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internetandnetwork · 4 years ago

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6 Things You Should Know When You Step Into the PPC World

Have you just started your PPC journey? This is one of the most interesting spheres in marketing, and it is ever-changing and evolving. However, when you first step into this world, there are a few things you must be aware of (well, at least we wish somebody told us about them). When you are new to PPC, everything will seem very exciting as well as challenging at the same time. But in order to master it, you must understand its scope completely first.

In this blog, we are going to discuss the six helpful things that will make this journey a smooth one for you.

Utilize the Opportunities to Learn

Earlier, the opportunities to learn were scanty, and new PPC executives had to become determined researchers in order to find programs.

Meanwhile, now numerous PPC platforms have started offering plenty of advanced training.

Now you can find lots of certification programs that go in-depth into PPC and help boost your knowledge. Moreover, these programs also allow the candidates to secure various career opportunities in this field.

When it comes to polishing your skill set, these top online paid media platforms won’t ever disappoint you:

Google Skillshop

Microsoft Advertising

Amazon Advertising Learning Console

Facebook Blueprint

Pinterest Academy

Making Mistakes Is Part of the Process and It’s Okay

You must have heard that, in life, it is essential to learn from the mistakes. In fact, most of our important life lessons come from those mistakes.

Although making mistakes in PPC can be thwarting and sometimes cost you a lot.

But fortunately, we don’t usually see a lot of sudden fully-fledged implosions here.

Tracking the performance in real-time and taking immediate actions will help in finding out and preventing the paid media disasters before they take place.

These are the four things you should focus on to steer clear of making costly mistakes in PPC:

Budget and bid settings – Incorrect set up can lead to your PPC account overspending or exhausting the ad budget on irrelevant clicks.

Account Structure – If you don’t organize your account structure in a way that aligns with your intended strategic direction, your PPC goals will not be achieved.

Targeted Keywords – Using too many keywords or wrong keyword match types can stop your ad from reaching the right/target audience.

Inappropriate Expansion – Untimely or inappropriate expansion into additional audiences or targeting will ruin your ad reach and performance.

Moreover, when it comes to PPC, it is always good to learn from the mistakes of other people.

Typically, every PPC training program will train you in things you should do, but they don’t tell you the things you should strictly avoid doing.

Now, this is where partnering up with other peers in your industry, conducting thorough research, and plenty of reading comes into play.

Blogs, articles, podcasts, and physical meetings are great places to listen to PPC war tales and utilize these stories to determine what you should and shouldn’t do to avoid making the same big, costly mistakes.

Educate Other People on PPC

There was lots of confusion and wrong/lack of information for people working in the PPC sector in the past.

How much does one-click cost? What is an Ad Auction?

Why is Quality Score important?

But the most scary and mysterious among all was the information regarding click frauds.

Most of the time, those in PPC were unable to get answers to tricky questions at once; therefore, the whole learning and updating process was going on always earlier.

As the PPC marketing world started growing progressively popular over the past decade, organizations and new marketers become more knowledgeable.

Moreover, the skills of PPC professionals will now be going in-depth on technical tasks and strategic approaches, making things even more exciting.

PPC Platforms and Features Are Ever-Changing

If you don’t know it already, here’s a fun fact about PPC that your learning and work in this domain are never “finished.”

With new updates, features, and releases rolling out for our favorite paid media platforms always keeps PPC professionals alert and attentive, ever ready to adapt to the changes.

Although at times, all these changes demand just a little bit of tweaking by the PPC managers. And sometimes, they require changing or restructuring the whole campaign or account and putting your time as well as efforts in conveying these changes to your clients or company and getting them on board with it.

In addition to all this, as a PPC manager, you will have to describe these changes thoroughly to the concerned people, manage the project, implement all the changes, and then monitor its impact on your campaigns.

This is what makes a PPC executive’s job so difficult – working in an environment that keeps changing continuously.

And in case you are working in eCommerce, it’s an entirely different scenario.

User Behavior Is Always Changing

User behavior will eventually change, be it now or years later; it is inevitable and only a matter of how and when.

For instance, during the last decade, we witnessed a big shift from desktops to smartphones, and today more than half of the total web searches happen using mobile devices.

Then a couple of years ago, we saw a shift from keywords to audiences giving way to a more audience-centric marketing and audience-powered approach.

Forget about what happened years ago; the biggest example is right in front of our eyes – all the changes that have occurred during this Covid-19 outbreak.

This pandemic has completely transformed how we live, work, eat, communicate, and travel, among others. It has also changed the way customers search for products and services online.

A lot of elements together influence user behavior. Here are some factors, along with common examples that you should keep in mind:

Platform usage changes – People of specific demographics shifting to Instagram from Google.

Social trends – Celebrity news and gossips, sports events

Search habits – Including “near me” in web searches

Device usage – Wearables

Universal trends – Climate change, disruptive innovations

Political trends – Court cases, elections

Become a Part of the PPC Community

As soon as you enter the world of PPC, it won’t take you much longer to develop a sense of comradeship with your other peers working in the same industry as you.

Online meetings and regular conferences will help expand your PPC network vigorously.

Having mutual interests and the evergreen shoptalk will help you discover new tips, strategies, and more information about different platforms.

However, considering the current situation, most of these interacting opportunities have been limited and gone online for our own good, of course. Still, even then, online platforms offer unparalleled access, and at times it’s free too!

Joining Linkedin and Facebook groups and other professional business memberships and participating in group discussions actively are an excellent way of becoming a part of the PPC community and partner up with co-workers.

Conclusion

One of the many things that no course will tell you is that you will be working in a super dynamic environment that keeps changing and how you can navigate through those changes as a PPC professional.

However, that surprise and constant change are what keeps the PPC specialists excited about their work.

These were the six things you should know when you are new to this industry. Keep them in mind and start your beautiful journey with enough information to keep you going without hindering your growth.

Hariom Balhara is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles for E Global Soft Solutions. E Global Soft Solutions is a digital marketing, seo, smo, ppc and web development company that comes with massive experiences. We specialize in digital marketing, web designing and development, graphic design, and a lot more.

SOURCE : 6 Things You Should Know When You Step Into the PPC World

#marketing #E Global Soft Solutions #Keywords #digital marketing #PPC #SEO

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wemarkwatson · 4 years ago

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How Can Help Desk Tickets Improve Your Business by Making it More Efficient?

Every company wants to evolve and grow, but in order to do so it must firstly make sure that the communications between departments and clients are top notch. One way of ensuring this is done properly is by introducing a help desk tickets protocol in order to streamline the protocol. But to do this a company has to find the right CRM platform. Among the first choices for almost every company is First Data CRM. With almost half of century of experience, the people behind First Data know what they are doing and are dedicated to offering the best services and greatest features to all of their clients.

How Do Help Desk Tickets Work?

Solving problems for both customers and employees in a company can be hard sometimes. There are a lot of people asking a lot of questions and a lot of information is flying around, sometimes chaotically. Trying to make heads or tails of the entire thing is hard, especially if you also have a company to run and want the best for both employees and customers. This is why special systems and protocols have been developed over the years in order to help people better explain the problems they are having and to give the ones in charge of handling it a better understanding of the nature of the problem. For instance, the customer call center of a company can be sometimes practically bombarded with calls from clients with various questions and problems. Or the IT department can have a lot on its plate with people from other departments.

This is why most companies employ a help desk tickets system. This system helps the ones in charge of dealing with the problems better manage what they are up against. This way they have a much clearer image of what the problem is and can prioritize it along with the others of the day. Also, tickets help them know which department or customer asked for what and this way information doesn’t get lost. Creating help desk tickets is easy and transmitting them from one person to another, or even to another department, is done without any stress or problems.

Help desk tickets are also a great way of keeping track of what employees are doing. For instance, a manager can check in at any time and see how many tickets an employee has in his queue and how many he has resolved. This way he always knows who’s done the most and the hardest work. So, when bonus time comes around, they know who is worthy.

Help desk tickets are also very helpful for clients. Sometimes people have difficulties in reaching the right department or person to help them with whatever it is they might need helping with. Special software enables clients to choose from a pre-loaded list of options just what they need. These software programs work just like in interactive FAQ section. Once the customer has described his problem using the available options, the ticket is generated and automatically sent off to the right person from the right department in order for it to be solved. This comes in very handy especially when a client doesn’t really understand what the problem is and can’t give a detailed description in order for the person at the other end of the phone to go on.

More and more companies have adopted and implemented such a system. But you don’t have to create yours from scratch. CRM developers have understood how important these tickets can be and how useful they are especially to growing companies. And so, they’ve started incorporating features into their products that lets users generate and manage these tickets in order to be more efficient and cut overhead costs. But, although many CRM platforms offer these features, you should make sure that you choose the right CRM platform for the job. Some of them can be tricky to use while others might be better for bigger companies and not so much for small emerging ones. Take your time and do some research before signing up with the first one you find on your Google search.

Who Are First Data CRM?

One of the leading CRM solution developers on the market right now is also one of the oldest in the business. First Data CRM was created in 1971 in Omaha, Nebraska. Back then it was called simply First Data, and it provided processing services for the Mid-American Bankcard Association. In 1976, the company started processing Visa and MasterCard, being the first ones to do so. By 1989 First Data Corporation was created thanks to American Express Information Services buying 80% of the company’s stock.

First Data CRM has since become the leading payment industry merchant processors, helping 6 million merchants. They handle around 3,000 transactions every second of every day, which comes up at about $2.2 trillion every year. They are such a big part of the industry, that their reports are used by renowned news networks such as The New York Times and Bloomberg.

The company partnered with Bank of America in 2009 in order to create the Bank of America Merchant Services. In 2013 they acquired the POS startup Clover and in 2014 they followed that up with another startup named Gyft. Last year, Fiserv merged with First Data CRM as a result of a $22 billion deal. This was the move that brought the company into the 21st century and ensured it a place among the greatest in this industry.

First Data CRM is one of the biggest and the best customer relations management solutions company, with over 40 years of experience and a portfolio envied by many. Their goal today, as it was back then, is to offer the best services possible to both merchants and ISOs. With their features and integrations, this CRM solution is one of the best there is.

#First Data CRM help desk tickets

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workrockin · 6 years ago

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Remembering the days we spent chasing congalala, understanding lifi and taking a look at Intel's AX200 wireless card

Summer is at its peak, Rain is around the corner. Soon the heavy clouds will leak, So says my trusty informer.

Between you and me as you might have perceived, but nevertheless I will come out and say it in clear terms, to remove any remaining doubt, that I’m no expert in wireless technology. The whole thing seems to me quite astonishing infact. There lies a box in the corner holding a wand. You (s)witch it on and it will send you data over the air. What sorcery is that?

However many people have pointed out to me that it is no magic. On the contrary it is a phenomenon that has been studied scientists,verified by engineers and regulated law makers. It is very much real. So I take their word for it and believe in it myself.

But technology changes so quickly. Just as we have broken the gigabit barrier in wifi a new invention has come up. LiFi or Light Fidelity a new form of communication that promises something even more incredible. To use visible light for wireless transmission. Our readers demand to know its status. We scramble for answers.

And before we could satisfactorily answer one query more questions are raised. It is in these trying times we come to accept our limitations. However we don’t let that stop us. After many hours of reading arcane specifications and trying to make sense of this rapidly progressing world of communication technology we present our thoughts to you on the matter, hoping that you’ll be so kind as to pardon the inconsistencies and factual errors that may have mistakenly crept in despite the most careful efforts of a tired staff.

What happened to LiFi technology?

Thank you for A2A. Light is an electromagnetic wave. It is already the most dominant form communication in both wireless and wired varieties. Fiber optic communication which powers today’s internet broadband service uses light. Wireless communication such as wifi [1] and Bluetooth use electromagnetic spectrum of light. TV remotes have used IR waves for switching channels.

So there is precedent in using light waves for communication in modern world.

LIFI intends to use visible light signals for wireless communication. Note the emphasis on visible light. We are not talking about radio waves here. We mean light we can see. Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow,Orange and Red. Including UV and IR (IR as we have noted has already had a very successful implementation in remote controls for TV )

The idea is good. But the implementation is going to be tricky because of following reasons

Client support. Even if you build base stations for wireless visible light communication how are you going to get users to use them? Lot of work needs to be done in this area. There is however no reason that signals can’t be transformed from visible light to other already supported mediums like wifi to provide communication.

Visible light affects humans. So the intensity of light must be kept low. At lower intensities will the technology reduce to point to point communication? If so what happens to roaming devices? These are the questions I have not found answers to. Considering the negative press that 5G is getting for its millimeter wave , the use of UV in LIFI is going to be a PR nightmare. I can already hear cries from beauty experts on how LIFI is damaging their skin!

LIFI positions itself as a short range communication medium. That gives it protection against hackers. [2] At short range, lets say within room how can it be cheaper than a near free Ethernet cable that has universal support? Especially in the industrial application where LIFI aims to reduce electromagnetic interference. The easiest/cheapest way is to use wired communication. I might care about aesthetics in my hotel lobby. But in a workplace I want something reliable and well supported. If LIFI had increased distance transmission capacity say more than 70 M then it would have been a better substitute.

So to answer your question. LIFI is promising. But like every new invention LIFI needs to overcome technological, economical and marketing challenges. These things will take time. I’m sure that it will find a niche that will transform into a big industry. But its going to take time.

Talking about niches there’s one upcoming technology called optical computing [3](utilized in what is known as a photonic computer) that could replace electronic circuits. At the moment fiber optic cables are used to transmit light. In an optical computer therefore it would make sense that fiber optic cables would form the data transfer medium.

Here lifi technology could be utilized. In a controlled environment like inside of a CPU case you can benefit from all the positives of visible light communication while experiencing none of the negatives.

[1] Is LIFI a substitute for WIFI? https://www.quora.com/Is-LiFi-a-...

[2] “The light waves cannot penetrate walls which makes a much shorter range, though more secure from hacking, relative to Wi-Fi.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Fi

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_computing

What was your amazing experience with wireless technology?

It was raining outside. Power was out. We were supposed to be attending lecture. We skipped. I turned on my psp. My friend did the same. I had the black one. His was jet blue, slim.

We were going to hunt Congalala. He was a low level monster. An ape. Quick on his feet. Fond of fart bombing his enemies. Ice was his weakness. So we crafted out ice elemental weapons. Still he was too good for us.

We died often and when we didn’t we ran out of time. You must finish a quest within 50 minutes. Or else its game over. We were novice hunters in those days. Knew little about the habitat of the beast we were hunting. Even less about the mysterious jungle in which he dwelled.

We played and played until the battery ran out. But he got the best of us. We lost all our money. Our equipment was rendered useless. Our preparation futile. The beast won every time we attempted to take him down.

That was the start of an epic 700 hour long wireless multiplayer campaign. I haven’t felt the same way about any other game since. Even now a decade later sometimes I dream about Monster Hunter.

At that time psp was a very competent multiplayer device. A 32 bit arm 9 chip powered its 802.11b wifi. Upto 16 players could play simultaneously. But most games allowed only 4. Enabling a speed of upto 11 mbps back in 2005. It was unlike anything the world had seen before. A handheld [2]multiplayer gaming device that could stream!

Monster hunter was a sensational adhoc multiplayer success. Selling a combined total of 10M copies in japan alone.

That was 11 years ago. Multiplayer games these days need internet to work . If you don’t have a fast connection or if the server is taken down you’re out of luck. I do see a change around the corner. Game streaming is becoming more common now. We’ll need different kind of devices to [1] enable this kind of gaming. Those devices will most probably be wireless. That’s the amazing experience that I’ll be looking forward to.

[1] Return of wireless adhoc multiplayer. https://workrockin.quora.com/Ret...

[2] Nintendo Switch’s wireless capabilities look extremely promising for the future of gaming (https://workrockin.quora.com/The-wireless-features-of-Nintendo-switch)

How fast is Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 wireless network adapter card?

Thank you for A2A. The chip can do 2.4 gbps but only if you’re using 5ghz channel. Otherwise 573.6 mpbs on 2.4 ghz.

To calculate speeds look at the data rates table on wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IE...

The max speed is in the lowest column (#11) on the table. As an example assume we want to calculate the max speed of 2.4 ghz.

2.4 ghz band can have a max width of 40 mhz. And according to the spec [1] we have 2 transmitters. So the max speed in 2.4 ghz band is

2*286.8 = 573.6 mbps

Similarly 5ghz band can have a max of

2 * 1.2 =2.4 gbps

Some more details on the AX200 hardware

intel launched AX200 wifi 6 chip [1] last month. It is competitively priced between $10-$17 [2] . Before we take a look at the hardware it would be good to start with a brief on wifi 6

Wifi 6 is is technically defined by 802.11ax standard. Although it works in both 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands the highest speed in 160 mhz channel is only attainable in 5ghz band. And since 5ghz has lesser range than 2.4 ghz it means that you can only enjoy the highest speed at lesser distances. [3]

Max speed on a single radio, widest (160 mhz) channel is 1.2 gbps.

Since the standard works in both 2.4 and 5ghz bands it is backwards compatible with all other wifi standards. Which means that all your wifi client devices will work with a wifi 6 access point whether they themselves support wifi 6 or not. [3]

With that out of the way lets see what chip has for us in terms of hardware

2 transmission and 2 receive radios. Which means that we get a max throughput of 1.2*2= 2.4 gbps (note the point #2 above)

Dual band support with max channel width of 160 MHZ.

Integrated support for bluetooth 5.

Not bad for its price I’d say [4].

[1] https://ark.intel.com/content/ww...

[2] When purchased in volumes of thousands. This price is only for device manufacturers. But this is also good news for consumers because they’ll be getting the latest networking technology at cheap prices.

[3] FCC has a test report for the chip in which they specify the supported modulation schemes (page 6). BPSK, QPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM, 256QAM. Which confirms the backwards compatibility with all wifi standards.

Note that the FCC document only measures up to 256-QAM. But intel’s product page indicates a max speed of 2.4 gbps which means that it should support 1024-QAM. I’m not sure why it is not covered in the fcc document.

https://fccid.io/PD9AX200D2L/RF-Exposure-Info/RF-Exposure-SAR-Report-4213237.pdf

[4] The actual performance that you’ll achieve will also depend upon the hardware of your system. The wireless card is mostly a peripheral and its optimal performance is contingent on the capabilities of host device.

Looking for someone to help you with your wifi problems? We ar ehere to help. Email us on

[email protected]

write to us on our tumblr page

[https://workrockin.tumblr.com/ask]

[https://twitter.com/workrockin]

connect with us on linkedin

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/workrock-careers-21b3a2186/]

Happy networking!

Santiago,Chile

#wifi #gaming #internet

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onlinemarketinghelp · 6 years ago

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16 Reasons to Start a Business http://bit.ly/2UzDPFW

Starting a business can be a life-changing experience. It can also seem like a scary one if you’ve never done it before. So you daydream about it, imagining yourself as rich as Jeff Bezos, as innovative as Sara Blakely, and as ambitious as Jack Ma. Future you is going to dominate the world. But today you is a little bit nervous about what starting a business entails. Truth is, we need future you now more than ever, so let’s break down the reasons to start a business to give you that kick in the butt you desperately need.

16 Reasons to Start a Business

1. Work From Anywhere

There’s something magical about the daydream of you drinking a daiquiri or a beer on the beach working on your laptop at sunset. It almost feels surreal – doing what you love where you’ve always dreamed of being. And while it can be hard to use your laptop with the sun’s glare on your screen, truth is working from anywhere does have its perks. You can run your business from your laptop during a flight to an exotic destination. Or at a coffee shop, library, coworking space, home, and basically any other place with a Wi-Fi connection. Let’s be honest, nobody wants to work in the same boring place all the time. So if you’re looking for the freedom to work anywhere, you can add this to your list of reasons to start a business. You might also find that the digital nomad lifestyle is for you.

Shopify entrepreneur and globetrotter DJ Jammison shares, “I became an entrepreneur so I could take back my time freedom, financial freedom and travel the world. I was forced to drop out of college because I could no longer afford it & then got a job as a custodian. That’s what motivated me. I started my journey in 2013 and I never looked back. I began with Affiliate Marketing and then transitioned to E-commerce with Shopify & Oberlo late 2015. Fast forward to 2019, I run my online business with just a laptop while traveling the world.”

2. It’s in Your Blood

Kyla Denault, Founder of Easy Breezy Dogs, explains, “It’s in my blood. Both my parents were entrepreneurs and they always told me to do something you enjoy and brings you happiness. I have had multiple side hustles from starting the first cage-free dog kennel in Ottawa, to selling Cedar Barrel saunas, selling tea, organizing speed dating events, selling pet products to currently owning Easy Breezy Dog Training. I love the creation of an idea, the research, taking a risk, implementation. My favorite quote that I have hanging in my livingroom is, ‘Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”

3. Experience Freedom

If you ask people why they started a business, experiencing freedom would be at the top of most lists. More people are taking Ariana Grande’s 7 Rings advice, “I want it, I got it.” From taking vacations when you want to waking up at any hour of the day, running a business allows complete control over how to schedule your day, your breaks, who you spend time with, what days you work, working around your energy levels, and more. The biggest reason for starting a business is that your life is back under your full control.

4. To Find Others With Similar Interests

Kray Mitchell, Founder of the magic trick accessories store Tricky Fingers, tells us, “I started my current business because I felt there was an opportunity to provide more of an elite branding to magic in Canada. While the classics have their place, I wanted to provide a curated selection of products that were both highly visual and highly rated. I wanted to provide my customers with an amazing experience online and post purchase. I love magic, and I love watching magicians, so the more magicians I help to live their passion, the more I get to enjoy too. It’s win-win.”

5. Feed Your Family

A solid reason to start a business comes down to supporting your family. In life, family comes first always. It’s not just about putting food on the table, it’s also about making sure your family has money to create special memories together with vacations, weekend getaways at the cottage, trips to the amusement park, or a special birthday party for your young child. And it’s important to make sure your children are set up to be successful – tutors, sports or dance classes, hobbies, books, and more. By starting a business, you can help provide a higher quality of life for your family that a 9 to 5 job just can’t match.

6. To Create a Product You Need

Maya Page, Founder of the cannabidiol product store Oilly CBD, explains, “I started my own business because the entire process of purchasing CBD oil frustrated me. I’m just a midwestern mom – I didn’t need chocolate haze-flavored CBD oil! I just needed a clean product that was effective and most importantly, organically grown.

“Since CBD is not yet regulated, there is so much misinformation out there. Each company seems to have different labeling techniques and dosing, which, in the end, left me with more questions than answers. With my background in launching businesses, I decided to go straight to the source.

“I knew others felt my frustrations, so I decided to start my own line. This way, I knew exactly what was in the formula. I started this business out of necessity, but also with the hope to help bridge the gap between an amazing product and the end user.”

7. Escape the 9 to 5

Ugh, the dreadful 9 to 5 job. The 9 to 5 can be a place where your dreams go to die. Why do we invest so much of our energy and time to help others realize their dreams without investing in ourselves first? You deserve to wake up at a time of your choice, work in a career you love, and make money for yourself. And by starting a business, you can do all that and so much more.

8. To Give Back

Arthur Ishkaev, Founder of Strike Your Coin, shares, “I have been collecting coins since my early childhood. I was collecting different kinds of coins from my native country first. Then I started collecting coins from other countries. When we arrived in Canada at the end of 2016 with my family, we noticed all the preparations for the upcoming Canada 150 Anniversary. I thought about how I can contribute to this country that welcomed us so nicely in order to make history! I decided to make a commemorative Canada 150 coin that anyone can strike with a sledge hammer.

“My first souvenir coin turned out to be a big success, driving a lot of interest and also getting me featured on CBC Ottawa News. This has motivated me to start my entrepreneurship journey so that anyone interested can have their personalized coin minted at their event. Now I am invited to weddings and private parties as well as corporate events, and share this joy of striking souvenir coins with all event guests.”

9. Take Ownership of Your Career

Pay raises, promotions, and company guidelines tend to be outside of your control. Whereas when running a business, you get as much as you put into it. If you invest in heavily marketing your products, you’ll generate more sales than someone who didn’t. At your 9 to 5 job, your career growth and income is capped. The average company pay raise is about 3.1% each year. And that pay jump usually coincides with inflation going up so you’re not really making as much money as you think. If you’re looking to advance in your career, the easiest way to do that is to start a business. Why? Because entrepreneurship requires you to learn and master a lot of business skills allowing you to experience the level of growth your day gig can’t match.

10. You’re Inspired

Mark Ranson, Founder of the fashion store Mark & Vy, shares, “I studied IT at university but it was probably Tim Ferriss’ book, ‘The 4-Hour Workweek’ which solidified the idea that an e-commerce business could really be a viable option for me. I hated the corporate life, being tied to a cubicle for long hours, and I wanted to grow something myself from the ground up. It would take a number of years, moving to Vietnam and meeting my wife before these plans would really come to fruition however.

Vietnam is home to some master tailors and my wife grew up in a tailor’s shop, with many relatives also working in this profession. Our particular passion is traditional Vietnamese dresses called ‘ao dai’, and the amazing quality of the tailoring which goes into every single dress from the best tailors. We wanted to help bring these beautiful, elegant dresses to the world, and particularly those who don’t have access to high quality tailors in the home countries, and hence our brand ‘mark&vy’ was born.”

11. Quit a Job You Hate

Annoying coworkers, bad managers, lack of recognition, and an unfulfilling role can all contribute to the dread you feel every morning before heading to work. Why spend 40 hours a week doing something you hate? Don’t say to make money because there are a ton of ways to make money online. Seriously, why do you keep torturing yourself when there are so many other options. Do you realize how talented you are? Your company interviewed countless people, but they ultimately hired you. If your recruiter and boss believed in you, what’s stopping you from believing in yourself? You can succeed as an entrepreneur. Don’t be the person blocking your own success.

12. Create Jobs

Maybe you grew up in a home where your family lived paycheck to paycheck, or you watched seasonal workers in your family get laid off each year. A popular reason to start a business sometimes comes from wanting to create jobs to help other families. Some entrepreneurs love that they can give back an opportunity that someone once gave them: a paying job. This altruistic reason to start a business leads to a sense of fulfillment and purpose, which keeps entrepreneurs motivated for years to come.

13. To Kill Boredom

Hassan Alnassir, Founder of Premium Joy, says, “I got quite bored from the daily job as an engineer. After several years of service, it felt like a massive waste of my precious time. The working hours were overly long, and I didn’t genuinely love what I was performing. The most attractive alternative to the tedious job which I thought about was establishing my own business and selling products online. Being an entrepreneur would give me back my time and allow me to enjoy working. I initially thought the task of creating the website would be overwhelming, but Shopify made it simple to launch the online store for my business in only one month through customizing an existing theme.”

14. Pursue Your Passion

“Choose a job you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” Motivational quotes like this one from Confucius remind you that you can pursue your passion to live a happier life. And I know that some people will tell you that some passions aren’t profitable to discourage you from doing it. But remember it wasn’t too long ago that video gamers first realized they can make money streaming their game time. And there are beauty bloggers who now make money from video tutorials, selling beauty products, and influencer posts. So remember, if your passion is tied to a niche, you can and will find a way to start a successful business doing what you love.

15. Build Something

Some of today’s most powerful businesses were built by creators. You can create an app, a blog, an online store, an ebook, graphic designs, etc. By taking those creations and promoting it to a relevant audience you can start your journey as an entrepreneur. Many entrepreneurs start businesses because of their obsession with creation. They recognize that their ability to turn nothing into something tangible that’ll help or entertain others motivates them to create more. Creators are the doers of the world which is why it makes perfect sense why so many of them turn to entrepreneurship.

16. Create a Legacy

Unless machines take over our consciousness in our lifetime, there’s a chance that in a few generations after our death we’ll no longer be remembered. Scary thought, I know. So, how can you become memorable? You can build something that outlives you. You can build a business. If you want to be remembered long after you’re gone, you can build a brand that outlives you that continues on for generations. You don’t have to build something innovative or unique, you just need to build something that lasts. You can start with an online store focusing on getting those first few sales. And as the years pass and your brand grows, your impact in that niche can expand into other categories and serve customers in ways they don’t expect. Building a legacy won’t happen overnight. However, the steps you take today can lead to a huge impact in the world a few years from now.

Conclusion

They say that half the battle of building a business is starting. It’s true. Those daydreams you’re living in aren’t real. I know it’s terrifying to take a risk and to take a chance on yourself. But how is it fair that your boss becomes a millionaire when you’re slaving away doing all the work? What skills do you crush your coworkers at that can help you succeed on your own in the long run? Do you want your boss in the driver’s seat when it comes to how much money you make? No. So, who’s ready to start a business? YOU are.

Check out millions of products you can start selling on your own website today.

Want to Learn More?

60 Shopify Stores to Use as Inspiration for Your New Business

30+ Business Ideas for New Entrepreneurs

20 Trending Products You Can Start Selling Today

10 Best Side Hustles That’ll Ease You Out of Your 9 to 5 Job

The post 16 Reasons to Start a Business appeared first on Oberlo.

from Oberlo

16 Reasons to Start a Business

1. Work From Anywhere

2. It’s in Your Blood

3. Experience Freedom

4. To Find Others With Similar Interests

5. Feed Your Family

6. To Create a Product You Need

7. Escape the 9 to 5

8. To Give Back

9. Take Ownership of Your Career

10. You’re Inspired

11. Quit a Job You Hate

12. Create Jobs

13. To Kill Boredom

14. Pursue Your Passion

15. Build Something

16. Create a Legacy

Conclusion

Check out millions of products you can start selling on your own website today.

Want to Learn More?

60 Shopify Stores to Use as Inspiration for Your New Business

30+ Business Ideas for New Entrepreneurs

20 Trending Products You Can Start Selling Today

10 Best Side Hustles That’ll Ease You Out of Your 9 to 5 Job

The post 16 Reasons to Start a Business appeared first on Oberlo.

http://bit.ly/2Gm2wgm April 15, 2019 at 04:00AM http://bit.ly/2UXmhTB

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endenogatai · 5 years ago

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Fleksy rolls out an SDK for its AI keyboard

The developers behind Fleksy have launched an SDK for Android and iOS to scale demand for white labelling of their AI keyboard software which bakes in privacy-safe next-word prediction. Swipe-style input (which it calls Fleksywave) is also in beta and slated to roll out soon.

Fleksy competes for smartphone users’ digits with giants like Google’s Gboard and Microsoft -owned Swiftkey, offering a standalone Android keyboard app with smart app suggestions — and the differentiating pledge that your personal information is safe from data mining (as the AI runs locally).

Barcelona-based ThingThing took over development of the Fleksy keyboard in 2017, after the original team had been acqui-hired by Pinterest. The Spanish startup went on to fully acquire the keyboard tech — setting themselves up to build out a licensing business where they can offer fully flexible white labelling for app (or device) makers that want to offer a custom keyboard to their users.

The indie dev team behind the keyboard app reckon the bulk of their revenue will be coming from b2b licensing down the line. “We’re growing really fast on that market,” says CEO Olivier Plante. “Conversion is surprisingly high… The projections show that the b2b SDK business will represent at least 60%-70% of own business model.”

One such earlier implementation of the tech saw the Fleksy keyboard deployed on the ultramobile Palm handset. It’s had other device makers as customers, as well as customizing keyboards for third party apps in spaces such a cyber safety, healthcare and government, per Plante, though he says they’re under NDA so aren’t able to disclose the names of any other customers.

While the team has been doing custom implementations of Fleksy on an ad hoc basis for a while now, the SDK opens the door to scaling this side of the business.

“Since the companies need it we see that the licensing model is quite promising for us, and now we have this tool that gives them the ability to work on their own — with little help. So it’s really about this scalability,” he tells TechCrunch . “We quickly saw it was important to scale this.”

In terms of where demand is coming from, Plante says they’re seeing traction from Europe and the U.S., and also have some customers in Asia and Africa. “This is where we really sit in the sweet spot,” he argues. “We’re European, so privacy is with us. Antitrust laws are with us — and then, on the other side, the big giants don’t have those types of interesting projects on the side. It’s all mass scale and those types of things.”

“The Chinese and Asian competition is just not in that touch point with Europe and the Americas,” he adds. “They’re out of reach and they’re very hard to deal with is what we heard, in terms of just language barriers and the way they work. Fear of being copied and these types of things.”

On specific use cases for a custom keyboard, he says customers come with “very, very different needs”. And sometimes after having tried to build their own keyboard — before deciding that the level of polish required to get a “proper keyboard” means they’ve bitten off more than they can chew.

“Some of them are in cyber safety,” he says of current licensees. “They are trying to solve a problem where there is maybe data leaks, protection of the individual against a greater threat. On the other side they are governments that are trying to make their messaging app really secure — so the keyboard and the message app are one encapsulated whole that cannot be penetrated… We also have demand in the medical environment.”

Plante points out the security risk of having a secure messaging app user who’s running a third party keyboard which uploads user data to the cloud. “You have a high risk of a data leak,” he argues.

“One particular common ground with all these players is this focus on ‘your technology’s offline; there’s no contact with the external world. There’s no tricky things you’re trying to do [in the background]. You’re exactly what we need and you have exactly the flexibility that we need’,” he adds. “What we focus on is providing our technology — we don’t deal with any personal data handling whatsoever… we don’t want to deal with that.”

Another area where it’s seeing some traction is in the videogaming space — giving the example of PC gaming keyboard makers wanting to offer a related experience to mobile users and not knowing how to go about making software themselves. Plante also reckons there will be growing demand for ergonomic customization of keyboards within apps that are targeted at elderly or very young device users — who may not fare well with standard keyboard layouts.

Being a lean startup is another selling point for Fleksy, as he tells it — enabling the team to cater to smaller business needs than keyboard-owning tech giants would typically bother with.

“One of the key aspects that we have is that we built from the ground up — all the technology that we have in the keyboard is ours. From the algorithm; the way it works; the layout of the keyboard; different languages; there’s no blackbox,” he adds. “We can do a lot of things — adding specific words to the dictionary, tweaking the autocorrection so it gears toward more of a specific type of population that uses a specific type of names and words. There’s so much control over whatever we want to do with the keyboard — the clients are demanding things and we say yeah we can do this.”

While the locus of ThingThing’s business has shifted onto licensing (currently via tiered pricing, depending on number of keyboard users), it continues to offer the Fleksy keyboard as a b2c free-to-download app on Android. And while getting traction as a small indie keyboard app clearly remains challenging, the consumer app functions as a testing ground for new Fleksy features and a showcase for the growing pipeline of b2b clients.

“For the b2c side we’re trying to experiment a bit how we can find the right balance between the end user — a free app with monetization in a certain way that doesn’t 1) use your personal data and 2) doesn’t become a bit gimmicky,” says Plante. “So we’re trying to play around those and experiment.”

“We see a lot of interest from brands out there, app developers that really want to be in the keyboard because it has added value for them… and also a user uses a keyboard about 100x-120x per day. Which is a lot of times. So there’s a lot of companies that want to be there in this space,” he adds.

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kadobeclothing · 5 years ago

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How to Choose the Right Marketing Automation Platform for Your Ecommerce Business [Checklist]

So you’ve decided you’re ready to take your marketing to the next level by investing in a marketing automation tool — congrats! But as you start your research, you soon discover there are 7,000+ marketing automation solutions available as of 2019. How will you know which is the right platform for your ecommerce business? Like with every tricky business question, the answer is: it depends. In this post, I’ll cover seven factors to consider when comparing different marketing automation platforms. These factors will ultimately help you make a more confident and informed decision about the future of your tech stack. But first, let’s discuss why ecommerce businesses should always use some kind of marketing automation platform.

Why Use Marketing Automation for Ecommerce? Marketing automation uses online software to automatically execute your marketing tasks, like sending emails, growing your database, and collecting data to help drive your strategy. Although it’s commonly known for making the lives of digital marketers easier (which I can completely attest to), it also helps your ecommerce business scale. At Campaign Creators, we help ecommerce brands leverage the power of marketing automation. Here’s a list of some of the immediate benefits we’ve seen our clients reap after implementation: Reduced customer acquisition costs Increased average order value (AOV) of customers Conversion of one-time buyers into repeat, loyal customers Increased frequency of purchases Improved conversion rates with automated emails (i.e. abandoned cart emails) Ecommerce Marketing Automation Platforms to Consider With thousands of marketing automation solutions available, it can be difficult to choose the right one for your company. Because the buyers journey and sales cycle differ between ecommerce and other types of businesses, some platforms may lack the tools and features you need to manage the customer lifecycle. Start your research by examining marketing automation tools that have a specific solution for ecommerce businesses, including: Then, use the following seven factors to guide your evaluation process and help you make the best purchase decision. 7 Factors to Consider When Choosing the Right Marketing Automation System 1. User Interface First, consider how simple or overwhelming the platform’s user interface is designed. Many, if not all, platforms will claim they have an intuitive and easy-to-use platform — but this isn’t always the case. To determine whether the platform’s user interface will be easy for you to learn, ask for a demo of the platform. When testing each platform, ask yourself: Is there clear navigation? Try creating an email or accessing the analytics, and see if these simple tasks are difficult to complete. Is there contextual information? If titles are vague or confusing, some platforms will provide contextual information below or when you hover over the title. Did you have to jump through multiple hoops to complete a simple task? If so, this can hinder your efficiency in the long run.

A learning curve often exists when jumping onto a new platform. As an ecommerce business, you’ll likely have other priorities such as fulfilling online orders or launching other campaigns. So, make sure you’re able to test the user interface of the platform to determine how quickly you’ll be able to get up to speed — and get to work. 2. Features & Native Integrations Each marketing automation platform will offer different features, so make sure you’re choosing a platform that has the capabilities you need. Also, consider the existing technology you already have. You may have existing technology you want to integrate with your new platform. When comparing platforms, ask yourself: Does the platform have the features you need? Making a list of features you need prior to doing research can help you stay focused on choosing the right platform. Does the system natively integrate with your existing technologies? This will make it easier to connect and transfer data across your existing platforms. Does the system have an open API? This can be essential to consider if you plan to have a developer create custom assets. As an ecommerce company, you may have your online shop on a different platform, such as Shopify. If this is the case, it’s essential to make sure your shop natively integrates with your new marketing automation platform. This will make it easier to set up your automated lead nurturing campaigns that are based on your contact’s website activity. 3. Customer Support When jumping on a new and unfamiliar system, you’ll want to receive the best help possible. It’s important to recognize that technology isn’t perfect and that things may break — so having that extra help to resolve your unique issue can be critical. When purchasing a new marketing automation platform, some kind of technical support is usually provided, however, the type of support available can differ.

Ask yourself: What kind of customer support is available? The most common is provided through phone support, email, or live chat. Being able to connect with an actual human (rather than a chatbot) can help you resolve unique issues. How immediate can you receive an answer? Sometimes support is available 24/7, and sometimes you may have to wait 24 hours. If customer support is not available, are there other resources you can utilize? It’s possible customer support isn’t an option, that it may require an extra fee you can’t afford, or just isn’t available 24/7. For those cases, community forums or online documentation can fill those gaps. Especially if you don’t have the time or extra help to figure out an issue, customer support can be an essential factor to prioritize when comparing different marketing automation platforms. 4. Learning Resources When purchasing a new marketing automation tool, having online resources available can help you get the most out of your new system. Some platforms have guides, how-to videos, or even webinars that can help you learn how to use the tool. For instance, the HubSpot Academy is a great online learning resource. Within the Academy, you’ll find all kinds of how-to videos that teach you how to become an advanced HubSpot user. When choosing a platform and researching their learning resources, ask yourself: What will these resources teach you? Some may be quick video walk-throughs of how to get started with the platform, or some may have comprehensive learning modules that provide certifications. How can you access these resources? Most are free and easily accessible online, but this may not always be the case. Are these resources up-to-date? You want to make sure your resources are relevant to the marketing automation platform you’re purchasing at the time. 5. Userbase & Reviews Although choosing the right platform for your ecommerce business really depends on your company’s personal needs and goals, you’ll want to understand how other users of the tool are making the most of it. Look for case studies or video testimonials that have existing customers speaking about their experience with the tool. To get a more authentic review of the platform, use outside review sites such as G2’s Marketing Automation Software Comparison. G2 is a trustworthy source that encourages peer reviews and star ratings of business products. Check out their grid below, which ranks the top marketing automation software products.

When researching each platform, ask yourself: How many users and companies are on this platform? The size of the system’s userbase can indicate its popularity. Is the platform used mostly by B2B or B2C/Ecommerce companies? Some platforms are clearly for B2B companies and may lack essential ecommerce features. What are others saying about the platform? Reading reviews from an outside source can provide a more authentic view. 6. Pricing Pricing structures can differ from platform to platform, but most will have a certain price per number of contacts. When researching pricing for different platforms, ask yourself: What is the base price of the platform and how many contacts can you have? Because ecommerce companies tend to have larger databases, make sure you’re aware of how much you may pay. How quickly could your contact database scale? Use past data to see how fast your database has grown. This can give you insight into how much you might need to pay in the future. What features or benefits impact the pricing? You may be able to get a cheaper price or cheaper version of the platform if you don’t need certain features. As a rule of thumb, the simpler and more transparent a company is about their pricing structure — the better. Jumping on a call with a sales rep can also be an easier way to figure out exactly what the price will be based on the size of your database, the features you need, and the goals you’ve set for your company. 7. Set-up & Onboarding Once you’ve purchased your new marketing automation platform, there’s no doubt you’ll need some kind of assistance getting up and running. However, the assistance offered varies between platforms. When researching about a platform’s set-up and onboarding process, ask yourself: Is there a set-up and onboarding fee, and if so, how much is it? Some platforms charge a fee that can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars just to get set-up. Does the process happen remotely, or will someone be physically there to guide you? Are you migrating from one system to another? If so, extra support may be necessary to ensure all contact data is transferred over correctly. Ultimately, ecommerce companies tend to have larger databases that scale quickly, so make sure you’re considering a platform that will benefit you in the future, as well. To make life easier for you, take a look at Campaign Creators’ Marketing Automation Comparison Guide. While research can be tedious, this chart will make it easier for you to digest and compare multiple platforms at once. The more you know prior to choosing a platform, the easier it will be to choose the right marketing automation system for your company’s needs.

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topicprinter · 5 years ago

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Hello everyone! I've participated in creation of this guide, made specially for startups, I've noticed that there are many self-starters here and they probably need a proper advice based on real experience. So I really hope this helps and waiting for your feedback & opinion. Thanks!Do you have a product concept in mind? Are you willing to shape it and head straight to the development process? Test the waters first and get your idea validated.Many companies struggle to decide whether creating an MVP (minimum viable product ) or MMP (minimum marketable product) or any other type of a minimum product is the right way to start. With so many stages for a tech product startup, it’s hard to decide on the right workflow. But each of them serves a specific goal and brings you closer to the desired product.Start with a prototype, follow with an MVP and get to the product.First things first, start with building a product prototype. A prototype doesn’t contain any features and works as a model or release of your idea. It helps to test the concept and build a base for an MVP. A minimum viable product instead has a set of sufficient features to satisfy early adopters. It is designed after initial users leave their feedback about the product. Along with that, there are also minimum marketable product, minimum loveable product and other variations of what is to become a final version of your product.In this article, we’ll help you distinguish the starting and end points for the product development and guide you through the MVP, MMP, MLP, MDP, and MAP startup stages. You’ll get a better understanding of what MVP is in software development and how to build it right.Read further to know how to properly utilize this terminology and which one would serve your needs the best.Table of ContentsGetting Familiar with the Main Startup Stages1. Identifying a Market Need2. Conceptualizing the Product3. Building the Product Roadmap4. Developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and Releasing it to Users5. Iterating Based on User FeedbackMain Stages of Tech Startup Development#1. MVP#2. MMP and MMR#3. MMF#4. MLP, MDP, MAPWrap upGetting Familiar with the Main Startup StagesEvery new company experiences certain lifecycle stages and it may be tricky to identify them at first. Yet, once you know what to expect — your chances to succeed increase.Here’s an easy breakdown of the main startup stages and an overview of how they influence a new tech company’s development.1. Identifying a Market NeedThe truth is that not everyone is willing to buy what you are selling. So, while confidence is a huge advantage you still need to learn if there is a market need for your product. Identify your target audience, conduct market research and provide focus group testing. You want to know for sure who you are selling your product to and whether or not they want to spend money on it.2. Conceptualizing the ProductAt this stage, you have to conceptualize your idea just enough to receive meaningful customer feedback. It may be a one-page website or a Powerpoint presentation — test your concept’s problem/solution fit with potential customers.3. Building the Product RoadmapOnce you’ve conceptualized the idea, it’s time to build a product roadmap. Basically, it is a strategic plan of your product development which contains all the key stages, plans, and business objectives. Why do you want to launch your product? Who is your target audience? Where do you start? Include these and other details regarding timing, product vision, and metrics into the roadmap.4. Developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and Releasing it to UsersThen you have to focus on MVP development. Make it really basic, just the features you would need to test the product/market fit and get significant results. The goal is to collect user feedback about the product in general and understand what users like most about it.5. Iterating Based on User FeedbackFollowing the previous step, you should iterate again and again based on the user reaction. Take feedback from the last iteration and implement the necessary changes to the product. Continue to collect qualitative responses and test the product again. MVP project management requires improving the product until you get a perfect loveable version of it.Main Stages of Tech Startup DevelopmentSince there are many different terms used to describe the development process it’s easy to get confused. Here, we’ll talk about key differences of the main startup stages from the perspective of end users, the tech team and the startup investor. Let’s get right into details.#1. MVPThe concept of MVP (minimum viable product) is widely used in the tech world. Let’s find out what it is and why your startup needs one.What is MVP and what it is NOTBasically, an MVP is an early version of a product that is created with minimum effort and development time. It may lack many features but should give your first users a sense of a product, so they can explore and estimate it. An MVP is not the first version of your product, but the most basic form of it.Why build an MVP?The advantages of building an MVP lie in its low cost and fast development. An MVP helps check if your target audience is chosen correctly, find out what features are the most popular, determine the possible problems and create a user base of your product’s early adopters.In general, it reduces the time you might need in the future for redoing or redesigning the product or its features. It also makes it easier to find and fix bugs at the early development stages. With an MVP you’ll have a clear overview of the things to improve, the product’s problems and the pain points for the potential users. You also get:Easy and cheap idea validation. Rather than releasing a full-fledged product that has a full set of features you can start with building an MVP. It is the cheapest form of a product and requires minimum features to test the idea and therefore — minimum time to build it. In other words, MVP aims to test and evaluate your idea, learn how the real world users are going to react to it.Room for change and evolution. With an MVP you have room for evolution. While you develop the product some new technologies may arise, so you can integrate extra features keeping the core idea in mind. Basically, you add value at each development stage and keep the product prototype flexible for the new changes.Possibility to test and experiment at low risk and cost. MVP is not for making a profit — it is about understanding what your product needs for succeeding. It doesn’t have to include all the features, just the ones you want to test. The best thing is that you can easily experiment with them to determine which of them work best and don’t spend a fortune on it.Valid Proof of your Idea to Stakeholders. MVP is a showcase of what can become a larger, more complex product. It allows to demonstrate investors and stakeholders the market validity of your idea and assure them to invest in building up the end product.User Expectations of an MVPGenerally, users have different levels of expertise, varied interests and expectations from the product. They might focus on various features and test ones they find the most interesting. Therefore you have to provide both qualitative and quantitative analysis — find out if the product solves customer problems and what steps users take in their user journey.Qualitative Customer Feedback. Target specific groups of users to get the most valuable qualitative feedback. For instance, you may want to hear from developers or decision makers regarding a certain piece of functionality. Are they satisfied with it? Does it solve their problem? Qualitative data will help you understand what can be improved in how you deliver value to the users.Quantitative analytics. Quantitative data is typically collected from surveys, analytics tracking tools or by giving users a specific goal they have to accomplish. You have to record whether they could reach it or not, how long it took them and what obstacles were on their way. The quantitative results are easy to interpret and transform into valuable insights — you’d know which steps make the users stall and what pains they have in their product use journey.Tech Team Expectations of an MVPDevelopers struggle with the uncertainty of MVP and product potential. Therefore, its functional elements should be modular so that the technical team can easily fix any bugs in the future. It means the architecture has to be flexible and simple.Flexible architecture. A flexible architecture allows adding new features and ideas fast and at low cost — developers can quickly change an existing code base and improve the functionality. The product architecture should be scalable enough to implement changes based on user feedback.The entire high-level scope. The high-level scope defines the features and functions of a product. It basically sets what is relevant and what’s not and helps understand if there are any technical limitations to your ideas. Once you decide on the entire high-level scope of your product discuss it with engineers, seek their recommendations and advice.Customer analytics. Your product should meet customers expectations and a tech team should be aware of those expectations. Provide an analysis to define what features users expect to have and conduct future development process based on the results.QA assistance. Sometimes it is difficult to see the “blind spots” when you are totally into the product. So, a QA analyst can be of great help. Invest in someone who is familiar with the product but works independently. This person will identify the features that should be improved and if there is anything you need to add. Besides, analyze competitors and learn what is your competitive advantage.So, we should first decide what we’re talking about: we’re not talking about how QA engineers do their job. We are talking about why Quality Assurance is an essential part of software development and the way we operate at Django Stars. Let’s start with some definitions. Quality Assurance engineers aim to help create quality products. It’s not about finding bugs, not about simple testing. The main function of a QA...Team Support to Test the MVPEngage your team into the discussion — what goes well and what doesn’t. Let everyone test the MVP version of the product and share their ideas. The tech team can benefit a lot from these results.Investor Expectations of an MVPIf user tests are successful it’s time to present an MVP to investors. Investors want to see that a basic MVP grows into a real product. In other words, they want to secure their funds and therefore recognize early in the development process whether the product is viable or not.Show them testing results and demonstrate that the product is able to generate revenue. Get your business idea validated with numbers and real user feedback to prove that your team can deliver. You should prove to investors that you know exactly what should be the next steps for successful product development.#2. MMP and MMRWhile an MVP is created to validate assumptions, MMP (minimum marketable product) and MMR (minimum marketable release) serve as a logical next step in the product development path.What is MMR and what is MMPAn MMR stands for minimum marketable release — a full release of a product that satisfies current user needs. While an MMR is used to shorten the initial time-to-market, the MMP (minimum marketable product) is able to deliver must-have functionality to users and bring quantifiable value back to the business. It’s a product that is developed to delight a group of few early adopters — a core target audience with specific needs.An MMP is the first version of your “real” product which can solve user problems with the minimum number of features. Along with that, it is the first launch of the MMR. The aim of the minimum marketable product is to document market feedback from real users and get the first monetization proof of success.User Expectations of MMP/MMRThe MMP is aimed at people who are eager to try your product for novelty’s sake and who are willing to overlook the rough edges. The key is to focus on innovative features that this group seeks. At the same time, MMR (minimum marketable release) contains new features that can bring value to customers.Tech Team Expectations of MMP/MMRFirst of all, MMP and MMR consist of only key features — you’ve collected the real customers’ advice and included what they want in the first version of your product. Basically, you let your product perform as the customers want.For this stage, you also need to define what third-party integrations you will have and build the functionality for them, or at least a mockup. And devise the product collateral for the prepared user flow or the support team’s user flow.Investor Expectations of MMP/MMRAn MMP is the first iteration of the minimal marketable release. It reduces time-to-market, so investments can be safely made at this stage of product development. Even though the MMP is not a feature-rich product, investors still expect to have some cutting edge technologies that’ll serve as a strong competitive advantage. So, make sure you have those. MMP launch requires minimum funds so the risk of loss in case of underperformance is relatively low.#3. MMFAn MMF stands for a minimum marketable feature and defines a must-have feature of your product that will bring immediate value to the customer.What is MMFBasically, MMF is a small set of functionality that has to be released to bring value to the customer. In terms of business, MMF enhances customer loyalty, helps you save costs and generate revenue.User Expectations of MMFUsers expect your product to have a feature that will address their pains easier, faster, cheaper, and more efficiently than alternative products’ features. Additionally, they want a noticeable new functionality — not just a bug fix or improvement of existing features, but a completely new exciting thing.Tech Team Expectations of MMFThe technical team has to create alpha and beta releases of the next major updates. This way they can resolve pains and complete tasks regarding the new features. They may even work on a separate MVPs but in general, one MVP can have several related MMFs combined.Investor Expectations of MMFAn MMF can help build the case for seed funding for an early-stage technology venture. Each MMF is a positive argument towards expanding the market size you can reach and as a result — the reason for attracting more funding. The more potential customers are interested in your particular MMF — the more of them will want to pay for it.#4. MLP, MDP, MAPWant to see the finished product? You’re almost there. These startup stage acronyms stand for minimum loveable, minimum delightful and minimum awesome product respectively.What are MLP, MDP, and MAPAn MLP, MDP, and MAP are based on the idea that if users have first delightful product experience they’re going to use it more and what’s most important — tell others about it. Still, creating a wow-product is easier said than done. So, strive to focus not only on technically feasible but also awesome and loveable features that would make users pleased. In a nutshell, they would rather choose an awesome product than a dull, but a technically perfect one.User Expectations of MLP and MDPIn order to get customers hooked, communicate that despite being viable and technically feasible, your product is also cool. Create a catchy design to make it visually appealing, make the product user-friendly to provide a positive experience and add a wow-factor. Seek inspiration from Apple products, for instance.Tech Team Expectations for MLP, MDP, and MAPAt this stage of your startup, we’re forming an emotional reaction to the product. So it is crucial to have a great design created specifically for a target user. Therefore involve more design and UI/UX experts in the product development process. MLP and MDP are also about speed: gathering user feedback and rapidly implementing new features, so it is best to have a highly functioning Agile development team with the resources to rapidly react to the changes.Investor Expectations for MLP, MDP, and MAPInvestors want proof of the wow-effect to determine if the product MVP has reached the MLP or MDP level. Engage a group of passionate advocates proactively engaged with the product. They would prove stakeholders that product is perceived as lovable and delightful.Five tips for UI/UX Development of Fintech ProductsIn the age of social media, people are more exposed to visual content than ever before. So it needs to be compelling. If whatever they see on their screens doesn’t catch their attention in the first couple of seconds, they will scroll down and forget about it the next second. So the visuals are important. But if users can’t really figure out your app, you can forget about growing your...Wrap upIt may feel intimidating to launch a tech startup. Still, once you have a clear understanding of the main development stages the workflow gets much better. The main thing you have to do is to conceptualize and validate your idea, gain feedback from real users about it, and confirm investors to fund the product development.First, you have to build an MVP and see how it goes. Then, you need to test the wow-effect of your product within MLP and MAP prototypes. Here is a list of important things to remember.If possible, get a team experienced with MVPs;Validate your business idea;Listen carefully to any feedback given by users;Implement only minimum features that solve users’ problems;Do not underestimate a prototyping phase;Launch an MMP;Test the wow-effect of your product with MLP, MAP, and MDP.Remember that MVP iterations are a journey to the successful product release. So, make the most out of them and get your dream product out to the market!

#/r/startups #reddit

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aurelliocheek · 5 years ago

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Tropico 6: Winning the Trust of Users

Why postponing is the better option over early release of any games project.

At the beginning of January 2019, Kalypso decided to postpone the release of the PC version of Tropico 6 until March 29. Originally, the release of the PC version was scheduled for January 25, but the great feedback from thousands of dedicated beta players confirmed the decision to give the title two more months of development time to make Tropico 6 a near perfect game. For the following interview about this hot topic, we talked to Martin Tosta (Producer for Tropico 6) and Bernd Berheide (Head of PR):

Making Games: Starting with an overall view on the delay, what are you planning to do with the extra time?

Martin Tosta: Delivering the best Tropico experience at launch is what we’re aiming for with Tropico 6. It’s incredibly important to us that the game exceeds the expectations of the players who have been so eagerly following the development process of the game, and to take the foundations of the beta to make a good game into a great game.

Making Games: Sure, but what exactly caused it? Were there problems with programming?

Martin Tosta: We’re developing Tropico 6 with an all-new engine so that it looks much better than ever before. With the engine and the new development team (Limbic Entertainment), who have been fantastic, also came new challenges. And while we’ve overcome those challenges, and feel like we’ve been working together for much longer than we have, there are still some rough edges due to the new environment we’re working in. We also received a lot of useful feedback from our dedicated beta testers, which we are really grateful for because it’s provided valuable input and made us aware of certain topics that weren’t even on our radar. So, taking all that into consideration, we decided that we should use the extra time to fine-tune the game and implement as much of the player feedback as possible.

Making Games: Alrighty then. So, you have been given another two months. How are you planning to use the time up until release?

Martin Tosta: In games development, we aim to hit certain “milestones” at a specific date. We’ve done so very successfully in the past and are now actively planning additional milestones for the topics I just mentioned, specifically polishing, and incorporating player feedback. For example, we aim to have a fully working and smooth experience using the Random Map Generator before release. Our full plan consists of many small milestones. We’ve already tweaked the interface and menus a lot, and plan on improving citizen interactions and multiplayer even further, together with the usual balancing and optimization for all platforms.

Making Games: You talked a lot about community feedback. What kinds of insights did you gain thanks to the beta? Are there any features or mechanics that have changed dramatically, or is now different than originally planned?

Martin Tosta: Some gameplay systems and features were not as obvious to players as we expected them to be. So, we’ve made a bunch of changes to those systems, and are still adding texts and icons to make things easier to understand. One example would be the trade interface, where we have now added trade route volumes, and an option to disable all exports. Both of those tweaks were requests from the community. Another point that was kind of small, but still noticeable, was inefficiencies in the simulation of the Tropicans. The community was once again a great help in identifying idle Teamsters, Metro Stations, and game mechanics that could work more fluently – and we’re actively working on those.

Contact with press, influencers and users is key and cannot be underestimated. Finding the right persons in the team is paramount.

Making Games: Can you give us an example of a milestone or goal would not have been reached or been as polished if the game had come out on the original January 25th release date?

Martin Tosta: Well, lately, we’ve been working a lot on warfare. We wanted to make sure that in Tropico 6, the feature feels more meaningful and interactive than it did in previous games. With the extra time, we’ve already made significant improvements there. Another part would be the cross-platform capabilities of the game. Making sure that all players across PC, Mac and Linux can play seamlessly together was very important for us, and we’re now able to ensure that for launch.

Making Games: Please tell us, how the feedback of the Beta-players finds its way into the game?

Martin Tosta: This process indeed needs some explanation. First, it starts right within the community of our Beta-Players actually. Right there, all discussions and all the feedback are gathered.

Making Games: You are actively in touch with the community?

Martin Tosta: Correct, any player can get in touch with us. Either via our official forums, social media channels, Steam community hubs, to just name a few channels. And for sure, we are trying to get back to them as best we can while still developing the game. After players have shared their feedback and ideas, our Community Management team and QA starts to sort the feedback and ideas. They will create a pool of requests and filter them by validity as well as feasibility and sorting out duplicates. The remaining requests will be forwarded to the producers who decide which of the requests can and should be done. The objective is to get as many requests done as possible Within the boundaries of a running production. After all, the regular development of the game is still ongoing, and every new addition or change has to be carefully planned for. At the end of this process, the requests are sorted into three different categories: Rejected requests, Backlog, Implementation

Rejected will be all ideas that are impossible to develop/implement. E.g. as those might be changing the core of the game completely, or simply require too much work on the structure of the game, or simply do not fit into Tropico or the genre in general. Backlog means, ideas will be stored, as they are solid, But they might require more time or they are dependent on another step in the development that needs to be achieved first, e.g. the implementation of a gameplay mechanic or the creation of art assets. Sometimes, requests will also be stored here to simply achieve a healthy task load for the development team.

Implementation means the idea/feature will be integrated into internal development planning.

Making Games: How long does a feature need to be implemented?

Martin Tosta: There are many steps to be followed and departments to be involved before a request is implemented. Let’s take the Trade UI changes as an example, from our latest January Update. Starting with the art department, which has to create new assets, or edit existing assets from the game. Additionally, our game designers need to design systems for the features and behavior of the new UI. They also need to check if the new system is not breaking or intervening with other features of the game and need to design systems for the features and behavior of the new UI. Next in line, is the coding department, which will start actually implementing the work done by art and game design. When this is done, the next step is to send it to QA for testing in order to check, if the new UI is actually working as intended. The entire process may take several weeks and if everything works as intended, we are able to release the new feature.

Making Games: Who decides on the implementation of a postponement as soon as the need for such a measure becomes apparent? Is the developer basically depending on the goodwill of the publisher or is the procedure for a possible postponement already embedded in the general contract?

Martin Tosta: In the case of Tropico 6, it is the general management of the publisher, who decides in the end, as the brand Tropico belongs to Kalypso Media. But until such a step becomes apparent all parts of publisher and developer are involved from top to bottom. Mainly the Quality Assurance (QA) departments of the publisher and the developer, as well as external QA in co-operation with the producing are the first to say that there might be too many issues with the current state of the game. This can be simply the number of bugs or also features that are behind schedule. In order to get a good amount of data for such a big decision, other departments like Product Management and Public Relations are involved. Especially PR brings in feedback from press and influencers. Also, Mock-Reviews from external freelance journalists might be used to give feedback on the current state of the build. When it comes to the contractual situation, we won’t disclose the actual terms, of course. Obviously, any contract in the industry has clauses regarding a possible delay. It would be irresponsible to not have those. Regarding who is depending on the other is a question of what is causing the delay. Maybe the publisher requested new features, or the developer e.g. underestimated certain parts of development. Ultimately both are dependent on each other and only mutual respect and understanding will help to solve tricky situations like a possible delay.

Making Games: How was the change to the new development studio made in the case of Tropico 6? Were program libraries, graphics and sound assets or detailed information about the function of the economic system, which was used in the predecessor, also transferred to the new development studio Limbic Entertainment?

Martin Tosta: Technically and asset-wise Tropico 6 is a complete overhaul of the franchise. The basic gameplay-ideas and -mechanics, as well as the setting, stayed the same. But anything else was rebuilt. As Limbic is using a new engine and we wanted a fresh start for the franchise nearly all the assets had to be done completely anew. Also, the AI and new features had to be built from scratch. Now every Tropican is simulated what was skipped in the previous installments of the franchise. So, I would guess more than 95% had to be built by Limbic.

The exchange between departments of publisher and developer help not just for mutual understanding and speed up development processes.

Making Games: Were previous assets even relevant for the development of Tropico 6 or were all content created from scratch?

Martin Tosta: All assets were basically done anew. Of course, previous art assets were a reference to Limbic. But rather in basic style and a benchmark to overcome and do better when it comes to creating the style of “Caribbean Romanticism” we are aiming for with Tropico.

Making Games: Which technical capabilities of the Unreal Engine 4 are particularly exciting in relation to Tropico 6 and which advantages does the Unreal Engine 4 offer over the Haemimont Engine used in Tropico 5?

Martin Tosta: UE4 allows for much bigger playing fields due to its performance. Foliage, the lighting system and other details like particle effects especially for smoke and other details now look very lifelike and the overall graphics quality are superb. There are quite a few advantages that UE4 brings to the table. Another big advantage is that we can adapt pretty quickly to other platforms like PlayStation 4 and Xbox One without having to rewrite most of the code.

Making Games: Limbic Entertainment has already gained experience with the Unreal Engine. Was this perhaps a reason to hire the German studio to develop Tropico 6?

Martin Tosta: Among others, yes. Of course, their experience with the Unreal Engine is a good thing. But also they are a long lasting studio. When we started working with them they were already 15 years in the business as an independent studio. And that in Germany, which is known to not be a favorable place to have a studio especially of that size! One of the other reasons was the easy access: Langen, the town where Limbic Entertainment is situated, is just about an hour drive away, plus there is no language barrier, which helps to communicate.

Making Games: Did the Unreal Engine and development tools have to be adapted first to meet the team‘s needs, or does the Unreal Engine 4 framework package already include all the tools needed to develop Tropico 6?

Martin Tosta: Yes, the engine and the development tools had to be tweaked to create a city builder like Tropico. We mostly had to optimize it for handling the big number of simulated Tropicans. They all have their needs and behaviours, resulting in unique decisions that they take. What this means is that we constantly need to calculate decisions for them and the paths that result from those. Additionally, being able to animate so many of them while they walk from A to B or display some specific animations when they are interacting with a building or with each other, was also something we needed to spend a lot of time on because of the impact it initially had on the game’s performance. That being said, Unreal provided us with many tools out of the box that made the creation of some parts of the game much easier. Especially level designers benefited from that. For instance, the lighting system allowed us to find the right setting very quickly and the tools for landscape editing and mission scripting were also very helpful. What this led to is that we were able to produce maps rather quickly and therefore have 30 unique and beautiful maps on launch.

Scripting in the name of: Pathfinding and AI are most important for a believable living world and need to be refined time after time.

Making Games: Are there other development tools besides the framework package of Unreal Engine 4 and if so, can you tell our readers which additional tools are used?

Martin Tosta: We used a couple of additional development tools for Tropico 6: Wwise for audio. 3DS Max/Maya for 3D asset creation and editing. Substance painter for working on textures. World Machine for generating maps. MemoQ for localization. Photon for multiplayer matchmaking. Lots Tropican mojitos, coffee, cigars, and chocolate to keep everyone on the development team happy and motivated.

Making Games: Is a release of Tropico 6 on the Epic Games Store planned to take advantage of the higher margins granted there on Unreal Engine games?

Bernd Berheide: Our focus with the PC version is Steam, other platforms like the Epic Games Store are very interesting alternatives that we will discuss in the future.

Martin Tosta (M.A.) is Producer for Tropico 6 at Publisher Kalypso Media in the Headquarter in Worms and in direct contact with Developer Limbic Entertainment to make sure the game will be the best in the series so far.

Bernd Berheide (M.A.) is Head of PR at Kalypso Media in Worms. Before his role at Kalypso, he started in the industry as a games journalist and worked in communication at Infogrames/ATARI as well as CDV and as a freelancer for e.g. Deutsche Telekom or Samsung Mobile.

The post Tropico 6: Winning the Trust of Users appeared first on Making Games.

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ralphlayton · 5 years ago

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Everlasting Memories: Boosting eCommerce Conversion Rate Using Bolt Checkout

If you asked any eCommerce store owner if they could make a wish and improve any key performance indicator on their site, most would probably say their conversion rate. It’s the metric that’s most directly related to how many sales an eCommerce site makes. Merchants try all kinds of strategies to bring that number up, but improving a conversion rate can be tricky. That’s because the number of visitors that a store converts can be affected in unpredictable ways by every single part of the sales funnel. The one thing everyone in this industry agrees on, however, is that the easier it is to checkout on your site, the better your conversion rate will be. Everlasting Memories is a well-respected purveyor of cremation jewelry, photo engraved jewelry, and memorial gifts. Since they opened their doors in 2003, they have expanded their business with two more eCommerce sites including Jewelry Keepsakes, and just last year Messages in Metal, which focuses more on personalized jewelry than memorial mementos. Casey Doran, the owner of all three sites, first contacted the eCommerce design and development team, 1Digital Agency, years ago to move his sites Everlasting Memories and Jewelry Keepsakes from Volusion to BigCommerce.

The Ongoing Process of Conversion Rate Optimization

Since those original builds, Casey has spent years tweaking his sites, refining and perfecting them, sanding off all the edges he can find. “I do quite a bit of testing,” Casey told us. “I record a lot of user sessions to watch navigation. When you’re really close to it you think you know how people use your site, but you don’t.” Websites are in a constant state of reinvention, especially eCommerce sites which always need to be working towards smoothing out the experience to boost conversion rates even slightly. To make these a la carte changes, Casey works with 1Digital Agency on a retainer basis. Each time he wants to implement a new test on his site, he can use the internal project management workspace to request an estimate on a task or assign one. “Sometimes I hire you guys to add something, then I hire you again to take it off,” Casey said. “Podio [project management system] is a pleasure to use. Sometimes I’ll have to go back and look at a ticket we did over a year ago. It’s so easy to find that information.”

Improving Conversion Rate with Bolt Checkout

As part of this ongoing conversion optimization work, it was 1Digital Agency’s CEO Dan Kogan who first recommended to Casey that he might be a good fit for Bolt. Bolt is an industry-leading 3rd party checkout experience for eCommerce stores. Many eCommerce merchants are frustrated by the lack of choice and customization that is afforded to them in the checkout area of their SAAS platform stores. Bolt provides a highly optimized checkout experience that can be plugged into a platform store to deliver a smoother checkout experience, greater fraud protection, and more approved orders. On each of his three BigCommerce stores, Casey has seen great strides in all of these areas since the implementation of the Bolt checkout. By using his session recording software, Casey could see just how often customers were getting hung up on the very last phase of the sales funnel. “We were experiencing customers dropping out of the checkout,” Casey told us. “It was very frustrating to pay for PPC advertising, SEO, marketing, content development, etc, etc, only to have your customer get to the very end, attempt to make a purchase, and have difficulty with it.” The Bolt checkout has been tested over the years to be as simple as possible for customers to use, but good design isn’t its only optimization feature. As its name would suggest, Bolt is designed to be fast. It boasts sub-1-second load times, about 10 times faster than a standard platform checkout. Since installing Bolt, the checkout completion rate on each of the three stores has markedly improved. On Everlasting Memories and Jewelry Keepsakes, checkout completion has risen from averaging around 36.5%, to 51% and 52%, respectively. On Messages in Metal, which used Bolt almost from the very beginning, checkout completions is now at 46% post-implementation. A lot of merchants don’t know how many potential sales they are losing by allowing their out of the box payment processor to choose which order to accept and which to decline in an effort to weed out fraud. “We did not realize how many false-positive orders we were losing. I would guess about 10 to 11 percent,” Casey said. “Previously, the credit card processor was simply declining these orders. We have seen a nice uptick due to Bolt ‘wanting’ to get these orders approved.” Bolt takes a percentage of each transaction, so the incentive is to approve as many orders as possible. Bolt also takes on the responsibility for any fraudulent orders they approve. The reason that Bolt can do both is that they leverage machine-learning algorithms to review 200 variables for each order and determine its risk level. If a transaction is declined by the algorithm, it receives a secondary review by a member of Bolt’s staff. If the order is still declined, the shopper is reached out to personally and given a chance to verify their information. This way the merchant can take more of the orders placed on their site while being better protected against fraudulent orders. Casey’s sites were averaging an 88% transaction approval rate with the standard checkout. Now, Everlasting Memories and Jewelry Keepsakes are sitting at a 99.6% order approval rate, while Messages in Metal has a 100% order approval rate! “Bolt is likely the future of eCommerce checkout,” Casey told us. “In addition, their tech support is fantastic. They respond quickly, even on weekends. I know their techs on a first-name basis, and they have no problem using the phone to discuss issues.” Conversion rate is something every eCommerce merchant thinks about. Many bang their head against the wall to increase their conversion rate by half a percent, and most would tell you that it was worth the headache. Since Casey Doran installed Bolt on Everlasting Memories, checkout conversion has increased by 39.7% and sitewide conversion rate has increased by 4.2%! In anticipation of a brand new line of fingerprint customized jewelry launching this month, this kind of conversion rate lift from one change to these three sites is as extraordinary as it is gladly welcomed. Casey continues to work with 1Digital Agency at improving his eCommerce process piece by piece, but an obvious win, like installing Bolt Checkout, doesn’t come around every day.

The post Everlasting Memories: Boosting eCommerce Conversion Rate Using Bolt Checkout appeared first on 1Digital®.

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imdoglover · 5 years ago

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Anti-Ransomware Strategy To Protect Your Business

Secure Networks ITC strives to create a perfect IT environment for all clients. The most common hurdle that most companies fail to overcome is the security aspect of their IT. Often falling short of any standards due to the cost or belief that just being careful is the best security measure.

It is far from it, really. Yes, you can go years before experiencing any serious malware attack, but once you do, the consequences can be catastrophic.

That is where we step in! We will do everything to create that perfect, carefree work environment, so you wouldn’t have to think about any malware attacks or loss of data.

Here’s a situation for you: you just got into your office, you prepared a nice cup of coffee and you are ready to start your day. It’s Monday and you feel full of energy and ready to get down to business. You open a few emails before you open the wrong one. The beginning of a nice week turns into a never-ending nightmare.

So, before you open your next email, answer this question: Do you have a backup? If not, put the mouse down and give us a call. If you do, give us a call, as we can discuss multi-layer protection plans and prevention.

What we’ll do:

• Deliver another layer of security by installing one of many endpoints or professional versions of Anti-Virus that will include Anti-Ransomware protection

• Take care of regular backups of your business data, so the damage is minimal in case your system gets infected with ransomware

• Frequently update your systems and software to eliminate vulnerabilities of previous versions

• Perform baseline checks of the server core to ensure optimal performance

Implement an advanced notification system to monitor and alert when the system is not performing optimally or if there is an issue with the backups.

What is Ransomware?

It’s 2018, so most of us know what Ransomware is — a sophisticated malware that takes over your computer, denies you access to your data, tells you to kiss it good-bye unless a ransom is paid. Depending on the size of the business or institution, the ransom can range from a few hundred bucks to tens of thousands.

The payment is to be executed in Bitcoins and the victims are sent detailed instructions on how to execute it. Initially, the FBI advised the victims to pay the ransom, as there wasn’t much that they could do in these kinds of situations, but recently the “no-negotiating-with-terrorists” policy has been strongly advised. Since there is no way of knowing whether the data will be securely returned or not, and there is no way to trace bitcoins, the FBI feels that paying up ransoms would only encourage these criminals to continue blackmailing companies and organizations. The ransom payments would only be used to further fund their illegal activities, so soon data hostage situations would be the day-to-day reality for all.

In case you find yourself in a situation that you are willing to pay any price just to get your business data back from the kidnappers, we’re sorry to tell you, but it will be on you. Why? Because there ARE strategies to protect your business and its data, and if you don’t think prevention and protection are important, well then, shame on you.

How Does Ransomware Work

There are numerous ways for the ransomware to gain access to your computer, and phishing spam is one of the most common ways. Phishing spam is all those email attachments that make you believe opening them would be perfectly safe because they appear to come from a trusted institution, a friend or a colleague (PDFs, Word Documents). In reality, downloading and opening them initiates a hostile takeover of your computer data. Some have built-in social engineering tools that trick users into giving them admin access, while some, more aggressive forms can exploit security holes and gain unauthorized access without having to trick the user into it.

Another popular method for infecting computers is called malvertising and the main trick here is that it requires little to no user interaction. The users would be browsing the web, legitimate sites even, when they are redirected to a criminal server, often without even clicking on the malicious ad. Criminal servers collect information about the user location and computer-based on which the most suitable malware is selected (most often ransomware).

There are three main types of ransomware:

• Encrypting ransomware — These are the nastiest of all because they encrypt (block) system files and demand payment in exchange for a decryption key. Once the files get encrypted, no security software can restore the data. The only option to get it back would be to pay the ransom, but there is no guarantee that you’ll get the data back even if you pay. It is hard to detect, it usually slows down the computer and shows the ransom message after absolutely everything is encrypted;

Locker ransomware — These block your access to a desktop, all files, and apps. Upon starting your computer, a window containing a message about the blockage would appear, often with the FBI or US Department of Justice seal. Screen lockers are not as bad as the encrypting ones, as they only block access while the data is not encrypted.

Scareware — These were supposed to be scary but are nothing when compared to the previous two types. These usually include tech support or security software scams, as the user would get a pop-up saying that malicious activity has been detected and that you would need to pay to remove it. If you ignore the message, you’ll get bombarded with more pop-ups, but nothing will happen. Just remember: if you are already paying an antivirus software, then why would the company ask you for money for each individual malicious activity that gets detected?

After the infection spreads, the victim is shown a message or an image saying that the files are now inaccessible and that the only way to regain access is to pay the ransom. However, this is not the only scenario and certainly not the one that causes the most panic. Some attackers can falsely claim to be a law enforcement agency that is shutting down the user’s computer because pirated software or pornography was found on it. Users panic especially in the case of latter and are prepared to pay any fine just to keep things quiet. The second scenario that causes panic involves leakware or doxware malware. The attackers inform the user that sensitive material has been found, so they threaten to publish it unless the ransom is paid.

In these kinds of situations, before you begin to sweat, remember this: there is no need to panic. In case the law enforcement agency found illegal material on your computer, you would probably hear a knock on the door instead of seeing the ransom message on your screen. As for the message about the sensitive data, know that finding and extracting such information is extremely tricky, so they probably don’t have anything on you.

Ransomware Attack — Who’s the Target?

The short answer: everyone. Although newspapers only report about the major attacks (such as the recent lockdown of the city of Atlanta), every small or midsize business, enterprise or organization is a potential victim. You may hear so much about so many attacks, but the real issues are attacks that you don’t get to read about. Attacks happening to businesses like yours.

Some organizations are more vulnerable and are, therefore, more likely to get attacked. For example, academic organizations, such as universities and colleges, not only have smaller security teams and budget constraints, but their user base does a lot of file sharing, which enables easier breach.

Other organizations, such as government agencies and medical facilities, are likely targets because their services are time-sensitive and crucial. There is a great sense of urgency when it comes to recovering the data, so these institutions are more likely to pay. HR departments of enterprises are also likely targets, as attackers can get ransomware in through job application emails.

Organizations with sensitive data, such as the law firms, are more likely to execute the payment because leaking sensitive information can compromise their business. Some attackers block access and then put the data up for an online auction where the highest bidder would get the data.

How to Remove Ransomware

You need to know that not all ransomware families have corresponding decryptors and that running a wrong decryption script can only further encrypt your files. That’s why you probably shouldn’t try downloading and running anything yourself unless you have a lot more skills and knowledge than an average computer user. On the other hand, in case you are dealing with a screen locker, a full system restore would probably be the best practice, but only if possible, of course.

It is crucial to pay close attention to the ransom message to determinate which ransomware type is the one you’re dealing with (sometimes it can only be scareware imposing as encryptor). Next, the system reboot to safe mode to stop the encryption and installing antimalware software is required, as well as scanning the system and restoring it to a previous state.

As we probably lost you at ‘reboot system to safe mode’, the absolute first thing you or your employees should do is seek advice from an IT specialist before anyone makes attempt to do anything themselves. Meaning — shut down computer forcefully immediately and get an IT on the phone. The user would explain the experience and a field tech would be sent to your office to start restoring your computer to the previous state.

An important fact you should know: The encryption infection doesn’t spread instantly upon entry. Depending on the computer it can sometimes take hours if a computer is fast, and sometimes it can take days for the malware to encrypt all the files. It is important for the user to immediately report unusual slowdowns and inability to access data because there is a good chance that there is active encryption going on.

As we mentioned, encrypted files can’t get encrypted without the encryption key, so once they’re captured, they’re gone. Therefore, prevention should be your top priority.

How to Prevent Ransomware

Ransomware is extremely sophisticated, there’s no doubt about it, but keep in mind that most likely targets are organizations with budgets constraints and poor tech infrastructure. As a small to the medium-sized business owner, you don’t encounter the same constraints the large government institutions do.

Since you are on top of the decision-making chain, you would need to create a solid IT infrastructure for your business which involves setting an IT budget and creating a 5-year plan.

Most of the companies rely on very precise budget planning in all parts of their business, including IT. Proper budgeting is only possible if careful planning precedes it. With IT, it is very different. The technology evolves at a staggering pace alongside malware and other malicious software that you would have to take this into consideration when creating a plan. Here is where the 5-year plan takes place. 5 years in IT are considered a lifetime of most equipment, so foreseeing what should be done within this period and prepare for the next is very important.

When talking about overall security, we would need to plan for physical protection like firewalls and replace them as soon as they reach the end of their lifecycle. Any firewall license that needs to be employed should be renewed after the licensing period expires. Proper upgrades are also something you should plan.

Another part of the security would be Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware software. Both should be always in-check and never left outdated. Testing should be done periodically to ensure that the current setup is something that is suitable for your environment. A lot of Anti-Virus vendors offer different types of protection and many times can offer great protection at first, but then after a while fall short in some or all categories. Same goes with Anti-Spam, as it can be really good for a certain period and then start to release more and more spam emails into your system.

Planning changes, upgrades, updates and testing during a 5-year period will certainly help you not worry about the abrupt loss of data or service.

There are numerous prevention and protection steps that you should make in order to keep the ransomware damage to a minimum. These steps are a part of good security practices provided by the managed IT service provider, so perhaps you are starting to be aware of why every business needs one and why an IT budget is crucial.

A solid anti-ransomware plan includes the following practices:

• Create secure data backups — Backing up your files regularly and having an offline backup is what is going to save you in case the ransomware attack occurs. In case your business data has been frequently backed up, then there is no hostage and there is no need to pay the ransom (learn more about Secure Networks ITC triple-layer backup protection plan);

• Invest in great cybersecurity — Just any antivirus simply won’t cut it, especially if we’re talking about free options. Businesses need professional versions of antivirus software and centralized management (learn more about the best antivirus software for business;

• Keep your systems & software up-to-date — Frequent updates of your operating system are important because newest versions have fewer vulnerabilities. Same goes for endpoint protection suits. Updates can be done manually or automatically through the server;

• Use layered security — This includes regular security software patches, system hardening, and vulnerability management. As the name implies, it will consist of multiple layers of protection. Physical layer is the first layer — firewall; the second layer is the software-based layer — Anti-Virus & Anti-Spam; the third layer is a policy based security layer — creating different policies and limiting the computer usage to the essential, for example, work file access only, we can stop the viruses from spreading or infecting the workstation from the start; the fourth layer would the backups — if all other layers fall short in protecting your data, backups will ensure that you will be back in no time.

• Use a whitelisting program — These programs will prevent your employees from installing unauthorized programs. Although the employees usually complain about this restriction, whitelisting is probably the best defense against ransomware besides a good backup;

• Determine an IT budget — In case you don’t have anti-house IT department, make sure you get a managed IT, service provider. Not only will the IT guys take care of all the points stated above, but they will also make sure all your business workstations and every-day business activities are running smoothly;

• Educate yourself and your employees — It is important to know how a possible threat looks like and to educate your employees. For example, employees, especially those with admin access, should be educated on how to detect malspam, suspicious websites and other scams that they should not open and to report suspicious activities or computer performance (especially computer slowness) to the IT department.

• Don’t get tricked — Don’t install anything that is sent to you in an email or offered by visiting a website. All software should be installed directly from the legitimate vendor’s website. The safest thing would like to contact the IT department every time you need new software installed. They won’t get tricked and installing all kinds of unnecessary apps (we’re not just talking about the malicious ones here) would be avoided.

#ransomware ransomsareattack cyberattack hacking hack hacker hackers

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philipfloyd · 5 years ago

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21 SEO & Business Lessons Learned From Optimizing Small Websites

Over the past 7 years, I’ve learned a lot about digital marketing and SEO. I started this journey by building WordPress websites, but then quickly realized that they are useless if they do not rank on search engines.

That’s how I actually got into search engine optimization. I got lucky and landed a job for a company in a pretty competitive niche (bodybuilding supplements) pretty fast. Fast forward for about 5 years and now I run my own company. Now I want to take my SEO & Digital Marketing Agency to the next level but, before that, I want to share what I’ve learned during this time.

SEO Isn’t All That Hard (If You Get It Right)

SEO Does Take Time

You Need Quality Outsourcing Personnel

You Have to Leverage Your Work by Training Owners & Their Employees

Don’t Rely On Clients Delivering

Avoid Taking Clients That Don’t Fit You!

Perfectionism Holds You Back. Don’t Be Afraid to Fail

Focus on Important Tasks

It’s Useful to Have a Monthly Schedule & Estimate

User Intent & UX Really Do Matter

Tools Are Really Useful & They Save up Time

Paid SEO Audits Are Better

Links Are Still Important

Links Are Indeed Expensive

Links Can Be Obtained For Free (#naturally)

The More Money Clients Have, the Less They Stress You Out

Be Firm About Your Schedule Upfront

Transparency Matters More Than Quick Results

Communication Is Key

Most People Who Want SEO Don’t Have Websites on Popular Platforms

Programmers Are (Sometimes) Difficult to Work With

1. SEO Isn’t All That Hard (If You Get It Right)

People fear SEO because of its uncertainty. Google isn’t straight-forward at all when it comes to SEO advice. Then, there are the Google Algorithm Updates which we all fear one way or another.

When comparing SEO to PPC, it seems that PPC is the safer bet. Although PPC also has the quality score which is tricky, there’s a lot more confusion that comes with SEO, which makes it harder to approach.

However, from my experience, it seems like SEO isn’t all that hard. At least not when you’re dealing with small/medium sites.

Most of the sites are pretty straight forward, with separate pages for each service. If you get lucky and run over a completely unoptimized website, the keyword research and title creation alone will bring in results.

Things actually become complicated when you’re dealing with the previous work of other SEOs or digital marketing agencies. Spammy backlink profiles, keyword stuffing and other things like that.

Of course, when you’re talking about big eCommerce websites, with hundreds of thousands of pages, things can get a little bit trickier.

But the fundamentals are the same. Make the site crawlable and indexable, have valuable content and optimize for keywords, earn some backlinks and you’re good to go.

2. SEO Does Take Time

Firstly, we have to talk about execution. Are you alone? I was. I had to do pretty much everything and, even if I outsourced content creation, it still took time to validate, edit and publish.

So, it can take a long time, especially if you’re a one man gang. We’ll talk more about this in the next lesson.

However, even if your execution potential is very high, if you’re planning on going the safe route, then it’s probably a better idea not to jump head first and rather test the waters before.

If you take massive action the first months but then stagnate or don’t do anything more later on, you’ll look suspicious. Why would a website be extremely popular for a couple of weeks and then not be popular at all? It sure does seem like someone was trying to manipulate the rankings.

Taking everything a little bit slower will provide the security that what you’re doing is fair and that you’re not trying to push things.

In my opinion, a website’s rankings reflect the level of success a business has. They’re interconnected. For example, if an eCommerce page only has 3 products, why would it be better than a competitor page with 300 products?

How can an owner expect to rank for the main keyword when it doesn’t meet the users’ expectations? A different strategy must be approached, either by optimizing for separate products, or a narrower, less competitive category keyword instead.

That’s something you should communicate to the owner. If he still wants to rank, then you’ll probably have to try some sketchy stuff, which will put his site at risk. Better avoid the stress upfront by not signing a contract.

So, consider this: if you have massive execution potential, expect to keep it up even when the rankings are high, or you might look suspicious and lose them.

Giving a good, realistic estimation of the time required will also build credibility. So far, my estimations with clients were very realistic. And through this, I’ve gained their trust long term. Promises kept, contracts still running.

3. You Need Quality Outsourcing Personnel

If you want to move ahead quicker in an SEO campaign, you’ll need help. Chances are, if you’re just starting out, that you don’t have money to employ people. However, outsourcing and subcontracting is a great alternative.

If you really want to be a search engine optimizer, then focus on having your backups when it comes to web design, servers and coding.

Most clients will often ask you about issues regarding e-mail and server issues, small content or web design changes and implementing new features, such as pop-ups.

So make sure you have at least someone who’s good at editing pages on popular platforms, such as WordPress and knows a little bit of CSS/HTML. It won’t be easy finding a programmer, since most of them already have a high paying job.

You can always take a look at platforms such as codeable.io where you can hire a coder. Be wary though, prices are by the hour and they’re not cheap.

You won’t have to pay for anything. Just charge the client for the work (you can even add a little bit extra, to cover for your taxes at least). But the client might always say “No freaking way am I paying that much to change the background color.”

However, what’s really hard to find from my point of view are good writers. They’re essential for SEO so make sure you start looking for them early on.

There are multiple reasons for that. Price range, quality and client expectations all get in your way. For some businesses, such as coffee shops, quality content might be easy to obtain. But if you’re working with someone selling building materials or medical equipment, average writers might not have the expertise to do it.

Then there’s also the issue of them not having a business of their own, which makes it harder to collaborate with them legally, at least here in Romania. The ones who do have businesses are either agencies with a lot of low quality content, or professionals with extremely high prices.

If your strategy is mostly based on content and you can call yourself a content marketer, then sooner or later you’ll need some writers. It’s better to start looking for them sooner.

Ideally, the client should write the content. They know their niche best. However, we know that’s not always possible. This takes us to the next lesson.

4. You Have to Leverage Your Work by Training Owners & Their Employees

Try to get as much information from the client as possible. They know their niche best. They know the clients’ possible needs and they know their products.

Firstly, try to get them to write the content if they have the time. A corporation owner won’t have time, but a small business owner might get the occasional weekend off and can squeeze 2 hours of high quality content writing.

Even if they don’t do the entire article, once you have your keyword research and content gap analysis done and have chosen a couple of topics, at least get the owners to outline key points which should be covered and provide inspiration sources for the writer.

You should always work with your clients to build an SEO opportunity seeking culture within their company.

Do they have employees who upload products on the site? Make sure they know how to do it from an SEO point of view.

Do they often go to conferences or meetings? Make sure they always seek a backlink opportunity with their acquaintances. What blogger friends do they have that could help with a campaign?

Remember though: make it clear that everything must pass through your approval before it gets implemented. They shouldn’t start any spammy link building and then blame you for bad SEO results.

5. Don’t Rely On Clients Delivering

Although it’s great that your clients accept to help you by providing all the information you have requested, don’t rely on them delivering it, at least not on time.

Make sure they are making progress on their task from time to time, if it’s a bigger one. If you talk on Monday that they will give you the list of employees to add on the site by Friday, call them on Wednesday and remind them that you’ll need the information on Friday.

If possible, set up a meeting and get all your questions ready to be answered right then, right there.

6. Avoid Taking Clients That Don’t Fit You!

Many requests can come from sketchy businesses or websites. Once someone wrote to me:

Client: “Hey, my website was hit by a Google Penalty after the recent Google Update and I can’t figure out why. Can you help me?”

Me: “Sure. What’s the website?

Client: “www.piratedmovies2019.com”

Me: “I think I already have an idea…”

Many other requests I get are for video chat websites, porn sites, loans and other barely legal or sketchy niches. However, the truth is that the niche doesn’t really matter. And it’s not up to me to tell you what your moral boundaries are.

However, I’ll tell you this: Those sketchy niches… are HARD. Not because the competition is good, but because it’s bad. Literally bad. More like EVIL.

Why? Because the earnings are big. And, although you can make good money there as an SEO, prepare for a heck of a ride. Competitors prefer to blow into your candle instead of making their own shine brighter. This means you’ll deal with SPAM, negative SEO attacks, DDoS and whatever other Black Hat SEO stuff you can think of.

But this doesn’t just stop at the type of website or business they’re running.

Are they asking you to create videos for them? If you can’t outsource and profit from it, decline! Do they want graphic design? Do not purchase a Photoshop course! Decline. Outsource. Focus on search engine optimization.

Then there are the people. How’s the client as a person? Too pushy and you don’t like pushy persons? Decline.

I once met a client who was disappointed with his previous SEO providers. I asked him whom he worked with previously and his answer was “everyone”. Kinda’ made me feel the problem was with him and not everyone else so… wanna guess what I did? Yeah… that’s right. I said no.

I once declined optimizing a butcher’s website because I don’t like it when animals get slaughtered. It would’ve made me feel bad so I just refused it, although it probably had a good pay.

Taking a client you don’t really like or don’t feel comfortable with will make you feel less motivated. This might end up in you delivering poor results and you don’t want that to happen. On the long run, you’ll feel better and less stressed and you might even end up making more money.

I know it might be hard, but it’s a good idea to learn to say no. Early.

7. Perfectionism Holds You Back. Don’t Be Afraid to Fail

Unfortunately for me, I’m a perfectionist. Although I’m not speaking from experience (I can’t say I’ve actually failed really bad so far), I can say this: I probably didn’t try hard enough.

Most of my life’s biggest lessons came from mistakes and I wish I could do more of these in my business as well. Now I’m not telling you to be a fool and to not be cautious. Everything is about calculated risk. Just don’t stop at calculating.

Overthinking, over-planning, constant supervision are not good friends and they set you back most of the time. In other words…

8. Focus on Important Tasks

As previously mentioned, clients will always ask you for minor things that will take you time. While changing a background color might take 5 minutes, adding a popup might take hours, depending on the platform.

Make sure you estimate right what you can do quickly and what you can’t do. Don’t spend hours trying to figure out how to implement that particular feature. The feature won’t be useful if the site isn’t ranking.

Focus on those important tasks related to SEO, such as publishing blog posts on schedule, constantly optimizing pages and seeking backlink opportunities.

Otherwise, these less important tasks, although small, stack up and end up taking a lot of time, leaving too little for dealing with the important things.

Source: grasshopperherder.com

9. It’s Useful to Have a Monthly Schedule & Estimate

As much as I don’t like relying on very strict patterns, as I feel they limit creativity, you do need some.

It’s good to have a checklist of SEO best practices you generally do for all clients (for an SEO audit) and it’s also good to develop monthly schedules for each client.

How many blog posts are you going to publish per month? When should you start looking for new topics? When do you launch a new wave of outreaches?

You can also purchase some nofollow backlinks from reputable sites which are relevant to your client’s niche. Avoid using the same sites for all your clients. If it’s a car rental website, look for car news publishers.

This will also help you deliver an estimate at the end of the month to justify your labor. Some clients don’t really care and if you deliver good results they will start ignoring them, but it adds to the transparency and helps you keep track of your progress (it acts like a journal).

10. User Intent & UX Really Do Matter

Once you get to the 1st page, you’ll start noticing that slight changes that align with user intent have a positive impact. Now it’s hard to isolate in order to see if the changes have impacted rankings, but it’s definitely worth taking a look at conversion rate, which will usually improve.

You have to figure out what makes a client buy or take the appropriate action that you want them to take and what makes them leave and never come back. Once you know that, you’ll know exactly what you have to do.

Do they want to see the price? Make the price font bigger. Are they looking for images? Put them first. Answer their questions and they will convert.

Here’s a good video to watch to understand the basics of UX:

youtube

A general rule of thumb is that your clickable objects are obvious. You can use tools like Hotjar or Yandex Metrica to figure out if your users are clicking where you don’t want them to click.

A good first step is to take a look at what the top competitors are doing. Don’t copy paste them, but consider that since they’re #1, it means that they’re definitely doing something good.

For me, working on improving the UX brought results in both rankings and sales. Even if Google doesn’t reward the UX changes with rankings early on, you can measure its success by looking at the conversion rate. Higher conversion rates mean more money and more money means more SEO, which eventually ends up in better rankings.

11. Tools Are Really Useful & They Save up Time

Having the luxury of being able to use the CognitiveSEO Tool was essential to my success. It saved me countless hours of work and sorting Excel files by aggregating everything into the platform, from backlinks and technical audits to rank tracking.

SEO tools can really help you speed up the optimization process, so make sure you pick the right ones and use them to leverage your work.

If you’re just starting out and don’t have a budget to spend on tools, you can obviously help yourself with free ones. Here’s a list of free SEO tools that I use in general, along with the CognitiveSEO Toolset.

12. Paid SEO Audits Are Better

When you do an SEO audit, don’t copy paste some info from a free tool. Firstly, the client might test you with that. Secondly, following that path your results might not be impressive.

Wasting too much time on things such as 100% PageSpeed Insights score or keyword density will really hurt you both short and long term. Instead, focus on important things such as indexability, keyword research, UX, content creation, title & meta description optimization and promotion.

A great deal you can make is to offer a free audit if they decide to sign a monthly services contract.

If they say no, they can keep the audit, but it’s going to cost them. This way, it’s not actually a free audit anymore, but it’s like labor included in a monthly contract. You’ll have to audit their site before you start the job anyway, right?

This way you’ll feel more responsible for the work, knowing that it’s actual work and not just a pitch. You also have the audit as an incentive for them to sign a monthly SEO services contract.

As a client, free SEO audits can cost you more than paid ones on the long run. So better get the real deal.

13. Links Are Still Important

There’s not much to say here. I always do technical things first while preparing the keyword research and content gap analysis. Then I immediately start the content optimization process and long term monthly content via the blog.

However, to really push it to the next level, I have to admit that links have definitely showed good results, especially when pushing from the 5th position to the top 3 ones.

So if you have a tough competition, you’ll still need to think of some ways to get sites to link to you, even in 2019.

14. Links Are Indeed Expensive

Obviously, the easiest way to get links is to pay for them.. But god damn, some links are expensive! And when I say expensive I don’t mean just money but also all the problems that paid links can bring (penalties for instance).

I’ve had cases in which certain publications have asked me for a client’s whole month budget just for one link. And I also had to provide the content myself!

The truth is that cheap links are also bad links and they’re usually not worth it, since they come from sketchy websites that don’t provide much quality. I know “bloggers” that write about everything… today they write about one brand and the next day about their competitor, recommending both.

However, I would high recommend that you nofollow those links. Even though you might think that they don’t, the truth is that nofollow links impact SEO. Not as much as the dofollow ones, but they do.

15. Links Can Be Obtained For Free (#naturally)

Yes. You’ve heard me right. It is possible. Even for small websites in uninteresting niches. But links don’t come that easily.

You can’t just publish your post and pray that it will rain backlinks. You have to promote it. Be it through direct e-mail outreach, organically on social networks or through Facebook ads, your chances of landing a backlink will increase.

You need to be persuasive. The truth is this requires both earned skills and some talent. A good way of increasing your success rate is to get under their skin. Don’t outreach directly with what you want, but try to build a relationship before. In general, you have more chances if they also get something in return, so figure out how you can help them first and they will help you back.

I’ve started conversations by asking about soccer, favorite movies or personal stories. Many people share these experiences on social media. Follow them for a while and try to start a conversation. Once they reply the first time, your chances of collaborating are already high.

Also, when you’re starting with e-mail outreach, make sure you’re outreaching to people that might be interested in collaborating with you. If you do your research well, your chances will increase even more.

Some even go one step further by writing posts specifically for the people they’re about to outreach. For example, if you see someone constantly talking about certain aspects of a diet, you could write about it on your nutrition website and then outreach them.

Most of them will at least be happy to share the post on social media and, even if it’s not quite as good as a backlink, it still helps make your post more popular. Who knows, maybe someone else who follows them will see your post and link to it.

You can also try some other methods, such as the mention outreach technique.

16. The More Money Clients Have, the Less They Stress You Out

Don’t get me wrong. People are all different and character is what matters most. I’ve had people that have money and stressed me out a lot.

However, in general, the ones that don’t have the money upfront or always postpone payment for different reasons might also be the most demanding and they can also be the first to call you out if you take a bad step.

Generally, people with money have a better understanding of how things work and they ask more questions about what the final result will be and fewer questions about how you’re going to achieve that.

If your offer isn’t ridiculously high, you’ll have an easier time signing a contract for a decent pay. They are focused on the final result and don’t micro manage you too much.

However, they are also the most fierce if you try to scam them or take them for fools, so make sure you avoid that. They have good lawyers.

17. Be Firm About Your Schedule Upfront

I’ve made the big mistake of always answering the phone and trying to serve the client immediately whenever they needed assistance. However, that put me second and, over time, it affected me both personally and professionally.

Even if you work from home or if you’re an entrepreneur, you need to have a limit on how much you work.

It’s a good idea to tell your clients upfront that you prefer to be contacted via e-mail (or your preferred social network channel) and that your schedule is between xx AM and xx PM.

I know it’s all #GaryVee and stuff and I love him, but don’t overwork yourself or you’ll get too tired to be motivated at all.

If the clients keep calling you all the time, you can consider telling them that the hours spent act as marketing consultation sessions which can be billed.

18. Transparency Matters More Than Quick Results

Many clients that come don’t have any SEO training. Most of them will ask questions about Google’s algorithms that might seem silly. Answer then with calm and honesty.

If you’re dealing with someone who’s had bad previous experiences, being transparent might help even more. If the others have promised them #1 in no-time and haven’t delivered, do you think they will fall for it again?

Instead, tell them that nobody can actually promise you that. If they want to work with you it’s good and if they don’t, it’s also good. You can instead promise them that you’ll do your best.

Here’s a list of questions and answers on how to convince clients to buy your SEO services. They should help you get more deals.

19. Communication Is Key

Sounds like couple therapy, doesn’t it? Well, you and your client are sort of a couple and communication is very important. You have to make it very very clear what you need, what you’re going to do, what they can and can not do. And they should communicate things back to you as well.

Make sure your clients understand that they can’t make any modifications to the website without consulting you first. SEO can be affected by anything, so make sure they know this.

More importantly, make sure they don’t start getting backlinks from sketchy websites. Sure, it’s a very good idea that they always seek backlink opportunities, but this doesn’t mean they should also start any link building without telling you.

When talking about big changes, make sure you have a written consent, either via e-mail, SMS, social media or even paper. It’s best via e-mail as it’s harder to lose.

20. Most People Who Want SEO Don’t Have Websites on Popular Platforms

This might not make you happy, but many people that really need SEO campaigns don’t run on popular content management platforms, such as WordPress, Joomla or Magento.

Those platforms are already pretty SEO friendly and there’s usually a lot of information on the web that covers specific cases related to them.

Prepare to deal with very weird platforms, as well as custom built sites which are either old or simply not SEO friendly.

This might be a case of SEO lesson no. 6 (not an ideal client). However, if you’re just focusing on the SEO part strictly and can guarantee that someone else will implement the changes, then it’s good.

But again, if you don’t want to waste time, just don’t take clients that don’t meet your ideal criteria.

21. Programmers Are (Sometimes) Difficult to Work With

Disclaimer: I’m not trying to insult anyone. Programmers are awesome. If you’re a web developer/programmer, then you should definitely have a good understanding of technical SEO.

This might just be something local, but 2/3 of times I’ve got the impression that they have a can’t do attitude, an excuse or something similar.

A common mistake I see with programmers that build custom websites is using the same titles as URLs, menus and slugs and not having enough flexibility.

So, if I create a page with the title “X lessons I’ve learned from optimizing small/medium businesses” then the URL will be automatically generated as “x-lessons-I-ve-learned-from-optimizing-small-medium-businesses” and that same title will be in the menu of the site, which isn’t quite favorable.

Again, most of these issues don’t come with WordPress and seem basic knowledge to us, but for PHP developers it might be different, they might focus on other things they find more important.

Explaining the importance is essential but you also have to be assertive in your communication. Most of them are always trying to be nice, but you can feel that tension somewhere… Sort of like you’re addressing a criticism on their work, as if it weren’t good enough.

Sometimes though, they might have good arguments, such as “That would probably cause a security issue, are you sure it’s worth it?” to which the answer would be “If you’re certain it causes that much trouble, then probably not”.

youtube

If you want to save time, record videos showing exactly what you mean instead of e-mail texting. A video recording of your screen showing where the changes should take place + your voice explaining the process will be more effective.

Prepare for bugs and let them know upfront that it’s not a 1 time deal. In one case there were some redirect issues in which URL parameters with unique identifiers from Facebook would result in a blank page. The programmer fixed it, but then we figured out that Adwords parameters do the same.

Then some other bugs came out and so on. At this rate, both you and the programmer can get annoyed, but keep your calm.

It might sound logical and simple to you, coming from a world where these small issues don’t really exist (WordPress) but to them and their platform it might not be the same. However, some SEO training won’t hurt. They should be interested in learning these things. The truth is that the code can be pretty, but it doesn’t matter if the site doesn’t rank.

It’s a different thing when they understand how SEO works, though. For example, the awesome programming #team here at CognitiveSEO definitely isn’t a difficult one. And believe me… our CEO is a champion at finding bugs.

What SEO lessons have you learned in your journey as a digital or content marketer? Which one was the most important? Please share in the comments section below!

The post 21 SEO & Business Lessons Learned From Optimizing Small Websites appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

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krisggordon · 5 years ago