.

ARE YOU A SELECTIVE ROLEPLAYER?: i’m much more selective now than i ever used to be, tbh, yeah.

DO YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE MUSE (IF YOU HAVE MORE THAN ONE)?: I enjoy all of my main muses equally and for different reasons… but i suppose i have a lot of particular fondness for my Hawke...

WHAT MADE YOU DECIDE TO JOIN THE FANDOM?: i got badgered into playing the DA games by some people i knew from Tolkien and then fell in love with the world and characters.

DO YOU SEE YOURSELF STAYING WITH THE FANDOM FOR A LONG TIME?: at this point, having been here continuously, though on different muses, ever since inquisition dropped, i think i’m pretty much stuck with it and here to stay.

TAGGING: @archontem @arielshepard @foppishdandy @cllgood @beefcakequnari @servesorlais @magisterivm @koranatos @frcgment @gracebroken and idk whoever sees this and feels it

TAGGED BY: no one but i wanted to do a munday meme since a lot of people here don’t know me well yet because i’ve been so inactive on this account for so long.....

#munday meme #ooc meme

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dekiruherodeku · 7 years ago

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TAGGED BY: @resilizuku // thanks quinn twin!! (〃´ﾉω`〃)ﾉ♡ TAGGING: @wildxplosion, @heroic-wrath, @bnnyhppd, @myspiritremains, @ghost-explosions; heck, ALL Y’ALL are tagged!

* GETTING TO KNOW THE MUN :

NAME : Mary NICKNAME : Embi, Bunni FACECLAIM : Embi the Jackalope -- I draw them myself! (´ ∀ ` )

PRONOUNS : She/Her/Hers HEIGHT : 4′5.5″ (135.89 cm) BIRTHDAY : 12/14 AESTHETIC : nature’s natural beauty, especially overgrowth in decrepit human foundations LAST SONG YOU LISTENED TO : The Hardest Part by Coldplay FAVOURITE MUSE (S) YOU’VE WRITTEN : Deku (BnHA), Chara (UT)

* GETTING TO KNOW THE ACCOUNT :

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO TAKE ON THIS MUSE :

Literally, aside from how much i just love Deku’s character and story, the other main reason is that in the very beginning he 100% reminded me of an OC i’ve made, Kiyoshi Katase. The both of them share almost the exact same traits, excluding Deku’s mindset in that he can be more than what he is -- with Kiyo, he’s much more humble and casual with who he is despite all the hidden potential and talent he possesses, accepting his position as a ‘side-character’ when he could be a ‘main-character’ like Deku.

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVOURITE ASPECTS OF YOUR CURRENT MUSE :

Aaaaa where to begin...! Deku’s modesty despite his ever-growing potential is probably one, along with him growing as an aspiring hero with confidence in his abilities. Seeing the contrast between middle-school Deku and the current Deku makes me so proud of my green bean. Characters who just come a long way from that they used to be are my favorite things in the whole world. Another would probably be the fact there are two sides of him: the ‘I need to save them’ hero aspect, which stems from his inspirations from All Might, and the ‘I need to win’ hero aspect, which is constantly both inspired and tested by Kacchan.

WHAT’S YOUR BIGGEST INSPIRATION WHEN IT COMES TO WRITING :

I love trying to tap into hidden intricacies that a character can have, especially when thrown into situations outside of what anime/manga/their universe usually portrays them in. Like people, fictional characters can also be fluid, non-immutable, pretty much dynamic in their own ways with their traits and development, ever-growing and ever-changing, all depending on what situations we put or imagine them in. The fact that this open-ended interpretation can lead to so many different versions of one character is probably one of my favorite things about RPing. All of our unique takes on a character are expressed in how we write them -- from that, we can even learn about the muns themselves.

FAVOURITE TYPES OF THREADS :

Oof, I’m such a slut for angst. I think the core of my favorite types of threads surrounds the idea of developing chemistry between the muses, regardless if that’s platonically or romantically. The bigger the bond/history, the wider the opportunities we have -- which is why I love throwing said bonds into states of chaos or other complications which test their strengths. After all, muses are just as fluid and dynamic as people in real life. Of course, while I do love angsty/complicated threads, fluff/domestic threads are also my favorite, especially when it’s a break from all the shit I throw my muse into. •╹◡╹•

BIGGEST STRUGGLE IN REGARDS TO YOUR CURRENT MUSE :

To be perfectly honest, when it comes to writing muses and not OC’s, I tend to be a lot more strict with myself in terms of accuracy with my portrayal. I don’t just want to write about my muses, I want them to be like the characters I love. That said, with Deku and the fact the manga is still ongoing, the biggest struggle in accurate portrayals is when it comes to situations outside of combat/training. Majority of the series surrounds his development as an aspiring hero, but most of the time I’d be writing him in more casual and even romantic situations. Tapping into Deku’s mindset is also a struggle, because despite how modest and meek his behavior can be, his brain is astoundingly analytical and observant, especially in time-constrained situations. He’s a nerd, a very keen nerd at that, and if I want to capture that aspect in his character then I’d need to think just as analytically nerdy as him.

#tag memes #about the mun memes #about the mun #long post

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suzanneshannon · 5 years ago

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Responsible JavaScript: Part III

You’ve done everything you thought was possible to address your website’s JavaScript problem. You relied on the web platform where you could. You sidestepped Babel and found smaller framework alternatives. You whittled your application code down to its most streamlined form possible. Yet, things are just not fast enough. When websites fail to perform the way we as designers and developers expect them to, we inevitably turn on ourselves:

“What are we failing to do?” “What can we do with the code we have written?” “Which parts of our architecture are failing us?”

These are valid inquiries, as a fair share of performance woes do originate from our own code. Yet, assigning blame solely to ourselves blinds us to the unvarnished truth that a sizable onslaught of our performance problems comes from the outside.

When the third wheel crashes the party

Convenience always has a price, and the web is wracked by our collective preference for it. JavaScript, in particular, is employed in a way that suggests a rapidly increasing tendency to outsource whatever it is that We (the first party) don’t want to do. At times, this is a necessary decision; it makes perfect financial and operational sense in many situations.

But make no mistake, third-party JavaScript is never cheap. It’s a devil’s bargain where vendors seduce you with solutions to your problem, yet conveniently fail to remind you that you have little to no control over the side effects that solution introduces. If a third-party provider adds features to their product, you bear the brunt. If they change their infrastructure, you will feel the effects of it. Those who use your site will become frustrated, and they aren’t going to bother grappling with an intolerable user experience. You can mitigate some of the symptoms of third parties, but you can’t cure the ailment unless you remove the solutions altogether—and that’s not always practical or possible.

In this installment of Responsible JavaScript, we’ll take a slightly less technical approach than in the previous installment. We are going to talk more about the human side of third parties. Then, we’ll go down some of the technical avenues for how you might go about tackling the problem.

Hindered by convenience

When we talk about the sorry state of the web today, some of us are quick to point out the role of developer convenience in contributing to the problem. While I share the view that developer convenience has a tendency to harm the user experience, they’re not the only kind of convenience that can turn a website into a sluggish, janky mess.

Operational conveniences can become precursors to a very thorny sort of technical debt. These conveniences are what we reach for when we can’t solve a pervasive problem on our own. They represent third-party solutions that address problems in the absence of architectural flexibility and/or adequate development resources.

Whenever an inconvenience arises, that is the time to have the discussion around how to tackle it in a way that’s comprehensive. So let’s talk about what it looks like to tackle that sort of scenario from a more human angle.

The problem is pain

The reason third parties come into play in the first place is pain. When a decision maker in an organization has felt enough pain around a certain problem, they’re going to do a very human thing, which is to find the fastest way to make that pain go away.

Markets will always find ways to address these pain points, even if the way they do so isn’t sustainable or even remotely helpful. Web accessibility overlays—third-party scripts that purport to automatically fix accessibility issues—are among the worst offenders. First, you fork over your money for a fix that doesn’t fix anything. Then you pay a wholly different sort of price when that “fix” harms the usability of your website. This is not a screed to discredit the usefulness of the tools some third-party vendors provide, but to illustrate how the adoption of third-party solutions happens, even those that are objectively awful

A Chrome performance trace of a long task kicked off by a third party’s web accessibility overlay script. The task occupies the main thread for roughly 600 ms on a 2017 Retina MacBook.

So when a vendor rolls up and promises to solve the very painful problem we’re having, there’s a good chance someone is going to nibble. If that someone is high enough in the hierarchy, they’ll exert downward pressure on others to buy in—if not circumvent them entirely in the decision-making process. Conversely, adoption of a third-party solution can also occur when those in the trenches are under pressure and lack sufficient resources to create the necessary features themselves.

Whatever the catalyst, it pays to gather your colleagues and collectively form a plan for navigating and mitigating the problems you’re facing.

Create a mitigation plan

Once people in an organization have latched onto a third-party solution, however ill-advised, the difficulty you’ll encounter in forcing a course change will depend on how urgent a need that solution serves. In fact, you shouldn’t try to convince proponents of the solution that their decision was wrong. Such efforts almost always backfire and can make people feel attacked and more resistant to what you’re telling them. Even worse, those efforts could create acrimony where people stop listening to each other completely, and that is a breeding ground for far worse problems to develop.

Grouse and commiserate amongst your peers if you must—as I myself have often done—but put your grievances aside and come up with a mitigation plan to guide your colleagues toward better outcomes. The nooks and crannies of your specific approach will depend on the third parties themselves and the structure of the organization, but the bones of it could look like the following series of questions.

What problem does this solution address?

There’s a reason why a third-party solution was selected, and this question will help you suss out whether the rationale for its adoption is sound. Remember, there are times decisions are made when all the necessary people are not in the room. You might be in a position where you have to react to the aftermath of that decision, but the answer to this question will lead you to a natural follow-up.

How long do we intend to use the solution?

This question will help you identify the solution’s shelf life. Was it introduced as a bandage, with the intent to remove it once the underlying problem has been addressed, such as in the case of an accessibility overlay? Or is the need more long-term, such as the data provided by an A/B testing suite? The other possibility is that the solution can never be effectively removed because it serves a crucial purpose, as in the case of analytics scripts. It’s like throwing a mattress in a swimming pool: it’s easy to throw in, but nigh impossible to drag back out.

In any case, you can’t know if a third-party script is here to stay if you don’t ask. Indeed, if you find out the solution is temporary, you can form a plan to eventually remove it from your site once the underlying problem it addresses has been resolved.

Who’s the point of contact if issues arise?

When a third-party solution is put into place, someone must be the point of contact for when—not if—issues arise.

I’ve seen what happens (far too often) when a third-party script gets out of control. For example, when a tag manager or an A/B testing framework’s JavaScript grows slowly and insidiously because marketers aren’t cleaning out old tags or completed A/B tests. It’s for precisely these reasons that responsibility needs to be attached to a specific person in your organization for third-party solutions currently in use on your site. What that responsibility entails will differ in every situation, but could include:

periodic monitoring of the third-party script’s footprint;

maintenance to ensure the third-party script doesn’t grow out of control;

occasional meetings to discuss the future of that vendor’s relationship with your organization;

identification of overlaps of functionality between multiple third parties, and if potential redundancies can be removed;

and ongoing research, especially to identify speedier alternatives that may act as better replacements for slow third-party scripts.

The idea of responsibility in this context should never be an onerous, draconian obligation you yoke your teammates with, but rather an exercise in encouraging mindfulness in your colleagues. Because without mindfulness, a third-party script’s ill effects on your website will be overlooked until it becomes a grumbling ogre in the room that can no longer be ignored. Assigning responsibility for third parties can help to prevent that from happening.

Ensuring responsible usage of third-party solutions

If you can put together a mitigation plan and get everyone on board, the work of ensuring the responsible use of third-party solutions can begin. Luckily for you, the actual technical work will be easier than trying to wrangle people. So if you’ve made it this far, all it will take to get results is time and persistence.

Load only what’s necessary

It may seem obvious, but load only what’s necessary. Judging by the amount of unused first-party JavaScript I see loaded—let alone third-party JavaScript—it’s clearly a problem. It’s like trying to clean your house by stuffing clutter into the closets. Regardless of whether they’re actually needed, it’s not uncommon for third-party scripts to be loaded on every single page, so refer to your point of contact to figure out which pages need which third-party scripts.

As an example, one of my past clients used a popular third-party tool across multiple brand sites to get a list of retailers for a given product. It demonstrated clear value, but that script only needed to be on a site’s product detail page. In reality, it was frequently loaded on every page. Culling this script from pages where it didn’t belong significantly boosted performance for non-product pages, which ostensibly reduced the friction on the conversion path.

Figuring out which pages need which third-party scripts requires you to do some decidedly untechnical work. You’ll actually have to get up from your desk and talk to the person who has been assigned responsibility for the third-party solution you’re grappling with. This is very difficult work for me, but it’s rewarding when good-faith collaboration happens, and good outcomes are realized as a result.

Self-host your third-party scripts

This advice isn’t a secret by any stretch. I even touched on it in the previous installment of this series, but it needs to be shouted from the rooftops at every opportunity: you should self-host as many third-party resources as possible. Whether this is feasible depends on the third-party script in question.

Is it some framework you’re grabbing from Google’s hosted libraries, cdnjs, or other similar provider? Self-host that sucker right now.

Casper found a way to self-host their Optimizely script and significantly reduced their start render time for their trouble. It really drives home the point that a major detriment of third-party resources is the fact that their mere existence on other servers is one of the worst performance bottlenecks we encounter.

If you’re looking to self-host an analytics solution or a similar sort of script, there’s a higher level of difficulty to contend with to self-host it. You may find that some third-party scripts simply can’t be self-hosted, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth the trouble to find out. If you find that self-hosting isn’t an option for a third-party script, don’t fret. There are other mitigations you can try.

Mask latency of cross-origin connections

If you can’t self-host your third-party scripts, the next best thing is to preconnect to servers that host them. WebPageTest’s Connection View does a fantastic job of showing you which servers your site gathers resources from, as well as the latency involved in establishing connections to them.

WebPageTest’s Connection View shows all the different servers a page requests resources from during load.

Preconnections are effective because they establish connections to third-party servers before the browser would otherwise discover them in due course. Parsing HTML takes time, and parsers are often blocked by stylesheets and other scripts. Wherever you can’t self-host third-party scripts, preconnections make perfect sense.

Maybe don’t preload third-party scripts

Preloading resources is one of those things that sounds fantastic at first—until you consider its potential to backfire, as Andy Davies points out. If you’re unfamiliar with preloading, it’s similar to preconnecting but goes a step further by instructing the browser to fetch a particular resource far sooner than it ordinarily would.

The drawback of preloading is that while it’s great for ensuring a resource gets loaded as soon as possible, it changes the discovery order of that resource. Whenever we do this, we’re implicitly saying that other resources are less important—including resources crucial to rendering or even core functionality.

It’s probably a safe bet that most of your third-party code is not as crucial to the functionality of your site as your own code. That said, if you must preload a third-party resource, ensure you’re only doing so for third-party scripts that are critical to page rendering.

If you do find yourself in a position where your site’s initial rendering depends on a third-party script, refer to your mitigation plan to see what you can do to eliminate or ameliorate your dependence on it. Depending on a third party for core functionality is never a good position to be in, as you’re relinquishing a lot of control to others who might not have your best interests in mind.

Lazy load non-essential third-party scripts

The best request is no request. If you have a third-party script that doesn’t need to be loaded right away, consider lazy loading it with an Intersection Observer. Here’s what it might look like to lazy load a Facebook Like button when it’s scrolled into the viewport:

In the above snippet, we first set a variable to track whether we’ve loaded the Facebook SDK JavaScript. After that, an IntersectionListener is created that checks whether the observed element is in the viewport, and whether the Facebook SDK has been loaded. If the SDK JavaScript hasn’t been loaded, a reference to it is injected into the DOM, which will kick off a request for it.

You’re not going to be able to lazy load every third-party script. Some of them simply need to do their work at page load time, or otherwise can’t be deferred. Regardless, do the detective work to see if it’s possible to lazy load at least some of your third-party JavaScript.

One of the common concerns I hear from coworkers when I suggest lazy loading third-party scripts is how it can delay whatever interactions the third party provides. That’s a reasonable concern, because when you lazy load anything, a noticeable delay may occur as the resource loads. You can get around this to some extent with resource prefetching. This is different than preloading, which we discussed earlier. Prefetching consumes a comparable amount of data, yes, but prefetched resources are given lower priority and are less likely to contend for bandwidth with critical resources.

Staying on top of the problem

Keeping an eye on your third-party JavaScript requires mindfulness bordering on hypervigilance. When you recognize poor performance for the technical debt that it truly is, you’ll naturally slip into a frame of mind where you’ll recognize and address it as you would any other kind of technical debt.

Staying on top of third parties is refactoring—a sort that requires you to periodically perform tasks such as cleaning up tag managers and A/B tests, consolidating third-party solutions, eliminating any that are no longer needed, and applying the coding techniques discussed above. Moreover, you’ll need to work with your team to address this technical debt on a cyclical basis. This kind of work can’t be automated, so yes, you’ll need to knuckle down and have face-to-face, synchronous conversations with actual people.

If you’re already in the habit of scheduling “cleanup sprints” on some interval, then that is the time and space for you to address performance-related technical debt, regardless of whether it involves third- or first-party code. There’s a time for feature development, but that time should not comprise the whole of your working hours. Development shops that focus only on feature development are destined to be wholly consumed by the technical debt that will inevitably result.

So it will come to pass that in the fourth and final installment of this series we’ll discuss what it means to do the hard work of using JavaScript responsibly in the context of process. Therein, we’ll explore what it takes to unite your organization under the banner of making your website faster and more accessible, and therefore more usable for everyone, everywhere.

Responsible JavaScript: Part III published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

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dippedanddripped · 5 years ago

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The rise of these digital-focused resale platforms, from Rebag and The RealReal to the various sneaker resellers like StockX and Goat, may seem like a problem for Crossroads Trading, a brick-and-mortar-only reseller that has been around for nearly 30 years, but Gina Nowicki, director of marketing and communications at Crossroads, said that’s not the case at all.

“Overall, it has benefited us a lot as a business,” Nowicki said. “Because what these online resellers have done is put a lot of marketing dollars into making secondhand clothing more mainstream. They’ve increased the share for everyone; the pie is bigger now — and people are liking the sustainability of it.”

Crossroads Trading is hoping to capitalize on the growth of the resale sector by doubling down on its physical retail strategy, something that it believes sets it apart from its competitors.

Nowicki said marketing Crossroads as a resale platform that’s distinct from thrift — which has been a goal, considering thrift’s cheap connotations — has also become easier.

“I would say that probably the turning point was with the economic downturn,” she said. “I’ve been with Crossroads since 2007. We didn’t use the word ‘thrift’ ever. We sell contemporary clothing, usually not more than 2 years old. But people were more open to resale during the economic downturn. It became cool to thrift and buy pre-owned.”

Most of the big players in the space today started online-only, like The RealReal, and have slowly expanded into physical retail over the years as it became clear that physical retail is still a valuable sales channel. But Crossroads, which has 37 stores and 500 total employees, has made physical retail its sole area of focus. Nowicki declined to give specific revenue numbers, but the most recent figures available placed the company’s annual revenue at $21 million in 2012.

“A lot of digital brands are starting to move toward physical stores,” Nowicki said. “We don’t have any online business at all. We don’t plan on doing that, either. As the other online competitors come into this marketplace, we want to make sure we address convenience for our customers so that we don’t fall behind — but we find that there are a lot of people who are still looking for that physical experience. They still want cash and trade with no waiting. They want to try things on. When clothes are used and washed and worn, you want to see the condition in person. People still care about that a lot.”

Resellers like StockX have turned to physical retail to entice new buyers and sellers and to streamline some of the processes that can take much longer if conducted entirely digitally — it can take days or weeks for a product to be shipped, received, entered into a system and authenticated before a payment is delivered to a seller. In July, Scott Newman, director of streetwear at StockX, told Glossy that consumers sometimes need the “face-to-face interaction to get across the line” and convert.

“Whether stores are selling their own goods or secondhand items, they’re all realizing the name of the game today is offering an optimal customer experience,” said Corey Pierson, CEO of customer analytics company Custora. “The line between ‘online commerce’ and ‘offline commerce’ is blurring. The same customers who prefer to go in-store to buy apparel might also enjoy browsing secondhand items while they’re there. The same customers who browse secondhand items online might also be interested in seeing similar items direct from brands themselves. The main idea is to meet the consumer where he or she is shopping, and to provide the optimal selection wherever that is.”

Crossroads Trading’s closest thing to online sales is a sell-by-mail option, where customers can ship in their unwanted clothes remotely rather than bringing them to a physical location. Instead, to stay competitive, the company has put all its resources into improving the physical aspect of shopping, opening two or three new stores per year for the foreseeable future and continuing to build out an in-store app developed in 2017, which allows customers to plan their sales and purchases before they reach the store. Currently, the app lets potential customers add themselves to the queue of a seller looking to offload clothes and to receive notifications when it’s their turn to shop the seller’s items– no need to enter a store.

For sellers, Crossroads is competitive with newer platforms like The RealReal. Both platforms offer individual sellers 50% of the price their items are tagged.

Nowicki said there’s more than enough room in the resale space for Crossroads to focus on physical retail while competitors focus on digital.

“It’s a tricky thing to do online sales,” Nowicki said. “For us, going online would mean taking on an enormous amount of new responsibilities: taking the clothes online, sorting them, photographing them, storing them, shipping them. We can still get a lot out of physical stores.”

#brick and mortar #crossroads trading #streetwear blog #fashion blog #the realreal #womens streetwear #womensfashion #womenssportswear #menswear blog #menswear #contemporary menswear #vintage menswear

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