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gb-fics · 5 years ago

Text

Vibrations

Fanfiction:

Kiryuuin Shou x Kyan Yutaka (Golden Bomber)

Note: This fic is for the song “Shindou”, therefore the theme of (sound) vibrations.

Shou’s mobile buzzed.

He dropped the damp towel he had used to dust off his CD shelf and dashed over to pick up his phone from the coffee table.

His stomach took a weird little leap. Of course, Yutaka always messaged him around this time of day. Or earlier. Or later. There wasn’t really a scheme behind it, if Shou was being honest. He had tried to establish a rule, to reconstruct Yutaka’s daily routine based on his incoming messages. But for the most part, his schedule remained unpredictable.

It was Shou’s upper abdomen that felt weird. He didn’t understand why people referred to this feeling as having butterflies in their stomachs. To Shou, it felt like having heartburn. But happy. He was glad it only ever lasted for seconds after each incoming message.

He switched on the screen of his phone, curious how many messages Yutaka had sent him this time. Just one? Or two? Maybe even three?

He stared onto the LINE notification.

It was Kenji checking in on him.

Shou sensed something that felt like heartburn again. But sad this time. And somewhat angry. He wasn’t sure if he was angry at Kenji for leading him on, or angry at himself for getting his hopes up like that.

He swiped the notification to the right, so it would disappear from his screen. He didn’t feel like replying to Kenji right now. He would do so later.

Shou hated himself for how much he had wanted the message to be from Yutaka.

They didn’t message each other often, usually just once or twice a day.

But Shou looked forward to the messages too much. Yutaka’s texts where always interesting and funny and kind. Much kinder than he was in a face to face conversation in fact. They weren’t just messages Shou read and forgot about. He kept thinking about what Yutaka told him, wondered how he felt about those topics in return. He carried his messages around with himself at the back of his mind for the next hours and furrowed his brow, when he wasn’t sure about what to reply and smiled, when he remembered a funny line. Yutaka’s messages brought him through the day, especially at a time like this.

It wasn’t a reason to get so excited, though.

Since the messages made him happy, Shou assumed he was allowed to feel a little excited about them. But this strong, physical reaction was just getting ridiculous. Especially since it had been weeks now since the lockdown had started. It had felt new and exciting at first, but by now, the flavour of the new should have faded. By now, he should remember that it was just Yutaka he was talking to.

Still, his body reacted like he was back in high school and talking to his crush.

But Shou did not have a crush on Yutaka. Not really at least. He was just bad at telling honest affection apart from romantic involvement. Sure, he liked Yutaka. He had always liked Yutaka. He had founded a band with him. And their text messages lately had brought them closer together. It was normal to feel affectionate. It did not mean he had romantic interest in Yutaka, though. He was just craving the attention someone granted him, the interest Yutaka showed in what Shou had to say, the bare kindness of his encouragement.

Shou’s brain knew the difference perfectly well. His body, however, didn’t.

Usually, Shou’s brain was stronger than his body. Just when his body reacted this way – with heartburn and his pulse racing and his head feeling light and hot at the same time – hormones were set into motion and his body felt incredible happy, when he saw Yutaka’s messages. So, Shou’s brain started to associate Yutaka’s name on his mobile screen with happiness. Therefore, his brain reached the conclusion, that he liked Yutaka more than was reasonable – ergo had a crush on him – and it ordered his body to spill all kinds of romance hormones and those hormones confused Shou’s brain further. It was a vicious circle and sometimes it seemed as if his entire body had turned against him, to make Shou believe he was in love with Yutaka, although he knew that he wasn’t.

Shou sat down on the couch and stared onto his mobile.

He opened the LINE app. For some reason, there wasn’t always a notification when you received a message. Some error in the programming, he mused. Maybe, Yutaka had already replied to him, but Shou hadn’t seen it, because his mobile hadn’t informed him. Maybe he was missing out on Yutaka’s reply for unnecessary 18 minutes already, since the last time he had checked.

The message from Kenji was the only one unread.

Shou closed the app again and leaned back on the couch.

He was supposed to continue cleaning the shelf, but he couldn’t bring himself to get up and finish the work.

He was so bored. Lockdown made him bored with everything. Sometimes, he was too bored to do something, even if he had already started. The boredom seemed to lessen his concentration and he seemed unable to focus on any task longer than a few minutes. It made reading or even watching tv nearly impossible.

What he really wanted to do, was talk to another human being.

He could just check his messages again. See, if Yutaka had replied in the meantime. Admittedly, it wasn’t very likely. But it wasn’t about Yutaka this time. Shou just wanted to talk to someone. Anyone would be fine. He was just checking on his messages in general. He would be happy about any message, no matter from whom it came. Why was none of his acquaintances messaging him anyway? No one was checking in on him. It seemed as if the lockdown had made everyone forget about Shou’s existence.

Shou opened the LINE app again to see, if anyone would put him out of his lonely misery.

He realized he still had a message from Kenji, which he hadn’t even opened yet. He had forgotten about it.

Shou stared at the message for a long time. It only read “Hi, just wanted to check in on you. How are you?”

Shou realized that he had absolutely no motivation to engage in a conversation with Kenji.

He felt like a hypocrite.

He closed the app again and tilted back his head. He was still somehow angry at Kenji. He knew that it wasn’t reasonable. He had no right to be angry at Kenji for Yutaka not messaging him. He had felt so happy, when his mobile buzzed.

He really ought to get back to cleaning.

Instead, he closed his eyes and thought of men.

Shou was pretty sure that he was bisexual. Just sometimes, he forgot about it, because being bisexual was nothing like Shou had imagined it to be.

All the time while growing up, he had thought being bisexual was a third alternative to being gay or straight and that he would constantly be aware that he liked both men and women alike. He had thought his preferences would be 50/50.

But instead, Shou’s preferences changed. There were times when he could think of nothing but boobies and the smell of pretty women and the shape of their necks and he was completely convinced that he was straight. But then there were phases – and they usually came whenever there was a special guy in his life – where it was all broad shoulders and a crazily high consumption rate of gay porn.

Whenever those phases hit, Shou remembered every guy he had ever liked. Not his exes; Shou had never really dated another man. But he remembered how he had been too nervous to get out even one word in front of the cute friend of his brother in high school – divine dimples and the darkest eyes Shou had ever seen. Or how difficult it had been to meet the gaze of his former boss when still working at the convenience store – cheekbones, perfect cheekbones and something that Shou called ‘natural authority’. And he remembered that this with Yutaka right now was not just a moment of confusion, but something that had always been a part of him, although he forgot about it every time as long as it wasn’t urgent.

Currently, Shou only listened to male vocalists, because he loved their deep voices and how sexy they sounded, and every handsome actor on tv send him drooling as if he had never seen a man before.

Shou knew that he was going through one of his gay phases and he knew that it was because of Yutaka, most likely.

He had always thought that being bisexual meant feeling attracted to men and women alike, that it was 50/50. But Shou felt a 100% attracted to men. He also felt a 100% attracted to women.

It depended on his phase. The problem was, that those phases could change damn fast.

Shou might bump into a cute girl at the supermarket and she might smile at him and Shou would think of how soft her lips looked and how soft the curves of her body and how soft her skin and he would stare at her lips for far too long and think “damn, I’m so straight”.

And he might turn his head and watch a cute guy taking something out of a shelf and he’d stare at his hands, because wow, men surely had nice hands, so veiny and strong and masculine and Shou would think “damn, I’m so gay”.

Both thoughts could basically hit him within the same heartbeat and it was exhausting.

Because Shou felt damaged already. He was too greedy, too needy. He was looking for love so desperately, clinging to even the slightest display of kindness as if his dried-out heart could only be healed by another’s love. And he was a pervert, too. Thinking about sex all the time. Far more than the rest of the world for sure. Because if the rest of the world thought of sex as much as Shou did, humanity as a whole would never get anything done and they’d still be stuck in the stone ages today.

All this led to only one possible conclusion.

Shou wasn’t bisexual, not in the way that other people were at least. Because his desires seemed to be stronger than those of normal humans, Shou was both the straightest and the gayest person on the entire planet.

Sometimes, he wished to get a break from his own feelings. He didn’t want to be bi. He wanted to go to sleep.

Shou decided that he would check his mobile one last time and then he would go back to cleaning.

His phone would surely have buzzed, if Yutaka had messaged him within the last minute, but since he was about to go back to cleaning, he wouldn’t check his mobile in a while (ten minutes at least!), so it was only reasonable to check one last time.

Shou opened the LINE app.

He had two new messages aside from Kenji’s. They were from Yutaka.

Shou’s heart did a weird thing, where it stopped beating and then beat faster, or maybe it did nothing at all and Shou just imagined it, because his chest felt so strange suddenly, as if he was trembling on the inside.

Yutaka must have messaged him during the last two minutes. Shou’s first thought was, that Yutaka had looked at this chat only moments ago. He had thought of Shou, while Shou had sat here, thinking of him. They were soulmates! Their thoughts were basically synchronised! It was a sign of how well they went together! It was fate!

His second thought was, that it had been almost impossible for Yutaka to catch a moment where Shou didn’t think of him, or was not checking his phone. It wasn’t so much a matter of fate, as rather of percentage.

Shou closed the app without reading the message.

It wasn’t that he was scared of looking too eager. Yutaka usually read his messages pretty immediately. (Yes, Shou kept the chat open, to see when the notification would change to ‘read’.)

Shou didn’t read the message, because he needed to finish cleaning first.

It wasn’t that reading the message would be his treat. It was just, that reading Yutaka’s messages knocked him out for far too long and he didn’t get anything done afterwards, because his mind turned scatty and unfocused.

He usually read Yutaka’s messages once, greedy and curious. Then he read them again more closely, stopping at every paragraph to think about it properly. Then he stared into space some, thinking about his own opinions on the matter for a while. Then he read the message again, making sure he had not missed anything in it. Then he closed the app. Then he opened the app again and read the message again for the sheer comfort of it. Then he checked the time and realized he had no recollection of the last hour whatsoever. It was always the same.

Shou hated himself for being so unable to control himself and for being so unproductive and for feeling so strongly about Yutaka, when it was just Yutaka. At least, he could put off reading the message and force himself to get the minimum of work done that way.

Shou got up and went back to cleaning the shelf.

He kept thinking of the number two. Yutaka had sent him two messages. Shou wondered what they would say.

He also wondered what was the worst. That he hadn’t noticed how likeable Yutaka was for all those years already? That he was risking their friendship? Shou didn’t worry about the band so much. He was able to keep it professional. But if he fell for Yutaka, their friendship would be tainted. Of course, Shou did not intend to ever confess to Yutaka. But he would start to feel uncomfortable in his presence. Being alone with him would become painful. He would lose the intimacy between them, just by no longer bearing it. Or was the worst that Yutaka would not like him back?

Yutaka liked men. He had outed himself as bisexual to Shou years ago. He had been confident about it and not confused at all. Maybe it was 50/50 for him. Maybe Shou was fucked up. Maybe Shou was doing being bisexual wrong. Maybe that was why everyone else seemed surer about it. Shou wished he had Yutaka’s certainty.

The fact, that technically, it was possible for Yutaka to like him back, did not make it easier for Shou.

Should he try? If he liked Yutaka – which he still wasn’t sure about, because it would be a stupid thing to feel – maybe he could seduce Yutaka. Even if Yutaka didn’t like him now, Shou could try to charm him, flirt with him. Maybe Yutaka would fall for him, even if Shou wasn’t exactly the man of his dreams. Shou wasn’t handsome, but he was smart and talented and he was difficult to deal with, but he was loyal and generally kind, and if he could only convince Yutaka of his good qualities, maybe that would be enough to make him dateable. They had gotten along well for years already.

Shou imagined what it would be like to date Yutaka. How the staff would talk behind their back. How Jun and Kenji would look at them. What his parents would say, if he brought Yutaka home.

Shou loved the thought.

He knew that he shouldn’t, because all the scenarios were awful. But in a guilty pleasure reality tv show drama, he loved it. He imagined kissing Yutaka before a rehearsal. He imagined getting caught. He imagined how proud he would feel to get caught with a guy like Yutaka. He imagined how good it would feel to see that Yutaka wasn’t embarrassed, either. Because Yutaka would love him enough to take all the sneers and gossip and no matter what everyone said, with Yutaka by his side Shou wouldn’t feel ashamed for the life he was leading.

Shou knew that it was just a day dream fantasy he liked to entertain, of course.

Most of the time, he felt ashamed of the life he was leading already, even when he had nothing to hide.

Shou put away the towel and looked at his clean CD shelf. Well, that ought to be enough for today.

Finally, it was time to check Yutaka’s messages. He sat down on the couch again and opened the chat.

To be honest, my main problem

with not knowing what to tweet

about is that I don’t think I’m

very interesting LOL. I mean, I’m

doing stuff! I’m eating! If I made

a tweet, whenever I ate something

out of boredom, our fans’ timelines

would be FULL. I play videogames.

I read manga. But nobody cares!

I get, what you say about fans

wanting to know everything. I see

your tweets and I actually don’t

think they are boring. I get why people

would want to read them. But I

still can’t get used to the thought

of being a celebrity. I’m not Hyde! LOL

And even when someone I admire

posts about their breakfast, I

usually wish they would shut the fuck

up. Maybe it’s easier for you to imagine

the fans’ feelings, because you are more

curious by nature, aren’t you? You

always want to know what is going on

with the people you like. I just assume

the people I care for will message me

directly, if there is something in their

life I should know about. Maybe that’s

why my relationships always failed wwww

I wonder if I don’t care enough sometimes.

Wait, how did we end up here? I just

wanted to say, I don’t know what to

tweet about, because I feel pretentious

posting every time I yawn ^-^; I guess I’m

a little insecure, about why people would

find me interesting. I mean, most fans

like me for the crazy stuff I do on stage.

But you are the one writing most of our

performances. Maybe I should hire you

to write my tweets? Aren’t you jobless

now anyway? LOL

Speaking of which, it also hit me hard,

that all the concerts got postponed. I

really hoped we’d be able to go back to

normal in late summer. It really leaves me

at a loss for what to do with the rest of

the year, though I’m sure you little sadistic

bastard will come up with something to

keep us busy anyway ;; Since you are such

a workaholic, I can imagine that it must hit

you even harder. But I will try to take it as

an opportunity to rest, and you should do

the same. We’re not young anymore. Maybe

the time to relax and think of even new

concepts for the band is exactly what we need.

Aren’t people going to get bored with Kenji’s

ass sometime? We could try to think of

something new, to stay different and original.

Maybe we can get Kenji to show his balls next.

Or rather, the tv stations. Convincing Kenji

won’t be the problem LOL

And thanks for asking! I actually slept very

well the last night, too. I listened to you counting

sheep, but I feel asleep after just ten minutes.

Are you even doing the full ten hours?! No

one will ever know, everyone is asleep before

that wwwwww

Anyway, I’m feeling healthier now and more

rested. I guess touring was stressing me out. Or

your videos are really improving my sleep! I had

problems with it for so long and was always

tired, but now it’s all gone. Thank you,

Mr. Sandman ^-^

How have you spent the day? Hopefully you

weren’t all gloomy, because of the tour! Please,

watch some porn, to cheer yourself up LOL

Shou went to rereading the message. He wondered if Yutaka was right and Shou really was more curious than the average person – or at least more curious than Yutaka. Shou figured it was a nice way to say he had an obsessive personality and that Yutaka was absolutely right with that. Shou found it easy to imagine that his fans cared about what he cooked for dinner, because when he liked someone, he wanted to know what they ate, how many hours they had slept, whom they had talked to, what they had seen and thought and heard and smelled throughout the day. Because he was the worst and Yutaka knew. But he hadn’t pointed it out in a mean way.

In fact, his messages made Yutaka sound kinder, always. He sounded more vulnerable, too. Shou was sure, that in a face to face conversation, Yutaka would never have admitted to not knowing what to tweet about, because he didn’t find himself interesting enough.

Shou assumed that it was due to the format, that felt more like exchanging letters than having a real conversation. Taking your time to put your thoughts into words properly and not fearing a direct response made it easier to open up.

And Shou wondered if it was the format that made him like Yutaka to begin with. He liked vulnerable, honest Yutaka. He might even have a little crush on him. And maybe it was the real Yutaka indeed.

But that did not change the fact, that in real life, they would never be able to talk like this. Even on the phone, Yutaka would not say any of those things out loud. Shou probably wouldn’t either. Which meant, that his whole crush was a lie.

He liked Yutaka’s letters, not Yutaka. Hearing his voice, looking into his eyes, wouldn’t cause him nearly the same excitement as the buzzing of his phone did. Which meant that Shou was stupid and crushing on a fantasy construct build around only a small part of Yutaka and that construct would not outlast reality. It made sense, though. He knew Yutaka for so long already, if he liked the real him, he would have realized so long ago. He wouldn’t have needed a worldwide lockdown to make him realize his own feelings.

No, his feelings were based only on the soft and vulnerable parts Yutaka showed him in his messages currently. Admittedly, his messages also sounded a little rude sometimes. Reading them, Shou could imagine all too well, how Yutaka would sound while saying them out loud “Are you even doing the full ten hours?!” He’d say it angry and mockingly at the same time. He wouldn’t sound vulnerable, but the words had a different quality, when Shou knew how Yutaka meant them. The messages exposed a side of Yutaka, that Shou had not been aware of before. It made him regret his words at their last meeting even more. In real life, Yutaka hadn’t seemed bothered at all. But the Yutaka from the messages had probably been hurt. Shou had probably hurt him.

Shou left the chat and opened Kenji’s message instead.

“I’m good, thanks”, he typed. “Hope you are doing alright, too.”

Then he closed the app.

There. He wasn’t obsessed with Yutaka or anything. He hadn’t sat down immediately to answer to him. He had replied to Kenji instead. Therefore, he had proven himself that he did not care for Yutaka specifically.

Shou did not know why he had replied to Kenji at all.

He knew that he had done so to trick himself into believing he didn’t give special treatment to any of his bandmates. But since he knew he had only done so to prove a point, it meant that he wasn’t really in denial about his own motives, which again meant there was no point in replying anyway. He told himself a lie, although he already knew he wasn’t buying it. He might as well be honest with himself and admit that he had a horrible weakness for Yutaka.

Shou got up and decided to start preparing dinner. It wouldn’t take him long, because dinner would basically be meat with seasoning. He tried different seasoning every day. But he stuck to meat. Shou loved meat.

He got out his favourite pan and thought about Yutaka’s message.

Was Yutaka right, that Shou was more interested in people in general than Yutaka was? Was Yutaka’s indifference the cause of his relationships never lasting?

Shou tried to recall Yutaka’s past relationships, or what he had seen of them at least.

The memory made him feel queasy. He wasn’t directly jealous of Yutaka’s former partners, but they made him feel insecure.

Shou couldn’t answer Yutaka’s question from his own experience, because his dating experience was poor compared to Yutaka’s. He had never reached the point where it got really serious with anyone. He had never moved in with one of his girlfriends. He had missed out on a lot of things he should already have done at the age of 35 years. When it came to general life experience, Yutaka seemed to be older than Shou. Shou wondered why Yutaka even wanted to talk to him about such things. When it came to dating, planning a marriage or just making compromises in a relationship, Shou felt like a toddler. He had no interesting observations to offer to Yutaka in this regard.

Sure, Shou had other good qualities. When it came to their work, he was an expert. He took pride in the songs he had written and the stage programs he had come up with.

But when he talked to Yutaka about their daily lives, he still feared that Yutaka would deem him ridiculous at some point. In some areas, Shou was painfully aware of how underdeveloped he still was.

Shou also wondered, if Yutaka was right and he should use the sudden free time on his hands to think of new concepts for the band, to make sure they wouldn’t get stuck in certain routines too much. Golden Bomber’s biggest achievement was that they defied every set category. They had to watch out not to become their own category, either.

And Shou wondered, if his videos were really helping Yutaka with sleeping.

He knew that Yutaka had problems with getting a good night’s rest for years already. So, he had recorded the first video as a secret present to him, and to make up for what he had said.

He hadn’t expected Yutaka’s excited reaction, though. Yutaka had messaged him on the day of the first bonfire video, telling him how much it had helped him relax and how grateful he was. Somehow, they had ended up talking about what kept them awake at night, and the conversation had turned deep fast. They had exchanged the worries on their minds and then they had started to talk about the current situation and by now, the origin of the text messages didn’t matter anymore, because the topics kept changing and evolving anyway.

And because Yutaka had been so happy and excited, Shou had taken to record more and more videos.

Because the videos gave them something to talk about, too, and Shou made sure that their conversation kept going that way. And because Yutaka had actually looked rested during the last video conference and because Shou felt proud when Yutaka wrote him he was happy about a new upload, and because he wanted Yutaka to see him, to make sure he didn’t forget about him, while they were not meeting in person, although that was stupid of course, because after all those years, it wasn’t like Yutaka would just forget about Shou’s existence. And because he had wanted to apologize.

In the latest video, Shou had recorded his own voice for a change. He had sent it out to Yutaka to put him to sleep. And because he hoped that Yutaka would understand, what he really wanted to say with it.

I’m sorry I hurt you.

It would probably be easier to just write down the words and send them.

But then, Shou was scared of addressing the topic, because he still wasn’t sure about what had happened on the last day, they had seen each other in person.

There had been this cute girl from the staff again, who had talked to Shou a couple of times before. And because Shou was infatuated fast, whenever a cute girl took the time to acknowledge his existence, he had tried to impress her a little too hard. Shou was always bad at hiding his crushes. Yutaka shouldn’t have made fun of him in front of her like that, though. It had been rude. But it did not excuse the things Shou had told him afterwards. Yutaka wasn’t a good-for-nothing. He wasn’t dumb. He wasn’t ignorant.

But Shou was scared to tell him, that he hadn’t meant it, because then they would have to talk about that day. He was scared to ask Yutaka, why he had badmouthed Shou in front of the girl like that. He was scared that it might be, because Yutaka liked her, too. Now, that Shou liked Yutaka, he would be horribly jealous, if that was the case.

He was scared of Yutaka asking him, if Shou really liked her, too. Because he didn’t anymore. Not now, that he was chatting so intimately with Yutaka for several weeks already. But he couldn’t admit that. Because then Yutaka would know that Shou liked him, and things would turn weird and tense and Shou did not want to risk it.

So, he sent his voice out to Yutaka, saying other words than the ones he really meant. And the words faded away without reaching Yutaka, because Yutaka could not possibly understand what Shou was trying to say with them. His words were nothing but vibration in the air, because he couldn’t say what he really meant.

I’m sorry I hurt you.

Dinner was ready and Shou poured it into one bowl, that was big enough to hold everything he cooked, so he saved himself the trouble of having to clean several dishes afterwards.

He went back to the living room and sat down at the table. Before he started to eat, he fixed his mobile again.

He felt like a hypocrite, because Shou told himself constantly, that he wasn’t waiting for Yutaka to message him desperately. But he kept his phone on himself all the time, while he was waiting for Yutaka’s replies. As soon as Yutaka had messaged him, though, Shou forgot his phone lying around, as if he had suddenly lost all interest in it. His phone only mattered as long as Yutaka might text him.

Shou opened the LINE app. No new messages.

At first, he felt a tiny pang of disappointment, because he was so curious to hear Yutaka’s opinion on all the thoughts he had just had in the kitchen.

Then Shou realized that he hadn’t texted them to Yutaka yet and felt ridiculous immediately. Of course, Yutaka couldn’t read his thoughts through telepathy and reply to something Shou hadn’t written down yet.

Shou felt a little guilty for not replying faster to Yutaka. When it was the other way around, Yutaka could never reply fast enough for Shou’s means. Since he always took ages himself, he wasn’t mad at Yutaka for taking his time of course, but honestly, Shou wished Yutaka would text him every five minutes throughout the day. He couldn’t get enough of reading his texts and the giddy feeling they caused in his chest.

Shou ate in silence and wondered what he should do after cleaning the kitchen.

He could reply to Yutaka, but then, he’d rather take his time with that and wait for a moment, where he felt properly relaxed to focus on what he wanted to say. Typing the messages to Yutaka always took him quite a while, not just because they were long, but because he needed time to collect his thoughts while he did.

Yutaka had suggested Shou ought to watch porn to cheer himself up.

Maybe Shou should try that.

The thought, that Yutaka wanted Shou to watch porn was actually quite hot. Maybe he thought of Shou masturbating. Maybe the thought turned him on. Shou could send him a dirty message afterwards. Or even attach a picture. That would be sexy.

Shou loved sharing pictures of his dick. The thought of the other person seeing it turned him on somehow. Thinking that Yutaka would get aroused by the sight made Shou feel excited in return.

It would also be a good test, Shou thought.

He could put it as a joke. After all, Yutaka had brought up the porn first. And Yutaka had seen him naked many, many times before.

But it was also an offer to flirt. If Yutaka ignored the picture, or scolded Shou for sending it, Shou would know that Yutaka wasn’t interested in him and they could brush it off as a joke. But if Yutaka complimented his dick or wrote something dirty in return, Shou would know that Yutaka wasn’t opposed to him. He was pretty sure that Yutaka enjoyed their conversations as much as Shou enjoyed them. He just didn’t know if his messages caused the same fluttering in Yutaka’s chest, or if Yutaka spend way too much time thinking of Shou throughout the day, too. Yutaka’s reaction to a dick pic would make his feelings towards Shou a lot clearer – either way.

So far, it sounded like a good idea. But then Shou wasn’t sure, if he might not be crossing a line with that. Maybe it would make Yutaka uncomfortable, because he thought that Shou was sexually interested in him. Shou did not want Yutaka to think that. Unless Yutaka felt the same. Then Yutaka was supposed to think that by any means.

And what, if Yutaka just didn’t like Shou’s dick? It was a pretty good dick, at least there was nothing wrong with it. But maybe Yutaka didn’t find his dick sexy for some reason. Because it was too small or too big or not shaped the right way. Or because Shou was his friend and he couldn’t look at his dick objectively. If Yutaka didn’t find Shou attractive as a person, maybe he automatically wouldn’t find his dick attractive either.

All in all, sending a dick pic was a pretty bad idea.

Shou cleaned the kitchen and returned to the living room.

His mobile was blinking. The green light meant he had a notification from LINE waiting for him.

Probably Kenji, who had replied in the meantime.

Shou did not feel excited to check his phone at all.

Yutaka had already sent his reply. The message couldn’t be from Yutaka. Shou didn’t really feel like talking to anyone else.

He switched on the screen anyway to check.

He had three new messages from Yutaka.

Every single one of Shou’s organs took to tapdancing. He wanted to throw up. Why did he feel so excited? So nervous? He wished his body would calm down. Yutaka had messaged him thousands of times before the lockdown. How had those few weeks changed Shou’s feelings enough to provoke a physical reaction like that? He hated his body for not obeying to his mind and staying calm.

Shou opened the messages.

I was googling shit on the internet,

because I was bored. I found out that

this is a character from a children’s

program overseas. It made me think

of you immediately.

Below that was a picture of a life-sized loaf of bread with a face on it and arms.

According to Wikipedia, it’s a bread

with a gloomy personality and

depression LOL

Shou felt overjoyed.

The message itself wasn’t really great, admittedly, but Yutaka had texted him, before Shou had even replied to his last message. He had thought of Shou. Alright, he did have a good reason to message Shou about the bread character. With Shou’s love for bread, it was natural that Yutaka had thought of him.

But Shou still felt flattered and excited, that Yutaka had thought of him. He had read about a depressed bread and Shou had been the first person he had thought of, the first one with whom he had wanted to share his findings. He had seen the article and thought “I need to tell this to Shou”. It was a clear sign of affection. Solid proof, that Yutaka thought of him, even when they weren’t chatting at the moment.

Or just solid proof, that Shou was the only gloomy person with a strong love for bread in Yutaka’s life. Shou preferred the first option, though.

And Yutaka could have waited until his next reply, too. But he had wanted to share this with Shou so urgently, he had broken their natural text chain. It had to mean something.

Shou was aware that he was clinging to straws now. It was the picture of a bread, not a love confession.

But the sheer kindness of the words “It made me think of you immediately” overwhelmed him. Shou had always been bad at expression affection like that. Maybe that was, why all of his relationships had ended badly. He wanted to know everything about the other person, but he didn’t give much in return. He hid the words he really wanted to say under so many other words, that no one could hear them anymore.

He wished he could just text back “I’m happy you thought of me”, or “I appreciate you are not scared to let me know you care”. He felt appreciated by the short message and wished he could evoke the same feeling in Yutaka.

But then he thought of disturbing the routine they had established with their text messages so far and of appearing too clingy and of not finding the right words anyway and he closed the chat again. Shou sometimes hated being himself.

He wondered what to do next and decided to go for the porn. He could shoot some pictures, even if he didn’t know if he would share them with Yutaka yet. It was always good to have some back-up dick pics ready in case you needed them.

He thought of Yutaka looking at his dick and getting aroused. He imagined Yutaka touching himself.

Shou started to grow hard before he had even switched on his computer.

He could have switched on the VR headset as well. VR porn was pretty much the best thing that had ever happened in his lifetime. But today, he didn’t really feel like he needed the porn at all. He was just using it as an alibi. His thoughts were on Yutaka mostly, anyway.

He had bookmarked his favourite porn on his computer and picked one of the videos randomly.

Shou pulled down his pants and stroked himself lazily while watching the actress on the screen moaning and sighing. He did so until he was properly hard. It didn’t really take much for him. Shou was lowkey horny most of the time anyway.

He opened the camera on his phone and tried to get a good angle of his erection. He wasn’t proud of it, but he had a lot of practice at finding the right angle. As a celebrity, he shouldn’t have been doing so, but whenever he dated someone, Shou ended up sending out tons of dick pics anyway. He enjoyed imagining how excited it would get his girlfriends. In his imagination, it usually worked better than in reality. Most girls just told him to stop eventually.

Shou swiped through the photos he had taken. He was pretty pleased with at least three of them. His dick looked good on them. It wasn’t arousal he felt while looking at the pictures, but the pleasure of feeling sexy at least. If Shou received those pictures from another man, he’d be fapping to them for sure.

He put his mobile aside and looked back onto the computer screen, where the porn was still playing.

He tried to focus on the video, but he could only think of Yutaka. If he sent those pictures, maybe he would even get something in return.

Shou thought of pictures of Yutaka’s dick. He got excited by imagining the sight. But he also got excited by the thought, that Yutaka would trust him enough to share those photos with Shou. He got excited, imagining Yutaka wanting to be sexy for him. He imagined Yutaka saying his name.

Shou grabbed a tissue and ejaculated into it. He let out a low gasp and felt warm and peaceful now, although the orgasm hadn��t been exactly strong. Shou hadn’t really been in the mood. He had just been excited to take those pictures.

He switched off the porn and opened LINE on his computer.

It felt a little weird to reply to Yutaka right after having masturbated, but then, Yutaka would never know, so what did he care? And the sooner Shou answered to him, the sooner he could hope for a reply from Yutaka again.

I have prepared a bunch of tweets

for you! “I’m an idiot!”, “I’m a jerk!”,

“I’m a dumbass!” I really immerged

into your personality, so I’m pretty

sure, this will fool people into thinking

it’s actually you talking (^-^)

No, seriously, I understand why you

would feel insecure if what you have

to say is actually interesting. I feel

that way, too. I’m pretty sure that

everyone does. But don’t think of it

as telling the fans something about

yourself. It’s just about letting them

know you are healthy and alright.

Nobody cares what you had for lunch,

but a lot of people care to know that

you are okay. Even if you just tweet

“still healthy” and nothing else everyday

people will be happy. You are not boring

them, you are soothing them. So,

don’t think too much about what you

are tweeting. It doesn’t really matter :)

Also, I don’t think you are too cold at

all. Everyone who knows you can see

that you care. If your exes didn’t see

that, they weren’t paying attention to

you and therefore didn’t deserve you

anyway. You may be right about me

being more obsessively curious, but it’s

not like it’s a good quality. It’s exhausting

to feel like that. I wish I could care just a

little bit less at times.

And if people become bored with

Golden Bomber and demand something

new, we will just have to exchange the

members one by one. I’m sure that

will make things more interesting again :D

I obviously can’t leave the band, since

I basically AM the band, but with the

other members it shouldn’t be a

problem. You’re all useless anyway! We

will start the replacing with the member

around the longest, which would be …

oh, bad news for you, dude LOL

I’m sure we will find something to do

instead of the tour, though~

And I’m glad you slept well! Please,

watch my videos carefully (^-^)

Of course, I did the full ten hours,

though! I’m not a lazy asshole like

you!

I actually did watch AV today! Acky

got me fired up as always! Here, I’ll

attach some proof - to show I wasn’t

just gloomy all day ;D

Wwwww I love the bread! Bread is

the best! … though I wonder what

you are doing, checking foreign

children’s tv characters! You have

nothing better to do?! LOL

Shou went back to rereading his message. He always spent too much time editing them before sending. Deleting passages, which would mean he was oversharing. Adding passages, where something remained unclear. He always made sure Yutaka would understand what Shou was talking about, even without recalling the original question. Yutaka’s memory was pretty shitty after all.

Shou wondered if Yutaka spend that much time editing his messages as well. Probably not. It was Yutaka. He surely just sent the message as he had typed it down, without second guessing too much. He never filtered his words as much as Shou did. He never overthought his statements. And, most importantly, he did not care for Shou’s opinion as much as Shou cared for Yutaka’s opinion. Because from Yutaka’s point of view, Shou was probably just his friend since high school. Shou wasn’t someone he was romantically interested in. Of course, Yutaka cared less.

Shou stared at the paragraph about porn.

He had written it with the implication that he was going to attach a dick pic. Although he wasn’t sure he was going to. No, actually, that was bullshit. Shou had known he was going to attach a picture the moment he had taken them. He had even decided on which one to send already. Three of the photos had turned out nicely. But he couldn’t attach all three. That would look both vain and desperate. He had to settle for one. His favourite.

Shou hit send.

Then he opened LINE on his mobile and selected the picture of his dick. He clicked send once more.

Then he inhaled sharply.

He had probably made a mistake. But it was too late to take it back. The picture was out there. It was both a horrible feeling and a very liberating one.

He kept the chat open on his computer.

He took another long look at the dick pic. It was larger on the computer. It was a pretty good picture. His dick looked nice. He hoped Yutaka would think so, too.

Shou wondered, why he loved sharing nudes that much. He figured that he needed the appreciation. Of course, the fans told him he was cute and handsome all the time. But he wanted to be desired. Physically desired by a person, who actually knew him. Who knew what he looked like up close and without makeup. He wanted to feel sexy, just the way he was. He also wanted to be held sometimes and wanted someone to stroke his hair gently. He wanted to be attractive to someone, both physically and emotionally. But Shou wasn’t sure anyone would love him for his personality, not really at least. He was likeable. For the fans, he was adorable, too. But was he lovable? Shou wasn’t convinced of that. He’d be happy already, if someone just wanted to fuck him.

The status of the messages turned to read.

Shou felt sick again.

Yutaka had seen the message. He had seen the picture of Shou’s hard dick.

Would he react immediately? Would he tell Shou that he was gross and disgusting and should not harass him like that?

Or – and that was what he hoped for – would he react immediately with a more enthusiastic reply? Would he tell Shou how much the picture turned him on? Like, right now?

Shou waited.

He waited some more.

After ten minutes of just waiting he realized, that Yutaka would not react immediately. He would probably take several hours to reply, as usual. Those hours would be utter torture for Shou.

Couldn’t Yutaka imagine how nervous Shou was about his reaction? Or did he not consider that at all? Did he assume Shou had shared the picture as a joke, because he did not care about anyone seeing him naked? Knowing Shou’s attitude towards nudity, it wasn’t even an unlikely assumption. Shou couldn’t blame Yutaka, if that was, what he was thinking. Maybe he should be glad, if Yutaka didn’t read anything into the picture. Shou should probably be thankful that Yutaka was taking so long, it meant his feelings hadn’t been found out.

Of course, the original intention had been to find out, if maybe Yutaka returned his feelings in any way. But then, Shou wasn’t even sure if it was alright to speak of feelings on his side at all.

Sure, he was a little infatuated, but that happened fast - as soon as anyone showed interest in him, because he was just so starved for affection. It would probably blow over soon. At the latest, when he saw Yutaka’s stupid face again and remembered whom he was dealing with. His idiot high school friend, no one else. Shou wasn’t even sure he liked men that way. Yes, he had been recalling past incidents like the one with Yutaka now only recently. But if Yutaka didn’t count, those incidents didn’t count as well. Just because Shou thought of fucking the delivery man when he read out Shou’s name, didn’t mean he would actually do it. If he thought the same about a woman, though, he would certainly fuck her, if he got the chance.

Yutaka for example was so sure about being bisexual. Shou wasn’t sure. Which probably meant that he wasn’t bisexual. And if he wasn’t bisexual, it was impossible for him to be in love with Yutaka. And if he wasn’t in love with Yutaka, he had never been in love with another man, either, because his feelings had hardly ever been this strong before. If Shou had never been in love with another man, he therefore wasn’t bisexual. It was a flawless line of argument.

He figured that he needed to distract himself somehow, or his own mind would drive him crazy.

Shou did what he knew he wasn’t supposed to do.

He opened the latest ASMR video he had recorded to put his fans to sleep, switched off the sound and skipped right to the middle of it.

He stared at himself on the screen and tried to imagine he was seeing himself for the first time.

The first impression wasn’t that bad. Blonde hair, makeup. Alright.

He tried to imagine that Yutaka saw him like this. He wondered if Yutaka thought he was attractive.

His lips actually weren’t looking that bad.

But his teeth. Oh man, he really hated his teeth. And the shape of his face. Was his face really that round?

Shou told himself that he was just checking the video to make sure his fans were seeing him in a good light when watching the video.

But he could tell that the camera angle was awful.

Shou hated the shape of his face. And the eyeshadow was actually smudged on the left side. Why hadn’t he checked in the mirror, before recording the video? He looked fat, too.

Shou tried to imagine seeing himself as a stranger again.

Maybe it wasn’t so bad. At first glance, he didn’t notice the small details at all. To a stranger, he might be attractive even.

Shou skipped back a bit.

No, there was really no way to unsee it. He was fat.

The blonde hair, the makeup. It didn’t make him look good. It made him look like he was trying too hard. He looked like an ugly person, trying to look good, but unable to cover up his own ugliness.

Shou skipped forward in the video.

He was sitting so hunched over. His body was too small. It looked bad. He wouldn’t want to see a person like that naked.

Truthfully, he had recorded those videos for Yutaka to see him. For Yutaka to think he looked cute. Maybe even for Yutaka to tell him he looked cute. He wanted to make a good impression.

But he had failed.

Yutaka would see how small and chubby and ugly he was.

The whole thing was stupid, of course. Yutaka knew what he looked like. He had seen Shou many, many times before. He wouldn’t base his opinion on Shou’s looks on those videos.

But then, Yutaka wasn’t seeing him currently. All he saw of Shou were those videos and his face during the occasional video calls. He’d be influenced by what he saw for sure. And what he saw was ugly.

The video was over.

Shou jumped back to a random point of the video he hadn’t seen before.

His eyeshadow had been smudged from the very beginning. Without stylist, Shou was lost. There really was no way to make someone like him look good. The angle was not helping, either.

Shou thought of the fans as well. They would see his ugliness, too. And those were real strangers, people Shou had never met before. Maybe even people who weren’t fans would end up clicking on those videos. They would wonder why a person with Shou’s looks was even trying. He looked ridiculous with the makeup. Like he was too stupid to realize he was a lost cause.

Shou stared at the screen hypnotized.

During the last weeks, he had developed this habit, although he knew it was harmful. He couldn’t look away. He couldn’t stop listing his own physical flaws to himself. He shouldn’t be doing this. He shouldn’t be hurting himself like this. Shou felt so ugly, he wanted to claw off his own face.

It was strange, because over the years, he had pretty much stopped feeling self-conscious about his own appearance. This was what he looked like, so be it. There were a lot of fans, who called him handsome. In general, Shou did believe that people out there might find him attractive. Just when he watched those videos, he couldn’t believe it.

He checked the time.

It had gotten late already.

He should stop watching the video.

He opened another one, one of those he had already posted.

He looked bad in there, too. His face felt uncomfortable hot.

Yutaka had seen him like this. What had he thought to post something like this? Surely, Yutaka had wondered about it, too. Surely, he had thought that Shou looked ugly.

Shou wished no one would look at him ever again.

Everything about the way he moved was awful. No other human being he had ever seen moved like that. And what was with those facial expressions? That wasn’t normal. Surely, people wondered how he could still leave the house without feeling ashamed of being seen.

Shou switched off the computer.

He shouldn’t be doing this to himself.

It was late and he should go to sleep. Lately, he had taken to getting up early. It was helping him stay positive. He should be going to sleep early, too.

Shou got ready for bed and lay down. He switched off the lights and stared into the dark.

He was alright. He had no reason to hate himself.

He imagined Yutaka holding him in his arms.

Shou knew that he shouldn’t be imagining such things, either. It was making his infatuation worse. He was adding more details to the Yutaka he had constructed in his mind. He was making it harder for himself to fall out of love with that construct.

But all the same, he couldn’t bear lying in bed alone.

The mobile on his bedside table buzzed.

Shou’s whole body went tense, but he relaxed again immediately.

Yutaka never messaged him that late at night. Yutaka had gotten his sleeping schedule under control recently. He was probably asleep already. It was most likely just Kenji replying to his last messages.

Not really interested Shou took up his mobile in the dark and checked.

He had one new message from Yutaka.

Shou inhaled shakily, before opening it. This time, Shou wasn’t even trying to put it off. He wasn’t trying to lie to himself. He couldn’t wait to read Yutaka’s message.

He thought of the dick pic he had sent and felt awful.

Now, he would find out.

Thank you, that was actually

pretty good advice! I understand

that the fans want to know if I’m

alright. I want to know the people

I care for are healthy, too. I will try

to view it that way and think less

about the contents of what I’m

posting. I want the fans to be happy

and not to worry about me after all.

And I think it’s nice that you care

so much. I’ve always liked that

about you. You’ve always been very

considerate of others. It shows in

your songs, too. The fans can feel

that you are interested in them,

and that it’s genuine and not just

one-sided on their behalf. That’s

why they love you.

Please, don’t fire me! I’ll get a new

haircut or something! LOL

Oooh, that’s hot! I’m glad you didn’t

loose your libido yet, otherwise I’d

start to worry ^-^

I swear, it was just an accident that I

was looking up those things! I was

doing, uhm, research? LOL

Shou read the message three times. Luckily, it was pretty short.

“that’s hot!”? What was that supposed to mean? Did Yutaka think Shou’s dick was hot? Like, in a sexually appealing way?

But if Yutaka thought so, why hadn’t he said so more explicitly? Was he just saying that, so he wouldn’t appear rude? It did sound like the bare minimum reply, that wasn’t totally turning Shou down, but not expressing interest either. It was the polite way of saying that he didn’t care to see Shou’s hard dick ever again, wasn’t it?

Or did the exclamation mark mean, that he actually really meant it? That he wasn’t just finding Shou’s dick hot, but very hot indeed. Was he too scared that Shou might have made a joke only to react more strongly? Was it a hesitant, polite way of letting Shou know that he was intrigued by his dick, but did not want to push the situation, in case it made Shou uncomfortable?

Shou wished Yutaka’s reaction had been stronger. He would have loved to read something like “your dick is sexy, I want to suck it” or “damn, you made me all hard as well”. In that case, he would know what he was dealing with.

But Yutaka’s reaction could basically mean anything.

Maybe it was Shou’s own fault. He had put his message like it was meant to be a joke. He had made sure that the backdoor was still open for escape. He had even mentioned Acky. A woman. Of course, he still liked Acky. He still liked her a lot. But rubbing that in could have been the wrong approach to get Yutaka’s attention.

If Shou had written something explicit like “I don’t need to watch porn, I just think of you” instead, it might have gone differently. If he had been brave enough to be that direct, maybe Yutaka would have been brave enough to be direct as well. Shou couldn’t really blame him for staying tentative, when he himself had been cowardly, too.

Maybe Yutaka had not understood what Shou was asking him with that picture, because Shou had once again chosen words that did not say what he really meant. Maybe, Yutaka hadn’t heard the words implied, because Shou hadn’t actually voiced them. Maybe he was as much at a loss about how Shou felt as Shou was at a loss about Yutaka’s feelings.

If he really wanted to know, Shou ought to ask.

He switched off his phone and put it aside.

Well, those were clearly problems for tomorrow. He preferred typing the longer messages on his computer and he had already switched it off. And it was late anyway. He was supposed to sleep. And even if he sent a reply now, Yutaka would probably only see it tomorrow, so why bother?

Shou tossed in his bed.

He should sleep. Why was it so hard to fall asleep?

He thought of all the things he wanted to tell Yutaka. I think I like you. I want you to hold me. You make me feel confused about my sexuality. What makes you so sure you are bisexual? Do you like me back? Why have you made fun of me in front of the girl I liked? I’m sorry I hurt you.

Shou picked up his phone again, turning it in his hands without switching it on.

Maybe he should just tell him.

Instead of just recording different words for Yutaka, that ended up as nothing but meaningless vibrations in the air, he should write down what he really wanted to say. He’d have it black on white. A remaining proof. Not just vibrations that would vanish the moment he spoke them. He needed Yutaka to know. It had been weeks now and still he hadn’t made sure that Yutaka knew.

Shou wondered if it was alright to text Yutaka now. He had only just texted Shou. There was a fair chance he was still awake. He wouldn’t be mad, if Shou didn’t reply to the rest of his message, would he? Or should Shou type out a full reply? The message wasn’t that long this time. But then, it would take too much time and Yutaka might fall asleep in the meantime.

Shou unlocked his phone and opened the app.

He stared at their chat for a moment.

Then he started typing.

I’m sorry, this is not the reply yet.

I’ll reply properly tomorrow. But I

can’t sleep. I keep thinking of what

I said the last time we saw each

other. Talking hasn’t been weird

since, so I guess you are not mad.

But I still feel sorry. I should have

told you sooner. I’m sorry.

He hit send, before he could change his mind. The message turned to read almost immediately. So, Yutaka was still awake.

Shou kept the chat open, wondering if Yutaka would reply right away. He hoped he would tell Shou that it was alright and that he forgave him for all the ugly things he had said.

The screen of Shou’s mobile changed. It started buzzing.

For a moment, Shou felt nothing but panic.

Yutaka was calling him. Shou hadn’t talked to him on the phone one on one since their last meeting.

Shou pushed the red sign to reject the phone call.

Then he inhaled deeply.

He wondered what Yutaka would think of him now.

His mobile started buzzing again.

Shou hit the red button again, faster this time.

He typed.

I’m sorry, I can’t talk about it in person.

Shou wondered why the thought scared him so much. He actually didn’t mind talking about his feelings openly. He put them into songs and when asked questions during interviews, he was never scared to answer honestly, no matter how personal the topic was. He didn’t mind sharing personal information with his fans.

But he had never been good at talking honestly, when it was just him and someone he cared for. All of his past relationships had ended because of that. He had hurt all of his ex-girlfriends and he had never been able to apologize.

Shou, please, we need to talk about

this. I can do the talking, if you want.

But I need to tell you something. I

don’t want to do this over the chat.

Please. I promise, I won’t make it

difficult for you. Just pick up the phone.

Shou read the message that had just come in. He hesitated. He considered, if he should call Yutaka.

Shou’s behaviour was ridiculous and not reasonable at all. He had been on the phone with Yutaka so many times before. Rejecting his call was just a panic reaction.

And after all, Shou was the one who had brought it up. Yutaka deserved a proper conversation, if he wanted to talk about it. Shou trusted him to keep his promise, too. Yutaka did not mean to make this difficult for Shou. He probably needed this call.

Shou’s mobile started buzzing again.

Shou inhaled, letting it ring for quite a while. Yutaka did not hang up. Finally, Shou picked up.

“Hello?”, he said quietly.

“Hey, Shou”, Yutaka said.

Shou had believed that hearing his voice would be weird. That it would remind him of the real Yutaka, who had not much in common with his imaginary construct. Shou had thought he would remember that he wasn’t really in love with Yutaka as soon as he heard his voice.

But instead, a huge wave of affection rushed over him the moment he heard Yutaka speak.

He had forgotten how much he cared for Yutaka. Sure, his construct was just a construct. But that was the point. No construct could live up to all the years of friendship they shared. Truth was, Shou did not care less for the real Yutaka than he cared for his romanticized idolization. He cared so, so much more.

“Hey”, Shou repeated softly.

“Are you in bed already?��, Yutaka asked.

Shou was irritated by this start of the conversation. He had imagined Yutaka would cut right to the point. Somehow, it made Shou feel disappointed. As if he had built up all this anticipation for nothing.

“Yeah, I went to bed half an hour ago or so”, he confirmed. “It’s late already. But I can’t fall asleep.”

“Yes, me neither”, Yutaka confirmed. “I was sleeping early those last nights, but tonight I couldn’t.”

Shou wanted to ask, if Yutaka had watched one of his videos tonight. In a chat, Shou would have written down the question for sure. In real a conversation, he couldn’t get out the words. They sounded too vain, like he really thought his videos alone might fix Yutaka’s sleeping problems. Maybe Yutaka did not even care for Shou’s videos at all. In writing, you couldn’t tell. But his voice might give him away, if he was just being polite about enjoying them. Shou thought, that he wouldn’t be able to deal with the disappointment well, if that was the case. He figured it would be safer to stay quiet.

Yutaka stayed silent, too.

Shou felt like Yutaka was waiting for him to bring up the topic, because he knew that Shou was the one uncomfortable talking about it. He obviously wanted to go with Shou’s pace.

Shou’s pace would be not addressing it at all.

“About the last time we met”, Yutaka finally said.

“I’m sorry”, Shou interrupted him.

Yutaka went quiet, as if he wanted to give Shou the time to voice his thoughts properly. Shou kept shut.

“I’m not mad”, Yutaka said. “You didn’t need to apologize.”

If Yutaka wasn’t mad, Shou wondered why he had wanted to talk about it on the phone.

“I’m sorry anyway”, Shou said. “I didn’t mean the things I said. Some of them were pretty cruel.”

“I deserved them”, Yutaka said. “I was acting like a jerk.”

Shou looked up at the ceiling. In the dark, he could only make out shadows.

He thought about how their voices where just impulses, rushing through the line to get to the other side. Just vibrations, in the end, just vibrations again instead of a real connection.

“You were”, Shou confirmed. “I still don’t understand why you had to embarrass me like that in front of the girl.”

Both of them went silent once more.

Shou thought, that silence could hold meaning, too.

“You like her?”, Shou asked eventually.

Yutaka chuckled.

“Oh, dear, no”, he said and then sighed. “This is what I wanted to talk to you about. We’ve been talking very honestly to each other those last weeks. But there is something I didn’t tell you. A big thing. And I feel like a fraud, telling you everything, but not this. Because it’s so essential for me. It’s been on my mind so much for such a long time already. But I didn’t want to send you a text about it. I wanted to tell you personally.”

“Why don’t you tell me after the lockdown?”, Shou suggested, suddenly scared of what Yutaka might have to say. “Once we can meet again in person.”

He didn’t want to hear about his secret. Not, when his secret might possibly hurt Shou. Maybe there was someone in Yutaka’s life, someone special.

“No, I think over the phone is best. I probably wouldn’t gather the courage, if I had to tell you face to face.”

Shou closed his eyes and listened to Yutaka’s breath. His breath was causing vibrations in the air, too.

Shou understood what Yutaka meant and at the same time, he didn’t. He had thought he wouldn’t be able to talk about his feelings over the phone, because he wouldn’t feel as safe as he did while writing a letter. But at the same time, he thought that he never felt as safe as he did while listening to Yutaka’s voice.

Maybe it was because Yutaka had always been so close to him. He had seen him every other day for years. It had felt normal to have him by his side.

But now, that the lockdown separated them, Shou realized that it wasn’t the fans he missed most, or Jun or Kenji. It was Yutaka. Maybe the messages they exchanged weren’t the reason he liked Yutaka. Maybe the exchange of those messages had been the natural course, because he missed Yutaka so much. Maybe they were just exchanging those messages, because Shou had liked Yutaka all along.

“So?”, Shou asked, bracing himself.

“I was jealous, when I saw how she smiled at you”, Yutaka confessed. “And I already knew you liked her. I thought you guys might actually end up dating. I was scared, so I wanted to destroy that possibility. I didn’t consider how that would make you feel, though. I want you to be happy. Even if it’s with that girl. I’m sorry, too.”

Shou licked his lips. They felt dry.

“So, you do like her?”, he assured.

“No”, Yutaka said very seriously. “I like you, Shou. That’s why I was jealous. And that’s why I was scared to tell you in person. I don’t want to ruin everything. You are important to me as a friend. Not just because of the band. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. But now that we talked about our feelings so much and about romance too, not telling you felt like lying to you. I had to say it out loud at least once.”

Shou hummed quietly, not sure what he ought to reply.

He had had the feeling that maybe his feelings weren’t entirely one-sided. Not because Yutaka had flirted with him. But because their conversations seemed to mean as much to him as they did to Shou.

Shou had thought that it was a recent development, though. That Yutaka got confused through their conversations, too, and that Shou might have a chance with him, if he only dared to try for him. He had thought, he’d have to put in more work to actually get Yutaka interested.

He hadn’t assumed that Yutaka had already liked him to begin with. It made sense, but it also seemed surreal. Shou had hoped for this and he could even understand what Yutaka saw in him. They had good chemistry. Their chemistry had always been good. And Yutaka was bisexual. It wasn’t unreasonable. But then, it seemed too good to be true.

“Are you sure?”, Shou asked.

Yutaka snorted quietly.

“Yes, I am, idiot”, he clarified, then he paused. “Please, don’t be angry. It won’t change anything between us, I promise.”

“I’m not angry”, Shou said, fumbling with the hem of his blanket. He knew that he was supposed to say something encouraging, something to let on that he actually felt the same. But he seemed unable to find the right words.

“Actually”, he said. “I’m happy. I was worried that it was her you liked. I mean, really worried. I think that’s why I lashed out at you so bad. It wasn’t about her.”

Shou went quiet as if to listen to the echo of the words he had sent out through the phone line. They were just meaningless vibrations again. Yutaka could not possibly guess all the words Shou was trying to transmit through that statement. He couldn’t hear all the silent words Shou spoke, which didn’t even cause vibrations in the air.

I’m confused about all this.

I’m sorry I hurt you.

I’m in love with you.

For another moment, Shou just listened to Yutaka’s breath through the phone. How was it possible that Yutaka’s breath caused vibrations, but Shou’s thoughts didn’t, although they sounded so loud inside his own head?

But right then, as if through a miracle, Yutaka whispered the words that Shou had not dared to hope for. It was just three words, but Shou heard all the other words beneath them, too, all the ones that didn’t even cause a vibration.

“I hear you”, Yutaka said.

#Golden Bomber #Kiryuuin Shou #Kyan Yutaka #kirikyan #fanfiction #fanfic #I hope you don't feel like I'm spamming you

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nadziejastar · 6 years ago

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I’m pretty sure there might be parallels between Isa/Saïx and that anime doll in the Toy Story world. What tipped me off was the blue hair and green eyes, rabbit ears, and the cutscene afterwards stating it was possessed and attacked its fellow toys against its own will. Which makes it all the more jarring considering how much control Saïx and the other Norts all seem to have in KH3.

Angelic Amber

An unlucky denizen of Galaxy Toys that was possessed by a Marionette.Unpredictable and erratic, her moves made her a maddening foe to face. After Sora and his team freed her from the Marionette’s ill influence, she bore a melancholy expression.

I didn’t make the connection until you pointed it out, but you’re right. The doll does bear an uncanny resemblance to Isa, lol. The hair color, the eye color, the eye shape, nose and lips. Even the rabbit ears. I suppose gothic lolita fashion is the doll equivalent of Organization XIII robes, too. And I mean, hey. Yozora does look like Riku. The characters even admit it. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the doll was inspired by Isa as a reference to what he was supposed to be. Maybe as an inside joke on the part of the development team.Buzz was afraid they’d wind up like her. Forgetting themselves and attacking each other. Which he did.

“The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well. Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next.”

–Lewis Carroll

Ya know, now that I think about it, it’s very common to see Alice dressed up in that kinda gothic lolita fashion in anime art. Alice in Wonderland is often used as a literary example of a “Lower World” journey in shamanism: she fell down the rabbit hole and landed in a world full of mysterious creatures and strange experiences. If taken allegorically, all the elements a shaman might encounter in the Underworld are represented during her adventure; from puzzles, to transformations, to guides and guardians and the journey itself – finding the white rabbit.

Alice: Oh, whatever am I going to do?

Sora: Something wrong?

Alice: Yes! I can’t remember anything–not even my name!

Sora: That’s awful! And strangely familiar… Have we met?

Alice: Oh, I do hope so! Then you can tell me my name.

Sora: Your name is… Alice!

Alice: Alice… Yes, yes, that’s it! Oh, thank you! Now, if only I could remember everything else…

All these elements represent the astral world she’s journeying through. It’s very similar to the Realm of Sleep. I think that’s why Wonderland was chosen as a world in 358/2 Days and Re:Coded. So it’s possible that the doll is not only based on Isa, but an “Alice in Wonderland” version of him. It mixes Alice, who is in a strange dream world, with the White Rabbit design.

Sora: What did you do to him!?

Young Xehanort: I thought I made it clear. I am testing the strength of their bonds. In this world, toys have hearts. And those hearts come from a powerful bond. So what happens when those bonds are stretched to their limit? When they are worlds apart, can cloth and plastic hold onto their hearts? All I needed was a wedge to widen the divide—someone like you to fill them with distrust and doubt. And that chasm you created can be filled with a vast darkness. Witness it for yourself.

The possessed version even has orange eyes. It’s kinda sad that this doll does a better job representing the whole idea behind Isa’s character than the canon depiction. Because that is exactly what Isa was turned into, like all vessels. A doll/puppet for Xehanort’s heart and mind. It’s SO stupid how they were all given free will in KH3. By far one of the worst plot decisions that game made IMO. It completely ruined all that was interesting about the Seekers of Darkness. Isa would have been the first successful vessel, other than Terra and Braig. Terra put up a fight, and Braig was willing. I think Isa was the first vessel he created by turning them into an empty shell without a sense of self first. So, the doll being designed like Isa would make perfect sense.

And I swear, for someone who was allegedly in complete control of himself, Saix sure does have some of the blankest expressions I’ve ever seen. He’s the only Organization member in that illustration who looks so…out of it. Like, his eyes look totally glazed over. It’s just like how Terra looked after he became a vessel. Like there’s nobody home. Even in the final battle, Isa just looks like he’s so unaware of himself. Which is actually what happens to berserker warriors. They are said to fight in a trance-like state. And when people are put under severe enough stress, their fight or flight mode kicks in, and they can enter a berserk state where the parts of the brain that control the sense of self shut down. But I’m doing a separate post on that. I think it��s relevant to the experiments.

Randall: But negative energy? Especially sadness? Give ‘em something that really breaks their little hearts, and they’ll stay sad forever. We’ll never have to worry about energy again.

It’s funny. All the Disney worlds in KH3 have such a strong thematic connection to the Xehanort Saga, but they still wound up feeling totally irrelevant. I think Nomura had all of these plans for how they would be connected to the actual story, but their implementation never amounted to anything more than half-baked ideas. You’ve got Young Xehanort who shows up in Galaxy Toys. And his interest in toys is because they are empty puppets, which is how he wants his vessels to be. And he’s experimenting on them, testing their bond.

Vanitas: My heart is made of just one thing. And the Unversed collected enough screams and sadness from those children to reconstruct it.

Then there’s Vanitas in Monstroplis, who was using negative emotions to build his heart. I found it really weird that there would be all of this talk about how the new Organization was figuring out the perfect way to get a heart to fall to darkness in the worlds of KH3. Which is what is necessary to create a vessel and presumably what Xehanort was trying to do. Yet, it wasn’t even necessary since there were so many people lining up to join the New Organization completely voluntarily. And how can anyone become a vessel for Xehanort’s heart and still be trying to atone? Like Vexen and Saix. You either have to fall to darkness yourself, or you have to have no sense of self to be a suitable vessel. If Saix and Vexen had altruistic intentions, then I highly doubt they’d have enough darkness to sustain Xehanort’s heart. Shit makes NO sense.

🦆🦢🦜Anyways, this is not in response to this question. Just something in general that doesn’t deserve its own post. I wish people would stop telling me to use “Read More” text breaks, LOL. I do! Apparently they don’t show up on certain mobile apps. Not my fault. Blame Tumblr. 🦉🦅🐦

#kh isa

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arsenault16lawrence-blog · 6 years ago

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holstvick53-blog · 6 years ago

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Siacoin Wallet (SIA-UI)

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It's also really the only official app made simply by Nebulous, the developers connected with the Tanto Storage System. That can be found for Mac pc Linux plus Windows OS and is probably the most safe Siacoin wallets, buyers may use. It is agreeable with iOS gadgets plus is considered the most effective Siacoin wallet IOS. An individual must double check the Siacoin wallet deal with thoroughly prior to sending. As of now, no additional wallets are supporting Siacoin, but as its turning out to be well-liked, more wallets will certainly also begin supporting the idea.

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citylong · 3 years ago

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loadvid756 · 3 years ago

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Softtote Mac Free Data Recovery For Mac

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clarencenicholsonata · 4 years ago

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10 Proven Ways to Improve Your Ecommerce Bounce Rate

High bounce rates are costly and indicative of problems with operational processes and business management.

A rising bounce rate shows that potential customers are leaving your product or service page without making a purchase. These are web visitors who enter your site and leave (“bounce”) instead of proceeding to view other pages within the same website.

This exit rate affects your business revenues, but it is essential to understand that all eCommerce outlets, including the most successful global brands, experience bounce.

Companies cannot reduce the bounce rate to zero because there always are customers who are not ready to visit other pages on the same site or make a purchase.

To understand how to control the exit rate, this article will tackle the definition of the term, causes, tools to detect it, and 10 best ways to improve your eCommerce bounce rate.

What is a bounce rate?

Benchmark bounce rates by website type - Image Credit: growcode.com Bounce rate refers to the level of site visitors who leave your eCommerce website immediately after clicking on one page. It is calculated as the proportion of single-page visitors to total visitors, expressed as a percentage. It symbolizes visitors who land on the product page but exit without interacting or taking further action during that session.

Bounce rate (%) = No. of visits accessing only 1 page/ Total no. of website visits

According to HubSpot, the general bounce rates to look out for by sector or industry are 40-60% (content websites), 30-50% (lead generation), 70-98% (blogs), 20-40% (retail sites), 10-30% (service sites), and 70-90% (landing pages). Still, eCommerce websites should aim for a low bounce rate as possible by keeping visitors interested in their content, products, and services, and potentially converting them.

Causes of bounce rates

If you manage an eCommerce website, you want visitors to convert by accessing other webpages on the same site, start buying items on sale, read more content, or fill out a signup form.

However, if there is a bounce, it could signal that the visitor did not find what he or she was looking for or the webpage was too complex to navigate. Other causes of bounce rates include:

A visitor clicking on a website accidentally.

Few relevant pages.

Visitors cannot understand or locate the site navigation.

The site appearance and graphics turn visitors away.

The content (text, images, and video) is unappealing to the visitor.

The web pages load too slowly.

Intrusive popups and ads affecting customer experience.

There is no eCommerce call to action.

Tools to detect bounce rates

Google Analytics will not tell you why visitors are bouncing from your website. You need to gather more data and insights using the following 3 tools:

Heatmaps reflect what site visitors see and interact with. It will help you to improve your eCommerce bounce rate by determining if people are seeing the most essential content on the landing page and how many more pages they click on. This content may include brand messages and product information enticing people to scroll further and engage more.

Heatmaps provide data analysis, giving you a glance at what your site visitors scroll through, click on, or ignore. With this information, you can identify trends and optimize your sites for higher engagement.

The following diagram demonstrates an example of a heatmap, which enables you to see where visitors click when using desktop devices or tap their fingers when using smartphones. The color-coding on the map shows the clicked elements.

On-site surveys enable you to gather customers’ feedback about their experiences, including their questions, expectations, and frustrations. You can ask questions to gauge the quality of service, things they like about a specific page, and factors they would consider when buying items from the website. For instance, you can ask users if the website feels trustworthy, how they heard about your site, and what they found any troublesome pages in need of fixing.

Session recording, also known as session replays, enables you to review user sessions and observe what people do on the web pages before exiting. You can reconstruct the sessions to understand what visitors experienced during a session. Some insights to derive from session recordings are the possibilities of user confusion or frustration (if page elements are non-clickable), the page sections they seem to miss or linger on most, and what users were doing right before the exit.

Now that you understand all about bounce rates, let’s discuss the top 10 ways to improve it.

1. Improve page loading speeds

Slow-loading pages can make customers get frustrated and lose interest in your web page. On average, 47% of customers expect your eCommerce web pages to load within 2 seconds or less. According to research by CrazyEgg, a one-second delay in page-load time causes 11% fewer page views, a 16% decline in customer satisfaction, and 7% in lost conversions.

The Sachs Marketing Group suggests that the following factors can contribute to your web page loading slowly:

*Server/hosting - slow speeds can arise if your web hosting company does not have enough resources on their server. This scenario also occurs when you use shared hosting instead of a virtual private server, especially when you operate a large website. *File types and sizes - many, large files and images will slow down your site. *Plugins - running too many plugins on your site or using plugins that are not optimized can slow your site down, *Traffic volume - the amount of data your site can accommodate from visitors can grow smaller as your traffic volume increases, leading to a slower website.

You can still improve your page loading speeds by optimizing your files and plugins and investing in private hosting with the ability to accommodate a high bandwidth as your traffic grows. You can also minimize and combine your files, lower server response time, and adopt more technical measures.

One of the best strategies for improving your eCommerce bounce rate is to ensure you test and analyze your site’s speed. You can do so using tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights, which scores and compares your site performance on both the desktop and mobile.

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2. Attract the right site visitors

You should reduce the bounce rate arising from the wrong traffic by choosing the right keywords for your content. The goal should be to attract qualified visits, not just the most number of views. You can also develop multiple landing pages with unique keywords and content to suit the needs of different buyer personas.

To optimize your web page for the right visitors, ensure to use meta descriptions to guide search engine users. Meta descriptions are short-form descriptions of a given page or article appearing under the title section of search results.

It influences whether users or Google or other search engines click on your website link or not. It is one of the best ways to improve the eCommerce bounce rate because it directs the right traffic while keeping away the rest.

A good meta description should contain less than 160 characters (120 characters for mobile devices), should contain the page’s primary keyword or keyword phrase, and should use a complete and compelling sentence(s).

In addition to writing attractive, useful, and short meta descriptions, you should also ensure your online advertising campaigns target the right audience for an improved bounce rate.

You should perform research to select the appropriate keywords to match your content, create many landing pages with unique keywords and content according to your buyer personas, and target your audience using social media shares and other relevant tactics.

3. Fix technical issues

Finding and fixing site usability issues is one of the best ways to improve your eCommerce bounce rate levels. If visitors cannot navigate or click on items within your web pages, you can expect a high bounce rate.

The main usability issues include:

Websites that don’t respond well on specific browsers or mobile

Technical errors like error 404

Broken links and faulty drop-down menus

The best way to detect these issues is to conduct usability testing using eye-tracking equipment or by watching session recordings of how people interact with your app or website.

For instance, you can watch session recordings of users’ navigation journey. During this process, you can review your high-bounce pages and note down problems visitors are likely to run into. You should then fix the issues promptly.

You can also test your pages manually to check if they have any loading problems, links not working, or errors both on the desktop or mobile. Errors are commonplace whenever you introduce changes to your site, making it essential to test your pages whenever you upload new products and content.

You can fix these issues by removing any broken links manually and replace them with functional or correct ones. You can also optimize and update your plugins to ensure they are compatible with your website themes. If unable to fix more technical errors, ensure to engage your site developer for support.

4. Publish quality, trustworthy content

Ensure your website has attractive and customer-friendly images and videos. 84% of web visitors have reported that at one point they were convinced to buy an online retailer’s product or service because they watched a video of the brand. You should also invest in quality content.

Keep the following points in mind to keep site visitors engaged and lower the bounce rate:

Have a relevant main message and titles

Use clear headings and subheadings

Use stylish images and colors

Proof-read your content for grammatical errors

Insert a clear call-to-action and links directing customers on the next steps

A look at the Uber website will show you how the brand leverages quality content to keep visitors scrolling and visiting other pages. The “About US” page, for instance, has the following elements:

A relevant title - “We ignite opportunity by setting the world in motion.”

Clear headings - “Rides and beyond,” “Your safety drives us,” “Company info,” and “Keep up with the latest,” among others. There are plenty of clear subheadings too.

A call-to-action - There is a “Sign Up” button at the top-right corner of the site.

Flawless English.

Stylish images - see below

You should also ensure your site looks trustworthy to build the confidence of prospective customers. Many first-time visitors will not buy from an unsecured website, further affecting the bounce rate.

The following steps can help you to improve your site’s trustworthiness:

Reduce or remove the number of content-blocking popups on the page. Irrelevant and invaluable popups can frustrate or overwhelm visitors.

Add user reviews and testimonials. First-time visitors will be convinced to look at other pages on your website or even buy your offering if they can see social proof.

Continuously monitor site performance using recordings and heatmaps to evaluate the impact of any changes you make and improve them promptly.

5. Employ upselling & cross-selling tactics

Upselling and cross-selling are among the best ways to improve your eCommerce bounce rate effectively. Upselling is encouraging shoppers to buy a more expensive version of an existing product or service, such as a premium or upgraded package for a software.

On the other hand, cross-selling entails suggesting related, additional, or complementary goods, such as offering customers to purchase ink with a printer.

According to HubSpot, you should employ the following upselling tactics to improve your eCommerce bounce rate:

Understand what customers value or want to determine the best products and services to meet their needs.

Identify and focus your upselling campaigns on customers who clearly have gaps you can close in their current packages or plans.

Start providing the target customers with real returns, value, or benefits as soon as possible to demonstrate your expertise and deepen the relationship.

Provide customers with transparent pricing information, including a breakdown of the timing and costs involved.

Incorporate trends into the sales plan to proactively discover opportunities to upsell.

To implement upselling strategies successfully, you should invest in the right products, have superior knowledge of your products, display/place your products strategically, provide maximum value, and listen to your customers’ needs actively.

The best places to place your upsells are at the checkout page or after customers add items to the cart, product pages (enables you to show off multiple product versions), and when your customers reach a given success milestone.

Pro Flowers incorporates upselling strategies at the checkout page.

Amazon upsells by displaying and recommending other frequently bought products

When you upsell and cross-sell, you encourage customers to continue interacting with your web page, lowering the bounce rate while improving conversions. Amazon uses this approach, whereby customers visiting the “camera & photo category,” for instance, can also view the Prime Day deals and discounted items. The retailer uses the approach to incentivize customers to stay on the page for long by helping them identify other products and services they might need.

6. Make the website responsive and mobile-friendly

You should optimize your website and its contents for multiple devices, including desktop and mobile.

Statistics by TechJury show that consumers spend more than 69% of their media time on their mobile phones. As of 2019, smartphones accounted for 52% of all web internet traffic globally.

The average bounce rate arising from the use of mobile phones is 60%, compared with about 42% for the desktop.

To leverage the best conversions and improve your eCommerce bounce rate for phone users, ensure your site has a simple WordPress theme, and install the right plugins. This step will ensure your pages are updated often and responsive on the backend.

You can check if your site is mobile friendly using a mobile-friendly test tool from Google. Once you plugin your site URL, you should click on the “ANALYZE” button. WordPress users can use the JetPack plugin or WPTouch plugin.

Other measures to take to make your site mobile-friendly include:

Add a responsive eCommerce theme

Simplify the product menus

Display your calls-to-action clearly

Make the help center easily accessible

Add a search function

When your site is optimized, you capture more smartphone users while improving your eCommerce bounce rate.

7. Invest in intuitive navigation

Sometimes users cannot figure out how to navigate the website or how to get to where they want to go. One of the best ways to improve your eCommerce bounce rate is to ensure the navigation elements are clear and intuitive.

Customers should not have to guess where the call to action is, neither, should they have difficulties understanding your site’s navigation structure. You should simplify the navigation tabs to make it seamless for site visitors to explore other pages or take a specific action.

For instance, you can install a visible and honest call to action to avoid creating the impression of an insecure website. You can also develop a table of contents to make it easy for web visitors to select the specific sections they would like to visit on your page. eCommerce sites reduce user confusion and frustration by creating categories for the main types of products they sell.

8. Target engaged visitors

Sometimes if you’re running a resource section or blog post, you’ll get many users who will leave your page the moment they find what they want. If you are looking to convert these visitors, you should show them the most relevant offers while they are still navigating your website.

If for instance, a visitor is viewing content on influencer marketing, you should display offers on tools to leverage influencer marketing instead of household items. This strategy can help improve your eCommerce bounce rate while increasing the conversion rate.

Tools like heatmaps will enable you to study, analyze, and understand customer behavior, informing you of the pages customers are paying the most attention to.

You can create promotions or upsell and cross-sell your product features and other benefits on these pages. The goal is to emphasize the additional value your already engaged customers can gain from your offering.

Heatmaps will also inform you if customers are hesitant to click on certain pages due to the appearance of ads or popups. You can then remove or place the distractors in a more strategic place to keep your site visitors engaged.

Storytelling is also a good way to connect with your customers, drive mutual relationships, and keep already engaged visitors on your site.

When creating stories, ensure to talk about people, not your services or products, evoke emotions, be honest, and focus on what customers expect to gain from buying or using your products.

9. Insert strategic and helpful internal links

When you insert relevant internal links in your content, you increase a site visitor’s engagement. They will be led to other pages within your website, increasing their interest in your products and services and the conversion rate.

In the event they landed on the wrong page, strategic internal links can enable visitors to reach the intended page or category while keeping them browning instead of leaving.

When linking your pages, ensure they are relevant, they have a relationship with each other, and have value-generating characteristics or benefits to site visitors. For instance, you should link related child pages to parent pages and vice versa.

A parent page can be the Product category, while the child page can be the specific products you are selling, such as electronics, household equipment, and others.

You can insert links suggesting content and products using tools like Yoast for SEO, Link Whisper, and Interlinks Manager.

This tactic will make your content easy to find. See the below example where you can link the content for Lion, Leopard, and Cheetah to each other. The page for Africa’s big cats can also be linked to the one for Asia’s big cats, both of which fall under the Big Cats parent category.

10. Engage abandoning visitors

Irrespective of what you do to improve your eCommerce bounce rate, there are still users who will leave your website after clicking only one page. Some of them may have clicked your site in error or just had an emergency and had no option but to leave abruptly.

How can you track users when they are about to leave your site and convert them into subscribers?

One of the most powerful tools to use the Poptin tool, which enables you to display a popup message when users abandon their shopping carts.

It enables you to send customized offers, improving both conversions and bounce rates. You can also display subscription messages when site visitors visit or when about to leave your website.

You can also display a pop-up with a last-minute discount, which users can choose to go for or simply close the window. When you combine an exit offer with a subscription form, you run a high chance of controlling your eCommerce bounce rate.

When displaying popups, ensure to:

Use the right format (insert those that move in from the sides),

Serve them in a timely manner (like when visitors are about to leave the page),

Integrate them with your website (using branding elements like your company logo), and

Create a clear path by prompting action and grabbing the site visitor’s attention.

However, you should not use popups with an aggressive call-to-action tone like Yes/No and avoid asking for too many things in one popup. For instance, you can ask users to sign up for your services or ask them for their email address only. Also, avoid too bulky popups (keep it simple).

Conclusion

Bounce rate is measured using the number of site visitors who leave after clicking on only one page.

Although it is not practical to lower the bounce rate to zero, you should aim to keep it to the minimum. Tools like heatmaps, on-site surveys, and session recordings can help you to determine the bounce rates.

Once you identify the reasons visitors are leaving, you can improve your eCommerce bounce rate by adopting relevant strategies like enhancing the page speed, fixing technical issues, making the mobile eCommerce, and targeting engaged and abandoning users, among others. Depending on your business type, these tactics will lower your bounce rate significantly.

You can improve your site speeds by optimizing your files and plugins, and investing in private hosting. You should also attract the right visitors to your site using meta descriptions of your content titles. Your content and images should also be appealing to your users.

Consider using the recommended upselling and cross-selling strategies to make your campaigns value generating. Technical-related fixes like addressing site usability issues, ensuring your site are responsive, and employing intuitive navigation will improve your engagement with customers.

Overall, you should target both engaged and abandoning visitors by inserting strategic internal links on your eCommerce site.

About the Author

Rithesh Raghavan is the co-founder of Acowebs, an online store for eCommerce plugins with 15000+ satisfied customers across the globe. Having rich experience of 15+ years in Digital Marketing, Rithesh loves to write up his thoughts on the latest trends and developments in the world of IT and software development.

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shirlleycoyle · 5 years ago

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Europeans Aren’t Really Using COVID-19 Contact-Tracing Apps

After three brutal months of sitting at the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, almost two-dozen governments across Europe have released Covid-19 contact-tracing apps. These apps, they claim, are integral tools to maintaining a fragile new normal.

There’s just one problem: nobody is using them.

Germany’s state-developed Corona-Warn-App, one of the most popular contact-tracing in Europe, is estimated to have been downloaded by just 14.4 percent of the population, according to estimates released Wednesday by the mobile analytics firm Sensor Tower. (Firms like Sensor Tower plug in a combination of public data from app stores and user data into statistical models which then provide estimates.)

Their estimate for the Italian government’s Immuni app drops down to 7.2 percent of the population. And for France’s StopCovid it’s a mere 3 percent, translating to just 14 notifications being sent out since June 2nd telling users that they’ve been in proximity with an infected person.

This is a problem, professor Dirk Brockmann, a researcher specializing in computational epidemiology at the Robert Koch Institute (the German equivalent of the CDC) wrote in an email to Motherboard, because contact-tracing apps become exponentially less effective with each person who doesn’t use them.

“The relationship between coverage X (percentage of users that participated) and reconstructed encounters Y (links between people) is quadratic: Y = X^2,” he wrote. “That means if 10 percent of users have the app only 10 percent of their contacts are also users. 10 percent of 10 percent is just 1 percent of all contacts.”

In other words, with just 10 percent of a population using a contact-tracing app, 99 percent of all transmissions go undetected. A recent study from Oxford estimated that for contact-tracing to be effective, at least 56 percent of the population needs to use the app.

Not great numbers, and ones which also beg the question: why have such a wide swathe of Europeans been hesitant to download contact-tracing apps?

Privacy Concerns

One reason is privacy. Almost immediately the idea of contact-tracing apps was met with skepticism by critics who felt they could be weaponized to spy on citizens.

It’s pretty clear why developers quickly abandoned the idea of using location data. Instead, they opted for Bluetooth Low Energy, which allows devices in close proximity to communicate data. Most contact-tracing apps also don’t store any personal information, such as names or phone numbers, and the cryptographic key broadcasted by a user’s phone changes every couple of minutes. In an extra effort to be transparent, the source code for just about every app can be found on GitHub.

France’s StopCovid app.

Yet, while Germany’s Corona-Warn-App may have received a rare nod of approval from Europe’s most prominent association of hackers–Chaos Computer Club–other corona apps have continued to be hounded by privacy questions.

France’s StopCovid app, for example, was blasted by academics and security experts in an open letter for using a centralized server. Germany and Italy’s apps, by contrast, rely on a decentralized API developed by Apple and Google.

Technical Faults

If Europeans were already uneasy about using contact-tracing apps, blunders on behalf of their governments did little to boost confidence.

In the Netherlands for example, development firms were only given 72 hours to come up with a proposal for a contact-tracing app. Unsurprisingly, all 750 proposals were later rejected because they weren’t complete enough to meet the security and privacy criterion.

There’s also the question of how well these apps actually work. In a survey of 800 Italians who chose not to download the national contact-tracing app conducted by the software analytics firm SWG, nearly half of the respondents claimed they did so because they thought it wasn’t effective.

Even experts have their doubts.

Professor Esther Rodriguez Villegas of Imperial College London was developing her own contact-tracing app with a team of volunteers. She later stopped development after she claims Apple told her team they would only allow one government-sponsored app per country to be published on the App Store.

One of the difficulties in developing contact-tracing apps, she says, is determining the criteria of what actually constitutes contact between two users. She considers the weighted “risk factors” used by the Apple and Google API, for instance, to be oversimplified.

“I think it’s important to convey how challenging it is to actually create an app that works effectively,” she told Motherboard. “Just because there’s an app out there doesn’t mean it’s doing a good job.”

And with few governments publishing testing data, it’s hard to actually know.

Complacency

Then there’s the changing atmosphere around the coronavirus. With lockdowns in most of Europe all but lifted, infection rates at a fraction of their peak in March and April, and borders reopened, Europeans have returned to some imitation of normal life.

As the pandemic moves further out of mind, Europeans have started reading less coronavirus-related news, and basic measures, such as the once cardinal 1.5m (6ft) rule are being flouted–both domestically and by vacationers.

But with cases gradually beginning to rise again across the continent, cases still spiking in the United States, and experts warning of a possible second wave in the fall, the ability to turn a blind eye may not last forever. In that event, contact-tracing apps which are flopping now could become useful tools later, especially if governments pitch them as a way to avoid returning to the stringed lockdowns which Europeans endured for months.

Europeans Aren’t Really Using COVID-19 Contact-Tracing Apps syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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appdevelopmentcompanyinusa · 6 years ago

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Why Mobile Applications Are Must Have For Education Industry?

In recent years, The EdTech market has changed dramatically, the market has crossed approx. $5tn which is 8x the size of the mobile app development market and 3x size of the Media and Entertainment Industry.

According to the Ovum study, colleges and universities will also increase their investments in Cloud Computing Infrastructure and Cloud Computing Applications by 22.3% by 2023.

This kind of study unleashes the growing realization of EdTech and it’s important for the 21st Century workforce. Even nearly 94% of educators believe that E-Learning App Development improves engagement, as there are still gaps between students and teachers as some of them being underserved in-classroom interaction.

Why E-Learning apps are important?

For effective education, the relationship between teacher and student be smooth with social and emotional development, which leads to fruitful outcomes that can apply to the real world.

With Educational App Development Solutions, learning can become interactive and solve critical problems easily, makes education more effective and productive.

Existing M-Learning Mobile Apps

Amazon Kindle

Duolingo

PhotoMath

Khan Academy

ABCmouse.com

Epic! – Unlimited Books for Kids.

Mathway – Math Problem Solver.

Learn Languages with Rosetta stone.

Lumosity

Peak – Brain Training.

Udemy Online Courses

Elevate – Brain Training and Games

Advantage of M-Learning Mobile Apps

The demand for online education is growing each day and in the USA it is expected to break all records. Though there are huge benefits of M-learning but here we are discussing a few major benefits of M-Learning mobile application.

Easy Learning

Mobile applications have made education so simple for children with the help of videos, animations, interactive whiteboards, interactive displays, and tables, etc. Digitization has taken education to the next level by serving all people with the same content and one can get access to the learning materials at any time. This has helped various students who are not financially strong to pay the admission fee for further studies. But now, with educational mobile apps, they can study whenever they get time.

Reduced Learning Costs

Educational app developers have reduced the learning cost to a great extent. Now higher-quality education is not meant for rich people, it is equally distributed to everyone who has smartphones and devices. Instead of paying huge amounts in institutions and buying hundreds of notebooks all you need is a smart device with an internet connection.

Boundless Learning

The best part of the educational mobile application is that it can solve a complicated algorithm within a second at any time and at comfortable space. Students can learn as much as they want without any restrictions. With this facility, they can easily learn and enhance their skills in a particular field for a brighter future.

Increase Student Engagement

In the 20th century, the education system was based on child-centered education, realist education, and social reconstruction. But in 21st-century, education is fully shifted towards personalized skills that help students to succeed in the modern world. And because of education mobile app development, this has become an easy process.

How to Manage Educational Mobile App Development Costs?

With the increasing demand of EdTech in schools and universities all around the globe, we will see significant growth in the below-mentioned technologies:

Cloud-Based Technologies

The education institute will aim to use the potential of cloud-based technologies for cost savings and to enhance operational efficiencies.

Blockchain Technology

To cut down the paper and printing cost, the education industry will focus on utilizing blockchain technology by digitally storing student information, certificates, and other data. This will not reduce data management costs but also reduce the chances of data loss and damage.

AR/VR Technology

Educational app developers will start integrating AR/VR solutions while developing mobile applications or designing connected classroom devices. With AR and VR technology, learning has become ubiquitous and affordable.

Now Augmented Reality is almost everywhere and inlays digital aspects onto the real world. According to the market players, AR will project digital devices onto the education industry to make it more realistic and practical.

Summing Up

Today teachers are polishing their knowledge and incorporate tech within the classroom. This has not only raised the standard of education but also opened the doors for those students who are not economically strong to pay for private services to improve their marks.

Educational organizations and institutes are pushing their limits to deal with new competitors. If you also want to improve your educational services, hire mobile app developers and interconnect your whole institute with one feature-rich app.

#Mobile App Development #Educational App Development Solutions #M-Learning mobile application #Education mobile app development #AR/VR Solutions #Hire mobile app developers #Mobile App Development Services #Mobile App Development Companies #Mobile app developers #App Development Companies

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sciencespies · 6 years ago

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Smithsonian Scientists Need Ginkgo Leaves to Study Climate Change—They Need Your Help

https://sciencespies.com/nature/smithsonian-scientists-need-ginkgo-leaves-to-study-climate-change-they-need-your-help/

Smithsonian Scientists Need Ginkgo Leaves to Study Climate Change—They Need Your Help

SMITHSONIAN.COM | Aug. 6, 2019, 10:38 a.m.

The next time you venture into the great outdoors, keep an eye out for Ginkgo biloba trees, which can be easily identified by their distinctive fan-shaped leaves. If you find one—and you likely will, as the native Chinese plant is now ubiquitious in the United States—take a moment to pluck a few leaves, snap some photographs of the scene, and record your observations via the iNaturalist mobile app. Then, package your sample in an envelope, drop it into the mailbox, and give yourself a pat on the back. Congratulations: You’ve just become a citizen scientist, helping researchers at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History use ginkgo leaves to study the past, present and future of climate change.

Perhaps best known for its pungent smell and medicinal properties, ginkgo actually boasts an impressive backstory. As the online portal for the museum’s Fossil Atmospheres project explains, the conifer plant (meaning it has seeds but doesn’t produce flowers) arrived on the scene more than 200 million years ago. Surviving three mass extinctions, including the one that killed the dinosaurs, ginkgo has retained a remarkably similar appearance throughout its time on Earth. This characteristic makes it possible for scientists to easily compare modern specimens with fossils dating to the distant past—a practice that could help researchers assess how the planet’s atmosphere has changed over time, as well as predict what effect future climate shifts will have on Earth’s living creatures.

Rich Barclay, the paleobotanist who leads Fossil Atmospheres, says the project consists of two main parts: an experiment based out of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland, and a multi-phase citizen science initiative. Per a Smithsonian Voices blog post penned by Barclay and Laura Soul, the museum’s Deep Time Science Education Specialist, in June 2017, the experimental side of the research revolves around a grove of 10-foot-tall ginkgo trees being grown at carbon dioxide concentrations ranging from 400 parts per million (ppm), or the level found in the atmosphere today, to 1,000 ppm, a ratio last seen when Earth’s climate was so warm that there were no polar ice caps.

Grove of ginkgo trees being grown at carbon dioxide concentrations that range from 400 ppm to 1,000 ppm.

(Rich Barclay)

The citizen science component, on the other hand, began with crowdsourced stomatal counting—a plant’s stomatal index reflects carbon dioxide concentration at the time of its growth, enabling scientists to gauge the conditions in which a specimen developed—and is set to continue with a newly launched leaf survey. This latest phase, running for the entire month of August, asks science enthusiasts from across the country to send in ginkgo leaves from their local communities. These samples will be used to paint a clearer picture of how a plant’s features reflect the environment in which it grows, providing insights on contemporary climate that can then be applied to prehistoric climates, as represented by well-preserved ginkgo fossils.

Soul, who leads the educational side of Fossil Atmospheres, explains, “We can’t go out and get leaves from every state in North America, but the public can. . . and that’s why citizen science performs [such] a vital role in what we’re doing.”

She adds, “[Citizen scientists] are enabling the project to have a much broader scope and [helping researchers] answer questions that we wouldn’t be able to answer otherwise.”

To contribute, interested parties must follow a detailed set of instructions outlining the process of obtaining, recording and submitting specimens. Be sure to follow every step, from identifying the sex of a chosen ginkgo tree to noting its exact location, uploading photos and observations to the iNaturalist app, and properly packaging the leaves, or else the scientists will not be able to use your sample. For more details, visit the project’s website or email [email protected].

Attention nature-lovers, the @smithsonian needs your help in a #CitizenScience project! Gather leaves from Ginkgo trees, mail them to our @FossilAt research team, and advance our understanding of Earth’s climate history! #FossilFriday https://t.co/5Ay7g58hUu pic.twitter.com/oePfpC1vQk

— Smithsonian’s NMNH (@NMNH) August 2, 2019

By restricting the time period in which samples are collected, as well as outlining specific instructions, Barclay says the team will be able to reduce the number of variables affecting stomatal count down to geographic range and environmental factors such as temperature, rainfall, elevation and latitude. Ultimately, data garnered from these public contributions will play a key role in published scientific research. Even if specimens aren’t used for Fossil Atmospheres specifically, Soul points out that they will be permanently accessioned into the Smithsonian’s collections: She notes, “Future scientists will be able to use them to answer questions that we haven’t even thought of yet.”

The exact science behind the project largely comes down to stomatal index, which serves as a climate proxy, or means of reconstruction, for past carbon dioxide concentration. In layman’s terms, stomata are tiny openings on leaves’ surfaces that let in CO2 but expel oxygen and water. Stomatal index refers to the optimal number of stomatal pores needed to facilitate this exchange and is determined by an array of environmental factors, chief among them the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

As Barclay explains, low stomatal numbers tend to correspond with high CO2, while high stomatal numbers correlate with low CO2. But while researchers “know there’s a strong relationship between decreasing number of pores. . . and increasing CO2,” previous studies have failed to fully quantify this dynamic.

“We knew we needed to redo [the research], and we wanted to do it in a more realistic way,” the paleobotanist says. “We moved to this scenario where we’re actually growing trees under elevated conditions, . . . pushing the plants to higher CO2 concentrations than [have] ever been studied.”

A plant’s stomatal index reflects carbon dioxide concentration at the time of its growth, enabling scientists to gauge the conditions in which a specimen developed.

(Rich Barclay)

According to Barclay, Fossil Atmospheres is unique in both its scale and level of citizen science involvement. In addition to the leaf survey, the volunteer side of the project involves counting stomatal pores captured in images of modern and fossilized leaves. This task is decidedly more difficult than simply collecting and cataloguing leaves, but the campaign’s Zooniverse page offers tips, tutorials and practice rounds for those willing to give it a try. (For what it’s worth, more than 3,300 participants have contributed 31,000 classifications to date.) Samples collected via the leaf survey will later be imaged and added to the counting page.

“Some people are excellent at [counting], and some people struggle a bit more,” Soul observes. Since each image is presented to multiple volunteers, however, the team has found that maximizing participation usually yields an accurate answer.

In Barclay’s view, citizen science benefits everyone involved. Volunteers have an opportunity to contribute valuable scientific research and learn more about the topic at hand, while experts gain a trove of usable data. With more individuals collecting leaves and counting stomatal pores, the project can be completed in a reasonable amount of time—namely, within the next several years.

Fossil Atmospheres’ ultimate goal is to determine the relationship between carbon dioxide and stomatal index. By doing so, Barclay and Soul write in Smithsonian Voices, “We should be able to pick up a fossil ginkgo leaf and know the composition of the air in which it grew.” At the same time, the researchers hope to use their findings to answer a key question about the future: “As we humans add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, how warm will the planet get?” The answer, according to the pair, lies in the past, locked in the minute nooks and crannies of ginkgo leaves’ surfaces.

“The real benefit [for volunteers] is to participate in a project that’s actually answering useful questions about our changing climate, which is one of the most pressing issues that we’re facing at the moment,” Soul concludes. “This kind of research. . . is going to be vital moving forward.”

The project, “Fossil Atmospheres,” is unique in both its scale and level of citizen science involvement.

(Rich Barclay)

Modern ginkgo leaves closely resemble fossilized specimens.

(Scott Wing)

Citizen scientists can spot ginkgo leaves based on their distinctive fan-shaped appearance.

(Rich Barclay)

#Nature

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tristanleggett · 6 years ago

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Behind the Marketing Scenes of Top Web App Design Company: Monterail

Technology alone is not enough to succeed, every product needs a team of passionate people who will give it their best. Monterail

And what is the best for Monterail, the awarded web app design company? By now it meant:

Achieving a 400%+ revenue growth in 2013-2016 and being featured in 2018 Financial Times 1000 Europe's Fastest Growing Companies.

Achieving a 206% revenue growth in 2014-2017, featuring for the second time in a row in FT1000.

A marketing campaign that brought them EUR 750k worth contracts.

New business that accounted for 46% of all 2018 revenue

Worth investigating all of this, right?

So let there be marketing! The content strategy, the social media efforts, the community involvement.

We’ve analyzed everything. Follow us along to learn more about their strategy and “steal” their successful tactics and strategies to implement in your company.

TABLE OF CONTENT

Monterail Web App Design Company- Short Overview

Monterail’s Marketing Strategies Reverse Engineered

Brand Awareness at Monterail

Monterail’s Website and Conversion Rate Optimization

Monterail’s Traffic Acquisition

Content Marketing

Monterail’s Social Presence

Employer branding and hiring

Wrap Up

More than 90% of potential clients who visit the Monterail office decide to work with them.

Kudos to you, guys!

Now, let’s see what makes Monterail such a magnet for clients.

Monterail Web App Design Company - Short Overview

Szymon Boniecki and Bartosz Rega, co-founders of Monterail, were recognized in 2017 New Europe 100 list as changemakers in emerging Europe and as individuals who are improving people's lives with ideas that scale up in the digital world.

But let’s see what other stakeholders have to say about this Wroclaw-based web app design company: their own clients.

Exceeding expectations and overcoming challenges

Proactive, responsive, transparent & flexible

Solution-oriented

Top notch communication

Well organized and professional

Speaking of clients, new business accounted for 46% of all 2018 revenue, compared to 28% in 2017.

What are the secrets behind the success of this web app design company?

We’ll try to follow in their footsteps and reconstruct their employer branding and marketing strategies.

So, let me tell you a story about:

How inbound marketing combined with efficient promotion can get you mainstream

How a team-centered company is of utmost importance

How you can establish leadership through community engagement

Monterail’s Marketing Strategies Reverse Engineered

With Deloitte and Financial Times nominations, 100+ projects covering IoT, web, mobile, Node.js, Ruby on Rails and Vue.js development, Monterail is writing history in Wroclaw IT outsourcing.

Content strategy, offline events, marketing automation, these are just a few of the stories we’ll tell you next, stories that led to the inspirational growth of Monterail.

Brand Awareness at Monterail

As Marty Neumeier says it in his book “Zag”, a brand is not:

A logo

A corporate identity

A product

A brand is “a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or organization”.

How can you influence one’s gut feeling?

Through a lot of social proof.

For software houses for example, the reviews on Clutch, Google, Facebook or Goodfirms are of utter importance.

Awards are also essential if they are done by trustworthy companies.

Monterail’s Awards

Monterail features in Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 in Central Europe in 2017.

Monterail, as you’ve probably guessed, they’re into Ruby on Rails. Clutch ranked them second in their world Top 15 Ruby on Rails Development Agencies.

The company also ranks 10 in Top 15 Web Developers in Poland - by Clutch.

Monterail’s Website and Conversion Rate Optimization

The website is plain and simple, no mystery there. But beauty lies in simplicity.

It’s easy to find an answer to the buyer persona’s most important questions:

What do you do?

We design and develop web & mobile apps to support startups and businesses on their missions.

How can I trust you?

Case studies, testimonials, client listing.

How can I contact you?

Through a contact form or via chat bot.

They have a projects section where they showcase products and services they’ve designed.

They want to make it clear what the workflow is, they can begin from scratch, with an MVP or scale existing products.

What I like about them is that they have two types of newsletters, focusing either on business, either on technology. This means that personalization is essential in business.

Speaking of personalization, the Hubspot chat bot is used to better qualify the leads and offer a customized experience:

The conversion rate optimization efforts are supported also with automation. It's all about improving the processes and being customer-centric for Monterail. So, Hubspot is their weapon of choice for marketing and sales automation.

CRM, chat bot, forms, CTAs, pillar pages, workflows, CRM - Monterail tried to take the most out of Hubspot when designing the Vue.js campaigns.

Monterail’s Traffic Acquisition

The main website traffic sources, according to Semrush, are:

Direct - 15%

Referral - 1%

Search - 71%

Social - 13%

Social brings more than 10% of the traffic. From our research, this is one of the biggest percentages encountered so far, so we’ll try to understand what strategies lay behind this number.

The 15% direct traffic makes sense because of two main reasons:

Monterail has a team of 6 involved in business development, meaning that they do email outreach, networking

Monterail organizes a lot of events: Monterail Academy, meetups and workshops, but also have a lot of speaking gigs at all sort of tech conferences

30k+ search traffic, give or take, is a considerable amount of search traffic. This is why we’ll dive more into the content strategy to see the strategies behind it.

Content Marketing

The blog is updated kinda bi-weekly. The main tags are agile, culture, project management, Vue.js, product design, Javascript, development, business, mobile development, ruby/rails.

The more technical posts are written by the developers, and these are the posts that bring more traction.

An example is Zuzanna Kusznir, from the back-end team, that wrote a blog post ending up generating 8.4% of the blog’s traffic in 2018.

According to Spyfu, there are 65 keywords showing up on the first page, and 61 are almost there. Thumbs up, guys!

This next screenshot is telling an interesting story:

The technology related keywords are really valuable, bringing in traffic, but the “outsource” cluster is trying to make its way up to the first page.

Non-branded keywords bring traffic to blog post pages. Branded “monterail” traffic, leading to their homepage, is almost insignificant.

Now, I’m gonna peek a bit at their high ranking blog posts.

The most traction was brought by a blog post that covers becoming a certified tester, it’s almost 2 years old, but still bringing in fresh traffic.

They’ve got content also on Slideshare, like this great piece on Storytelling in data visualization, written by Paweł Hawrylak, the Head of Design.

Their account also features a story about Marketing B2B, that accrued 1300 views.

But in content marketing, not everything revolves around blogging.

Besides, blog posts are merely addressing their personas in the awareness stage. The same with the newsletter.

When moving down the funnel we encounter other types of content, such as case studies, which can be leveraged for the consideration phase of the buyer’s journey.

The Vue.js campaign

So, we’re finally here, the campaign that brought Monterail clients worth EUR 750k+

Monterail has a thing for Vue.js.

An untapped framework potential, not enough buzz around it: why not take the lead and be the Vue.js go-to company? So, challenge accepted.

It was 2017.

Was it risky? Hell, yeah. No benchmarks, no assurance that the marketing budget won’t be thrown out the window.

As Monterail rolled up its sleeves it began developing content:

Blog posts

State of Vue.js report

Newsletter

Pillar pages and landing pages

Additional elements on the website

At the core of all this content lays the all-mighty survey:

A four-week period in August and September of 2017

1,126 responses, mainly from software developers and CTOs of organizations using Vue

Responses from 88 countries

+ Lots of promotion and outreach:

Vue conference

Sales activities

Drip email campaign

PR and sponsors

Paid ads: Google and Facebook ads

Social media channels

Medium & Quora

Vue.js official channels + influencer Evan You (the creator of Vue.js himself!)

The tools:

Hubspot: forms, CTAs, workflows, CRM

Ahrefs: SEO

Google Analytics

The results:

Valuable backlinks

4500+ downloads of the report in 3 months

300+ Vue conference attendees

10k+ visits ro Vue related content

EUR 10k+ cost (time and ad spend) by Jan 2018

Contracts worth EUR 750k+

Vue.js goes mainstream

The campaign’s key takeaways:

Original content is paramount

Content production and content promotion are equally important

Plan everything

Have goals, KPIs, proper measurement

Consistency in messages across channels, consistency in time

Educate your potential clients

Invest in tools and people. 0 budget, no can do

Be patient and don’t give up, SEO takes time to show results

Know your persona and buyer’s journey

Get influencers on-board

Prioritize your channels, you don’t have to be everywhere

Data manipulation - the right people for the job if you want accurate info

Next: State of Vue.js revisited.

Monterail ran a survey with the purpose of creating the new state of Vue.js report. After having collected the responses and prepared case studies, the updated 2019 State of Vue.js report is out. I’m really curious how the 2019 inbound B2B campaign will turn out. We’ll be watching you guys!

So, Monterail managed to take something relatively unknown and make it mainstream - the Vue.js framework, all through inbound marketing and quality promotion.

They’ve reached their objective of being recognized as the experts in the field.

Chapeau!

This was a great inbound marketing lesson.

Backlinks to Support Content Marketing

Do-follow links from 70+ domain ranking websites link back mostly to the Monterail homepage, and Mozilla is the main attraction.

Backlinks

Putting the pieces all-together, from high search traffic to a solid blog, high-quality backlinks, it’s clear that inbound is at the core of their marketing strategy.

Looking back at the 2018 performance in terms of blog traffic, in comparison to 2017, according to their blog post, the numbers are:

6% more users and 63% more sessions on the website

110% more sessions on the blog itself.

Monterail’s Paid Traffic Acquisition

Monterail is also leveraging Google Ads. From Spyfu’s research, it seems that they are bidding on node.js and vue.js keywords.

We know that they used the power of retargeting during the Vue.js campaign also. And it's not only Google ads remarketing, but also Facebook and Twitter.

But they also use the power of sponsored post for topics such as:

Node.js development

Nearshoring/outsourcing

Successful case studies

Progressive web apps

Monterail’s Social Presence

2500+ Facebook followers

1300+ Twitter followers

1200+ Linkedin followers

Not all of the organic and paid efforts in social media are responsible for these numbers.

All of the other offline or inbound efforts might translate into followers and likes.

Everything connects, and the end result is branding.

Monterail’s Facebook Page

2500+ Facebook followers get regular updates from Monterail regarding events they’re hosting, webinars they’re organizing, jobs available, blog posts and case studies. Vue.js posts seem to be very appealing to Monterail, lately.

Facebook’s posts are headed two ways:

Getting more clients

Increasing employer branding

Most popular posts talk about the team or Monterail’s events. And check this out, Discovery featured Monterail in a series on entrepreneurship. Kinda cool, I’d say!

Some of the posts get traction, but the average engagement per post is around 14.

Instagram

The Instagram account is all about the team, reinforcing the Monterail idea that “every product needs a team of passionate people who will give it their best.”

The images are praising a company culture:

that revolves around communication

which happens in a cozy ambiance

where work and play are equally appreciated

On LinkedIn profile news from the industry and blog posts are shared. It’s clearly client-oriented content.

The image being portrayed on LinkedIn speaks of Vue.js leadership, React expertise, products they’ve built.

The platform is also used for hiring because jobs are being posted.

Twitter

Monterail almost replicates the Facebook content within its weekly tweets.

Blog posts and news from the industry are being shared.

They also promote webinars and events they attend to in order to build awareness around their business.

The purpose of the account is more about gaining new clients, than building employer branding.

Dribbble

The 290 Dribbble followers get updates from Monterail regarding

Latest web-designs

Apps made by Monterail

Design for events

Most of the shots are published by the Monterail Head of Design, Paweł Hawrylak.

Monterail’s Community Involvement

Webinars, tech summits, meetups, the Monterail Academy - these guys are really busy. But this is how you build a community, establish leadership in the field, for both future employees and clients.

And let’s not forget they’ve hosted a conference around Vue.js with 300+ attendees.

Employer Branding and Hiring

Now, let's mingle with Monterail’s current and former employees and see what they say about the working environment. It seems that the company’s culture and remote working possibilities are highly appreciated.

The quality of code and the learning process are among the pros of working at Monterail. Some say that the management team is a bit un-experienced and decision making takes kinda long.

They want to expand their team by hiring developers and product designers. Salaries and other perks are transparent. There’s also an employee testimonial on the page to increase the chances for conversion.

They are really proud of their office and the friendly atmosphere. They make use of social media to promote the cozy environment. Speaking of the office, it’s not like any other offices. There was a whole strategy around it in the design phase.

Monterail commissioned sociologist Karolina Dudek for an in-depth study of the spatial and cultural needs of the staff. From her observations, they decided to set up rooms for projects, instead of having an open space. So, using science to design the proper working environment, kinda cool, right?

They support learning among the team, that’s why they introduced Self Development Time, meaning every employee has 2 hours per week to spend on whatever they like for personal development.

Wrap Up

From the B2B marketing point of view, it seems that a consistent content strategy, seasoned with some events and marketing automation, is the recipe of success for Monterail.

But let’s make a more comprehensive list of takeaways:

Build an effective team - of engineers, of marketers, of business developers, don’t settle for less

Inbound at the heart of marketing efforts. Get the developers team involved in creating original 10x content

Promotion is key, it should be consistent and carefully planned

Get out there, get noticed, host events, go to speaking gigs, create buzz around you

Plenty of marketing lessons from Monterail, right?

But we ain’t stopping here.

We’ve got more companies up our sleeves.

And, more so, our Ultimate Guide To IT Outsourcing Companies in Central Eastern Europe. will give you a birds-eye view on the IT outsourcing landscape within three ex-soviet countries: Poland, Ukraine and Romania. They’re fast, they’re furious and they’re reshaping the industry.

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