#Geeksperhour

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5 Must Have Skills to be a Successful Online Entrepreneur

https://goo.gl/aNZLJA

Contact experts with all these skills https://goo.gl/GjNr21

[taskshift]

Top 10 Sites to Hire Magento Developers

1. Toptal If you need to improve your ecommerce platform, or begin ecommerce development for the next iteration of your online store, start with Toptal. Their vetting system, which leaves only 3 percent of candidates standing, ensures you’ll receive nothing less than some of the best. Toptal is most suitable for large-scale projects and established ecommerce businesses.

Once you’re connected to a Magento programmer who’s suited for your project, you’re given a no-risk trial period. If you decide to hire them, you have someone who will work with you as long as you need them — you can even bring them into your company if they agree. Toptal even offers temporary on-site hiring.

2. Magento Partners Need a developer with years of experience in ecommerce development? Magento has its own list of certified Magento developers to pick from to improve your ecommerce presence. Many of these Magento development services are aimed at large-scale enterprises, but there are quite a few for small- to medium-sized companies as well. Along with e-commerce website development, you can also find online marketing services, extension development, custom Magento solutions, and business optimizers, if needed. With a robust Magento community, their selection of dedicated Magento developers is a great place to start your hiring process.

3. CodementorX Codementor was established as a website for helping novices get off the ground with one-on-one programming help from an expert. Its offshoot, CodementorX, allows you to hire those same front-end developers with years of experience as well as hundreds of thousands of other rigorously vetted freelancers.

Once you sign up and submit your project, you’ll be given a shortlist of candidates as well as a free trial. You don’t need to pay any platform fees — only the hourly or retainer fees, which vary in range. This is great for long-term engagements, and you can even get an on-site developer if requested.

4. Upwork It can be difficult to hire Magento freelancers for short-term contract projects on your online store. Upwork seeks to make this easier; it’s one of the most trustworthy and easy-to-use job boards you can find for cost-effective web development and ecommerce solutions. Besides giving you a shortlist of job candidates, potential applicants can find you and search for them.

Upwork’s basic plan is free. No need to pay for job postings and interviewing candidates is up to you. If you want full control over the hiring process and your business needs, Upwork is your choice.

5. Magentax Magentax is an all-in-one Magento development company. With experienced ecommerce developers to choose from, and an in-depth analysis of your project requirements and business needs, you’re sure to receive a quality online store. Along with the site, you can also pay for Magento theme development. You give your idea, and the Magentax development team makes it a reality.

6. GeeksPerHour Businesses searching to hire Magento developers should check out GeeksPerHour. GeeksPerHour uses an expedited hiring process where you simply post your job and have someone suitable assigned to you. You have five-hour, refundable trial periods to test out their ecommerce solutions. But with an incredible repeat business rate, it’s likely that you’ll be pleased with the results.

7. Stack Overflow Stack Overflow is a growing community of dedicated developers of all skill sets, who are constantly exchanging knowledge and advice. The job board is a great place to locate a serious and well-educated Magento expert and other ecommerce developers. Plus, its high popularity means a fresh and constantly evolving list of applicants.

8. Hired Hired upends traditional freelancing job boards by having the employer come to the employee. You can use Hired’s amazing search tools to narrow down potential expert Magento developers. Certain cities have local hiring services, but relocation and remote jobs are available as well.

Hired also prices projects per business, so you won’t go over budget. If you’re willing to spend a few extra minutes a day to hire Magento developers, this is a great platform to use.

9. PeoplePerHour Much like Upwork, PeoplePerHour lets you browse through Magento programmers and other ecommerce developers to post your own job listing. It’s free to use, and its Hourlies allow you to find ready-to-hire Magento freelancers for a smaller project. From agencies and small businesses to contractors of all caliber, you can find any sort of person for the job here.

10. Freelancer Use Freelancer to post your Magento project or find users directly. Watch as the Magento experts bid on your job, and pay a fixed or hourly rate, in milestones or all at once. Have someone hand-pick people for your project, or sort through the applicants yourself. You can even hire locally. If you want control over your online business and the hiring process, Freelancer is a top choice.

[premiumwebsolution]

RT @GeeksPerHourCom: 11 Servant Selling Philosophies Episode 197 of The Action Catalyst Podcast https://t.co/UlQbkEpTBi #rory_vaden #onlinebiz #CoventryIs

11 Servant Selling Philosophies Episode 197 of The Action Catalyst Podcast https://t.co/UlQbkEpTBi #rory_vaden #onlinebiz #CoventryIs

— GeeksPerHour (@GeeksPerHourCom) May 31, 2017

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[geeksperhour]

ClickSend’s Tips to Improve Your SMS Marketing Campaigns

This is a guest post by ClickSend.

Given its fast engagement, high open and response rates, and effectiveness in reaching audience wherever they are, SMS campaigns are one of the most adopted mobile marketing tactics. SMS can be an incredibly valuable marketing tool if used correctly, but with just one wrong move, SMS messages can easily come across as spammy.

Don’t worry: the experts at ClickSend are here to help you delight your customers and get the most out of your SMS campaigns with these simple tips.

Before you start sending:

Set an objective

What do you want to achieve from an SMS campaign? It might seem boring, but you need to know your goals to measure how your campaign is working. Your objective might be to capture data, or to increase bookings or reservations. Set your goal, track it, and learn from it.

Know your database

Everyone on your database must have opted-in to receive your SMS marketing communications. Otherwise, your messages, campaign, and even account can be canceled. No one likes SMS spam, and messaging recipients who have not opted in will do more harm than good.

Keep messages clear and concise

Get to the point quickly. You have 160 characters to promote your offer and drive your desired action, and in today’s media saturated world, people have very short attention spans.

Pay attention to timing

Timing is everything, and that’s especially true for SMS marketing. Not only do people not want to get messages in the middle of the night, but they can’t take action if they’re asleep. Track when your users are most active on your mobile site or website to find the ideal times to send out SMS messages.

With these tips in mind, you’re ready to build your SMS marketing campaign. If you’re wondering where to get started or how to tell if your campaign will be effective, check out our list:

Five elements of a good SMS marketing message:

1. Give your message a personal touch by using the recipient’s first name, if you have it. Using ClickSend’s (First Name) placeholders will do this automatically. This also adds credibility to the message.

2. Identify yourself and/or the name of your company. Clearly stating who you are builds trust and recognition.

3. If promoting an offer, clearly present it and any conditions as succinctly as possible. Don’t use open-ended messages. Make it clear when the offer ends to avoid confusion, create urgency, and drive your desired action.

4. Include a clear call to action, whether it’s “Show This Text…” or “Click Here.” Show the recipient how to complete the action you want.

5. Always provide a clear way for the recipient to opt out of your marketing SMS messages. It’s the law in most countries and making it difficult for recipients to opt out only loses customer trust. For example,  include instructions in your SMS explaining how the receiver can opt out by texting ‘STOP’ to your short code (your shortened text number).

Engage customers and prospects through SMS campaigns or personalized one-on-one messages—try the ClickSend extension for Zoho CRM. This bi-directional text messaging extension allows users to send and receive SMS from Zoho CRM leads and contacts without logging in to the ClickSend platform.

Try ClickSend for Zoho CRM

Work smarter by adding new capabilities to Zoho CRM with business solutions from Zoho Marketplace. Explore Zoho Marketplace >

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[geeksperhour]

Say hello to the new Office Suite logos

Your favorite Zoho office suite products—Writer, Sheet, Show, and Notebook—are getting new, refreshed logos. 

When we first launched Writer—Zoho’s first cloud app—we knew it was going to be an uphill climb to build a familiar, yet uncompromising office experience on the web. Now, more than a decade later, our word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and note-taking apps stand among the best, with tens of thousands of documents created every day.

Starting today, we’re bringing new design updates to our office apps to create a refreshing, unified experience across the suite, and the first of these updates are new product logos.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILWAToz4qE4

  Embracing Logolinism

If you use multiple Zoho apps, you’ve likely already noticed our new line-based logos on other apps. This is based on our new design language, Logolinism, which embraces simple, linear shapes to create easily recognizable product metaphors.

    The minimal, understated nature of the design—which we believe truly reflects the Zoho brand itself—also gives us more flexibility to adapt our logos across multiple platforms, media, and color palettes.

  Goodbye, Fill! =]

  These new changes are rolling out across the Writer, Sheet, Show, Notebook and WorkDrive web and mobile apps as we speak. We’ll be back with more design updates for the office suite, as well as complete insights into Logolinism and our process behind it, in the coming weeks.

We know design is a highly subjective experience, and since you’re seeing these changes with a fresh perspective, we at Zoho would love to know what you think. Post your thoughts about the new designs in the comments below!

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Enhance Your Productivity with the Zoho Forms-Automate.io Integration

Zoho Forms is one of the leading form software solutions for lead generation and data collection. Since launching in 2015, we’ve been pioneers in offline data collection, offering a feature-loaded mobile app and customizable and responsive web forms. Many businesses also use Zoho Forms to collect data internally to log their issues, raise requests, and more.

In most cases, the data collected through forms has to go to another app. Usually, the data transfer either happens manually or involves duplication with copy-paste. If not, it requires a bulk of coding expertise to automate the data flow between your apps.

To simplify integration with apps of your choice and automate business workflows, Zoho Forms is integrating with Automate.io.

Automate.io is a tool that lets you connect multiple apps and automate tasks between them, saving you a lot of time and effort in the process. It transfers data from Forms to various apps and solves critical business workflows.

How it works

Automate.io’s platform triggers an action in another app when someone submits a form response. You must create bots with your apps to set up workflows – one app is a trigger, and based on the trigger, automate.io will perform an action in another app. This integration can be two-step involving two apps or multi-step involving many apps.

For example, when your employees collect data from clients on your site, our offline mobile app would be an effective data collection tool. You won’t need to wait for them to return to your office and update the data in your CRM. When they are online, the data syncs to the Zoho cloud, and it triggers an action through automate.io. The collected data can be added to your Hubspot CRM, and tasks can be added to Todoist or appointments can be booked in Calendly through automate.io.

Configuring bots in automate.io is simple. To learn how, check out our step-by-step guide to integrating Zoho Forms and Automate.io here.

If you haven’t tried out automate.io for Zoho Forms yet, you can visit the link below to explore the app gallery.

While the possibilities of this integration platform are endless, we’ve listed a few examples that might help your team automate workflows across verticals efficiently:

  If your business runs on one or many of these applications and you need an efficient forms app that simplifies data collection, Zoho Forms should be your go-to choice. With the Automate.io integration, there are numerous business workflows that can be automated for you.

Try them out and also let us know in the comments which apps you use and the workflows you’d like to solve with Zoho Forms-Automate.io integration.

If you have any queries or suggestions for us, you can always reach us at support@zohoforms.com.

Happy automating!

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[geeksperhour]

#ZCampaignsChat Recap: The power of email marketing in the digital era 

We talk a lot about email marketing these days—crafting content, designing templates, choosing recipients, and, finally, sending out campaigns. Emails are sent by marketers to individuals who have the hopes of receiving content that interests them. Technology has a huge influence on email marketing, and that’s why marketers now need to be creative, critical, and action-oriented at the same time. With the entry of each tech disruption like Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, and Predictive Reporting, email marketing sees new light, becoming more humanized and contextual.

Recently, we chatted with some email geeks and industry experts on Twitter about how smart email marketing is getting. Here are excerpts from our #ZCampaignsChat in our second Expert Diaries episode:

  Q1. They say A/B testing also stands for “Always Be testing.” How do you think this method is evolving? #ZCampaignsChat

A/B testing is the most-sought-after tool for any email marketer. Subject lines, sender addresses, or content—experiments can be run for any attribute. But “smart” testing is when you not only know what you’re testing, but why and how to perform that test. Look what some of our experts say:

A1: The right martech makes A/B testing easier/faster, allows marketers to test nearly everything, and in real-time. Despite advances, A/B testing can still waste time and $$. AI+A/B helps marketers uncover hidden insights to A/B test for greatest impact. #ZCampaignsChat

— Tom Sather (@tom_sather) July 30, 2019

A1: Testing has to happen one piece at a time. You can't two elements of an email at the same time or you don't really know what has the greatest impact. Testing is, therefore, time consuming and clients avoid doing it (and miss huge opportunities by doing so) #ZCampaignsChat https://t.co/u3FrVgHdcy

— Val Geisler

(@lovevalgeisler) July 30, 2019

A1. “Always Be Testing” but “Always Have a Hypothesis”. Don’t test for the sake of testing. Have a testing plan in place. Even if it’s as simple as mapping out a few months' worth of subject line testing. #ZCampaignsChat (1/2) https://t.co/cEGPRb8Wse

— Jaina Mistry (@jainamistry) July 30, 2019

  Takeaway: A test without a plan is a lost route. First understand what attributes you’re testing and then reflect on why you to test them, which ultimately gives you answers for what metrics can optimize your emails. Some recent trends in Machine Learning are changing the way testing and experimentation is carried out, so leverage the power of these mechanisms as well. Don’t forget to test when you see what it yields!

  Q2. Email cadence has been receiving a lot of press lately. What’s your ideal email-sending pattern for starters? #ZCampaignsChat

Every brand wants to send out emails, but do their recipients really look forward to receiving them? The answer is…it depends! While you think you craft the best email campaigns, somewhere at the other end of the globe, your recipient might see you as a potential spammer and try unsubscribing from your brand. So how do you avoid sending too many emails while also not underperforming? Watch out what our experts discuss:

A2. Over 80% of UK marketers want rules to dictate cadence. This makes no sense if you are trying to have a conversation. #ZCampaignsChat

— Skip Fidura (@skipfidura) July 30, 2019

A2: Cadence is SO unique by brand! One thing you'll learn as you grow a new email programs is that *relevance* wins out over a set rule on # of emails, i.e. automated emails!

That said, starting monthly and adding from there is always an easy place to start.#ZCampaignsChat

— Jessica Best (@bestofjess) July 30, 2019

A2: No ideal email cadence for everyone and depends on biz, individual subscriber’s prefs and age of subscription. Use data to see how subscribers interact with emails over time both positively and negatively. New subs usually welcome more email at first. #ZCampaignsChat

— Tom Sather (@tom_sather) July 30, 2019

Totally! And once you set those expectations for your subscribers you have to stick to them. Don't suddenly change your monthly newsletter to a weekly without letting them know. Some of those subscribers may only want monthly emails from you. #ZCampaignsChat

— Jaina Mistry (@jainamistry) July 30, 2019

  Takeaway: There is no one rule for brands. Every brand needs to find its own email cadence, which might sometimes call for common sense and relevance over rules. Marketers can use the data they collect to determine what works for them, but, again, too much data can bog them down too, making them indecisive. This is where a balance between intuition and data comes in, so get realistic and aware about your engagement pattern with recipients—what conversations they like, how much content they can process, and how they reacted to your previous emails.

  Q3.What are some challenges you’ve faced in getting emails delivered, and how have you overcome them? #ZCampaignsChat

Getting your emails delivered to recipients’ inboxes can be the biggest challenge of all, considering the spam filters and umpteen domain reputation protocols. Beyond all this, brands still successfully manage to engage their contacts by sending emails that directly reach recipients’ mailboxes. Let’s hear from our experts as to how they handled unforeseen challenges while delivering their email campaigns:

(Some serious discussions can’t be restrained in 280 characters, you see! ;))

A3: How to answer this in 1 tweet??

First: you have to know if you have an inbox placement issue. Cue @returnpath or start by looking at your results by recipient email domain: if something's out of whack, you may have an issue!#ZCampaignsChat

— Jessica Best (@bestofjess) July 30, 2019

Good LORD. Do NOT switch ESPs if you're already having deliverability issues!

It's more often your fault as the marketer (content + how people got on your list) than it is your poor IP address

#ZCampaignsChat

— Jessica Best (@bestofjess) July 30, 2019

A3. Maybe I'm making this too simple but The best way to maintain good deliverability is to engage your readers. In other words, don't send crap. #ZCampaignsChat

— Skip Fidura (@skipfidura) July 30, 2019

A3. If you’re having deliverability issues, the most important thing is to not feel shame! It happens to every single email marketer at some point in their career. Use the resources around you to get to the issue and figure out the solution. #ZCampaignsChat (1/5) https://t.co/0E0OPG1nAn

— Jaina Mistry (@jainamistry) July 30, 2019

Takeaway: Don’t be embarrassed if your sender reputation is getting bad. Well, it does serve as an alert signal, but this is when you need to spend the time and analyze your domain reports and performance.

exactly. Don't run from your problems. They have a habit of following you! #ZCampaignsChat

— Tom Sather (@tom_sather) July 30, 2019

Don’t run away from problems; rather, take some simple yet effective measures like cleaning your mailing lists, adopting some list monitoring techniques, obtaining consent from people before sending emails, and studying your previous campaign metrics.

Q4. How are machine learning and AI shaping today’s email marketing strategy? #ZCampaignsChat

As stated earlier, machine learning and AI are transforming the way emails are created and delivered. While there are numerous advantages to these tools, the real question is whether marketers are really adept at handling them. Let’s look at what the experts think:

A4. The area I see it the most is making emails more relevant by dynamically inserting different content/products for different people #ZCampaignsChat

— Tim Watson (@tawatson) July 30, 2019

A4. … but don't be a magpie marketer and chase after the shiny new thing just because it has a sexy buzzword. #ZCampaignsChat

— Skip Fidura (@skipfidura) July 30, 2019

Takeaway: It’s undeniably true that machine learning and AI are changing the way email marketing is done, but one shouldn’t forget that as long as we don’t know what to achieve with them, they’re merely magic tools with no use. The future of marketing is highly shaped by the accurate decisions, strategies, and metrics that machine learning and AI put forward, so it’s time for email marketers to understand how best to leverage the power of these technological advancements.

  Q5. Automated emails with humanized content is the new norm in email marketing. Your thoughts? #ZCampaignsChat

Automation is always welcomed by email marketers, and, true to its nature, it does save a lot of time. But sending emails in bulk needn’t mean the message should also be written for the “mass” audience. Automation certainly ensures the emails are delivered on point to the right people, however, designing tailored emails is still in a marketer’s hands. Here’s what our experts say about designing personalized emails:

A5. I have been saying for years that all we are trying to achieve is having human conversations at scale. #ZCampaignsChat

— Skip Fidura (@skipfidura) July 30, 2019

A5. Every email, whether automated or not, needs to have the human touch. Email is a 1:1 communication. Without a sense of authenticity or humanity in your email, you may as well be a robot. #ZCampaignsChat https://t.co/eWItsuiMOO pic.twitter.com/KOKb0P2uq3

— Jaina Mistry (@jainamistry) July 30, 2019

A5: The holy grail of email marketing is a fully personalized, automated and humanized content. Surely another area that AI and machine learning will help marketers achieve? But don’t be creepy. #ZCampaignsChat

— Tom Sather (@tom_sather) July 30, 2019

A5: Ha, I'm chuckling a bit here: What is "humanized" content?? Be actually human, please.

Automation is one of my favorite #emailmarketer tricks for getting emails to someone on their timeline, but content and messaging should all still be, well… human.#ZCampaignsChat https://t.co/9dok54Tjub

— Jessica Best (@bestofjess) July 30, 2019

Takeaway: Emails need to be contextual and conversational. You can automate and mechanize the process of email creation, but in the end, they’re delivered to humans who would prefer to read content that relates to them. If you fail to bring in a human-to-human feel, the whole idea of delivering emails would fail. It’s time to send humanized emails, dear marketers!

  Q6. Unsubscribes aren’t always harmful to your brand. What do you think? #ZCampaignsChat

Marketers are frequently frustrated with the opt-outs that increase with every email they send. But rarely do marketers take the time to understand what made people quit receiving the email in the first place. And only a chunk of them feel positive about the whole “unsubscribe” show. Want to know why?

A6: Bring on the unsubs! They're cleaning up your list (good for deliverability), telling you they aren't a good fit for you (good for product-market fit), and saving you money on your per-profile costs with your ESP! #ZCampaignsChat https://t.co/AC3Ncwy7kd

— Val Geisler

(@lovevalgeisler) July 30, 2019

Allowing subscribers to easily unsubscribe isn’t just about deliverability, it’s about how your brand is viewed by your subscribers. If you hide your unsubscribe, you could be seen as deceptive and untrustworthy. Is that really how you want to be seen? #ZCampaignsChat (2/2)

— Jaina Mistry (@jainamistry) July 30, 2019

A6. Unsubscribes are to be embraced. Whilst we'd rather not have them, they are ultimately a very good thing. Break ups happen and finishing a relationship on a good note, not sour one, is always best #ZCampaignsChat

— Tim Watson (@tawatson) July 30, 2019

Takeaway: Unsubscribes aren’t always harmful. Sometimes it gives you a way to clean your mailing lists and keep only the contacts relevant to your brand. Unsubscribes also help you reflect on your campaigns’ performances and take actions that will improve engagement.

  Q7. Which performance metric best determines an email’s success for you? #ZCampaignsChat

Creating and sending email campaigns has got a step beyond—reviewing. An email’s success is determined by many different criteria that differ across brands and their intent to engage. That said, here’s our experts’ outlook on which performance metric could be looked at:

A7. The best performance metric is the one that tied to your goal or CTA, like revenue per email, or downloads, etc. Metrics like Opens should be tracked but are better in troubleshooting why a campaign didn’t meet objectives. #ZCampaignsChat

— Tom Sather (@tom_sather) July 30, 2019

It takes looking at opens, clicks, conversions, unsubscribes, spam complaints, etc, to give you a full picture of the success of your campaign. #ZCampaignsChat (2/2)

— Jaina Mistry (@jainamistry) July 30, 2019

A7. So as close to the sales as I can get and still have current enough information to make changes mid-campaign. #ZCampaignsChat (2/2)

— Skip Fidura (@skipfidura) July 30, 2019

Takeaway: Plan well before you send out your campaigns—this will help you decide which metrics are essential for your brand so that you can effectively track them. Moreover, studying performance metrics is important to revising your email marketing strategy, so looking at a campaign’s opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, and spam complaints helps you get a complete picture.

  We hope this episode of #ZCampaignsChat helps you understand the importance and power of email marketing in the digital age. Got some interesting perspectives to share? Drop in your comments and let’s discuss email marketing!

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Introducing Custom Branding and more in Office Integrator

We’re adding white labeling options to Zoho Office Integrator aimed at making our document, spreadsheet, and presentation editors a true part of your application.

Zoho Office Integrator helps businesses add document creation muscles to their custom applications by giving them powerful, easy-to-integrate document editors and APIs.

Businesses like e-Agree.com use Office Integrator to streamline and automate the user experience of their contract management services, and we couldn’t be happier. Office Integrator enables creators like you to access fully-featured, customizable document editors easily—without having to build them from scratch.

Today, we’re happy to introduce some exciting updates aimed at giving you even better control of how the editors look and behave in your application. Here’s everything new and improved:

Custom branding

Add your custom brand logos to the editors. Remove any instances of the default Zoho logo across the document, spreadsheet, and presentation editors, and replace them with yours—we’re sure they’ll look great!

Here’s how it works

  Custom domains

While the default API requests and editor URLs are pointed to .zoho.com, you can now customize them to be directed to your own custom domains, like .zylker.com for example.

Custom domain mapping in Office Integrator is implemented using the CNAME method. All you have to do is verify and match your registered domain with the custom code we generate for you, and we can complete the process in 5-7 days.

Here’s a complete on using custom domains in Office Integrator

  Customizing the editor experience

Polishing the overall experience? Pick and choose what you want your users to see and how. You now get the control to keep or hide Download, Print buttons as well as the entire top-band of our editors—making sure they sit well within your application and the experience it provides.

To get to the UI customization options, go to the White labeling tab and choose the “User Interface” menu.

We’re also opening up internationalization options for all three editors, so that they match the UI-language of your application.

Here’s a deep-dive

That’s all for now. Let us know if you have any questions by posting in the comments section below or by dropping us an email at support@zohoofficeapi.com

Availability: Customers on the Commercial plans can get hold of everything we announced today through the new White Labeling Add-on.

What’s stopping you? Get started with building your next big dream, right away!

  Happy building!

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[geeksperhour]

Zoho Projects: A glimpse of our year so far. 

The year is halfway over, and we’ve been hard at work improving your experience with Projects. Say hello to an upgraded Zoho Projects that comes with new and enhanced features to give you a productivity boost. Read on to learn more!

Lay it all out – Multiple layouts for projects

Zoho Projects is introducing multiple layouts for your different needs. Let’s use the example of a musician in a record company. It would make sense for the business to follow a standard layout for managing all its administration activities. However, the musician would need the tool more for keeping track of their bookings and the logistics of their tours. The fields for managing administration don’t really apply to their work. A layout that’s tailored to address event planning work would help more. After all, software that you use to manage work shouldn’t make you work harder. That’s why we introduced our multi-layout functionality, to facilitate layouts that record details which are more relevant to your work. We’ve also added a few other custom fields to our existing list. You can now add URL, phone, and email fields to your projects.

Control access – Task field permissions

Introducing enhanced Roles and Permissions—you now have field-level permissions to go deep and break down your tasks at the field level. You can now set your system so your employees can only view and modify tasks that they’re assigned to or tagged in. With our new field-level permissions, you can require that only some profiles—like a manager or admin—can assign tasks to others, while the other profiles can only assign tasks to themselves. The user profiles can be given view or edit permissions for each field in your tasks. You can also make sure that particular fields are hidden, or can’t be edited. For example, if you don’t want your employees to change the task dates, it can be done. If there’s a particular custom field like “Externally committed end date” that you want only your managers to be aware of, you can do that, too.

Work easy – Subtasks in Kanban view 

Easily manage all of your tasks by simply moving them across a board. Our Kanban view has now been enhanced to introduce subtasks. Even with carefully laid out plans, there are always factors that can cause changes to a project in real-time. For a construction project, getting permits for land may have originally been a subtask, but unforeseen legal problems can make it complicated. Now this can become a task on its own that requires you to do a whole set of activities to solve it. In Zoho Projects, you can now simply drag and drop to reorder subtasks or make them into parent tasks in Kanban view.

Be alert – Threshold and budget reach alerts 

Keep your project spending in check. It’s easy to get caught up in your work and spend more than what was planned. There’s also always a chance of unexpected expenses. With Zoho Projects, you can set up a threshold for your budget and get notified with email alerts when you hit it. There’s also an option for getting alerts when you reach your planned project budget.

Balance for better – Resource allocation

Use resource allocation to efficiently balance the workload among your employees. When creating and assigning tasks, it’s possible to see which users are under-utilized, over-utilized, or unavailable on specified dates. You can also select an owner to see if they’re available at that particular period, and how full their plate is. This saves you the time it would take to go to the resource utilization chart to check everyone’s workload after all the tasks have been assigned.

That’s not all! We have several exciting updates in the works for you. Stay tuned to find out what’s up!

Until then, we wish you many happy projects!

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Introducing Zia in Writer: The smart writing assistant trained to help you write better.

Writer now has a smart assistant to identify grammatical errors and also come up with real-time style and readability suggestions to help improve your writing.

Meet your new personal proofreader. Zia, Zoho’s AI-powered intelligent assistant, can help you identify embarrassing grammatical and style errors early-on, before you share your writing with the rest of the world.

Zia is smart enough to understand the context of your piece, and capable enough to give it the polish it deserves. And the best part? She does it all while working quietly in the background–in real time. Let’s take a closer look.

1. The grammar checker that combines rules with context

We’ve seen grammar checkers before. But Zia is a little different. She doesn’t stop with the basics. She combines them with advanced machine learning techniques to provide contextual feedback about each sentence.

From frequently confused words to punctuation and preposition errors, Zia is trained to identify most common grammatical errors and suggest corrections. Watch for the green underlines she makes in your documents.

Real-time grammar and style suggestions in Writer

  2. Readability scores and insights 

Zia knows the Flesch-Kincaid index so that she can score your piece for complexity. Open her mini-report card and she shows you how readable your piece is, and what age groups will be able to read it.

The Ease of Reading card also lists ways to improve your overall score:

A. Run-on Sentences are primary indicators of writing that isn’t structured well, and avoiding them will make your writing more readable and clear.

B. Average Sentence Length indicates how long you structure your sentences to be. Sentences that are too long can confuse your readers, preventing you from conveying the concept clearly.

C. The Polysyllabic Words section lets you know if you’re using complicated language in your piece. Words with more than 3 syllables are generally harder to read. Zia identifies these words and lists simpler alternatives you can use.

  3. Style suggestions to give your writing its final polish

Zia lets you know if you’re overusing adverbs and passive sentences. She warns you if you’re starting to sound cliched. She nitpicks so that others don’t have to. 

Here are some highlights of the Writing Quality card:

A. Wordy Phrases: These are the orange underlines that appear on your documents. Wordiness is about using more words than necessary to make your point. Zia comes up with ways to shorten some of your phrases and avoid redundancy in writing.

 B. Cliché Scanner: Lets you know if words or phrases you had written have already been overused and thereby lost their effectiveness.

 C. Passive Sentences: Zia identifies sentences in your piece that are in passive voice. Avoid passive voive—especially in formal writing—as it can make your sentences appear less direct.

You’re probably wondering how much all these new updates are going to cost you. Our monthly plans start at $0. All the new grammar, readability and style tools will be available completely free for all our users, forever.

That’s all for now. Let us know what you think about the new updates and how they help you write better. Drop us a comment below or mail us at support@zohowriter.com.

Happy writing!

This announcement is part of the #FutureOffice series that talks about the latest updates to the Zoho Office Suite. Read the complete announcement here.

The post Introducing Zia in Writer: The smart writing assistant trained to help you write better. appeared first on Zoho Blog.

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Stories That Inspire #1: How Zoho Partner Natalie built a world class SaaS consulting firm in Germany

Greetings readers! Welcome to our new series-Stories That Inspire. Join us as we trace the journeys of Zoho partners from across the globe, their lives,their businesses, their challenges and their success. These are their stories.

Ani: Before we begin, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Natalie: I’m a consulting partner from Germany with over 7 years of experience. I run my own firm with 13 employees, and I’m proud to be accredited as a Zoho Premium Partner.

  Ani: Wow! Seven years! You must have a big picture view of the whole SaaS landscape in Germany. Can you tell us a bit about it?

Natalie: Yes, I can speak about my region — which is Bavaria — and Germany as a whole. This is a country that offers the best of both worlds. On one hand, there are the old guard, traditional companies who are looking towards building a future-ready business. On the other hand, there are these exciting start-ups springing up across the country and disrupting businesses.

The thing with technology is that it has the ability to bring change and be a bridge across these two different generations. The future for SaaS technology in Germany is very bright!

Ani: Bright, indeed! However, there must be something beyond the promise of a good market to get you into the business of SaaS consulting?

Natalie: Prior to setting up my own firm, I was a sales consultant for several German companies. This was a time when everything was being done manually on spreadsheets. Everything from sourcing to the management of leads was very difficult and ultimately brought down the productivity of the agents.

On encountering Zoho CRM and doing a deep-dive, I could clearly see that this was a much simpler and more effective solution that could be applied to all my clients. I immediately signed up to be a partner, and this has been my life’s work ever since.

Zoho products are very dynamic; they find their place across domains and industries. Over the years, we’ve been able to provide solutions for companies that operate in manufacturing, services, energy, and pharmaceuticals.

Ani: You mentioned the presence of traditional companies. Was it challenging to convince them to move to the cloud, and how did you overcome them?

Natalie: The major challenge was the clients’ concerns about data and security. However, this issue has been eased out ever since new Zoho data centers came up. Clients are also convinced when they see the apps working in harmony in real time. It’s a far cry from when they had to wait for a long time to get even a single record of data. Now, everything is instant!

Ani: Great! Please tell our readers about your most challenging assignment yet.

Natalie: So we were working for a large German corporation. It had about 300 subsidiaries, and each of them had their own newsletter and methods of communication. There was absolutely no control.

The solution we came up with, using Zoho Campaigns and Zoho Reports now helps the company to speak through all their subsidiaries in one voice. It was a lot of work, but the results were very rewarding.

Ani: We know that your firm means more to you than just work. You co-run your consultancy firm along with your husband. Can you tell us how that came about?

Natalie: Rene was still working when I started the firm and joined when the business started to materialize; he now handles the implementation of large deals. I must admit that it’s a rare work-life balance we’re able to have. It’s not just for us; this place is like family for all our employees. We are 13 of us spread across marketing, sales, operations and consulting.

Ani: That’s great! You’ve mentioned marketing. How do you get companies to notice your firm?

Natalie: We spend a lot of time on social media and in creating targeted newsletters. We also have a referral program and have invested in creating videos and learning resources in German. Conducting events and regular webinars also helps to get the word out.

Ani: It’s that time when we talk numbers. How has the year been in terms of growth?

Natalie: It’s been a very positive year. We’ve achieved last year’s revenue target in six months and, as far as projections for this year go, we’re on track. To be specific, we’ve achieved 83 percent YTD.

Ani: Thank you Natalie, now we finish with what we would like to call the final four.

Reach out to Natalie at their website: https://www.soell-vertrieb.de/

Know more about Partners @ Zoho here.

The post Stories That Inspire #1: How Zoho Partner Natalie built a world class SaaS consulting firm in Germany appeared first on Zoho Blog.

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Announcing 7 new user-requested features for Writer

Keeping in mind the spirit of this holiday season, we decided to pick some of the most requested features from our community and add them to Writer as a small token of gratitude for the incredible love and support you’ve given to Writer all these years. We’re extremely thankful!

    Here are 7 new updates we rolled out this month that should make a big difference in the way you use Writer. We hope you like them!

1. “Keep with next”

Have you ever been in a situation where your heading keeps slipping to a different page as you add more text to the paragraph below it? You can now link headings to the text below by asking Writer to Keep with next. This will ensure that no breaks are inserted between the paragraphs you select.

A similar option is also available for tables. If you don’t want data in a row to flow over multiple pages, turn off the Allow row to break across pages option.

  2. Putting an end to your date-format troubles

“dd-mm-yy” or “mm/dd/yy”? What’s the right format to choose while working with a client in a different locale? Different countries around the world have unique conventions for writing dates, and it can be difficult to keep track of all of them. We’re making this easy for you with new language-aware date fields.

To get to the date picker, go to Insert>Date

Pro-tip: If you want the date field to show updated dates based on when you’re accessing the document, check the “Update automatically” box in the above panel.

  3. Better table controls

Table controls are now more granular and better organized. The new distribute options can make all your rows and cells evenly spaced in one click. We’re also introducing multiple options, like At least and Exactly row heights to configure the finer details of tables in your documents.

  4. Resuming and restarting lists

The new Continue With Previous List option is perfect when you’re trying to merge two separate numbered lists—separated by a paragraph in between—into a single series. On the other hand, you can also split an existing list into multiple lists using the new Restart Lists option.

  5. A brand-new look for your published pages

Some of you have reached out to us about how the document publishing feature has been helpful in publishing your own mini-blogs, or in sharing instructions within your team. This month, we gave it a new all-white look.

The updated look of pages published using Writer

The canvas is now wider—giving more space for your content to breathe. The page also displays the approximate reading time a visitor might take to finish reading your published piece.

  6. Quicker ways to change capitalization and find fonts

We added a couple of shortcuts to help make formatting easier. Do you toggle between sentence case and title case often? Capitalization toggle is now available on right click. Looking for a particular font? The font dropdown now has a search field to locate your specific font name.

The new formatting shortcuts

Can’t find a font you’re looking for? Writer now suggests similar fonts from our library for you to use. Learn more about font alternatives, and why we removed some of the proprietary fonts here.

  7. Responsive embeds

The way Writer documents behave when embedded onto webpages has been completely reworked from the ground up. We’ve added support for responsive layouts, giving you the freedom to generate embeddable documents in any size or aspect ratio you want.

That’s all for now. Let us know how you like the new updates in the comment section below. Keep your eyes peeled, Writer is gearing up for something big, and you’ll hear more from us very soon. Interesting times ahead!

  Happy writing!

Make Zoho do more for you: You can now use Writer, along with Sheet and Show, as part of our cloud office suite and other collaboration tools by signing up for Zoho Workplace or for Zoho One.

The post Announcing 7 new user-requested features for Writer appeared first on Zoho Blog.

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The Three Questions to Ask Yourself Before Investing In a CRM System

The below is a guest blog by Gene Marks, a CPA, author, columnist, and owner of The Marks Group. Gene writes every day on small business for the Washington Post; twice a week for Forbes and weekly for Inc, & Entrepreneur.

When considering a customer relationship management (CRM) system for one’s business, most people devote their time to evaluating an application’s features, cost, customizability, scalability, and how quickly it can be implemented. It’s all good and important stuff. But it’s not as important as something else: a look in the mirror.

CRM is not for everyone. For sure, a good CRM system, if implemented the right way, can benefit any business of any size and in any industry. But sometimes a company just doesn’t have the culture for CRM. This is not a fault of the company. In fact, I’ve come across many great, profitable and growing organizations that – for reasons I’ll dive into below – are just not able to succeed with a CRM system. Is this your company? To find out, you should ask yourself these three questions. If the answers aren’t positive you might want to consider whether or not a CRM system is right for you.

One: Do you have the right resources?

In the end, your CRM system is just a database. But it’s a database – if used the right way – that will be accessed by most, if not all, of your employees and it will help them significantly improve productivity, profits, and sales. Like any asset, it will require an investment and, like any investment, it will require resources – both time and money.

Sure, you’ll have to subscribe to the software. But the software cost will be just a small part of your overall investment. To get your system off the ground, running smoothly, and then growing with your company, you will need people to be involved. You may need to hire external partners, consultants, developers, integrators, and specialists in the application. You will definitely need your employees to spend time on the system. You’ll want to assign user and database administrators. You’ll need some IT support. You’ll want to organize training.

All of these activities take time, and time is money. This is time that your people will be spending that will be taken away from their normal jobs. It may require overtime. It will definitely result in questions, frustrations, challenges, and pushback from some – it’s all normal human behavior. Regardless, it will require resources and you’ve got to make sure they’re available. Two: Is there a clear way to evaluate your return on investment?

If you’re going to spend $1,000 or $1 million on a CRM system, you’re choosing to do so in lieu of investing in another asset. Is this a good investment? Would your money be better spent on a piece of equipment, or some inventory, or hiring a new customer service representative? Or maybe just sitting in the bank collecting interest? To justify whether you need a CRM system initially, and whether or not the system is generating a satisfactory return on investment in the future, you need a clear-cut way of evaluating your ROI.

It’s not as hard as you might think. You’re in business to profit, so a CRM system – like any investment – should be helping you generate more profit. There are really just two ways to generate more profit: increase your sales and/or decrease your expenses. It’s just math.

Think about sales. How many opportunities have you lost in the past couple of years because you didn’t follow-up on a task or something fell through the cracks? How many dollars are you overlooking because your people aren’t asking the right questions of your existing customers? How many customers did you lose because you didn’t keep a close relationship with them?

Now think about expenses. Will a CRM system help you improve productivity? Answer calls faster? Respond to problems quicker? Get more things done with less people? Can you quantify this?

Before getting started with this system, create these profitability metrics and then closely measure during and after the implementation. If you find yourself unable to do this, then you might want to reconsider your investment – because this is how you’ll satisfy yourself that your investment is worth it.

Three: Are you resolute?

A CRM system can be a tremendous benefit to your company, but it can also take a tremendous amount of work. While it’s just a database, it can be a powerful database. However, for it to be useful and productive the data needs to be accurate and complete. If the data isn’t good, your system is a waste.

So how to make sure you have a great database? People need to be trained. Internal controls over the data need to be established. Specific rules and processes need to be created – and then enforced. Everyone will need to modify what they’re doing, throw away those spreadsheets, stop making notes on the back of an envelope, enter information after calls and appointments, and really spend time in this system that they were previously not spending their time in. All of this takes effort and it requires change. People generally don’t like change, particularly when they don’t see the big picture or how the change is helping them.

So that’s your job. Once you’ve decided to go down this path you – as a leader – must be resolute. You cannot look back. You will be positive. You will not give in to the few (and there will be a few) who complain or want to go back to the old way of doing things. You will hear people out and make adjustments and ensure that problems are fixed. But you will commit to making your system a success.

Conclusion

The reality in 2018 is that there are many great CRM systems that will, if implemented the right way, contribute much to a company’s profitability and value. But there’s no such thing as the perfect system. So your job is to choose what you think will be best for your company and then make sure – by providing the right resources, having clear metrics to evaluate its return on investment, and then steeling yourself to get the job done over the long term – that the system ultimately meets and exceeds everyone’s expectations. When I hear of companies that failed with a CRM system, it’s usually because they never asked these questions before they got started. Now you know!

We’d like to invite you to continue the discussion and learn more about making the right CRM choice for your business. Join us for a webinar on April 26th, “3 tips for choosing the right CRM for your business.” Register for free.

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Zoho Mail Presents: Reader View, Email Status Indicator, and More

Have the comfort of reading emails on your own terms, view the statuses of your emails at a glance, call your colleagues from the mailbox, and drag-and-drop your emails as attachments. Make emailing simpler with Zoho Mail’s fresh set of features!

Without further ado, we present you the fourth installment in our Roundup of features blog posts.

Reader view:

Everyone has a preference when it comes to reading: the brightness at a certain level, the font size a little bigger, a particular font style and so on. The most important thing is that the words are legible and appealing enough to catch and retain the reader’s attention.

So why should it be different for emails? When emails that contain important information come in different fonts, sizes, and styles, it can disrupt your focus.

We can’t have that, so Zoho Mail came up with the Reader View. A little book icon in the top-right corner of every open email that will give you the perfect way to read the email on your terms.

Just like your e-reader, Zoho Mail lets you adjust the font size, line spacing, and font family to your liking. There’s even an estimated ‘time to read’ metric in the header of your emails. You can also switch between Night and Day modes while reading, in case you’re in bed, on a red eye flight, or just like to take it easy on the eyes. If you’re in an email conversation thread, you can just click the Next button to view subsequent emails.

Printing your emails is easy from the Reader view, just click and send to the printer without the clutter of headers and wild html styling. Have a neat and crisp physical copy of your emails.

Email status indicator:

The first thing you look at when you log into your mail account is your mail listing. As you scroll down checking one email after the other, there are bound to be instances where you do a double-take – wondering if you’ve replied to that one from your boss or if you’ve forwarded the email your colleague asked for.

With Zoho Mail’s Email status indicator, you don’t have to open an email to see if you’ve replied to it or not. Now your mail listing sports dedicated icons that display the status of your emails.

Besides indicating the Read/Unread statuses of the email, these icons placed before the sender’s name (In case of Classic view, it is visible when you hover over an email) will show whether the email has been:

Audio and video call support in Contact cards:

Some things are better explained over calls, where there is less room for miscommunication. The next time you want more clarification on the email your colleague sent you, give them a call straight from your mailbox.

That’s right, Zoho Mail now supports audio and video calls, in addition to its integrated chat option by Zoho Cliq.

Clicking on an email address displays the chat, as well as audio and video call options on the contact card. Select the most convenient option and start a conversation instantly.

Add emails as EML attachments:

When most of your business emails feature the phrase, “Please find attached,” it needn’t necessarily be media files that are attached, it can also be emails. It is not unusual for people to attach emails for reference when replying to an existing email thread or composing a new one.

In Zoho Mail, you don’t have to download each email in order to attach them while composing an email. A simple drag and drop does the trick.

  Once you click Compose Mail, just click and drag the email(s) you wish to add as EML attachments from your mailbox, then drop them into the compose tab.

You can also select multiple emails in your mailbox and use the ‘Forward multiple emails’ option to attach those emails as EML attachments and start composing a new mail all at once.

While we are coming up with more feature updates to make your email experience even better, please feel free to comment and tell us what’s your favorite feature in Zoho Mail

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Add custom fields to your ecommerce product page 

Does your ecommerce business sell products that involve displaying additional information or receiving product-related information from customers? Zoho Commerce’s new feature, Custom Fields, could be what you need.

What are Custom Fields?

Custom fields are product fields that can display or receive different types of information, including numbers, text, currencies, email IDs, check boxes, drop-down boxes, multi-select options, and auto-generating numbers.

You can use these fields to either display or receive data. You could use them to receive product-related info like a message to be printed on your product, or additional notes for product customizations. You can also include a check box to agree to terms and conditions, or a drop-down for an option to be selected.

To display data, you can include order-related info like a date or a text to be displayed to your customers.

How to implement custom fields in your online store

You can include custom fields in your online store by creating them from the Settings page. All custom fields are added to your products using a default layout.

What are layouts?

Layouts are groups of custom fields that you can add to your products. You can create your layouts in the Custom Fields section.

The default layout contains all the custom fields you’ve created for your products, but you can choose one containing only the custom fields that you want.

Conclusion

Use the custom fields feature on your online store whenever you need additional information for your products. Learn more about implementing custom fields here: https://help.zohocommerce.com/product-custom-fields#create_custom_fields

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Introducing Cliq’s new logo!

If you’ve been using other Zoho apps, and know many of Zoho’s product logos are undergoing a design refresh, you probably saw this coming: Cliq has officially joined the Logolinism club!

We’re excited to reveal we’ve updated Cliq’s beloved chat bubble logo to this sleek, minimalistic new version:

But first, why change it?

The purpose of a logo is to reflect your brand’s purpose and to create a unique identity among the public. That being said, a logo should also reflect brand aesthetics while also staying simple and unique.

 Following the guidelines of Logolinism—Zoho’s new minimalistic logo style characterized by simple line art, bright colors, and simplified forms—we began to remodel our existing logo to match Zoho’s fresh new look.

 The story behind our logo:

When the idea of the new logo came into discussion, it didn’t really take us too long to decide on what direction to proceed. Our logo—a simple, clean design—was created to communicate very simple ideas:

The outlines match the outside curves, or brackets, formed by the letters “C” and “Q” in our product name, “CLIQ”.

The three dots in the center signify communication, collaboration, and productivity—Cliq’s purpose and our motto.

And of course, the overall representation of a message or chat bubble highlights Cliq’s capabilities as a messaging platform.

We carefully deliberated over the variety of designs our dedicated designers came up with, and in the end, we are pleased to present a new and improved logo that carries the essence of what we want to convey.

Our new logo embraces the minimalist style of using clean, brightly colored line art to form a simplified image in place of highly detailed or realistic icons. While this style follows the current trend of minimalism, it’s also easy to understand and recognize.

The best part of this new Logolinism style is that it works for everything! We’re pleased to join other Zoho products in this ongoing design refresh, making Cliq easily identifiable as part of the Zoho family. 

P.S. If you’d like to update to or use the new logo, we’re sharing our assets right here for you to use!

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