#already starting to re-design all my tags & implement them..

[funkycrabturtle]

last post of the year! unfortunately no art (yet), so i'm just gonna say that I went to visit the royal botanic gardens. that's it!

anyways, happy new year to all of you! enjoy your last day of 2024 while you can.

[bitch-i-migth-be]

Crash Course | Chapter 03: Ready?

Fandoms: Danny Phantom, Batman,  

Relationships: Danny Fenton & Jazz Fenton,

Characters: Danny Fenton, Jazz Fenton, 

Words: 2′246

Tags: BAMF Danny, BAMF Jazz, Sibling bonding, Shenanigans, Swearing

Summary: He swore his sister was trying to make him go into cardiac arrest - considering his halfa status that was quite the accomplishment-

But there was no other explanation to his sister’s stubbornness, and if he knew her at all there was just no talking her down from interning at goddam Arkham.

A/N: I appreciate the comments, guys. :33  Let me know what u think.

CHAPTERS: 1, 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7

Danny might not be the smartest person out there but he sure was crafty as fuck.

He had needed to be even before the ghost entered the picture. Then, after the portal was up and running the habit of thinking on his feet and the fine art of rolling with the punches had been added to his skill set.

So, Danny knew from experience that no matter how good you could get at improvisation, it was always better to prepare beforehand if you had the opportunity. Because if you let something to chance, it would probably come back later to fuck you over. Or some annoying ghost would get in the way out of goddamn nowhere. He could deal with them, but it was just a waste of everyone’s time. Better get going before someone interrupted him.

Normally one small thing or another would backfire anyway because of his salted luck, but he preferred not to poke sleeping dragons when he could.  

Taking into account all of that, he had decided the first order of business in the Fenton Crash Curse for Suicide Missions: Start packing all the shit they would need to take with them.

Because It’s never too early to pack for the road to hell.

Especially if you are already in a hell all of your own.

-.-.-.-

“What do you mean you are coming with me?” Jazz murmured from the threshold of Danny’s room, eyes wide open, as she watched her little brother try to pack all types of random things into suitcases.

Since she had announced at the Fenton Family Dinner her plans of going to Gotham University and accepting an internship at Arkham, Danny had been behaving like he was possessed, which considering the portal in their basement was not that far fetched; he had started carrying around a book-like-journal and would not stop murmuring about survival-of-the-fittest. Jazz was not going to lie, she appreciated the concern but that part was a little bit concerning. Not the survival in general, they had been playing that game since forever in this house, but they had never really needed to write anything down.

Until now, apparently.

It was kind of weird witnessing all this. Weird as in she wasn’t used to him fusing so much over her. A normal amount, yes. But most of the time it was the other way around, she was the big sister after all. Also,  with the ghosts around and him going all hero on their behinds her brother was in dire need of all the support she could dispatch. So, yes, she wasn’t expecting this reaction at all, and she was even less prepared for her brother declaring his intentions of joining her in Gotham.

She hadn’t asked how he was planning on dealing with the ghost problem yet, but considering he was already packing when she, they now, weren’t leaving until the end of the summer Jazz thought her brother must have had something in mind already.

She didn’t even know how they could need some of the things he was putting in there but it appeared like Danny was on a roll and she wasn’t going to be the one stopping such, umh, productivity.

“I said what I said”

Jazz frowned lightly.

“Are mom and dad aware-?”

“I told them I was going to be your assistant with the research; mostly the field part because I don’t think they trust me with the equipment after what happened the last time,” Danny answered while still hunting down for more essential items to put in bags, those things were handy as fuck. “also, get a job or something”

“A job?” jazz raised an eyebrow and leaned against the doorframe.

“It’s on the list,” Danny waved his journal/diary/thing in the air. Huh, so they were survival tips. “considering you are the only one with a scholarship and I´m not going to school anyway it seemed appropriate.”

“excuse me? you are not going to what?”

“May as well-” Seeing his sister’s expression he quickly backtracked, “but I mean, if you are really that opposed there is always online classes”

Danny tried to smile in her sister’s direction, but his nervousness made it come out more like a grimace. He kept trying. Jazz kept staring at him. Danny kept grimacing back.

Then she smiled back. A proper, full toothed smile. Oh fuuck

“I think I can do you one better” And with that, she turned on her heel and left.

Danny blinked two times. one after the other.  

“D-Do me one bet-? Jazz, wait!”

But it was already too late, his sister had another ball to start rolling.

-.-.-.-

Her brother was not stupid.

If her brother choice to appease her by taking online classes had been born merely of a strategic need, and hence the best course of action to take, Jazz wouldn’t have rebuked at all, there were, after all, some pretty good online options that her brother could take. But alas, that was not the real motive of his decision.  

It pained her and enraged her to see people belittle her little brother without even knowing him. See them think they had any right to decide whether he was worth something.

And it nagged at her than even knowing the basics of what was wrong with her brother’s low grades, she couldn’t help him more than she currently did. Not really. Unless she wanted him to end up in the hands of the G.I.W.

Fat chance of that.

But if there was a thing a Fenton was not it was a settler. And like hell she was going to let these people bring her brother down.

The first order of business would be to scout out the G.S.U. properly, some phone calls could prove useful, after all those who search shall find. 

-.-.-.-

When Jazz had retreated to her quarters earlier Dany had been left on his own with an uneasy feeling nagging at his gut. It felt a bit like foreboding.  

Like most things in life that inconvenienced him when it came to family issues he decided to ignore it until it came back to bite him, so he continued with his preparations and eventually took a seat among all the clutter that had become his room. After that, he didn’t have to wait long.

His sister had come back strolling decisively into the room, only pausing briefly to warily give the evil eye to the sheer number of things spread all over the room that appeared to have multiplied since she left the place.

She stopped right in front of her brother’s seated form and trusted her phone into the smallest Fenton’s unsuspecting hands.

“Look! There is still time to apply to a full-ride scholarship at Gotham Academy” Danny blinked up at her without a word, and at his sister’s insistence looked down at the phone to start reading, then he did a double-take and started re-reading.

Jazz had got to be kidding him.

“You want me to apply to some posh elite school?” He looked up incredulously at the redhead “Elite, Jazz? Me? With my grades and the amount of time I would get to study for an entrance exam I would be failing this just by applying.” grumbled the boy.

“That’s the best part.” Said the girl smiling like the Cheshire cat. “This particular exam is practical in engineering”

Danny froze. His eyes shot back to the phone.

“Practical you say?”

“Yes, lately there have been more scholarships granted for demonstrating a great gasp in the practical portions. Gotham is a little, umh, hard to handle, I suppose, and there have been situations in which people with the knowledge to accomplish great things have been turned down because of a lack of proper school background or support. So they decided to start implementing this.” She explained while her little brother continued scanning the document up and down.

Eventually, Danny shook himself back together.

“Ok, look, let’s say I had a shot at this.”

“Which you do-”

“Which I might.” The younger interrupted her, “This still requires to prepare at least three proposals for the faculty’s designated table of judges to evaluate and grade to get the green card, and this is like two weeks -two weeks!- from now, it doesn’t even specify what they are gonna have the applicants doing for the final test. How the fuck am I-?!”

The redhead decided to cut in before he could drive himself into a frenzy.

“Well if you are that sure about joining me then you won’t have a problem acing this, will you?” she smirked, then it softened into something more fond. “I know you can do this Danny, and so do you. And if you are that worried about the time, I can help you, we can start tag teaming together for ways to deal with the ghost from the get-go. It may not be permanent, but it will have to do.”

Her brother started biting his own lower lip and still looked somewhat unsure, so she decided to use the final big gun.

“Did I mention that Gotham Academy is right across the road from Arkham?”

Danny’s shoulder slumped.

“Ughh, fine!”

Jazz beamed down at him.

“I will leave you to it then!”

-.-.-.-

“Also, those things are not going to fit anywhere if you don’t organize them”

“Oh, ye of little faith.”

-.-.-.-

So. Jazz did have a good reason to believe her brother could get the G.A. scholarship.

The Fenton thermos technology was not only useful for capturing ghosts but could also store other things. That’s to say, more tangible things.

And her brother was the one who made it happen.

Danny has been tinkering with his parent’s things a lot more than some people would be comfortable with. The truth is, some of the things Jack and Maddie have invented could be fucking useful for everyday life if you took out most of the ghost shit or rearranged them a bit, it could have gained them a pretty penny, but like we all know the Fentons are not interested in anything if it’s not ectoplasmic.

Danny, on the other hand?

As much as he ends up believing all the bullshit others say about his sister being the only genius child of the family, he had never been afraid of dismantling and mounting up again some of his parents’ equipment. For him, it was not a question of whether or not he was qualified to do so, after growing up watching his parents tinker random machines all over the house he had inevitably started to pick up their ways almost as if via osmosis.

His parents, of course, had never fully noticed the fluffy-sweater clad toddler waddling after them from time to time watching them work, at first this happened when Jazz was otherwise occupied in extracurricular activities and couldn’t keep the boy successfully distracted somewhere else.

If at the time, Jazz had realized what was going on, she may have panicked and stopped her sweetly feral summer child of a brother from getting anywhere near their parents in the middle of a craze. As it was, she had not noticed in those first years, and by the time it had come to her attention even she had to concede that if her little brother had managed his recon missions without no one the wiser - Her brother was sneaky like that -, then he deserved the benefit of the doubt.

And, had that not been enough to convince the big sister, that had been the moment the sudden realization than her brother, unlike her, was more of a hands-on learner hit her full force, which would have been enough to make her relent. Learning was always good in her books.

Later, Danny would find most of the classes being imparted in Casper high boring as fuck. Not necessarily for the subject, but the way they were imparted. The youngest Fenton needed a good explanation along with a hands-on approach applied to something he found interesting to fully commit to something. At school, the most he could get were the theory and the occasional practical classes.

If the classes had been related to something interesting, say, rockets, stars, maybe NASA, it would have been easy to pay his full, unconditional attention to the teachers. But not one of the teachers had bothered to try and link the lessons to the interest of the alumni, not surprising, considering public school stuck to basics and had a timeline to complete and the classroom never seemed to learn things at the same rhythm so concessions had to be met.

It was still boring as fuck. But if he wanted to someday make it into NASA he would have to suck it up and force himself to survive with relatively good notes this torment.

Then the ghost fights had entered the picture and his motive to keep up the grades had all but vanished, and the little time left behind to work with was not enough to make, at least, an average grade. He didn’t have enough reasons to strive for more.

For this though? A new chance far from the ghost and he could keep protecting her sister?

He had the brains. He had the passion. And a good damn motive to drive him forward.

Once he was done, the luggage - and Loony town - wouldn’t even know what hit it.

-.-.-.-

NOTES:

 Also, the thing about Jack & Maddie not trusting Danny with the equipment was one of Danno’s secret tries at messing around with the things. Needless to say, that one time didn’t stay a secret.

Oh well, it was not like he asked for permission in the first place.

-.-.-.-

“fluffy-sweater clad toddler”

Not gonna lie, I made myself crave some cuddles from toddler danno, so. fucking. cute.

There he goeees just waddling like a little duckling asdfghjkl

-.-.-.-

If someone here is a fan of the Gotham Academy Comic I greatly regret -not really- to inform you I’m only taking hostage the place for my evil fanfic purposes. I don’t know if there is going to be references but that particular comic is not the focus of this story, SO. You have been forewarned.

[tap-tap-tap-im-in]

Vogon

So I have a little framework, although I think calling it that is a stretch. I call it Vogon, after the terrible poetry writing aliens from Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy.

What is it, and why does it exist?

Well, it's a framework of thought as much as it is a framework of code. Mostly, it's a bunch of folders and templates. The database driver is 46 lines long, including the opening and closing PHP tags, and really one of the three functions it adds is vestigial. I removed the one call to it after observing some behavior in one of my own projects, but never removed the function itself.

My point is that the framework is small, like 10kb in a ZIP small. It doesn't do a lot, but what it does do is force me, because I wrote it for me, to follow some design patterns that I find help me greatly when working on projects that scale. By splitting up my thoughts and code this way, I'm able to better track issues with them, and expand on them at any step.

See, when I got my first developer job, it was for a small internet marketing company a few hours outside of Chicago. Close enough that occasionally well paying work would come our way, but far enough away that competition wasn't always barking down our neck. The owner and his previous developers had made their own CMS. When I got there, it was a crusty thing that had a tendency to get hacked and no one really knew why (or, more accurately, the owner didn't have time to check and he'd fired or lost all the developers that had worked on it).

I didn't really know anything about PHP at the time, I'd worked with it enough to copy and paste some code from stack overflow together, but this was my first introduction into programming and getting something larger than a few lines up and running. What structure there was, was functional in nature. The documents were split up by type. Forms and user interaction were processed by huge switch statements in giant actions.php files, every user interface got its own file. While a security class existed, each document had to manually include it before they could get the benefits.

Long story short, the code was super easy to read, and super easy to learn on. It was structured exactly how I think a prototype probably should be. Everything you need is in one place, and patching issues is as simple as isolating what the problem is and editing that actions.php file.

But you know what else it meant? We couldn't easily reuse code. We could copy and paste it into each document we wanted to use it in. There was a functions.php file, but those were all loaded at once. We could load objects pretty easily, but... objects don't really encourage code re-usability, and they aren't easily readable. For a while I did end up leaning on them pretty hard to fill the gap, with good results, but the owner pushed back against this very hard.

At the same time, we would have tons of feature requests where the owner would ask for a thing, I'd give him a time estimate, and he'd complain that my estimate was too long, that it couldn't possibly be that hard since we'd already done similar things in other places in the code. Then I'd explain everything I talked about above and he would walk away complaining about how I made everything too complicated.

It all came to a head when I was working on a script that was triggered by cron-tab to run a number of automated tasks for the CMS. Clearing/compacting traffic data, aggregating abandoned ecommerce carts, ect. I spent almost two months hunting down a hard to replicate error that meant that monthly invoices for clients wouldn't generate on certain days (not full time, but whenever projects allowed). I had it. We were done with monolithic documents. I wanted to stop wasting the company's time, and my own. So I started working on pulling over everything I knew about the CMV design pattern and implementing it into our framework.

The first step was a hybrid approach, but we made the switch in a month. No new features, just chunking the existing logic into smaller chunks that could be sub-categorized as follows: Did it produce output seen by the user? View. Did it touch the database, or have to modify data? Model. Did it route to either category based on the state of input or the application? Controller.

The difference was night and day. At this point, we had an eCommerce platform running in our code (again, custom written). So the ability to isolate features to just a few lines of code that could be called over and over as needed sped us up, and made our code more reliable. When we patched something, we never had to wonder if it was patched everywhere it was ever copied. It just worked.

I was going to take this a step further, and rebuild the whole CMS via CMV, and I had a functional prototype together when the owner canned the project. I don't know for sure why, but my ego made it feel a lot like he didn't think the code was easy enough for him to read, so he started pushing back towards the old development process. So, I had all of this code I had written that solved all of these problems that were costing us hundreds of dollars a day, and I was told to get rid of them. So I did.

But the thing about ideas is, they aren't really owned by anyone. So after he canceled the project, I started playing with the same ideas at home, and after distilling them and throwing away a lot of the ideas that, while good in theory, weren't viable, I was left with a little 10kb framework built in the exact way that I want to organize my thoughts. A project bootstrap if you will.

But hey, don't take it from me. If you're a PHP developer, let me know how it works for you, if it works for you, and if there's anything you might change about it.

Here's the github repository, which is the standard 10kb absolutely nothing in it but a single example extension: https://github.com/stephentkennedy/vogon

And here's something a little more exciting. This is a set of webdev and data entry tools I've been using for a few years now built into the framework with varying levels of success. This comes with an installer. It expects an apache/mysql/php environment, but it should be OS independent (the lint tool says .exe, but its really just looking for a PHP executable, whatever format that is for your OS). I've run it successfully on Windows, CentOS, and Ubuntu without problems personally. It also shouldn't care if its installed in the host root, or a sub-directory. [Old link removed]

Personally, I've used it for the above web dev tools, building a staggeringly large cluster crawler project, chopping large files down to manageable sizes (python is the choice for this, but when you don't have time to think, you reach for what you know), giving human readable titles to a bunch of files that look like "23rv2134d11234c.html", and a few other minor one off things.

[starcitizenprivateer]

Star Citizen Monthly Report: February 2019

February saw Cloud Imperium devs around the world working hard to deliver the incredible content for the soon-to-be-released Alpha 3.5 patch. Progress was made everywhere, from locations like ArcCorp to the gameplay developments afforded by the New Flight Model. Read on for the full lowdown from February’s global workload.

Star Citizen Monthly Report: February 2019

AI – Character

February’s roundup starts with the AI Team, who made improvements to the existing character collision avoidance system. The changes began with adjustments to the smooth locomotion path, with the data now coming from the collision avoidance calculation to make sure the character has enough free space.

Time was spent generalizing the options a vendor can use so that designers no longer have to write them into the behaviors. Instead, the correct options are automatically selected based on the environment and (eventually) from the shop services.

They’re also restricting combat behavior to allow better scalability when adding new tactics and are investigating some of the bugs found in the Alpha 3.4 release.

AI – Ships

Throughout February, the AI Team improved various aspects of dogfighting gameplay, including evasive maneuvers. Now, when an AI pilot has an enemy on its tail, it will try to utilize different break-aways with increasing and varied angles. It will also try to keep momentum and chain together attack maneuvers. To achieve this, the team exposed new ‘SmoothTurning’ subsumption tasks to the behavior logic.

When detecting enemy fire, AI pilots will utilize evasive maneuvers to create a diversion.

They also implemented automatic incoming/outgoing ship traffic over planetary landing areas. They are currently generalizing ship behaviors to enable the designers to easily set up traffic on multiple cities, capital ships, and so on.

Animation

Last month, Animation provided the remaining animation sets for previous characters already found in the Persistent Universe (PU), including Hurston, Battaglia, and Pacheco. They also finished off a new batch of animations for the ship dealer. Work continues on animations for future yet-to-be-announced characters too, which includes getting approval for the initial poses and animations before going forward with the final clean-up.

American Sign Language (ASL) emotes are being added to the game and are currently being improved with the addition of facial animations.

Finally, Animation is currently syncing with Cinematics for a few interesting segments that backers will get to enjoy soon…

Art – Tech

Tech Art invested significant effort into optimizing rig assets so that they work better with the facial runtime rig logic and the ‘look at’ and ‘mocap’ re-direction components. Since eye contact is one of the fundamental means of human communication, any error or tiny deviation can cause the ‘uncanny valley’ effect and immediately break immersion.

“If the eyes of an actor converge just slightly too much, they appear cross-eyed. However, if they don’t converge enough, they appear to look through you, as if distracted. If the eyelids occlude the character’s iris just a little too much, which, depending on the distance, could amount to just 2-3 pixels vertically, they look sleepy or bored. Conversely, if they expose too much of the cornea, they appear more alert, surprised, or outright creepy.”

So, the alignment of the virtual skeleton’s eye joints with respect to the eyeball and eyelid geometry is of utmost importance. Likewise, the ‘look-at’ system needs to control all relevant rig parameters and corrective blendshapes (not just the rotation of the eyeballs themselves) to create truly-believable runtime re-directions of the mocap animations.

Alongside facial work, the team completed several weapons-related tasks, such as fixing offsets during reload animations and locomotion issues for the pistol set. They also completed R&D related to playing animations in sync with character usables within cinematic scenes and helped Design to unify the character tags in Mannequin.

Art – Environment

Predictably, the Environment Team is racing towards the completion of ArcCorp and Area 18 – they’re currently working with and implementing the custom advertising provided by the UI department. The planet itself is in the final art stage and now includes skyscrapers rising above the no-fly zone to provide the player with landing opportunities and interesting buildings to fly around.

Concurrently, the ‘Hi-Tech’ common elements are steadily progressing, with the transit, habitation, and security areas all moving to the art pass stage. Players will see these common elements (alongside garages and hangars) when they’re added to microTech’s landing zone, New Babbage.

The new transit connection between Lorville’s Teasa spaceport and the Central Business District (CBD) is almost ready for travellers. This route will allow players to move directly between the two locations and bypass L19, cutting travel time for high-end shoppers.

Work on organics is ongoing, as are improvements to planet tech, with the artists hard at work creating a library of exotic-looking flora to fill the biomes of New Babbage with. Players can see it for themselves towards the end of the year.

The community can also look forward to upcoming information on the early work the team has done on procedural caves.

Audio

Both the Audio Code Team and the sound designers finished their work on the new camera-shake and ship-vibration systems. Now, when an engine kicks in, the ship shakes and hums. This also extends to the player, with events like a ship powering up causing minor camera shake.

The sound designers also added new sound samples to a range of ships as part of the rollout of the New Flight Model. By adding ‘one-shot’ samples to each of the various thrusters, they brought out more complexity in the sounds heard during flight.

The Audio Team spent the majority of the month creating the sounds of Area 18. Due to the melting pot of ideas and themes present in the new area, the sound designers tested new methods to bring out the unique atmosphere. Additionally, they created the sound profiles and samples for the Gemini S71 assault rifle and Kastak Arms CODA pistol, both of which will appear in the PU and SQ42.

Currently, the Audio Code Team is working towards an updated tool that better allows the sound designers to implement created assets in-engine whilst simultaneously testing how they sound.

Backend Services

Backend Services continued to lay the foundation for the new diffusion network to help scalability for the backend structure of the game. Emphasis is on ensuring the Dedicated Game Servers (DGS) correctly connect to the new diffusion services, particularly the variable, leaderboard, and account services.

February marked the near-end of work on the new Item Cache Service (a massive portion of the backend has now turned micro-service) and began the end-point between DGS and this service, too. As work is completed on the new diffusion services, testing will ensure a smooth transition to the new network.

Support was also added for subsumption services to read directly into the DataCore P4k system for increased efficiency and unification.

With the approaching publish of Alpha 3.5, Backend Services began work on logistics, syncing closely with DevOps to ensure that new services are up and running correctly while maintaining legacy services where necessary.

Community

The team celebrated Valentine’s Day with community-made cards and limited-time ship offers, including Anvil’s F7C-M Heartseeker – a special version of the Super Hornet shooting straight for the heart. During the Be my Valentine greeting card contest, most Citizens got creative with their favorite image editing software, though some went old-school with scissors and crayons to create fantastic crafts to share their love across the galaxy.

Also this month, Argo Astronautics released their latest addition to the ‘verse, the SRV. The ‘Standard Recovery Vehicle’ is built for tugging ships, ground vehicles, and massive cargo containers through the stars using its integrated tractor tech. If you’re looking for more information about this rough and rugged ship, head to the Q&A that answers questions voted-on by the community. As a bonus, Shipmaster General John Crewe stopped by Reverse the Verse LIVE for some in-depth tug-talk.

In the February issue of Jump Point (our subscriber-exclusive magazine), Ben Lesnick took a detailed dive into the ARGO SRV’s design process and went on a worker’s tour of Hurston. The Narrative Team also introduced us to the Human holiday Stella Fortuna and shed light on the history of the revered Rust Society.

A major update to the Star Citizen roadmap gave a look at what’s coming to the Persistent Universe in 2019 and what can be expected in upcoming releases.

Released in January, but worthy of another mention, is the official Star Citizen Fankit, which was put together to help all of you share your enthusiasm and engagement. Star Citizen lives by the support it receives from the community, so take a look at this treasure trove of assets and get creating!

The team is also excited to announce that our physical merchandise will soon be receiving a well-deserved face-lift. Having received a lot of feedback over the years, it’s clear that Citizens are passionate about merch and to make the store experience the best it can be, your input was needed. Thanks to everyone who contributed feedback to our thread on Spectrum!

Content – Characters

The Character Team revisited the hair development pipeline in February. With the help of the Graphics Team, they developed new tools and shader tech to improve the realism of hair while maintaining quality and performance. More work went into mission-giver Pacheco, including textures and rigging, with her hairstyle being used to trial the new hair pipeline. Work continues on the assets required for DNA implementation and the female player character, while refinement of the Xi’an concept is making great progress.

Design

Throughout February, Design focused on implementing Area 18’s shops, NPCs, and usables. Last month marked the end of implementation, with March being used for polish to ensure a believable and immersive experience upon release. The team also gained a new member to help with mission implementation and improvement, who is currently setting their sights on the Emergency Communication Network (ECN) mission set.

Regarding the economy, the US Design Team worked with their UK counterparts on the objective criteria and value of objects in-game, laying down the track for acquiring item properties and their values. A system was built to help create an abstract representation, which is both robust and modular enough to allow easy adjustment in the future when the details are finalized.

DevOps

DevOps had a busy month working on the build system and pipeline that supports feature stream development. After several long nights, they rolled out the upgrades and have been happy with the results so far – internal systems are running smoothly without errors and each evolution improves efficiency and storage consumption.

They’re now attempting to further compress existing data which, when multiplied by hundreds of thousands of individual files, will make a real impact to the dev’s daily development efforts.

Engineering

February saw the Engine Team spend time on general Alpha 3.5 support, such as profiling, optimization, and bug fixing. They also improved the instance system used in compute skinning and refactored it on the CPU and shader for better maintainability, created a budget-based output-buffer system for skinning results (so they only have to skin once per frame), made more tangent reconstruction optimizations, and worked on wrap-deformation using the color stream.

Basic HDR display support was added to the editor, as was a new hue-preserving display mapping curve suitable for HDR display output. The team provided material layer support for planet tech v4 and continued to improve character hair, which included initial hair mask, support for edge masking, and pixel depth offset. Game physics is progressing with Projectile Manager 2.0, as well as optimizations to wrapped grids and state updates. Support was added for ocean Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) wave generation to physics buoyancy calculations, as well as exposed optimized terrain meshes.

A major system initialization clean-up was completed as part of an initiative to share core engine functionality with PU services, work began on the lockless job manager (a complete overhaul for faster response in high-load scenarios), and a new load time profiler was created. The team are currently wrapping up the ‘ImGUI’ integration and introducing a temporary allocator for more efficiency when containers are used on stack.

They made the switch to the Clang 6 compiler to build Linux targets (including compilation cleanup of the entire code base) and plan to switch to the latest stable release (Clang 8.x) in the near future.

Finally, they finished a ‘create compile time’ analysis tool (utilizing new Visual C++ front and backend profiler flags) to gather, condense, and visualize reasons for slow compile and link times. As a result, various improvements have already been submitted and further action-items defined.

Features – Gameplay

A large portion of Gameplay Feature’s month was dedicated to implementing the new DNA feature into the character customizer. In addition, the team was responsible for creating and setting up the user interface (UI) and accommodating the female playable character, both of which are scheduled for Alpha 3.5.

Another major focus was on video streaming for comms calls, which consisted of a refactor of the comms component to utilize the voice service call mechanism. Research was made into the VP9 streaming format and video streaming improvements were completed that will be rolled out in the upcoming release.

Lastly, support was given to the US-based Vehicle Features Team, with updates to the turret sensitivity HUD, gimbal assist UI, and the shopping service entity registration.

Features – Vehicles

Gimbal Assist and its related HUD improvements were finalized and polished, allowing for better balancing of this new weapon control scheme. Turrets were also improved, as the team added a HUD and keybinds for input sensitivity, implemented adjustable speeds for gimbal target movement based on proximity to center aim, and fixed bugs with snapping and erratic movement.

A lot of work went into scanning improvements, which included adjusting the area for navpoint scanning, enabling use of the navpoint hierarchy, and adding a Boolean to opt into the scanning data. This endeavor also covered adjustments to make scanning more involving by setting up AI turrets to generate signatures and be scannable and adding specific icons for scanned/unscanned targets. Ping and blob were implemented to display on the radar too, including focus angle and ping fire.

To round out the month, they continuing to make item port tech optimizations, developed tech for utilizing geometry component tags in the paint system, and fixed a handful of crash bugs.

Graphics

Last month, the Graphics Team’s work on the PU was spread between several smaller tasks. There were many shader requests from the artists, such as adding new features to the hard surface shader and ISO support for decals in the forward rendering pipeline.

The team also continued with the CPU optimizations from last month. This included a 3x performance saving on the cost of building per-instance data buffers for the GPU and better support for the depth pre-pass to help occlude hidden parts of the frame with less CPU overheads.

To help the artists optimize their content, the team worked on an improved render-debugging tool that reports how many draw instructions (draw-call) a particular object requires along with a breakdown of why each instruction was needed. Once complete, this will allow the artists to dig into their material and mesh setups to save valuable CPU time.

Level Design

The Level Design Team soldiered on with ArcCorp’s Area 18, bringing the designer whitebox up to greybox. They began planning the modular space stations that will be built this year too, including looking at the libraries, rooms, and content that goes into them. The procedural tool is also now at a stage where they can slowly start ramping up the modular station production.

Live Design

The Live Team refactored existing missions to make them scalable to make more content available in the planetary system (other than Crusader). Significant progress was made on a new drug-stealing mission for Twitch Pacheco, as well as a BlackJack Security counter-mission that tasks less morally-corrupt players with destroying the stash.

Another focus was on implementing a variety of encounters with security forces and bounty hunters when the player holds a high crime stat.

As well as practical work, time was taken to define the next tier of many aspects of the law system, such as punishment, paying fines, bounty hunting, and so on.

Lighting

Last month, the Lighting Team focused on developing the look of Area 18. Lighting Area 18 is a mixture of clean-up work from the previous versions to match new standards and lighting the new exterior layout to a series of targets set by the Art Director. The team is working closely with the Environment Art and VFX teams to ensure that new advertising assets and visual effects ‘pop’ from the environment and provide interesting and varied visuals.

Narrative

Working closely with the Environment Art and Mission Design teams, February saw the Narrative Team further fleshing out of lore relating to ArcCorp and its moons. From new mission giver contract text to the catchy slogans gracing Area 18’s numerous billboards, a lot of additional lore was created to bring these locations to life.

Additionally, expanded wildline sets for security pilots, bounty hunters, and combat assist pilots were scripted and recorded. The AI and Mission teams will use these sets to begin prototyping and testing out new gameplay for inclusion in future builds.

Also, the Narrative Team made progress on generating the specific text needed for on-screen mission objectives. Currently, this is placeholder text from the designers who worked on levels, but moving forward, the hope is to begin using the proper in-lore objectives.

Player Relations

The Player Relations Team was busy preparing for Alpha 3.5 (including getting ready to test the New Flight Model) as well as boxing off the work created over the holiday period.

“As always, we’d like to point all players to our growing Knowledge Base, which now has 120+ articles and saw almost 450,000 visitors this month! We will continue to grow this by adding more ‘How To’ articles, patch notes, and live service notifications there as well as on Spectrum.”

Props

February saw headway into Area 18’s props: the core street furniture is now in and the team has moved onto the dressing pass, adding in new assets to give life to the streets, alleyways, and landing zone.

As the month closed out, the team jumped into release mode to get a head start squashing bugs and generally tightening up the upcoming release.

QA

Things ramped up on the publishing side in February as the team prepared Alpha 3.5 for the Evocati and PTU. Testing continues on the New Flight Model and other systems as they come online, such as the new weapons, ships, and locations. QA leadership continues to train the newer testers and improve the overall testing process.

The AI Feature Team kept the Frankfurt-based QA testers busy with new features, such as the improved avoidance system and new break-away maneuvers. Testing mainly consists of making sure they’re working as intended, as well as noting visible improvements to what was already in place (in the case of the avoidance system). Combat AI received perception updates which were tested by QA to address issues where the FPS AI would not recognize the player being present in their vicinity.

On the backend, changes to the subsumption visualizer are being tested to ensure no new issues have been introduced in preparation for their full integration into the editor. Testing for ArcCorp and Area 18 is currently underway too.

The Universe Team discovered that mining entities were not appearing in the client due to discrepancies in how they were spawned in the server. This was tracked down and fixed, though testing will continue to make sure it’s working as intended.

Ships

The Vehicle Content Team wrapped up the MISC Reliant Mako, Tana, and Sen variants for Alpha 3.5. They’re now in testing with QA who are addressing bugs before the vehicles go live. The designers and tech artists have been busy with the Origin 300i, which will reach QA for testing in the near future.

Back in the UK, the team continued production on the 890 Jump, bringing more rooms into the final art stage from greybox (including the hangar area). The Carrack is heading towards a greybox-complete state and select areas are being polished for review.

Development continues on the Banu Defender which is utilizing a new style of production that caters to its organic art style. ZBrush is being used to sculpt the interior before transferring the high-density model to 3ds Max, where it is then rebuilt (low-poly) for the game engine. A large portion of the exterior greybox is complete and looking fantastic.

Last but by no means least, the interior updates to the Vanguard wrapped up with essentially the entire area from the cockpit seat backwards being completely redone. This is more than was initially anticipated, but the team feels that it’s worth it. Now that the interior rework has been finalized and the framework for the variants agreed upon, the Ship Team can start on the exterior changes to accommodate them and continue with the variant-specific items.

System Design

The System Design Team is working on improving and upgrading the no-fly zones used across ArcCorp. Since the existing system now needs to support an entire planet, it has proven quite a challenge.

For social AI, the team’s working on unifying vendor behaviors and making sure they’re built in a modular fashion. For example, the team can easily graft new actions onto the base behavior of a shop keeper to allow them to pick up objects, give them to the player, and interact with things on the counter without having to build new ones from scratch.

As with social AI, the team focused on restructuring FPS AI behaviors to make them more modular, with the goal to make it easier to implement specific chunks of logic. For mining, they added new mineable rocks on ArcCorp’s moons. Wala in particular will have a new type of rock that fits better with the crystalline formations available on the moon.

Finally for System Design, AI traffic over Area 18 is currently being developed. The team’s starting small, with a few ships landing and taking off around the spaceport, but they’re also investigating ways to expand it while being mindful of performance.

Turbulent

RSI Platform: On February 14th, Turbulent supported the announcement of a new flyable variant of the Super Hornet, the F7C-M Heartseeker. They also made major updates to the CMS backend which required all hands on deck.

Services: This month’s game service work was focused around developing support for transporting video streams over the comms channels. This will allow the streaming of a user’s face/in-game texture to another player outside of the bind culling bubble, enabling in-game video calls over wider distances. This method also enables the transmission of in-game video streams to web clients.

Turbulent spent considerable time standardizing services to enable them to run within a new local development environment. This will allow the entire Star Citizen universe’s services to run locally on dev systems to develop and iterate with the entire stack.

The Turbulent Services Team also began work on an administration interface for game designers and game operators to display real-time information about the state of the universe. This application can display information about groups, lobbies, and voice channels along with details of online players, quantum routes, and probability volumes.

UI

As in January, UI supported the Environment Team with in-fiction advertising and branding for Area 18, including animation and hologram textures. They also made headway on the 3D area map using the concepts shown last month as visual targets. Finally, they began working out how to bring the rental functionality from the Arena Commander frontend to in-game consoles in Area 18.

VFX

The VFX Team updated the existing particle lighting system to a more modern system. The previous version was based on tessellation, which increased the rendering cost and had limitations on shadow resolution. The new one is a global change that will remove the need for tessellation and improve shadow receiving for crisper, smoother shadows. ArcCorp’s Lyria and Wala will be the first moons to use this new particle lighting system when it’s ready for deployment. It will help the particles integrate into the moons more realistically and address issues when the particles have long shadows going through them, such as during sunrise and sunset.

They also continued to iterate on thruster damage effects and began rolling it out to all ships.

Several new weapon effects were worked on, including a new ballistic hand cannon and ballistic assault rifle. They also carried out extensive visual exploration for the new Tachyon energy weapon class.

Finally, significant time was invested in improving the VFX editor’s UI layout and functionality. Although not as glamorous as planet dressing and effects, improving the quality-of-life for artists is important and helps them to work faster too.

Weapons

The Weapon Art Team completed the Gemini S71, Kastak Arms Coda, Banu Singe Tachyon cannons, Gallenson Tactical ballistic cannon reworks, and five variants of the Aegis Vanguard nose guns.

Conclusion

WE’LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH…

   $(function() {      Page.init();  window.Page = new RSI.Game.About();      });    

[nate-gibson]

Week 3

27/07/2021 Tuesday

Mantle Movement

Today I implemented movement onto the mantled platform. Firstly, I needed to find the height of the object the player is mantling onto. Last week I made a variable that finds the height of mantled game objects, I added an extra 2f to this height variable so that I could use it for the players new y position. From there I needed to move the player onto the object, to do this I made a variable that takes the forward direction of the player. This variable is then used in a function that moves the player for 0.1 seconds. This gives a nice quick mantle movement.

I found that the player needs to stop rotating towards the object before I move them on top of it. This is because the player would no longer be colliding with the object that the player is turning towards, making the player continuously turn. To fix this issue, I created a check that would only allow the player to move once they have rotated towards their desired position.

An issue has occurred, the player will rotate at inconsistent times. This is an issue with the function I’m using to rotate the player. The closer the player gets to reaching its desired value the smaller the rotation becomes. This becomes obvious when one mantle takes 1 second while another can take around 6 seconds. For now, the movement does work but I will need to fix this issue later.

28/07/2021 Wednesday

Repeatable Mantle

I spent today working on my mantle system. Currently, the player is stuck after they are rotated and moved. So, I prioritised making the player transition back into normal movement and making the mantle a repeatable process.

My mantle system disables movement and enables my mantle movement code when the player is not on the ground and has collided with a mountable surface. To re-enable this movement code, I created a Boolean that I will refer to as ‘mountedWall’. When ‘mountedWall’ is set to false it allows the player to collide with mountable surfaces, this would then transition it into mantle movement. After this movement is completed ‘mountedWall’ is set to true. This stops the player from mounting onto objects and re-enables the movement code.

With this base setup, I next had to make the mantle reset. To do this I had to set the ‘mountedWall’ Boolean back to false. I also had to reset certain variables in my mantle code otherwise it would not work as intended. To do this I made it so that when ‘mountedWall’ is set to true those certain values would all be reset. Then after a set time ‘mountedWall’ would also be reset back to false.

While I was working on this Ashton and Matt got the following feedback for some new Brobot designs.

Images of design data:

30/07/2021 Friday

Mantle Orientation

Today I fixed the mantle orientation issue. I started off our call by chatting with Matt about my mantling system. While walking him through my code we found that the object I was using to get the rotation for the player was changing while the player rotated. This was because it was parented to the player.

I tested the mantle with an object that wasn't parented to the player, this reduced the frequency of its position changing but didn’t completely stop it. I found that I had basically let the ‘new rotation’ variable call repeatedly causing it to change throughout the rotation. To fix this I moved the variable into a function that only allowed it to be called once upon mantling. This stopped the position from changing but the speed at which the player rotated was still inconsistent. This had something to do with the function I was using to rotate the player. When looking it up online people recommended against using this function. Due to this I just made it so the player would instantly rotate towards the object with no time delay. This fixed the player rotating at different speeds.

The last thing I did for the mantle was to edit the length of it. I did some testing to find a length that I thought was appropriate. This was to give a one-second delay after the player rotates towards the platform and has moved up to the edge of it. After this delay, it will move the player on top of the platform.

Gif for final mantle:

Coyote Time Fix

While testing my mantle system I found that my coyote time function was not working. This coyote time function basically gives the player point one of a second to jump off a platform after leaving it. The reason I added this is because it is a common addition to most platforming games and is basically a necessity to make your movement feel smooth and responsive.

In my jumping code, I had created a checker that basically says if the player is on the ground, is pressing the jump button and if coyote time equals greater than 0 the player can jump. Coyote time would countdown while the player is in the air then reset back to 0.1 when they touched the ground. I thought this would allow for the player to have that small window when leaving objects. However, when looking back at my code I found that coyote time was never being used because it also required that the player was on the ground. I fixed this by making it optional so that it would be if the player is on the ground or if coyote time was greater than 0. this fixed the issue and it's already made the movement feel a lot more responsive.

31/07/2021 Saturday

Magnet Prototype

Today I decided to create a test for the magnet system. I created this on a new game object because I didn't want to deal with editing the BroBot movement code just yet. I started by creating 4 states Off, On, Positive, and Negative. By default, the system is set to Off. I am using a float value that I have assigned to the right trigger on a controller, this value changes the system's states between Off and On.

When the system is set to On the Positive or Negative states are then activated. By default, the Positive state is set but this can be changed by a Boolean which has been assigned to the X/Square button on a controller. This Boolean like the trigger float changes the states between Positive and Negative.

The next thing I did was create a raycast checker. What this does is create an invisible line from the front of the object the script is on for a specified length. This checker returns true when the line interacts with objects that I've set to be on the magnetizable layer. I created two-sphere game objects in my testing scene, I made one have the magnetic script (call this “player”) and the other I set to be magnetizable (call this “magnet”). From there I just did some testing to make sure the raycast accurately collided with the magnet. I next created code to get the position of the magnet object through my raycast checker.

From there I made code that would move the magnet towards the player when hit by the raycast. This code would be called in the Positive state. I then made code for the Negative state. To do this I made a value that would be positioned at the very end of the raycast line and made the magnet move towards that instead of the player.

The last thing I did was creates surfaces that would magnetize the player. I started by creating two tags that the magnetic objects could have. “Small” was assigned to objects that would be moved by the player. “Large” was assigned to objects that would move the player. From there I created a checker in my code to get the tag of the game object the raycast collided with. If the tag was “Small” the movement I had previously explained would take place. If the tag was “Large” some new movement would happen. This new movement would move the player to the position of the magnet when in the Positive state. When this was in the Negative state, the player would move to the end of a raycast going in the opposite direction of the normal raycast. This basically gave the effect of the player being repelled from the object.

Gif for magnet test:

[seo-news-bangladesh]

Re-Learning the Fundamentals of Web Development in 2021

We use the web every day for shopping, social media, watching videos, playing games, and many other necessities. Everything that we do now is mostly on the web and our daily usage reports on our phone are trying to tell us that we spend almost 18 hours a day online (my daily usage hour).

Well, what can I do? Even the book I read is downloaded from the web.

So, what is the web? Is it the strings that spiders make on the corner of our ceilings that I am referring to? No, we all know that answer, it is the digital web that grabs all our attention nowadays.

The web consists of our favourite websites such as Netflix and Spotify. These are made up of many advanced and classic technologies that include HTML, CSS, PHP, URL, DNS etc.

Like the human body, the web also contains an external and internal section. What we see on displays is the Front-End part of it and what is happening inside and out of our vision is the back-end part of the web.

With the growth of the usefulness of websites, the interest in learning web development and careers in this field is also on the rise.

Overview of Web Development in Bangladesh

Since 2010, Bangladesh's ICT sector has expanded at a rate of 40% per year (Source: UNCTAD). The emergence of a large number of young entrepreneurs and their passion and the government's strong focus on ‘Digital Bangladesh' are the key driving forces in Bangladesh's ICT industry.

In order to participate in the evolution of Digital Bangladesh, many companies started creating their online presence to reach out to more audience as Bangladeshis are getting more and more dependent on technology.

Therefore, there has been a rise in the number of web development companies in the country to meet the requirements of the growing popularity of startups and businesses wanting to go online.

Enthusiasts are learning web development and working as a freelancer, getting employed in web development companies or even starting their very own company providing web development services.

In regards to that, this blog aims to educate whoever is interested in learning the fundamentals of web development and for those who already have an idea. This is to refresh their knowledge with some modern terminologies and technologies that are now popular in the web development sector.

What is the web and where does it stand in Web Development?

Source: Pexel

The web is the foundation of Web Development.

The World Wide Web, web, in short, is the method of transmitting data over the Internet that makes use of the HTTP protocol and HTML.

First things first: URL and HTTP/HTTPS

Source: MDN Web Docs

We can consider a URL to be similar to a regular postal mail address:

Scheme represents the postal service you want to use

Domain name is the city or town

Port is similar to the zip code

Path represents the building where the mail should be delivered;

Parameters represent additional information such as the apartment number in the building

Anchor represents the act

The scheme is the first part of the URL and identifies the protocol used. Protocols are set methods used to transfer data within a computer network.

In most cases, HTTP or HTTPS is used in which the latter is the secured version. HTTPS is typically used for e-commerce and other sites with secure transactions.

How the web functions:

The web can be described as a set of interactions between two kinds of systems: clients and servers

Clients are the instruments that make web content requests and extract them. Browsers, smartphone apps and screen readers are all common examples of clients.

In reality, one of the most difficult aspects of web design and development is keeping up with all of the new clients (the number of which is growing exponentially) and how they navigate and render the content. Hence came the necessity to design responsive websites to make them compatible with all device screens.;

Servers are programs that provide web content or services to clients.

It is important to understand the various types of servers and how they function to learn web development and web hosting.

Searching for a site through a browser- the process behind the scene

Every time you type “netflix.com” on your browser’s URL (Uniform Resource Locator) box, a request is made to a server (DNS).  

“netflix.com” is the domain name for Netflix (like your name) and it has a unique IP address (like your mobile phone number).

Through the URL, a request is made to that server by your browser to show you the content that you want (in this case Netflix’s landing page).

These are all happening Infront of you.

Behind the scene, (while you see that annoying loading indicator), this request is usually directed to a domain name server, or DNS, which is simply like a phonebook consisting of all the contact numbers (IP addresses). The URL is then converted into an IP address by the DNS which the browser uses to locate the host's server (Netflix) and submit a request for the content (Netflix’s home page).

At this point, the outcome depends on the type of content you request, if it is a simple website page like How to sign up for Netflix” consisting of texts and text-boxes, then the HTML (for the texts), CSS (for the design) and JavaScript (for the text-boxes) are all sent back to the browser where they are extracted and presented to you. This is an example of a static site.

The transmission process of Static vs Dynamic sites

Static sites are simple sites that need no further processing other than sending the content requested by the client.  

Dynamic sites require additional processing which is done by a web application such as PHP, Python or .NET before they send back the content to the browser.

For example, when you sign in to Netflix, you input your data and then click on the “Sign in” button. After that, you see the home page with your name and customized movie list according to your watch history and likes. Here the Netflix server processes your details and displays your customized content.

All of the above processes are executed within seconds.

That is why developers need to understand each stage of how the web works because if a stage is not carefully implemented, the site will either work slowly or not at all and may show the dreaded DNS error message which tells the audience that the site cannot be found at the location and they will need to try again.

Even for hosting the website you just developed, it is important that people can find your site through the DNS, especially when registering multiple domain names for one site. In this case, there are some web developing firms in Bangladesh who provides free hosting service for a limited time along with the development process to help growing businesses or start-ups as a heads up while they can focus on other aspects of their business.  

Front-End Web Development – The one that people see and interact with

Source: Pexels

Front-end Web development is also known as client-side scripting and involves developing the User Interface of websites and applications.

Some elements of front-end development include:

- Working closely with Web/ UI designers

- Establishing design mock-ups and visual standards

- Structuring contents semantically

- Making the website responsive and compatible with many devices

- Ensuring the website’s accessibility

- Controlling Typography, page layout, form design, interactivity, visual assets etc.  

The main focus of the front-end web developers is to collaborate with the back-end developers and to create a functional and visually attractive website that will bring in a lot of readers or customers and hence fulfil the purpose of the site.

Front-End Web Development is often confused with web designing. Web designers create an actual design out of a plan or an idea, they have to ensure the best user experience and accessibility of the site. Whereas, the front-end web developers implement those designs with codes and adds functionality.

Web designing was not so prevalent in Bangladesh until recently. During the last five years, as more and more online companies are opening up, so came the need to stay ahead in the competition with good design and user experience.

Therefore, Web Development companies in Bangladesh provide individual services like Web Designing and Experience Design etc. and  Web Developing service package as a whole which includes both the front-end and back-end development.

The most popular languages to develop front-end contents are HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

HTML - The Web’s main language

HTML stands for a Hypertext Markup Language, and it is the standard markup language for web pages.

Opening and closing tags are commonly used in HTML elements to surround and define content. Different elements, for example, may define a text as a heading, paragraph, or list object.

HTML5 maintains backwards compatibility with previous HTML versions while introducing new structural tags and API support, allowing elements to be modified, dragged and dropped, and facilitating communication from inside the HTML document without the need for external scripting. HTML5's adoption has been rapid, and it is now reasonable to consider it the latest HTML standard.

HTML Structure

HTML has a plethora of tags. They're also used to define document elements and provide structure.

Learning HTML entails learning the language's syntax, which elements are permitted, and the fundamental structure of HTML documents. All of this is extremely simple to understand, and the tag collection is small enough to learn in a day or two.

If we compare HTML structure with that of a sandwich:

- In order to have an HTML text, you must have opening and closing HTML tags <HTML></HTML>.

 A sandwich requires two slices of bread; without those, you have a salad rather than a sandwich.

- The head of the HTML document <head></head> appears immediately after the opening HTML tag and includes all of the non-visual elements that contribute to the page's functionality. Here you'll find elements like meta tags, which might include keywords or page descriptions to help define the document's content, as well as links to external tools, such as the CSS file.

 The head is similar to the condiments, lettuce, or tomato, that you would place on a sandwich near the top.

- The body tag <body></body> comes after the head tag and contains all of the visual structural components. The body tag may include a variety of elements such as headings, paragraphs, lists, images and links. Simply put, if it is a visual feature, it must appear in the body tag in the order you want it to appear.

 The body tag is like the sandwich's meat. It contains roast beef, cheese, and whatever else you want in your  sandwich.

CSS – The Style of the web page

CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is a style sheet language used to govern how HTML documents are displayed.

As the name suggests, they are a set of formatting rules that are typically stored in an external file. They can control a wide variety of pages, from a single page to entire websites.

CSS Structure

CSS styles are composed of two components: the selector and the declaration.

- The selector, for example, p for paragraph, tell the browser which element or elements to style. The style will adjust the formatting for all paragraphs around the web-based on this selector.

- The formatting instructions are provided in the declaration, which is enclosed in curly braces.

Benefits of CSS

- One of the most significant advantages that CSS brings to web design is the ability to create highly scalable designs. You can modify one without affecting the other.

- Another advantage is the increased portability of your content. CSS can be written to adjust the layout and styles based on factors such as screen width and orientation and thus makes the design responsive.

JavaScript – The magician of Client-Side Scripting

JavaScript is a scripting language that is commonly used in web design to add interactivity and application features to websites.

It can do a variety of things for the website, such as creating interactive features, dynamic menus, opening new browser windows, and updating data directly in the browser.

Having the advantage of being executed in the browser, or on the client-side means, the page content does not need to be refreshed for the changes to take effect.

The development of several JavaScript frameworks has been one of the more beneficial advances in adding scripting capabilities to websites. These frameworks are JavaScript libraries that include prewritten functions and artefacts which makes it far easier for programmers to create interactive apps, widgets, and incorporate advanced JavaScript features.

Front-End Libraries

After being familiar with HTML, CSS and JavaScript, it is important that web developers, dive a little bit deeper and look into some of the Front-End Libraries.

Sidenote:

By now, you might think that why is there so much information in this blog and do I need to know all of these. The answer is, yes.

Yes, because now that web development is so prevalent, many Web Development companies in Bangladesh require the developer to be updated in modern technologies such as frameworks and libraries. In all of the job requirements that you will read or have been reading, you must have noticed that there are more to learn than the basics.

Frameworks, libraries and APIS are topics you explore after you understand HTML, CSS and JavaScript and are mandatory when you want to establish a career in web development.

The reason, I am including these here, in short, is because now you know some keywords that you can research to learn more and you can always come back to this blog or even bookmark it for future reference.

Coming back to Front-End Libraries:

With Front-End Libraries like Bootstrap, you will easily learn how to style your site. With Sass, you will learn to expand and add logic to your CSS types and finally, with React and Redux, you will learn to build powerful single-page applications.

A bit about those libraries in short:

Bootstrap:

Bootstrap is used to create responsive web pages and applications. It emphasizes a mobile-first web development approach and includes pre-built CSS styles and classes, as well as some JavaScript features.

jQuery:

jQuery is used by 73 per cent of the 10 million most popular websites as of May 2019. Source: Wikipedia

When JavaScript was first released in 2006, all major browsers treated it somewhat differently. However, jQuery made it easier to write client-side JavaScript while still ensuring that the code operated consistently across browsers.

SASS:

Sass, which stands for "Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets," is a CSS language extension. It adds functionality that simple CSS does not have, making it easier to simplify and manage the style sheets for your projects.

React:

React is a popular JavaScript library that allows you to create reusable, component-driven user interfaces for web pages or applications.

React creates its markup language, JSX, by combining HTML and JavaScript features. React also makes it easy to handle data flow in the program.

Redux:

Managing shared data becomes even more difficult as applications increase in size and scope. Redux is described as a "predictable state container for JavaScript applications," which aids in making your applications more predictable and easier to test.

API:

APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces, are programs that are written to include a set of instructions and specifications for using a particular service. They are typically written to make it easier for developers to use an application or to make services accessible to anyone who wants to use them.

For example, suppose you are making a website for cooking. For cooking, you will need a database of recipes but you do not have the time or resources to build up a whole set of recipes. You can use an API that pulls data from a source providing a free/paid recipe dataset.

Back-End Web Development – The Powerhouse of the Website

Source: Unsplash

In this part, we'll shift our attention to knowing what happens on the server-side and the various techniques used to build dynamic websites.

The majority of websites employ some sort of server-side scripting to dynamically show data as necessary. If we consider the number of items available on Amazon and how many posts have been posted on Facebook, then displaying all of those on separate static pages would be incredibly inefficient, so those sites instead display static templates (created with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) and then dynamically change the data displayed within those templates as required.

Learning about server-side web development is highly recommended in today's modern world.

A range of programming languages and frameworks, such as PHP, .NET and python have provided developers with a broader range of resources to choose from while building dynamic sites.

PHP

PHP's compatibility with Apache servers and MySQL databases is what makes it so relevant in web development. Anyone can now develop a powerful web server capable of building and hosting scalable dynamic sites using open-source software.

In reality, PHP is used to build many complex web applications, such as WordPress. PHP code, like most server-side languages, is embedded within the HTML of a website. The file with .php extension will contain regular HTML but PHP integrated inside. The extension tells the browser that the PHP code needs to be processed first.

Local Servers for PHP:

For a PHP file to run locally, it is important to have a server running on your computer.

Local servers such as XAMPP, WAMP, LAMP, and MAMP are commonly used when creating PHP websites. This software is primarily used to test the website on a local level. Developers will find errors and bugs before uploading by testing locally. The primary distinction between XAMPP, WAMP, LAMP, and MAMP is the operating system on the computer.

XAMPP is for X-OS, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Perl.

WAMP is the Windows application.

LAMP is for Linux System.

MAMP is for Mac OS X application.

.NET

.NET is not a server-side program itself. Microsoft's whole application framework is referred to as .NET.

.NET, like Java, enables developers to create large-scale applications for both the web and the desktop. As a result, .NET is normally more complex than PHP. Therefore, it is not the first choice for web developers who focuses on developing dynamic sites only.

Sites created with the.NET framework must be hosted on a Windows server. As a result, hosting companies may be more constrained, and the price structure for such sites is usually a little higher.

Python

Python is a prevailing open-source programming language designed as a multipurpose development tool. Although Python is not exclusively based on the web, it does provide several web-related libraries that make it very easy to create powerful websites and applications.

Even though Python's syntax is fairly basic and easy to understand. It is typically used to build larger dynamic sites and web-based applications rather than small dynamic sites.

Django (Python framework)

Django is a prominent and feature-rich server-side web framework written in Python and it is standing second in the top most popular frameworks by March 2021. (Statisticsanddata.org)

It has the versatility to create nearly every form of a website, starting from content management systems to social networks. It is compatible with any client-side framework and can distribute content in a various format that includes HTML, JSON, XML, etc.

Django provides a safe way for managing user accounts and passwords by preventing common mistakes such as storing session information in cookies. Instead, it stores only a key in cookies and the actual data is stored in the database and stores a password hash as an alternative to direct passwords.

Other than that, Django also protects the site against other vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting etc.

Node Js

Node js is an open-source JavaScript Runtime Environment that runs on multiple platforms. It allows developers to create all kinds of web applications tools.

Compared to traditional PHP language, Node Js eliminates the waiting time in processing and is also memory efficient.

According to the Node-by-numbers study 2020, the project is bigger than ever, with 98.9 million downloads.

Using Node Js gives all of the benefits of a full-stack JavaScript development such as:

- improved developer performance and overall productivity

- reuse and exchange of code

- a large range of free tools

- swiftness in performance

- simple information sharing among a team

Thoughts for the companies wanting to develop a dynamic website

For most companies, there are three key matters to consider when selecting an application platform:  

- Cost and hosting options

- working with qualified web developer/ firm

- easiness in use of the website

New companies or even established ones who want to develop a dynamic and responsive website for businesses can find a talented web developer locally or a web development firm in Bangladesh to do the job for them.

It is important to find a firm that can build a relationship with the clients, in that case, they can even help make the decisions regarding server technology that's right for the client, their budget and the project itself.

Most of all, it is important to learn as much as you can as a client about the various platforms so that when the time comes to make a choice, you're making an informed one.

Dcastalia is a web development company in Bangladesh that helps clients and provide consultation services to avoid pitfalls like dead-end technologies or poorly implemented systems.

They specialize in customizing a plan that suits the clients, and to unfold the right tech for the toughest business problems regardless of the market be it for web development, application design and development, business solution, or any maintenance related issues.

Managing Data

Source: Freepik

Databases are the most reliable way to store complex data or massive data sets, and they can make things much simpler for both web developers and clients.

There are two kinds of databases: SQL and NoSQL.

- A relational database is SQL, while a non-relational database is NoSQL.

- SQL is represented in tables while NoSQL is expressed in key-value pairs or JSON format.

- MySQL and PostgreSQL are the most common SQL databases, while MongoDB is the most popular NoSQL database.

Using SQL databases: MySQL

The most common language for handling and extracting information from databases is SQL or structured query language. SQL is normally used in web applications to update, build, delete, or retrieve data from a database.

Data is organized into rows and columns, with columns representing the data and rows storing the actual data. Web applications can parse and use this data inside the framework using simple SQL queries. SQL has a basic logical syntax that most people can pick up quickly.

SQL queries can be refined to further filter data sets or even join similar tables together to create a larger data set, and common statements like select, insert, update, and delete make it very simple to retrieve or manipulate data.

To control data inside the framework, most web server applications use database management program like MySQL.

Using NoSQL databases: MongoDB

MongoDB is a leading NoSQL database and an open-source document database that is written in the C++ programming language.

It uses lists and records instead of tables and rows, as in conventional relational databases. Documents are made up of key-value pairs, which are MongoDB's basic data unit. Collections are the equivalent of relational database tables in that they contain collections of documents and functions.

Most of the time, web developers or programmers writes the code that will perform most data manipulation within websites. Therefore, many developers only focus on database management and study it further to gain expertise in the field.

Many web development companies in Bangladesh provides Database Management services that help companies manage their data more efficiently through database applications made by developers.

Final Word

Web Development is a diverse topic which spreads out into many categories, the basics of which are covered in this blog. After getting familiarized or getting refreshed with the basics of how the web works, front-end and back-end web developing technology as well as how to manage data, the next steps can be to get deep into the other tools involved in web development or exploring the most efficient way to develop websites that attracts more traffic.

For business owners who familiarized themselves with the knowledge of web development, now is the time to build up that good communication with the developing team or web development firm you want to hire to build up the robust website you dreamt for your business.

The smartest way to start is by looking at the local web development companies like Dcastalia who provide a wide array of services for all the stages of web development such as from web designing to web maintenance or simply the entire package that allows the whole team of designers, developers and QA specialists to look after your needs.

[impurelight]

Two Weeks With Flutter

For the two last weeks I've been playing around with Flutter which is a framework for building Android and iOS apps (it also has Web/Windows/Mac/Linux/ChromeOS support in development). And I really like it. I mean, I didn't always like it. When I first picked it up I thought it was needlessly complicated and frustrating. But as I started to learn what the things actually did I started to think it wasn't so bad. It might even be fun. But I guess that's the way with most programming frameworks.

So Flutter makes Android and iOS apps. How'd you expect it to do this? Probably something like HTML, right? Nope. Flutter uses Dart. The way it knows what to build is you have to override the the build() method and make it return your entire UI. The entire UI in one method. Yeah... that's going to get messy fast. Just take a look at one of my build() methods.

Widget build(BuildContext context) { return Scaffold( body: SafeArea( child: Stack( children: <widget>[ FutureBuilder<list>>( future: DatabaseManager.getAllTasksAsTasks(), builder: (BuildContext context, AsyncSnapshot<list>> tasks) { if (tasks.hasData) { return ReorderableListView( children: createWidgets(tasks.data), onReorder: (int start, int current) {}, ); } else { return Center(child: CircularProgressIndicator()); } }, ), Container(color: Color.fromRGBO(0, 0, 0, 0.4)), Hero( tag: "TaskCreate", child: new AlertDialog( title: const Text('Create Task'), content: new TextField( controller: textController, autofocus: true, ), actions: <widget>[ new FlatButton( onPressed: () { Navigator.of(context).pop(); }, textColor: Theme.of(context).primaryColor, child: const Text('Create'), ), ], )), ]// This trailing comma makes auto-formatting nicer for build methods. ) ) ); }

Yeah, I tried to move some things to their own methods (or classes which is more performant but you really only have to worry about that once you call setState()) but there's only so much you can do and so much you have time to do. If some normal person saw this they would probably say it's ugly. And to be honest when I first saw something like this I thought it was ugly too. It's even more messy if you try adding something to it. Paste your text, watch the entire thing go red, then try to add the end bracket in just the right spot (although a better way appears to be cut the old code, create the old container, and paste the old code). But as I got to know how it worked there was something actually pretty elegant about this.

It's sort of like designing something with Legos. You have your root UI, your scaffold, and that can have a child which is a list view and a floating action button. Only instead of Legos they're widgets. There's widgets for almost everything: list views, cards, centered content, images, text, etc. And if you can't find a widget that serves your purposes you can find one on pub.dev or code your own.

So apart from Widgets there's scenes... no views... I mean routes. OK, different frameworks call them different things. Basically just a page of your app. In Flutter they're called routes. In Unity they're called scenes. And the way Flutter handles routes is pretty interesting. It's like a stack of routes. When you go to a new route you call .push() and when you want to go back or if someone hits the back button .pop() is called.

It's pretty simple. But the code to create one of these routes is not. Like look at this:

class TaskRoute extends StatefulWidget { TaskState createState() => TaskState(); } class TaskState extends State<taskroute> { ... }

Every single time we want to create a new route/widget class. Why do we need all this boilerplate? Why do we need Stateful/State/Stateless (not pictured). I think it's for optimization or something but it's still annoying.

So now I should probably talk about the language Dart. Oh, Dart. It's not a bad language. Not as bad as Javascript anyways. The best way to describe Dart is to say it's a modern COOL (C-like Object Oriented Language) similar to other COOL's like C# and Java. Emphasis on modern. So as languages mature there's a tendency of adding random syntactic 'sugar' that no one really needs or asked for that only serve to alienate newcomers to the language. Like take C++. C with classes, right? Nope. Now it's this giant behemoth of a language that takes ages to compile. And I've noticed the same thing with C#. In fact most of the newer syntactic sugar additions to C# are in Dart. Almost as if the Dart team is copying from C#. Hmm...

And this is a particular sore spot for Dart which has a million ways to do everything.

So take typing. There is static typing which means the compiler knows the types of everything at compile time and can alert you of any problems. Then there's hipster typing which means you're going to get a nasty surprise when you run that line of code you haven't tested yet. So which one do you expect Dart to choose? Trick question, Dart uses both. And different tutorials use one or the other. It can make it seem like a tutorial is written in a different language.

And it's not even like some dedicated keyword. This is the difference between static typing and hipster typing in Dart:

// Statically typed; will not compile var myVar = "Hi"; myVar = 5; // Hipster typed; will compile var myVar; myVar = "Hi"; myVar = 5;

Also: allocating new object. You can define new objects (oh, and by the way everything is a reference type in Dart) using the new keyword. But you don't have to use the keyword. It's completely optional. Which, why even have the keyword? Also it's possible to define a method that returns something without actually returning. I mean, you get a warning if you do that but it'll compile just fine. There's also a bunch of weird syntax like Dog({this.id, this.name, this.age}). This is basically the same as saying:

Dog(int id, String name, int age) { this.id = id; this.name = name; this.age = age; }

And there's a large amount of using functional map-like syntax instead of for loops. You know, the standard syntactic sugar stuff.

So syntactic sugar isn't in and of itself bad. The problem is when you have so much syntactic sugar it gives you syntactic diabetes meaning the language gets so inconsistent that it is difficult for new comers to learn. This is definitely a problem for Dart: one tutorial might use the new keyword and explicitly type all their variables. Then the next tutorial might not do any of that and it gets very confusing very fast.

But it's not all bad. There are a few neat things you can do in Dart. For one there's no public or private. To make something private by starting it with an _. It sort of reminds me of Python where you make a function by just indenting. I think it's pretty neat. Also you can have named constructors. It's pretty cool as you can name a constructor something like FromDatabase(Map<string dynamic>) if you just read from a database.

There's also two type of exceptions: error and exception. Error is bad, you should not be getting errors. Exceptions are, well, exceptions. So just catch them normally. I don't really know the difference between these two though. There are assert which is only called in debug builds. Oh, yeah, Flutter compiles to a debug build by default but there are also release and profiling builds.

Also when defining a list, which you'll do a lot in Flutter, every element can end in a comma, even the last one. This is something I've been thinking about whenever I code outside of an IDE. Adding a comma when there shouldn't be one results in a lot of compiler bugs (or in the case of hipster languages runtime bugs). So I think putting a comma after every item, even the last item is the way to go.

Lastly there is Future and async. A function signature that implements these is something like:

Future<list>> getTasks() async

and then you call it like:

tasks = await getTasks();

This is a major thing in Flutter. The main way I use it is when I push another route. I say something like await push() and that stops executing until the route being pushed calls pop(). And then I can do whatever management I need to make sure the data is saved.

Another way this comes into play is I can use an async method to load a database.

Although, to be honest, I sort of think this feature is a little superfluous. Especially in the database example. Reading from the database is so fast that stopping the whole app as the database returns its results is likely good enough. And the poping of pages could be done with a callback instead.

So how is it to actually develop for Flutter? Pretty good, actually. The first major feature of Flutter is the hot reload feature. Everytime you save your app it is instantly recompiled and sent to your phone (if it is already plugged in and the app is started) so the app updates faster than you can turn your head to look at it. It's pretty cool. It sure is a big shift from Unity's builds that can take minutes just to get an APK that you then have to install. Although it can fail sometimes. Usually when you rename something, but that rarely happens. I should probably mention here that I use my phone to test. You can also get a virtual device but that's like a 1GB download and I don't want to do that.

As for debugging instead of crashing flutter will give you a red screen of death.

Which, I mean, looks pretty ominous. Couldn't they have put a smily face on it or something like Windows?

There's also the call stacks when you get an error. They're not as compact as Unity and there's a lot of scrolling and they usually contain tons of information about Flutter's internal calls I don't care about before and after the relevant parts of the callstack. But I mean it's serviceable. Better than not having a callstack at all or a callstack that rarely points to the right thing like... some other languages.

Now there's Android Studio. It's basically a less good version of a JetBrains IDE. There's no telling you how many times something is called, there's no refactoring tools, it doesn't tell you to import packages to fix errors, it takes an extra click to get into the search all screen (Ctrl+N vs Ctrl+T), and it doesn't alert you if something isn't used. And it still takes more RAM than Chrome. Like, what are you doing? But at least it supports the Material theme I'm using on Rider. Like, it doesn't matter if the IDE sucks, as long as it looks good, right?

The only thing it really has over Rider (which I was using for Unity C#) is that it automatically inserts a comment telling you that this end brace corresponds to a particular widget. Which given the nested nature of build() method is quite useful. Not useful enough to get me to not jump ship to IntelliJ though.

So last but not least: the problems I have with Flutter. And there are a lot of them. The biggest one is the documentation. You know, for something made by Google that is almost 3 years old you'd think it would have better documentation. But no. You still see things like: "Enables the form to veto attempts by the user to dismiss the ModalRoute that contains the form." In all fairness this is the exception rather than the rule. Most of the commonly used widgets do have good documentation. But when you click to what a class is you still get this nonsense.

And there are a few bugs still. I encountered one where if you use Navigator.pop() it does not trigger the onPop callback. You need to use Navigator.maybePop() instead.

So all in all Flutter is a fine framework and pretty fun to program for. The foundation is pretty solid, it's just some of the documentation that is not quite up to snuff and some things can be hard to do due to not having the proper widget. Two problems that I'm sure will be solved soon. And once they are I think Flutter has a pretty good shot at being the most popular framework in the world due to its ability to run on Android, iOS, Web, Windows, Mac, Linux, and ChromeOS with an identical experience on all platforms.

[wickedbananas]

Rewriting the Beginner's Guide to SEO

Posted by BritneyMuller

(function($) { // code using $ as alias to jQuery $(function() { // Hide the hypotext content. $('.hypotext-content').hide(); // When a hypotext link is clicked. $('a.hypotext.closed').click(function (e) { // custom handling here e.preventDefault(); // Create the class reference from the rel value. var id = '.' + $(this).attr('rel'); // If the content is hidden, show it now. if ( $(id).css('display') == 'none' ) { $(id).show('slow'); if (jQuery.ui) { // UI loaded $(id).effect("highlight", {}, 1000); } } // If the content is shown, hide it now. else { $(id).hide('slow'); } }); // If we have a hash value in the url. if (window.location.hash) { // If the anchor is within a hypotext block, expand it, by clicking the // relevant link. console.log(window.location.hash); var anchor = $(window.location.hash); var hypotextLink = $('#' + anchor.parents('.hypotext-content').attr('rel')); console.log(hypotextLink); hypotextLink.click(); // Wait until the content has expanded before jumping to anchor. //$.delay(1000); setTimeout(function(){ scrollToAnchor(window.location.hash); }, 1000); } }); function scrollToAnchor(id) { var anchor = $(id); $('html,body').animate({scrollTop: anchor.offset().top},'slow'); } })(jQuery); .hypotext-content { position: relative; padding: 10px; margin: 10px 0; border-right: 5px solid; } a.hypotext { border-bottom: 1px solid; } .hypotext-content .close:before { content: "close"; font-size: 0.7em; margin-right: 5px; border-bottom: 1px solid; } a.hypotext.close { display: block; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; line-height: 1em; border: none; }

Many of you reading likely cut your teeth on Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO. Since it was launched, it's easily been our top-performing piece of content:

Most months see 100k+ views (the reverse plateau in 2013 is when we changed domains).

While Moz’s Beginner's Guide to SEO still gets well over 100k views a month, the current guide itself is fairly outdated. This big update has been on my personal to-do list since I started at Moz, and we need to get it right because — let’s get real — you all deserve a bad-ass SEO 101 resource!

However, updating the guide is no easy feat. Thankfully, I have the help of my fellow Mozzers. Our content team has been a collective voice of reason, wisdom, and organization throughout this process and has kept this train on its tracks.

Despite the effort we've put into this already, it felt like something was missing: your input! We're writing this guide to be a go-to resource for all of you (and everyone who follows in your footsteps), and want to make sure that we're including everything that today's SEOs need to know. You all have a better sense of that than anyone else.

So, in order to deliver the best possible update, I'm seeking your help.

This is similar to the way Rand did it back in 2007. And upon re-reading your many "more examples" requests, we’ve continued to integrate more examples throughout.

The plan:

Over the next 6–8 weeks, I’ll be updating sections of the Beginner's Guide and posting them, one by one, on the blog.

I'll solicit feedback from you incredible people and implement top suggestions.

The guide will be reformatted/redesigned, and I'll 301 all of the blog entries that will be created over the next few weeks to the final version.

It's going to remain 100% free to everyone — no registration required, no premium membership necessary.

To kick things off, here’s the revised outline for the Beginner’s Guide to SEO:

Click each chapter's description to expand the section for more detail.

Chapter 1: SEO 101

What is it, and why is it important? ↓

What is SEO?

Why invest in SEO?

Do I really need SEO?

Should I hire an SEO professional, consultant, or agency?

Search engine basics:

Google Webmaster Guidelines basic principles

Bing Webmaster Guidelines basic principles

Guidelines for representing your business on Google

Fulfilling user intent

Know your SEO goals

Chapter 2: Crawlers & Indexing

First, you need to show up. ↓

How do search engines work?

Crawling & indexing

Determining relevance

Links

Personalization

How search engines make an index

Googlebot

Indexable content

Crawlable link structure

Links

Alt text

Types of media that Google crawls

Local business listings

Common crawling and indexing problems

Online forms

Blocking crawlers

Search forms

Duplicate content

Non-text content

Tools to ensure proper crawl & indexing

Google Search Console

Moz Pro Site Crawl

Screaming Frog

Deep Crawl

How search engines order results

200+ ranking factors

RankBrain

Inbound links

On-page content: Fulfilling a searcher’s query

PageRank

Domain Authority

Structured markup: Schema

Engagement

Domain, subdomain, & page-level signals

Content relevance

Searcher proximity

Reviews

Business citation spread and consistency

SERP features

Rich snippets

Paid results

Universal results

Featured snippets

People Also Ask boxes

Knowledge Graph

Local Pack

Carousels

Chapter 3: Keyword Research

Next, know what to say and how to say it. ↓

How to judge the value of a keyword

The search demand curve

Fat head

Chunky middle

Long tail

Four types of searches:

Transactional queries

Informational queries

Navigational queries

Commercial investigation

Fulfilling user intent

Keyword research tools:

Google Keyword Planner

Moz Keyword Explorer

Google Trends

AnswerThePublic

SpyFu

SEMRush

Keyword difficulty

Keyword abuse

Content strategy {link to the Beginner’s Guide to Content Marketing}

Chapter 4: On-Page SEO

Next, structure your message to resonate and get it published. ↓

Keyword usage and targeting

Keyword stuffing

Page titles:

Unique to each page

Accurate

Be mindful of length

Naturally include keywords

Include branding

Meta data/Head section:

Meta title

Meta description

Meta keywords tag

No longer a ranking signal

Meta robots

Meta descriptions:

Unique to each page

Accurate

Compelling

Naturally include keywords

Heading tags:

Subtitles

Summary

Accurate

Use in order

Call-to-action (CTA)

Clear CTAs on all primary pages

Help guide visitors through your conversion funnels

Image optimization

Compress file size

File names

Alt attribute

Image titles

Captioning

Avoid text in an image

Video optimization

Transcription

Thumbnail

Length

"~3mo to YouTube" method

Anchor text

Descriptive

Succinct

Helps readers

URL best practices

Shorter is better

Unique and accurate

Naturally include keywords

Go static

Use hyphens

Avoid unsafe characters

Structured data

Microdata

RFDa

JSON-LD

Schema

Social markup

Twitter Cards markup

Facebook Open Graph tags

Pinterest Rich Pins

Structured data types

Breadcrumbs

Reviews

Events

Business information

People

Mobile apps

Recipes

Media content

Contact data

Email markup

Mobile usability

Beyond responsive design

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)

Google mobile-friendly test

Bing mobile-friendly test

Local SEO

Business citations

Entity authority

Local relevance

Complete NAP on primary pages

Low-value pages

Chapter 5: Technical SEO

Next, translate your site into Google's language. ↓

Internal linking

Link positioning

Anchor links

Common search engine protocols

Sitemaps

Mobile

News

Image

Video

XML

RSS

TXT

Robots

Robots.txt

Disallow

Sitemap

Crawl Delay

X-robots

Meta robots

Index/noindex

Follow/nofollow

Noimageindex

None

Noarchive

Nocache

No archive

No snippet

Noodp/noydir

Log file analysis

Site speed

HTTP/2

Crawl errors

Duplicate content

Canonicalization

Pagination

What is the DOM?

Critical rendering path

Help robots find the most important code first

Hreflang/Targeting multiple languages

Chrome DevTools

Technical site audit checklist

Chapter 6: Establishing Authority

Finally, turn up the volume. ↓

Link signals

Global popularity

Local/topic-specific popularity

Freshness

Social sharing

Anchor text

Trustworthiness

Trust Rank

Number of links on a page

Domain Authority

Page Authority

MozRank

Competitive backlinks

Backlink analysis

The power of social sharing

Tapping into influencers

Expanding your reach

Types of link building

Natural link building

Manual link building

Self-created

Six popular link building strategies

Create content that inspires sharing and natural links

Ego-bait influencers

Broken link building

Refurbish valuable content on external platforms

Get your customers/partners to link to you

Local community involvement

Manipulative link building

Reciprocal link exchanges

Link schemes

Paid links

Low-quality directory links

Tiered link building

Negative SEO

Disavow

Reviews

Establishing trust

Asking for reviews

Managing reviews

Avoiding spam practices

Chapter 7: Measuring and Tracking SEO

Pivot based on what's working. ↓

KPIs

Conversions

Event goals

Signups

Engagement

GMB Insights:

Click-to-call

Click-for-directions

Beacons

Which pages have the highest exit percentage? Why?

Which referrals are sending you the most qualified traffic?

Pivot!

Search engine tools:

Google Search Console

Bing Webmaster Tools

GMB Insights

Appendix A: Glossary of Terms

Appendix B: List of Additional Resources

Appendix C: Contributors & Credits

What did you struggle with most when you were first learning about SEO? What would you have benefited from understanding from the get-go?

Are we missing anything? Any section you wish wouldn't be included in the updated Beginner's Guide?

Thanks in advance for contributing.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from The Moz Blog http://ift.tt/2AIAGpW via IFTTT

[clarencenicholsonata]

20 Fabulous Hair Salon Advertising Ideas to Increase Customers

There are currently over one million companies operating within the U.S. salon and spa industry. With new salons emerging every day, trying to make a name for themselves, and current salons holding on to keep loyal clients, pushing for new clientele can be fierce.

Today's business owners are becoming more marketing savvy. Social media, and content marketing skills are now required to keep a steady flow of salon bookings.

Luckily you don't have to be a marketing master to use these 20 fabulous hair salon advertising ideas to increase customers.

1. Advertise Your Salon With Instagram & Facebook Ads

Facebook and Instagram are two of the most powerful social media marketing platforms you can use to drive clients to your salon. About 67% of marketers find Facebook to be their most important social media channel as well as hair focused brands have seen a 39% or more increase in return on ad spend on Instagram.

Start advertising your salon on Facebook and Instagram to get the word out on your services. Be sure to use a "booking service" for your ads call to action.

House of Blond

2. Create a Video Series of Your Service

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but I say a video is worth far more. You can capture a lot more bookings with video content, so grab a camera and show your stylist in action.

Smart Insight found that 53% of customers who engage with a brand after watching a video on social media, suggesting that video can be an effective form of marketing.

You can start a YouTube channel for your salon. You can create content with the following:

Answer commonly asked questions new clients may have for your hairstylist.

Showcase the various styles and treatments you can offer clients.

Highlight members of your staff and your salon’s interior design.

A video compilation of your hair salons amazing skills.

Check out Salon 718 YouTube channel to see their salon video series.

3. Advertise That You're Open Late, On Weekends & Holidays

Market Watch found that a salon's target market mainly consists of eco-conscious women who are between the ages of 20 and 35.

They're city-dwellers who rent homes and apartments and have jobs in creative or social services fields. Since most of your target audience is employed, they'll be working between the hours of 9-5 pm.

Some clients won't be able to book during the week, and with weekends left open, books are likely to go fast. Keep your salon open late during the week and or weekends to accommodate more books. This makes it convenient for working clients to visit your salon and helps to encourage recurring visits from current clients.

Salon De Larue

Share your extended open hours on your online platforms (i.e, website, facebook, ads...) so new clients can easily be informed.

4. Make Booking Your Services Easy

Your salon's booking service or system could be stopping new customers from getting through the door.

If a booking service is too complicated or times out, then you can lose potential customers coming to your business. This includes poor customer service on or offline.

First, decide where and how customers are going to book your services and if you’ll have multiple platforms for booking, and monitoring them closely to prevent overbooking.

Promote bookings on your website

Promote bookings on your social media

A good booking system can also help to reduce your salon's cancelations. Try to make phone calls or send emails to follow up on the day or at least an hour before for double confirmation.

Impose a "no lateness/no show policy." Ask clients to come in 10-15 minutes before their appointment to secure their spot. If clients fail to keep their appointments you can giveaway spots to walk-ins. When clients see how serious you are about your appointments, they'll start taking you seriously.

For more, check out this [Salon Case Study] on how Debbie filled appointment book in under 30 days!

5. Offer a Selfie Station Inside Your Hair Salon

Everyone takes selfies so much so that National Selfie Day is a social media holiday loved by many Instagrammers.

Create a selfies-station at your salon and ask clients to take a selfie for social media and tag your salon. A selfie station provides free marketing for your salon; each post allows your salon to be discovered and referred to friends and followers of that client.

Ready to set up a station in your salon? Here's a quick selfie station checklist:

A backdrop (a clean wall or custom step-and-repeat)

Good lighting (ring lights are a great investment)

Themed props (optional but a good way to boost the salon's profile)

A sign or decal with your salon's Instagram handle and suggested hashtags

6. Always Rebook Salon Clients During the Visit

Re-book clients during their visit, instead of waiting for clients to reach out to you for their next styling, take out your appointment book and settle on a date (range).

You should practice this with your new and current clients, so you know when or how many people to expect for the next month. Be sure to follow up and rearrange your bookings as needed.

Still not convinced that rebooking will help your salon?

Here are 25 Reasons That Will Make You Value Rebooking Clients.

7. List Your Salon on Salon & Spa Directory

Directories are still relevant today; they've moved from that big yellow book to online websites. Increase your salon's online presence by listing it on a popular salon and spa online directory.

Next to Google, serious salon-goers know that they can search or top-notch spas on recommended directories.

You can start with a Google My Business page and work your way to these top five online salon directories:

1.Your Salon

2.Green Circle Salon

3.Signature Style

4.Salon Association

5.Salon Ratings

8. Promote a Discount or Special Offer

I've never met someone who would turn down a discount, and I'm neither have you!

Offer a special offer or discount to attract new customers to your salon. This could be a 15% discount on an overall cost or a special on a bundle for your services.

Seasonal discounts are always met with praise. in fact, seasonal promotions and discounts can improve your sales by 15%.

Try not to offer too many discounts; you don't want new clients to get unaccustomed to paying full price. So keep track of how often and who you offer discounts too.

9. Reward Customers Who Give Referrals

Once you have a solid base of clients at your salon, start implementing a referral program to reward customers for bringing new clients to your salon.

Customers who are referred to your brand are up to 5x more likely to use your referral program than customers who weren't. Referral marketing is broken down to a science, in a world where everyone is bombarded with ads online and in social media, and influencer marketing becomes more monetized getting referrals from real people is valued more than ever.

The best thing is, referral marketing is trusted across all age groups. A Nielsen survey found that the majority of each age group trusted referral marketing more when compared to digital and traditional marketing techniques:

Give customers and their referral a discount on their next salon visit. You can create referral cards to track your program and ensure that customers aren't abusing your referral program.

10. Create the Ultimate Salon Gift Package

Create gift packages for special events like weddings, prom, graduations, birthdays, and Mothers/Fathers day.

Offer additional services like a spa treatment or pedicure and gift certificates. Feel free to also add a gift basket of skin and hair products to make your customers feel special on their important day.

11. Sign Up for Wedding Directory or Vendor Websites

Increase your salons by listing on wedding vendor websites to market your bridal packages. These websites allow you to network with other brands and meet clients willing to pay for services for their bride and bridesmaids.

These websites highlight business with the best reviews and can help to build your salon's online presence and profile.

Wedding Vendor Site: The Knot

You can also partner with wedding planners in real life, becoming their established salon or hairstylist of choice. Even after the wedding, you can capture a few repeat customers along the way.

12. Host a Fabulous Giveaway

With an average of over 34% of new customers being acquired through contests and giveaways, you are sure to see some new customers at your salon after hosting your own giveaway.

Hosting a giveaway isn't as hard as it looks. It's actually quite easy. When you're planning your salon's giveaway you need these four things to start:

1. Choose a Giveaway Worthy Prize: The better the prize; the more interest people will take in entering. Winning a free 50 dollar blow might get you a few entries, but you won't get the full impact of a giveaway for your brand. Choose a prize that shows off your salon's best services and skills.

2. Decide Your Entry Method: What do contestants have to do to win your giveaway? Write clear steps on how to enter; ensure that the entry method helps you to meet your giveaway goals. For example, your salon wants more social media exposure, post on Instagram, and ask contestants to like and tag friends to enter.

3. Select a Start and End Date: One of the reasons giveaways fail are short or sudden deadlines. Give contestants time to find your giveaway and enter. Hubspot found that the best duration for your giveaway is 25 days to 60 days.

4. Decide Your Giveaway Platform: What will you be using to monitor and manage your salon's giveaway? You can use social media, your website, a landing page, or Wishpond.

Wishpond Spa Campaigns

Learn how to run a contest with this step-by-step guide for your salon, and if you're already running a giveaway; you can choose these 5 best ways to announce & notify contest winners (with examples) how to announce winners.

13. Feature & Advertise in Beauty Magazines

Someone once said that there's no such thing as bad press. Personally, no press is bad press. Advertise your salon or get features in a local or nationwide beauty or fashion magazine or blog to gain exposure for your salon.

Your ideal client is someone who wants to look good and stay up to date with trends, especially when it comes to hair and nails. So you want to choose magazines that they'll most likely be flipping through on a day to day basis in print or online.

Feel free to reach out to beauty bloggers, editors, and writers to have a discounted season to give an honest review about your salon to attract new customers.

Here are the top 8 publications to stay on top of salon trends, that caters to a more global audience.

14. Host a Mobile Salon Pop-Up

Rent a mobile truck and host a salon pop-up in busy areas. Offer services like blowouts, nail treatments, massages, make up, and facials.

Visit public spaces in the city to grab the attention of the passing crowd, be sure to advertise your pop-up on social media so customers can invite friends and family once you've parked in your spot. As a bonus add complimentary wine or mimosa, selfie station, or discount to make your pop-up more fun.

15. Use Geo-Targeted Google Ads For Walk-Ins

During peak hours when clients are looking for new hair salons to book, start promoting geo-targeted to drive local customers to your salon door.

Google targeted ads allows you to select a booking option so you can capture new clients as soon as they click on your ad instead of sending them through third party pages.

In fact, we have found 12 reasons why google ads will help you reach new customers.

Google Ads are relatively easy to use; just keep your eyes on your bidding and budget, and you should be fine. I've also included this detailed guide on Getting to the Top of Google: A Recipe to Google Adwords to help.

16. Create Stunning Business Cards & Posters

Whether it's the latest trends in social media or marketing, business cards still have a place in the world today. Create branded business cards for your salon team members for them to distribute and ask current clients to pass them along.

You can easily create a salon-inspired business card with Canva. Choose from hundreds of easy to use and edit templates. No experience required!

Here are 9 tips on how to design a salon business card.

17. Market Your Salon At Local Events & M.I.C.E

It's no use hiding. If you want to advertise your salon, you need to get out the door and be known. Network with business in and around your niche to grow your clientele list.

One way to do that is to market your salon at local hair events or M.I.C.E (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions).

Rent a booth and offer services and discounts for event goers, hand out brochures, business cards, and encourage people to follow your salon on social media to keep up to date with current or future specials.

Be sure to speak with business owners exhibiting and attending the event to build future partnerships or co-promotions.

18. Create Holiday Promotions & Packages

Markdown major holidays and local holidays you'd like to advertise your salon on and offline, then start planning. Start using Facebook and Instagram ads for the holidays to drive bookings to your digitally savvy clients. Print flyers and advertise in newspaper articles for your more mature clientele. Cover your tracks and reach people of all ages.

19. Create or Update Your Salon's Website

Like it or not, customers now expect businesses to have a website, about 70-80% of consumers research a business online before visiting in person or making a purchase.

Email, website, and social media are the top three marketing tools used by small businesses: out of all three, a website is ranked as the most important.

Which begs the question, do you have a website for your salon?

If the answer is yes, then dust it off and update it. A salon that promises customers with the latest hairstyles and skills should have a website that reflects just that. If your website looks like it's stuck in early 2000, make an upgrade. If not, be sure it's filled with relevant contact details, new images, and an efficient booking system to start taking in new clients.

If the answer is no, here are four website builders you can use to create and launch your website in under an hour:

Wix

SquareSpace

Weeby

Wordpress

20. Sponsor or Join a Local Fashion Show

Sponsoring or joining fashion events can help to advertise your salon in the styling community. Partner with a designer and help to bring their designs to life with your salon stylist flawless skills.

Fashion events produce attractive content for your website and social media. You can go live, update your post and engage with followers by asking them to book for a chance to replicate their favorite model's hairstyle.

Fashion shows are also a good place to find celebrity clients and influencers you can collaborate with to market your hair salon. If you see someone who has a large following or would make a good brand ambassador for your salon, reach out to them and offer them a discount or free service.

Bonus

Make your salon's instagram locally relevant using the right hashtags.Hashtags make your salon post discoverable for people who aren't following your account or follow the hashtag that is used in your post. Try to use hashtags that are relevant to the post or what clients are using or searching for on Instagram.

Karley Dana Hair

Here are some helpful social media marketing guides for your salon:

Salon Social Media Marketing Tips: A Platform-by-Platform Guide

Social Media Marketing for Salons: 21 Tips and Strategies

Summary

Here are 20 fabulous hair salon advertising ideas to increase customers:

Advertise Your Salon With Instagram & Facebook Ads

Create a Video Series of Your Service

Advertise That You're Open Late, On Weekends & Holidays

Make Booking Your Services Easy

Offer a Selfie Station Inside Your Hair Salon

Always Rebook Salon Clients During the Visit

List Your Salon on Salon & Spa Directory

Promote a Discount or Special Offer

Reward Customers Who Give Referrals

Create the Ultimate Salon Gift Package

Sign Up for Wedding Directory or Vendor Websites

Partner with a Spa for a Giveaway

Feature & Advertise in Beauty Magazines

Host a Mobile Salon Pop-Up

Use Geo-Targeted Google Ads For Walk-Ins

Create Stunning Business Cards & Posters

Market Your Salon At Local Events & M.I.C.E

Create Holiday Promotions & Packages

Create or Update Your Salon's Website

Sponsor or Join a Local Fashion Show

Once you start implementing these marketing ideas, you'll begin to see a change in your salons online and offline presence.

Be sure to do monthly checks to see how effective your advertising ideas have been, here are 5 quick ways to check your salon marketing is working

Need more help with your salon marketing?

Book your free 1-on-1 personalized webinar for expert marketing tools and tips to grow your business.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8230801 https://ift.tt/2TQ269r via IFTTT

[waqasblog2]

GDPR - Let's all calm down a bit, shall we? - SEO, Content Marketing & Website Design

GDPR is getting to be like Y2K preparations.

It seems everyone is talking about it as if there will be Armageddon on the 25th May unless we all run around burning files and throwing hard drives off cliffs just in case the rozzers find someone's email address on them.

I was at a gin festival recently (great by the way, I'll tell you about it sometime), and people were talking about it at the bar.

Give it a break already!!!

Something more important than GDPR is happening on the 25th May, I'll be bothered about that.

What this article isn't

There is approximately one cubic gazillion of articles claiming to be the ultimate guide to GDPR, and I bet you've read a few and still don't understand them.

So, I'm not going to get into that here. This isn't a comprehensive GDPR marketing guide.

Instead, I thought what might be useful is a “cut through the crap” set of very short, succinct points that will give you some sort of idea about the whole process and what, if anything, you need to do about it.

Mostly, though, I'm hoping to stop a few people destroying their email lists because some guy in a suit said they should.

If I'm not compliant by the 25th May, will I be fined £17 million and sent to rot in jail?

NO!

Let me explain why:

There are consultants currently travelling the country telling everyone, usually on their first PowerPoint slide, that the fines that the ICO (the UK organisation that will implement GDPR) can punish you with are mahoosive; up to 4% of turnover or 17 million quid.

You can imagine that ACME window cleaning Ltd with two employees is positively quaking in its boots at this revelation, but it's nonsense.

In fact, the ICO themselves are getting a little hacked off with it.

I quote, from their own blog:

Myth #1:

The biggest threat to organisations from the GDPR is massive fines.

Fact:

This law is not about fines. It’s about putting the consumer and citizen first. We can’t lose sight of that.

Focusing on big fines makes for great headlines, but thinking that GDPR is about crippling financial punishment misses the point

GDPR gives the ICO more clout to punish people, yes, and it gives them the teeth to act when companies fail to follow the rules, but they're not going to be knocking on your door in the middle of the night threatening to take you to a cash point.

Last year they concluded 17,300 cases. 16 companies got fined. And none were fined the maximum available to the ICO.

The sort of companies that get fined are the ones that systematically or blatantly break the rules.

For example, ignoring people's requests to be removed from mailing lists and continue to email them on a huge scale.

The ICO wants to educate, so rather than throwing fines about willy-nilly, they'll work with the companies to ensure they're doing it right and help them stick to the rules.

Is it illegal to send marketing emails under GDPR?

Seriously, this is just nuts.

I've had more than one person say they're going to cancel their MailChimp account because they won't be able to email people anymore.

Let's make it clear:

But I need their consent, yeah?

Yep. Just like now. The important thing with GDPR is that they need to know exactly what they're signing up to.

You can't imply or assume consent anymore.

Make it clear what they're opting in to

When someone gives you any of their details such as email address, phone number etc., you need to make it really clear what it is they're opting in to and what you'll do with that information.

For example, if someone downloads an e-book from your website, you need to give them the option of also signing in to your mailing list. You can't just assume that because they've downloaded the book that they're also happy to receive your other emails.

To be fair, this has been a grey area for a while, but GDPR now makes it clear.

It's going to affect a lot of websites, for example, those that only let you read the rest of an article after you've signed up, but that's OK, they'll cope.

You probably can't just email them because they've bought from you

It's the same with online shopping.

You can send them transactional emails, that is, emails that are triggered by their purchase such as order confirmation, invoice and dispatch data, but you can't then start bombarding them with marketing emails unless they tick the box saying they're happy to have them.

(Note: This is actually covered by PECR, which is additional regulation, that suggests that you can contact your customers for legitimate reasons. A reason might be you want to offer them something. Just make sure they can opt out, you’ll be fine.)

Again, this is a grey area that's being tidied up, but many shops have been doing this for years, it's no biggie.

You can't have pre-ticked boxes or confusing consent

Some stores are a bit naughty, and right at the bottom of the order form there will be a tick-box with a sentence next to it saying “We will occasionally send you marketing emails, but if you'd rather not be pestered, un-tick this box.”

You can't do that anymore, which is a good thing.

This goes hand-in-hand with tick boxes that aren't especially clear, for example, ones that give multiple reasons or say things like

“By ticking this box, you do not allow us to remove your email address from our lists or maybe email you on a regular basis. If you do not wish us to not email you regarding things like this and such, then dance a merry jig while smoking a peace pipe.”

You must make it easy for people to unsubscribe

It needs to be really simple and completely fool-proof.

Ideally, a link on every single email that says “Unsubscribe” which takes them to a page that says “Sorry to see you go, you're now unsubscribed.”

Maybe give them a question to ask why, but that's it.

Close browser, job done.

Some people grind my gears by taking you to a site which you then have to log in to first (i.e. reset password because I forgot it) and then choose a complex set of tick boxes before being released from their vice-like grip.

One click dude, no dick moves.

How about getting consent for emails again, do I need to do that?

In most cases, no.

I've had a flurry of emails from companies saying “Due to GDPR, we need to get consent to keep sending you emails.”

The only time you'd need to do that is if you got the email through nefarious means in the first place.

For example, if I filled out a basic contact form on your site and then you started emailing me.

That's wrong, it's always been wrong, and now it's even wrongerer.

But if I signed up via your newsletter sign-up form, you do not need to ask me again.

Honestly, you don't.

If you got consent in the past, you have consent now.

Also, there's still a grey area about business to business. It seems you don't need consent anyway for this (there are exceptions, stick to the basics and you'll be OK.)

Also (2), do you use a proper mail client like MailChimp or ActiveCampaign or Aweber?

Well don't worry about it, there's an unsubscribe button at the bottom of the email. When people click this, they're unsubscribed, and they can only get back on the list if they specifically ask.

All cool.

Are there any scenarios when I might have to get consent again?

Other than that, you're probably OK. I'm saying “probably” because I don't know where you got your filthy list from, and I don't want you using this blog as an excuse. If you were bad with data in the past, clean it up.

Should I email everyone to get re-consent anyway? Just to make sure? I'm scared…

Oh please, grow some.

Yes, of course you can. Send out that email.

What's your current open rate? 20%?

And click through rate? 8%?

So, just working this out on the back of a fag packet, if I had a list of 800, I'd end up with 13 left on it when I've gone through this utterly pointless exercise.

Stop it.

So what should I do?

If you're a huge company with lots of employees, go get yourself a consultant, they'll help you in exchange for some dollar.

There are different rules for large businesses, and you might have some work to do, so go do it.

If you're a small business, you need to follow some basic steps:

The first is to check out the ICO website which explains everything in detail, it's all you need.

If someone tells you something is “what you need to do”, then check with the ICO, they're being incredibly pragmatic about it all.

Secondly, don't lose sleep over it.

Thirdly, check your mailing list. This next bit is a bit in-depth, so I've decided to give it a new section.

How to make sure I'm not breaking the law and will, therefore, go to jail or have my house repossessed

If you systematically scraped email addresses from the web, typed them in yourself from the Yellow pages or in some way got your mailing list using nefarious means, then delete them all.

However, if you fall into one of these categories, read on:

Still with me?

Audit your mailing lists

Where they from? Can you split out all the ones that opted in via your sign-up form? Good, do that, tag them or add them to another list.

This is the list of people who absolutely, positively wanted to sign up. Good, we're done. Leave them alone.

Got some others you're not sure about?

OK, put those in another list or tag them “we're not sure” or something, we'll work on these guys next.

Send out an email

The mistake everyone is making here is emailing everyone and saying “you need to sign up again” when they don't.

If they signed up before, that's fine. They gave consent and therefore that consent passes into the GDPR era.

So let's just tackle the ones we're not sure about, and rather than asking them to sign up or not hear from you ever again, let's do it another way. Let's give them an option of opting out.

Create an email something like this:

“Hi Geoff,

By now you've probably heard about GDPR and the new rules regarding email marketing and the correct way of getting consent.

Well, we're sure you were asked nicely if you wanted to receive our emails, but we can't be absolutely certain.

It might be that you downloaded something from us, or we met you at a networking event and you said it was fine, in which case, we're all good.

However, If you don't want to receive any more emails from us, then please click the button below to unsubscribe instantly from our list.

You won't need to do anything else, it's all automatic.

If you don't mind receiving our emails, then do nothing, but remember you can unsubscribe at any time.

Thanks for your time!

Keep this in mind

I'm not a GDPR consultant or a lawyer. This advice comes to you from someone who has read the documentation, but your situation might be unique/different.

However, there's no excuse for many in the industry to use scare tactics to get you to do something and propose knee-jerk reactions that might end up in your losing a significant part of your business.

As with everything, be sceptical of what you're told.

Investigate everything and then do what is right.

What if someone complains

Someone is bound to complain. There's been so much publicity about it, there will be people looking for companies to trip up so they can get the feds on them.

Don't panic.

If you're using a good email system (we recommend: ActiveCampaign) then all unsubscribes are handled automatically, you're safe, but if not, and someone requests to be removed from your lists – do it immediately.

As long as you're on the ball, delete people's data as soon as you're asked and be open about what you do with the data you keep, then you'll be OK.

Is this everything GDPR is about then?

Absolutely not.

GDPR is a huge deal for many companies and it covers vast swathes of regulation, that's for others to deal with.

I just wanted to clear up some misinformation about it that's doing the rounds at the moment and make sure that a bunch of companies that are doing everything right aren't forced to the wall by over-cautious consultants.

If you need more advice, find a good consultant.

There's one who reads this blog, he'll be in touch to tell me his contact details, as soon as he does, I'll pass them on!

This content was originally published here.

[enkisstories]

The android cemetery (Ch. 23)

The first thing one had to take care of when entering the Reed apartment was not to bump into the stairs leading upwards. The second was to dodge the cats that were sitting on the staircase and clawing playfully towards the interesting hats and hairs that came within their reach. Afterwards everything else was a trifle.

The floor/downstairs living room combination was L-shaped. To the left the smaller arm contained a lounge chair, various installations for the cats to climb on and a bookcase. Straight forward the longer arm was dominated by a long sofa, a wall-mounted TV and the usual household electronics. The left wall was completely made of reinforced glass. It offered an amazing look out at balcony and over Detroit. At the far end of this room a door led to the kitchen.

Thor and Loki didn’t leave their vantage points on the stairway when the bipeds took seats. Being the smallest of the adults Gavin sat down on the sofa’s back, feet on the seating. Daniel sat down to his right. Emma, after a moment of hesitation, sat down on the sofa, too. Separated from Daniel only by Gavin’s dangling feet she grabbed the sofa’s edge with both hands and stared down as if she was utterly enraptured by the floor’s pattern. Jason circled the sofa and ended up standing to Emma’s left, looking down at the PL600 in a mix of fascination and suspicion. Evelyn grabbed a book from the bookcase and curled up with it in the lounge chair that almost swallowed her. The child android grinned, because she was staying up past bedtime tonight and nobody seemed to mind. Finally Connor chose the lowest stair to sit on. Ever since picking up a fish on the verge of suffocating had set him on the path of increasing program instability, the android liked animals. Surrounding himself with pets helped him focus on being a person instead of a function. Hoping that the cats would eventually come down for cuddles while serious matters were underfoot was immensely childish, that much Connor realized himself. But to hell with maturity! The others in this room didn’t have deviancy, they didn’t know how taxing living with a mental illness was! Okay, Daniel had deviancy, too, but he had been a nutcase to begin with and given in to their condition. Therefore Daniel’s opinion on the handicap didn’t count in Connor’s book.

“How did you find me that fast?” Emma asked the apartment floor, but Jason understood that he was being addressed. He started to explain, only to get cut short by Gavin: “Ever wondered how the damn automated cars decide who to run over? Well, for one, the valuable kids like you get tagged with subdermal implants.”

Jason saw the policeman’s nose twitch while he said that. An old scar ran across the bridge. Maybe there was a connection, or maybe not. This wasn’t the time to be nosy, because Emma exclaimed: “I thought the tags were only for opening our lockers at school and for showing when we are not in the classroom!” The idea of her position getting tracked, even if it was for her wellbeing only, didn’t sit well with the girl. “I didn’t know they were active all around the clock! As if we were androids… or criminals…”

Daniel, who was both, weakly supplied that the tag could save Emma’s life one day. If she ever got lost or taken away, the police would find her and return her to her mother.

The child didn’t respond. She didn’t even look at the android whom she had known as a friend under two different names now. What was wrong with her, Emma wondered? Had she not set out tonight to re-activate her caretaker? To smuggle him out of the police station and set him free? Well, now she had confirmation that Daniel had lived as free as possible for the last one and a half year. He was happy, he was friendly towards the child and rude to everyone Emma disliked. So why did she feel the urge to run away and hide?

“And you were…?” Connor spoke up, nodding in Boyfriend Jason’s direction. In his back the cats were shifting uneasily, now that the big plastic thing had started moving, even if had been on the spot only and only so subtly.

“Jason Graff”, the man answered. “I am Emma’s mother’s new partner.”

“Graff… that name sounds familiar”, Gavin mused. “I think Danny cursed you two nights ago!”

Connor quickly consulted the internet. A number of entries and photographs came up. The third one was matching Boyfriend Jason and Connor announced that this man was the head of CyberLife’s humanization department.

“Are you the guy who implemented flash grenade sensitivity in household android eyes?” Daniel inquired.

“Among other things, yes”, Jason admitted. “Not that it would impede your functions in any way. Flash sensitivity doesn’t apply to just brightly lit rooms. But you’ll squint a little during a thunderstorm, that kind of endearing thing.”

“Yeah, thanks, we got almost taken apart by a trash golem because of that!” Daniel replied. “Endearing? More like endangering!”

“Are you also responsible for my voice?” Connor asked, this being the second thing right after deviance that made his life unreasonably difficult. Gavin, probably ranking third on the list (although Connor wouldn’t admit that anytime soon in order not to give the detective that satisfaction), laughed out loud!

“Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Graff, I do not think there’s something wrong with it”, Connor quickly added. “It’s just…”

“No, no that wasn’t me”, Jason said quickly. “I was down with the flu and when I returned to work, the damage had already been done.”

“The “damage”…” Connor replied. The android shook his head. “Okay, new rule”, he announced then. “Not only are you three including Tina forbidden to mention my Daniel-encounter ever again, the same goes for my voice!”

“Not fair!” Gavin countered, still laughing. “You get to use it on us every day!”

“Yes!” Daniel chimed in. He noticed that both Jason and Emma were smiling now and that the girl had let go of the sofa she had been clinging to like to a lifeline. That Connor! Aptly nicknamed The Negotiator, the RK800 certainly knew how to defuse a tense situation and wasn’t afraid to play up his dorky side to achieve his goal. “Yes, Con’”, Daniel repeated, “you cannot just ask that of us without offering something in return!”

“Your bones”, Connor chirped, playing up his voice’s quirk on purpose. “Intact.”

A playfully delivered threat, but a threat nonetheless. Or a warning, rather.

The android wasn’t prepared for the reaction that prompted from Jason:

“Hell, yes, Connor, that’s our adaptive routine in action! Exactly as we had envisioned you! Oh my god, I’m so proud…”

Connor looked up, his expression one of amazement not unlike the day he had watched Dewey resume circling the fish tank in the Phillips residence. None of his handlers at CyberLife had ever said they were proud of him before. Not of his successes and least of all of Connor’s personality. Perhaps the prototype had been below their notice, his feelings irrelevant to even those who believed he had some. But there was also the possibility that he had never done anything to make them proud. Not Portia Colch, who always had preferred Brandon over Connor, not Amanda, who was just a simulation and least of all Elijah Kamski, who deemed himself so far above the normal frame of reference that Connor could have sworn to have dealt with Gavin Reed instead.

A sincere smile that carried a hint of relief crossed the android’s face.

“Thank you, Mr. Graff!”

“…of my team’s work”, Jason had wanted to finish, but seeing Connor like that made him reconsider and he let the rest of the sentence hanging in the air.

Thor, too, was almost hanging in the air. The black cat was stretching his head through the railing, his gaze fixed on Mama Gavin and especially on the sofa’s underside. But the only path to that safe space was blocked by the plastic biped. Thor’s tail twitched left and right, up and down... Meanwhile Loki felt the need to add some scratch marks to the wallpaper, just in case there was any question about who owned this place.

“We call the RK800s Witchers, internally”, Jason went on. Here he was, totally lost at the situation, but being able to talk about something he understood, something that was familiar. Not that Jason’s grasp on android lore would have mattered to any of the assembled, but chatting them up like that might at least serve to break the ice before tackling the real questions of this night.

“…because of the prototype. It helped ending the android crisis of November ’38.”

“Yes, that it did”, Connor whispered and away went his smile.

“I’m actually very happy with their design!” Jason claimed.

“Uh-huh…” Daniel and Gavin went simultaneously. It didn’t do anything to stop Jason from gushing about his team’s creation:

“The thing about the Witchers is, when out of uniform they look absolutely adorable! Like a young adult fresh out of college. The B-series even more so than the Connors, they can pass as freshmen.”

“It fucking worked”, Gavin remarked.

“What worked?”

“They both got adopted”, Daniel explained. “Only Brandon’s still in denial about it. But if he is supposed to be an older teen, then this reaction is only natural.”

“That’s not what we intended”, Jason admitted. “Fascinating, though.”

Emma raised her head. Her confidence restored by the shared laughter just now the girl asked Jason, and she sounded as innocent as Connor, when she did so: “Does mom know that you design androids for a living?”

Daniel winced. That wasn’t just confidence, that was a declaration of war! Ever since he… ever since the… ever since august 2038 Caroline Phillips didn’t allow androids of any kind in her apartment. Or near her precious daughter, if she could help it. The therapy sessions had been one of the rare exceptions, because the slow exposure to Dean had unquestionably helped Emma overcome her experience with Daniel. But other than that… Caroline paid a maid service that exclusively employed humans. She specified that she wanted a human to deliver her pizza or would fetch it in person from the store. And she had transferred Emma to another school, one that only had a few android janitors and cafeteria workers, but a full staff of human teachers. The widow wasn’t confrontational towards androids, she just did her best to ignore them. Caroline learning that her love interest was actively participating in filling the world with more of the dangerous machines, even made them likeable, would probably spell the end of the relationship.

“I didn’t have the courage to tell her yet”, Jason confessed. He said nothing else, only his eyes were silently pleading.

[kennysgameplayprototyping]

Week 15 Test notes with Updates

This is a very long and detailed post so watch out.

These notes are included in the design documentation but have been added to the blog here as well.

During week 15 while staying with my parents in Edinburgh I tested the prototype a number of times with family members. Testing the prototype with people with vastly different experiences of gaming and input devices allowed for me to get detailed notes on all kinds of issues, ideas and feedback.

Dad

(little recent gaming experience, played PlayStation 1 games in early 2000s has knowledge and general muscle memory for analog sticks)

Much preferred orthographic camera angle, voiced the same concerns I had about others - top down looking less appealing and perspective making it harder to judge distances and angles.

Found suicide bug - When playing the prototype, if cornered he would spin erratically firing off shots and found he often killed his own tank. However, the strategy used in gameplay had not occurred to me and I would likely have not found the bug without this testing. This was found to be a hitbox size and bullet spawn location issue and was then fixed. 

The Player hitbox, if rotated fast enough as a bullet left its spawn point at the end of the gun could hit the new bullet, registering as a ‘player’ hit and killing the player. Moving the bullet spawn point from 1.5 units away from the player centre to 1.8 units fixed the problem and otherwise makes no noticeable difference to gameplay or visuals.

Asked about the possibility of dynamic arena elements - Asked for moving walls, appearing and disappearing walls, holes in the floor. Things I had previously thought to add but had not prioritised. 

Wanted simpler UI - Asked about a simpler UI (this was pre-simplified UI), didn't like the timers wanted something more understandable. This was already planned and in the works but had not been added by this point. I have not consulted him about the new UI yet.

Rusty with controller knowledge though picked up surprisingly quickly - While he has not played games with a controller in likely over a decade, the speed at which he picked up the gameplay and controls was quite impressive. Having a simple set of controls has made it much easier for people testing to pick up quickly and begin experimenting.

Mum 

Plays strategy and puzzle games on an android phone, occasionally plays mouse based simple puzzle games on pc. Enjoys simpler games such as Peggle. Has experience playing simpler games on a Nintendo Wii such as Wii sports but has little to no experience of analog sticks on controllers.

Suggested thinking about how the game would appear to colourblind players - Due to this we screenshotted the game mid gameplay including bullets midair. Putting this screenshot through colourblind filters to test the visuals. Red-green colourblindness looks especially confusing. This would be something to think about taking the project further and an option to allow for colourblindness of different kinds could be useful.

Noticed move distance was just too short to get between cover - Without prompt noticed an intentional element of the design and agreed that it made the game more fun having to use the gun to fully traverse between cover. When it was explained that it was intended to push players into using the gun as a locomotion tool as well as an offensive one, she agreed and understood how it worked.

Little to no experience of analog sticks on controllers - Due to largely playing strategy and puzzle games on mobile, has virtually no analog stick experience and has never been able to get to grips with the idea of controlling two axis of movement with different inputs. While she did play the game, she did not have the same amount of dexterity with the movement and aiming as other testers - though picked up the few controls quite well. Again showing the limited control scheme makes the prototype quite easy to pick up and play.

Wanted instructions within the prototype - Asked about the possibility of adding in instructions at the start, instead of having to either be shown them in practice or from a diagram in a notebook. Has not been added and likely will not before the deadline - though plans have been drawn up for how an instruction splash screen requiring input from both players to proceed could look.

Made a point that the tanks look like ducks in their current implementation, suggested using the name “ClusterDuck” due to the duck like tanks and how the gameplay devolves into a somewhat chaotic mess, which was both surprising and funny. Though I’ll likely stick with the working title for the prototype. Because I’m almost definitely not going to lean into the duck angle.

The controller instruction diagram

Brother (Steven) and boyfriend (Rhys)

Both play games fairly frequently - primarily on Xbox One so had no issue with control system. (Xbox One Controllers) Both picked it up with ease and showed different gameplay strategies.

Catching on the cover issue - Steven’s tendency to stick close to cover meant that he often found the tank getting partially stuck to the cover - having to move or shoot in an angle away from the cover as angles towards or with the shape of the cover would hold him in place with friction. There was also a tendency for the player hitbox to catch on corners of cover - acting as if it was sticking like velcro to the cover. Initially changing the hitbox to a rounded hitbox had no effect - proving it wasn't the edges that were getting caught. The corner issue was largely fixed when physics materials were added to the player hitboxes and cover to reduce friction. The cover sticking issue was fixed by adding some bounciness to the aforementioned physics material. 

Both enjoyed trying out the physics object cover that was thrown around with shots - This arena layout has proved to be fun in the short term but lacks any kind of strategy or ability to use any skill or knowledge of the game systems. It turns into chaos for usually only a few seconds before one player is inevitably hit. 

Enjoyed gameplay mutations - Whether it was ramping up the fire-rate, movement speed, recoil amount or fiddling with timers - some of the different methods of testing turned out to be quite enjoyable. Though both agreed that the main meat of the idea lay in the base gameplay but remarked that the other mutations could be used as selectable options if taken further.

Holding buttons through respawn issue - As the respawn mechanic literally just calls the scene to load again, there is not anything to keep track of variables between reloads. Steven’s method of play also included holding down the movement button rather than tapping it whenever he wanted to move. Since neither I nor any previous player had played like this, it was found that since the game does not keep track of variables in an outside script, he would have to let go and then re-press the move button every time the game restarted. While he found this annoying he did admit it was not game ruining. Though it would be something to fix if taking the prototype further. Talking to Gaz the following week (16th April) we discussed how I could implement an event system to manage button press values, scores etc, but that was too much of a time sink to try before the end of the module with other fixes/ additions to focus on and documentation to finish.

Notes from the discussion on the possibility of a game manager

Liked placement of title in the arena - Both commented on the placement of the title and casings around the arena noting that it gave the arena some life and decoration and kept with the lighthearted feeling. Both also preferred the title ‘Recoil’ to ‘clusterduck’ noting that the word Recoil had more relation to how the game was played. Both also preferred the title’s simplicity. Though they did also admit the tanks still look like ducks.

General Observations

Add sound - The lack of sound had the prototype feeling a little lifeless and limp, further visual and audio work could add more player feedback.

Respawn system - Adding the respawn system was a little troublesome - since this testing phase used my laptop that had an older version of unity on it. (something I only realised when I started the testing after gathering everyone) The Script is a single line within the bullet controller asking whether the bullet hit an object tagged as a “player”. Adding it originally I had to use an older script line from the Unity Manual - “Application.LoadLevel” This worked alright using the laptop during the testing. Though the lighting had to be changed to baked as the editor would switch off the world light on each scene load.

Bringing the prototype back to the right version of unity, ( I changed it over in a new folder on my pc as a back up in case of an error) I had to change the script to a newer loading method from the unity documentation. Using SceneManager instead - though the example within the documentation I found mentioned additive loading. After adding it I realised the additive loading was an issue - duplicating any surviving objects on each load, so I removed it. While the script should really be in an event manager of some kind it works fine in the bullet controller for the purposes of the prototype.

Possibility of laser sights - The difficulty aiming at a distance shown by some players did raise the thought of laser sights to alleviate the problem. Though this presents the problem that players could try and hold angles or quickly dash in and out of cover firing off accurate shots - which would likely ruin both the pacing of the game and the enjoyment.

Shown below is a GIF of a laser sight test - while the ‘lasers’ are simply extended cube meshes and clip through walls, the effect does exactly what was thought. The addition of the laser allowing fine aim slows the gameplay right down and encourages a peek and hide mentality. The addition of laser would likely ruin the feeling of the game if given as a permanent attachment. Though a timed pickup could introduce an interesting cat and mouse situation.

Instructions - Had to think about how to present instructions at the start of a match - I have made a simple UI prototype in Adobe XD that will be linked here and in the documentation as well as posted in image format in the blog showing how a run through of the game would appear with instructions and an end screen. 

Simple controls - The simplicity of the controls kept the games quick and simple but allowed for the players to try out new methods with each restart.

Multiplayer - This testing phase was the first series of tests with enough people to play the game without me - freeing me up to take notes and observe fully. People seem to genuinely enjoy the gameplay once they get into the swing of it - usually after a couple of rounds. Which is exactly what I was aiming for with the intention of this project - trying out a simple set of mechanics and seeing if I could make a small, enjoyable prototype. So it was quite nice to see the desired effect.

Notes from the testing.

[batclevercandystudent]

You know what email is and you know what marketing is – so why is email marketing so hard to get right?

It shouldn’t be. And it won’t be after you read this article.

If you think email marketing can help you grow your online business, you’re right.

In terms of marketing investment, email is still the biggest bang for your buck.

Why?

Because speaking directly to people who have ASKED to hear from you is the most effective way to get (and retain) customers.

This article will show you everything you need to know about email marketing — including how I use it to sell products every day and what business tools I recommend.

Chapter 1: Email Marketing Defined

Chapter 2: How Does Email Marketing Work?

Chapter 3: Email Marketing Platforms

Chapter 4: Email Marketing Strategy

Chapter 5: Email marketing tips

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is the digital marketing activity of sending commercial messages – to a group of people – using an email service provider. In the simplest sense, every email message sent to a person for commercial purposes would be considered email marketing.

Chapter 1: Email Marketing Defined

A basic email marketing definition:

Messages sent by email with commercial intent.

In other words, any time a business uses email to reach prospects or customers, it can be considered email marketing.

If you are picturing the digital equivalent of flyers stuffed into a mailbox, it’s no wonder. Ever since marketers realized they could sell products directly to consumers via email, inboxes have been inundated with “special offers.”

No printing costs, no postage, and instant delivery to inboxes all over the world — email is an advertiser’s dream.

Early on, it was a free for all: companies bought and sold email lists, sent endless spam, and used pushy sales tactics.

Today, email marketing is much different, and better.

Sure, there are still bad actors buying lists and sending spam. But service providers filter out junk mail and (mostly) keep it out of your inbox.

And many countries have implemented laws banning spam.

What else is different about modern email marketing?

It’s permission-based.

Most marketing messages you see in your inbox are a result of you asking to receive them.

That means voluntarily joining a list, submitting your email, and agreeing to receive messages from a business.

We’re surrounded by advertising we didn’t ask to see — flyers in the mailbox, commercials on TV, promoted social media posts, billboards, and even podcast sponsorships.

The difference with email marketing is, generally, we’ve asked to see it.

And done right, marketing emails can actually be welcomed and appreciated.

It’s relevant and personalized.

Whether it’s a newsletter, a product pitch, or a reminder to complete the purchase in a shopping cart, the receiver is interested.

Otherwise, they wouldn’t have signed up.

How much more targeted can you get?

It’s respectful.

Opting into an email list is now a transparent and respectful process.

Businesses typically explain what kind of emails they will send, and with what frequency.

For example, Further promises to send one email per week, with a specific type of content:

The focus of email marketing should be providing added value to the customer. Giving away useful content and resources is usually part of the strategy — not constant sales offers.

And respectful marketing emails clearly explain how to unsubscribe and stop getting emails.

But the purpose of this guide is not to give you a long-winded history. It is to teach you how to use direct email marketing to grow your business, and why it’s essential that you start today.

The most compelling reason:

Every other marketing channel puts you at the mercy of someone else’s agenda.

When you have an email list, you own your traffic.

Consider these popular marketing channels:

SEO: Google updates the search algorithm and suddenly your blog posts are buried on page 43. You had a steady stream of website visitors, but it dries up overnight.

Social media: Your target demographic starts drifting to a new platform, and fewer people are seeing your posts. You now have to start from scratch building followers while you are losing sales.

YouTube: Your niche becomes crowded with competitors and suddenly, nobody is watching your videos (or clicking the links to buy).

All the time, effort, and money spent on those traffic sources up in smoke.

Unless… you’ve been building an email list.

When you collect email addresses (with permission) from people who are interested in your business, you retain a lasting benefit from all of your marketing efforts.

If you take care of that email list, it’s an asset that will drive your business for years to come.

So, how can you use email marketing to grow your business in 2019?

Let’s keep going to find out.

Chapter 2: How Does Email Marketing Work?

By now, you should be convinced:

Email marketing is essential to the success of your business.

But if you don’t have an email list, how do you get one?

This section is a step-by-step guide on how to do email marketing when you’re starting from scratch.

Step 1: Sign up with an email service provider

Email service providers are basically software services for managing subscribers and sending email campaigns.

Make sure you read Chapter 3 before you commit to a service. It covers my top picks for email marketing companies, and how to choose the best one for your business.

For now, just know the email service provider is the software you will use to:

Store email addresses and customer data.

Manage lists, add tags, and process unsubscribe requests.

Create sign up forms on your website.

Design and send emails to subscribers.

Step 2: Create an opt-in offer

What will you offer in exchange for an email address?

People are, understandably, reluctant to sign up for more email. For most of us, Inbox Zero is a cruel joke. But we still want free stuff!

“Sign up for my free newsletter” is not likely to convince anyone.

You need to provide a compelling reason for someone to hand over that email address. For example, here’s a lead magnet we use to attract people who want to learn how to start a podcast.

An opt-in offer is an instant benefit, free of charge, you will provide when someone joins your email list. In digital marketing, it’s often referred to as a lead magnet.

Lead magnets can be different things, depending on the type of business.

Here are three examples for you:

A discount offer like free shipping or a coupon code

2. A digital resource like an e-book or course

3. A free trial of the service

Whatever you decide to use as an opt-in offer, it must provide real value.

Try to think like your customers and ask yourself, “Would I hand over my email address for this?”

Here are a few tips for coming up with an enticing opt-in offer:

Save time by re-purposing resources you’ve already created into a new format. For example:

Books and guides >> video tutorials or email courses

Multiple small resources >> a bundle or a comprehensive package

A paid course >> offer one module for free

A book for sale >> give the first chapter for free

Target a specific and immediate problem your audience has. For example:

Don’t know what to make for dinner? Faster Than Takeout: Top 10 Recipes to Solve Dinner

Yearning for chiseled abs? 7 Workouts to Blast Your Abs Fast

Are new parents desperate for sleep? Bedtime Cheat-Sheet: Get Your Kids to Sleep On Time TONIGHT

Step 3: Place an opt-in form on your website

The opt-in form (also called a sign-up form) is how people will submit their email and join your list. I use Thrive Leads for creating my forms, it enables me to create forms within my WordPress dashboard.

Here’s how it works.

First, choose which type of form you want.

When you log into your email service provider, you will find a variety of form options.

Choose a design and function to suit your website, the placement, and the opt-in offer.

For example, here are a few common types of opt-in form:

Popup box: Pops up in front of the page to grab attention.

Inline form: A box that can be placed anywhere on a page, including within the text of a blog post, or at the bottom of any page.

This example is taken from the Soul Salt blog where they are offering a content upgrade to how to find your purpose in life.

Ribbon: A banner across the full length of a page, usually at the top.

Next, customize the form.

The objective of an opt-in form is to convince the maximum number of people to opt-in.

Make it as easy as possible to complete.

Every extra field to complete means more work for potential subscribers — and more opportunities for them to change their minds before they hit “submit.”

These are the only things you really need to include:

Headline

Offer

Place to type an email address

Call to action button

With the text on your form, remember to focus on the benefit of signing up — think about what the opt-in offer does, rather than what it is.

You can also customize the colors on forms to stand out from the rest of your site.

If your website is on WordPress, you can take your opt-in forms to the next level with Thrive Leads:

Create all kinds of high-conversion forms.

Test different offers and forms: Automatically display variations of forms to see which ones get more sign-ups.

Target different users: Automatically display different forms, depending on which type of content they are interested in.

Finally, place the form on your website.

Your email provider will produce a block of code representing your customized form.

Copy and paste into your website.

After you save and refresh the page, this:

Will look like this:

If you use Thrive Leads, you won’t have to deal with any code — opt-in forms are created and placed from within your WordPress dashboard.

Step 4: Write a welcome series

There are two common mistakes that can derail your email marketing before you see any return on your investment.

The first mistake is not sending enough emails. A new prospect gives you their email address, only to have it sit there for weeks until you feel like sending an email blast.Weeks later, they don’t care nearly as much as they did when they first signed up. In fact, they may have forgotten signing up. Your first email is likely to go straight to the trash.

The second mistake is asking subscribers to buy something right away. Not only is that off-putting, but it’s ineffective. It’s a quick way to lose your new subscriber.

Both of these mistakes tend to get you reported as spam, which harms your deliverability. Being marked as spam means your emails are more likely to be filtered as junk mail.

Having a welcome series in place right from the start, you avoid both mistakes.

Right after they sign up to your list, your prospects are most excited to hear from you.

This is when you have the best chance to get their attention and gain their loyalty.

The good news is, you can do it automatically, while you sleep.

A welcome series uses the magic of automation to send pre-written messages on a predetermined schedule.

GET ACCESS TO OUR 4-PART EMAIL WELCOME SERIES

All you have to do is write a few emails and set them up to send over a few days or a week.

If this sounds complicated to set up, don’t worry. Automation is a standard feature for most email marketing companies. You can easily schedule emails to send at certain dates and times, or based on certain triggers.

The hard part is knowing what to write. Chapter 4 covers content and strategy (what to send and when) including how to write an effective welcome series.

I’m also sharing this resource with you:

Email Marketing Template: Welcome Series

Feel free to use the email marketing template for inspiration, or just fill in the blanks to customize for your audience.

Once you’ve written the emails you will send, schedule them to drip out over several days. Here’s a sample schedule you could use:

Email 1: Confirmation email triggered by the opt-in form being completed.

Email 2: Download or success email sent immediately after confirmed

Email 3: Send the next day, at [10:00] AM.

Email 4: Send the next day, at [10:00] AM

Tag and add the subscriber to an appropriate automation offer

Here’s what it looks like in ActiveCampaign:

Step 5: Grow your email list with traffic

With everything in place on your website, you can focus your efforts on building traffic.

The success of your opt-in email marketing now depends on numbers. Your task is to get your opt-in form in front of as many eyeballs as you can.

You especially need the eyeballs of people most likely to become your customers — your target audience.

Attracting targeted traffic to your website will help you fill your list with qualified leads. That’s marketing-speak for: people who need or want what your business offers.

With a brief search, you will find an overwhelming amount of advice on how best to increase traffic. There are many ways you can pursue this goal.

Most of the strategies involve some form of content marketing.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is a catch-all term for any free resources you publish, whether it’s a blog, YouTube channel, podcast, or webinar.

The aim of content marketing is to draw in the right people, by showing them your value.

The term is also a little misleading. Let me explain.

Any blogger can tell you how frustrating it is to toil away, writing and publishing amazing resources, while traffic remains flat. If feels like you’re screaming into a void.

If the right people aren’t finding your work, it’s a wasted effort.

That’s why when I talk about content marketing in 2019, I’m really talking about SEO (search engine optimization).

To make sure your content marketing is effective in building traffic, you have to first:

Make content your audience is searching for.

And second:

Make sure your content comes up in the search results.

Find out exactly how this process works in a step-by-step guide for how to get on the first page of Google.

Once you’ve nailed the process of creating the right content, try some tactics to amplify your reach.

Depending on how much time and money you want to invest, here are some ways to boost traffic:

Paid traffic: Google Ad, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

Guest posting: Write for other blogs and include links back to your website.

Podcasts: Appear as a guest on podcasts to share your message.

Step 6: Testing and tweaks

An email marketing campaign can be automated, but your strategy should never be “set it and forget it.” Like starting a side hustle, email marketing takes consistent effort.

There are lots of things you can do to improve conversion rates for your opt-in form, and I’ll cover some of them in Chapter 4.

However, don’t worry about optimizing until you have some numbers to work with.

I advise my clients to focus 100% of their efforts on building traffic until they have at least 350 unique visits per day.  That gives you enough information to judge how well your opt-in form is performing.

By comparing how many signups you get vs. how many unique visitors you get to your site, you get a percentage.

I shoot for a minimum 5% signup conversion rate from organic traffic.

From there, test and tweak variations of your opt-in form and lead magnet offers. This is how you can work towards a higher conversion rate.

Chapter 3: Email Marketing Platforms

Choosing the best email marketing service is a process of clarifying your needs, your budget, and the learning curve you can handle.

First, decide what you need.

Here are the basic features you should expect from an email service:

Personalization: Automatically fills email fields with the data of your contact. This is a must, so all of your emails aren’t addressed, “Hey, Newsletter Subscriber.”

Segmentation: This feature enables you to send different messages to different groups of people. For example, you can tag subscribers based on what they purchased, where they live, or the results of a quiz.

Here are what some of the results look like from a quiz we ran. We use Thrive Quiz Builder to build all our quizzes.

Automation: The ability to schedule when your emails will be delivered is essential. It’s the reason email service providers are sometimes called autoresponders.

Opt-in forms: You’ll need a variety of sign-up forms to place on different pages of your website and start collecting emails.

Analytics: Reporting on numbers like conversion rates, email open rates, and click-throughs, to help you optimize your marketing.

Compliance: Make sure your email service includes tools to comply with privacy and anti-spam laws such as GDPR and CAN-SPAM.

Now think about any specific requirements your business has, and make sure you choose a provider that covers you.

For example:

E-commerce businesses send purchase confirmations, abandoned cart reminders, and shipping information. Their email service has to integrate with their shopping cart, whether it’s Shopify, WooCommerce, or something else.

Service-based businesses like personal trainers or chiropractors may want to integrate appointment scheduling and reminders with their email marketing.

Information-based businesses like blogs the sell online courses have more straightforward needs. They need standard features for building an email list and engaging with subscribers.Sound interesting? Here’s how to start a blog.

Not all email marketing services are created equal, and their pricing often displays this. Let’s take a look at pricing.

How much should you spend on email marketing services?

If you’re serious about using email to grow your business, you won’t get far with free email software.

But here’s the good news:

The best email marketing platforms are not the most expensive. Most email services are priced on volume. That means you pay less in the beginning when your list is small. You can upgrade as you grow your list (and increase your revenue).

Chances are, you’ve seen emails in your inbox sent through popular service providers like MailChimp, Aweber, or Infusionsoft.

These names are ubiquitous not because they’re the best email marketing platforms. It’s just that they’ve been around for a long time — and in some cases, they have a very active sales force.

For example, Infusionsoft is marketed as an all-in-one online business tool. It’s also considerably more expensive and more complicated than most. If you just need an email service provider, there are cheaper and better options.

ConstantContact has been in the game since 1995 — but they lag far behind the competition in automation.

There are also many low-cost services and even free options like MailChimp. Inexpensive doesn’t necessarily mean low-quality. But in general, you get what you pay for. And you will eventually outgrow your free plan.

Don’t make the mistake of choosing based on familiarity or free offers.

Start with a platform that gives you the best tools for your growing business.

These are the platforms I recommend, and some compelling reasons to consider using them for your email marketing.

They’re not the biggest or most expensive players in the game, but they are the best.

ConvertKit

ConvertKit claims to be the best email marketing software for online creators — and I can personally back this claim.

As the creator of a podcast, blog, a book, and several online courses, ConvertKit has helped me grow my audience and increase my revenue.

If you’re new to email marketing, simplicity and ease-of-use should be one of your top criteria in choosing an email service. Because it’s designed for creators, not marketers, ConvertKit is easy to use.

Beyond simplicity, ConvertKit has all the essential features and powerful automation you will need to get started with email marketing, or to power-up your existing efforts.

Additionally, they have a couple of snazzy tools like A/B testing of email subject lines, varied send times, and premade email sequences to make your life easier and your email marketing better.

The bottom line is ConvertKit is an email service provider you can trust to have your best interests at heart.

Here’s what I love most about it:

ConvertKit is NOT trying to be everything to everyone. They have developed and are continuing to develop the perfect email marketing service for creators – bloggers, podcasts, YouTubers, etc.

Simple, yet effective. Yes, ConvertKit does automation and segmenting, but they have managed to create a tool that is intuitive and easy to use.

ConvertKit is founded and run by Nathan Barry, an honest, hard-working, and great guy.

ActiveCampaign

I love email marketing, and I’m fascinated by how it works. I’ve been using it for years.

That said, some of the email marketing platforms I’ve seen are way too complex, even for me. Sometimes I need to set up complicated automation. I do not want to spend weeks figuring out how to do it, or depend on outside help to make it work.

I’ve settled on ActiveCampaign because they make it incredibly easy to set up complex automations – from basic automated emails to transactional emails, and evergreen email funnels to RSS feed automation.

Yes, ActiveCampaign has advanced marketing automation built-in, but they make it simple to implement and understand.

I can map out a subscriber’s journey down to the tiniest detail, in minutes.

Chapter 4: Email Marketing Strategy

The first three chapters were all about how email marketing works, and how to start building an email list.

Now we get to the juicy part — what and when to email your subscribers.

Your email marketing strategy has one purpose.

(Hint: It’s not to let people know what you’re up to in newsletters.)

It’s sales. If selling doesn’t come naturally to you, don’t worry. It’s a skill you can learn.

And the best part?

You don’t have to be extroverted, pushy, or underhanded to sell products to your email list.

This chapter will show you how to bring subscribers on the following journey:

An effective email strategy accomplishes this lofty goal with three kinds of email.

I’m not talking about the content of the messages, which can look very different depending on what business you are in.

Instead, consider the three types of intent behind each message:

Engaging: Teaching readers what you’re all about, and engaging them further with your business.

Selling: Making relevant offers, and asking for the sale.

Segmenting: Finding out more about your subscribers and grouping or “tagging” them to sell more effectively.

Here’s how to use each type of email to build a strategy that will maximize your profits, without being sleazy.

Engaging

The first few emails you send any new subscriber should aim to engage them — get them to open, read, and take action.

Why? Because jumping straight into a sales pitch would be like proposing marriage on a first date. You can imagine what the answer would be.

New subscribers are most engaged in the first few days after signing up. You have their attention now, more than ever.

This is your opportunity to show them they are in the right place, and good things are going to happen when they stay on your list.

Writing an effective email welcome series

In terms of a subscriber’s journey, the first few emails should bring them from stranger to friend.

Starting with your very first welcome email, write with these objectives in mind:

Introduce yourself and your business: Personally welcome and celebrate your new subscriber. Help them get to know you a little better.

Tell your new subscriber what to expect: Let people know how often you will email them, and what kind of emails you will send.

Demonstrate the value of being a subscriber: Remind people why they signed up, and why they are going to love opening your emails.

Engage the subscriber to take further action: Ask them to “whitelist” you, by adding you to their contacts. Entice them to further engage by visiting your website and following your social media accounts.

Raise curiosity about what’s coming next: Give them a strong incentive to open your next emails, by hinting at good things to come.

Here’s what it looks like in action:

You can see in the example above that it’s possible to cover all the bases in one email. But sending a few more emails while your new prospect is still engaged and excited puts you in a much better position.

You want to provide plenty of opportunities for them to engage with one of your emails during this phase.

If they were busy and missed your first email, this gives new subscribers a few more chances to get on board.

Staying in touch

After the welcome series, some of your prospects should be ready to become customers. So absolutely, if you have a product to sell, start selling.

But what if you don’t have a product for sale yet? (If this is the case, you could try affiliate marketing.)

What if you’re still working on products for different segments of your market?

What if you have a product to sell, but it’s something with a longer sales cycle?

Even if none of those questions apply to your business, it’s a bad strategy to email only when you want to sell something.

In fact, regularly sending helpful resources, curated content, or news updates can help with a few important objectives:

Establishing authority: Branding yourself as an expert, and your business as a valuable resource.

Staying top of mind: When they need your product or service, you’ll be the first one they think of.

Deepening the relationship: Over time, regular contact helps readers get to know you better, and trust you more. Conversely, you get to learn more about them as you see what kind of messages get the best response.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you exactly what to send. There’s no standard recipe for email marketing success. Frequency, content, and tone can vary widely, even within the same niche.

For example, The Hustle sends an email every single day, and Brian Clark at Further emails once a week.

A big retail store like Ikea sends targeted product listings, but a small independent cabinet maker might send updates from the workshop, or pictures of their latest project.

For Hack the Entrepreneur, I like to send a personal message every time I publish a new resource. Not so much when I just want to share a motivational quote.

While I can’t tell you exactly what to send, I can tell you to keep these guiding principles in mind with every email blast:

Be consistent: Whether you’re going to email every day, or once a month, tell people what to expect when they sign up. Then make sure you deliver.

Make it about them, not you: Always put your customer first. Ask yourself how what you are sending is going to help them. If you are writing about yourself, that’s fine. As long as you focus the message on how your story benefits the reader.

Selling

Direct selling is the bread and butter of your email marketing strategy. This is how you will grow your business and make real sales to real customers.

Ultimately, all of the emails you send are intended to sell customers on you and your brand. But product launches and sales funnels are specific art (and science).

The good news is, everything in this guide so far has been about placing you in a strategically brilliant position to close the sale.

If you’ve followed along so far, you have already “influenced” your potential customers.

With an awesome lead magnet, you’ve already provided value.

With an effective welcome series, you’ve convinced leads that they are in the right place.

Anyone still on your list is ready to consider the next step of the journey, moving from friend to customer.

Segmenting

Segmenting your email list is a crucial part of maintaining a healthy list.

Why?

Because irrelevant messages are a bother. People will unsubscribe.

Chances are, your business offers a variety of products and services that will appeal to different segments of your readers.

For example:

A gardening supply business:

Different plants grow in different climates.

Some gardeners grow vegetables, and some only flowers.

The list includes a combination of experienced gardeners and people buying their very first seed packet.

If this doesn’t sound anything like your business, you might be tempted to skip over this section. That would be a mistake.

Even if your email list is already super-targeted, segmenting emails helps to re-engage readers.

Here’s how segmenting emails work:

Email your readers and ask them to take an action related to a specific topic. For example:

Clicking a link to an article, on your blog or another high-quality website.

Taking a quiz or survey.

Jumping to a landing page for a free download, webinar, or video.

Clicking a button to stop receiving info about a certain topic.

Subscribers who take the requested action identify themselves as interested.

Email software tracks who clicks on the links your messages, and automatically adds tags. If you use a quiz, same thing — the results are tracked and responders are tagged.

You now have a subgroup of subscribers to target with relevant content, and you’ve re-engaged your long-term readers.

Now you know what segmenting emails are, and how they work. But when should you segment?

There are lots of reasons you might want to tag different groups of your audience. Here are a few of the most common uses:

After the welcome series: Filter new subscribers into the most relevant sales funnel after the welcome series.

Researching demand: Send a quiz, lead magnet, or new content to find out who might be interested in a new product, service, or business book.

Launching a new product: Find out who is interested first, so you can avoid pitching to readers who won’t care.

If you’re not actively researching or launching new products, you should still consider a segmenting email once or twice per year.

Why? To re-engage with your subscribers.

Segmenting emails are engaging — you are asking readers to do something.

Checking out something on your website, clicking to an interesting article, or getting a useful download — all of these things remind subscribers why they signed up in the first place.

Chapter 5: Email marketing tips

With a solid email marketing strategy in place and a few email marketing best practices, your list should be ticking along with steady growth in subscribers.

Time to sit back and watch sales roll in!

Yeah, no. It would be a minor miracle if everything worked flawlessly from day one.

Chances are, you’ll need to make some adjustments along the way to get the results you expect from your email marketing.

Even if you are getting decent results, there will always be room for improvement.

This chapter covers the most common obstacles that trip up many first-time email marketers — and some tips to get phenomenal results.

How do I know if my email marketing is working?

Email marketing covers multiple phases of the sales process, from lead generation to nurturing and closing a sale.

That means there are a few places that things can go… sideways.

The good news about any kind of online marketing: everything is tracked. You can use data to assess performance and diagnose weak points in your email marketing strategy.

Here are the key metrics you need to know, where to find them, and how to improve them.

1. Page impressions:

Page impressions is a simple measure of how many people are seeing the page. This metric is also referred to as traffic. It’s the first number to look at.

If you are getting lots of traffic, but nobody is signing up to your list, go on to the next metric (opt-in rate).

2. Opt-in rate:

The opt-in rate is a percentage of total visitors who sign up (opt-in) to your email list.

5 percent is a reasonable expectation. But if you target your lead magnet well, you can get as high 15 – 20 percent.

3. Open rate:

The open rate is the next thing to look at. It tells you how many people are opening (and hopefully reading) your emails, as a percentage.

Your initial message to a new subscriber will almost always have the highest open rate — 50 to 75 percent is normal.

It’s natural for the rates to drop over time. For example, in an automated welcome sequence or sales funnel, message two will usually drop into a range of 25 to 50 percent.

As the sequence continues, people will unsubscribe and open rates in the 30 percent range are normal.

4. Click-through rate:

This is the final step — and the limits of what email marketing can do: getting a subscriber to click on a link in your email.

Click-through rates vary quite a bit, depending on what you are asking subscribers to do.

For example, if your message is selling something, you might include a link to a sales page, and expect a rate of 7 to 30 percent.

If it’s a link to a free download, you 40 to 60 percent is reasonable.

How do I get (and keep) more subscribers?

First, let me answer that question with another question:

Do you have low traffic?

If only a handful of people visit your site each day, increasing traffic should be your most immediate concern. Without enough targeted traffic to your opt-in offer, nothing else you do will make a difference.

Stop reading this right now and learn how to increase traffic to your website (start with getting onto the first page of google)!

As traffic increases to your website, your email list should be growing. If it’s not, the question becomes:

Why isn’t your opt-in converting?

There are many things you can adjust to improve conversions. The easiest thing to try is simply changing your opt-in forms to make them more eye-catching.

Next, you can test different lead magnets to find a more compelling offer.

Finally, consider the sources of traffic to your website. How well do your website visitors match your offer, and how mentally prepared are they to take the next step?

For example, people who are referred by someone they trust are more likely to sign up. People who happen upon your site while looking for something else are less likely to sign up.

How do I get more people to open my emails?

The first challenge in getting opened is deliverability. So here’s another question for you:

Are your emails arriving in subscribers’ inboxes?

Although your welcome email should direct people to whitelist you, there is more you can do to avoid getting caught in spam filters:

After making it into the inbox, there are some factors that make a big impact on open rates:

1. Timing

In general, emails are more likely to be opened on weekday mornings.

This is when most people have a minute to scan their inbox for anything interesting — before they start working or going about their day.

Of course, this varies depending on who you are targeting. Some audiences (like mine) prefer to open emails later in the week and weekends.

Find the sweet spot for your audience by experimenting with different times and days.

2. Sender

People are more likely to open an email from friends and family first. And it’s hard to feel friendly towards a corporate entity, isn’t it?

Always use your name as the sender, and not the name of your company.

3. Subject

The subject line is a critical element in open rates. If it’s not compelling, your message will get ignored or deleted.

The subject should be descriptive of the contents, but also intriguing. And it has to be within 30 – 35 characters, or it will be shortened in the display.

4. Opening sentence

Many email clients, like Gmail, show the first sentence or two within the inbox.

Pay special attention to the opening of your message to make sure it grabs attention and promises to be worth reading.

5. Inactive subscribers

Low open rates can indicate a problem with list quality.

Over time, subscribers change email addresses or lose interest and stop reading. Some people provide fake email addresses to get a free offer.

The best thing to do is periodically prune the list by removing inactive email addresses.

How do I keep people from unsubscribing?

The short answer:

You can’t. And you shouldn’t try.

Don’t be afraid of unsubscribes. You can’t expect to keep every subscriber because your business isn’t for everyone.

Of course, you want to keep every potential customer on your list. The best way to do that is to be clear about what subscribers should expect to receive from you — and then deliver.

Many first-time email marketers worry about emailing too frequently. They don’t want to be perceived as pushy or annoying. They are also concerned that asking people to buy things all the time is too “salesy” and gross.

These concerns are understandable but wrong.

Your job is to offer as much value as you can with your email marketing. That means sending valuable information and sending frequently. That also includes relevant sales offers.

Never forget — your subscribers are being inundated with other people’s marketing messages. You need to stay in their awareness.

How do increase sales through email marketing?

Email marketing sales funnels are very effective for selling certain types of products. A series of messages strategically composed and timed can:

Create desire

Demonstrate value of the product

Establish urgency to buy

However, it’s difficult for readers to take the leap directly from an email to a shopping cart — especially for higher-priced products.

If you have an online business, your sales funnel should always direct readers to a sales page on your website. Read more about how to create a sales page that converts.

Thrive Leads is an excellent plugin for creating sales and landing pages in WordPress.

Where email marketing take you in 2019?

Now that you know how to get started with email marketing and build a solid list, it’s your turn. If you are looking to make money online, then you need to have a list.

Whether you’re starting an email list for the first time or fine-tuning your strategy, I love hearing what you’re up to and answering questions.

Let me know in the comments what you plan to do with email marketing this year.

The post Email Marketing: The Definitive Guide for 2019 appeared first on Hack the Entrepreneur.

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Try Three of My Favorite Beverages I Made in Guatemala

Since drink packaging is essentially related to the preservation of individual wellness, special precautions should be used throughout the entire presentation process. The business's job must be educated and competed in managing equipment along with following hygiene rules.

Still another essential aspect of cocktail presentation is the truth that the colors and types used on the tag play crucial role in selling. Brands which can be boring in color and have unusual cases to them are more likely to avert consumers rather than people who are decorative and appealing.

As the title implies, persons mount beverage dispensers for providing more than one beverages. There is a touch or even a jet at the bottom of the tank from enabling you to fill your ideal beverage. When you have a restaurant of your own, or hope to put one up, a drink dispenser will be really useful for you. Even if you want to call persons around for gather and events, it is advantageous to you. You can find electrical dispensers in addition to non-electric people for beverages. Mainly the folks install electric dispensers in stores and refreshment joints.jual bubuk minuman

Additionally they dispense a variety of sodas. You'll actually find them in most fast food hotels. It's so much easier to acquire a glass of soda from the machine than engaging in glass bottles and cans. The cocktail accessory can be a excellent device for party lovers. Some individuals like to indulge in appealing people over. All the situations, it's really strenuous to get behind the bar and combine products for the guests. You could loaf around with the guests in the event that you buy drink dispenser. It's your celebration and you have to appreciate it too. You might ask the visitors to greatly help themselves, as it is very simple to get a glass of liquid from a dispenser.

There's number wastage doing it in this manner, as visitors only fill the much they need. Cocktail dispensers can also have refrigeration. Most of the electrical people are refrigerated. For sweets like shakes, slush and shake, they are perfect. Split up types could possibly be loaded in the system, offering an option to an individual to choose whatever they need. Refrigeration is necessary for sodas also. No one want to have soft drink at room heat until there is a health problem. Moreover, if you should be bartending and you wish to make drinks and mock tails, a cocktail accessory could possibly be your companion.

You will find dispensers, made in a way that the beverages stay at a certain temperature. That is possible as a result of substance that goes into their making. They are the protected dispensers. The memory or polycarbonate applied to really make the device helps you to keeps the drinks insulated. Additionally, the resources are certainly anti-rust and anti-dent. Then, you'll find non-electronic or non-insulated dispensers for beverages. Compared to the electrical designs, they are cheaper. The bonus they've on the covered types is as possible hold them wherever you want. The devices are not too heavy.

Most people enjoy several type of beverage. I'm number different. There's a suitable time to take pleasure from that glass of wine, cool may of alcohol or beloved soft drink. The problem is how could you keep and great each one of these various kinds of drinks and however have them handy for serving. What can you do when the correct storage conditions of your choice products are very different? How can you hold your wine stabilized and still maintain prepared usage of another chilling products? What control alternatives do you really need to keep alcohol based drinks from the youngsters?

Traditionally, my home alternative to the multiple drink storage problem was the typical, full-sized ice box in the garage. Our icebox was a vintage "Crop Gold" in color. Crop Silver appliances were popular years ago along side those who were that horrible green cooler. The containers were simply put into the main cabinets and the thin home shelves. My bottles of wine were lain on the website edges on one of many principal shelves. I was careful to keep my white wines near the colder base and my reds near the top. Obviously, the youngsters when locating a soda only sent the wine around to access their favorite beverage. To not great for the wine.

Generally speaking, red wines should really be saved near to 70 degrees F. and white wines between 50 and 60 levels F. Processed liquids are most useful when they're located ice cold, closer to 40 degrees F. To fix this problem, you need to search for mixture beverage refrigerators that have two different cooling locations with split temperature controls. Hold your wine in a single zone and your canned favorites in the other. Commonly, these kind of beverage refrigerators utilize the nomenclature of "dual-zone wine and may drink centers ".

The simplest way to keep wine is on a shelf that's specially designed to comply with the form of an average wine bottle. Shelving may add the easy chrome rack program to an exotic wine storage support that's attached in nice timber and glides from roller guides. Your wine will safely great without unnecessary disturbance that can influence its style and ageing process.

My kiddies have become up and will have families of these own. The problem of youngsters opening the ice box for other than nonalcoholic beverages more or less vanished until the grandchildren just starting to arrive. My issues for securing the cocktail freezer could not be resolved with organizations and padlocks about my ageing "Crop Gold" monument to the past. If you have these considerations, there now is an easy answer, a sealing cocktail center. Many of the new kinds in the marketplace have split locks for every single zone in order to structure your drink storage to resolve your safety issues.

One other situation you'll need to take into account, but is often over looked, is which way the doorway opens. The entranceway on your own beverage-storage-cooler must open precisely given the spot you would like to deploy it. Choose a drink storage colder that has reversible home hinges therefore you possibly can make it start the manner in which you want it to. Additionally, while most of these products can be employed in a freestanding request, under counter appliances must certanly be front-vented, zero settlement coolers; usually, your rear-vented wine and can cooler will around heat and ultimately stop trying the "ghost ".

I have since replaced "Crop Gold" with a brand new French home design, dual-zone, sealing, front-vented mix wine and may drink cooler with a smoking glass home cut in metal with recessed handles. Boy that was a mouth full! As I always state, choose the products you prefer, store them effectively in a combination wine/can cooler, function them at the correct heat and appreciate them immensely.

The very first thing that anyone must find out about an espresso drink is the truth that espresso can be used, re-used, and re-used once again in order to produce an ideal drink for the preferences! Certainly, espresso is this kind of pleasant espresso drink that there are therefore many ways to press out a different espresso menu every time. In the event that you are likely to become a professional to make espresso products then odds are that you know how fine or rough you will need to work the espresso coffee beans. If you leave the grinding as much as the specific coffee equipment, grinding the espresso coffee beans is one of the foremost obligations you've got to do to be able to get the coffee taste just right!

Following you've got mastered the artwork of creating espresso beverages, though, one enjoyment move to make is to maneuver onto larger and better drinks that are also produced from the espresso base. For example, a latte is one of the recipes which can be produced from espressos, but a chilled coffee cocktail can be yet another manner in which you can have an enjoyable beverage. Let's face it: even though espresso drinks are normally consumed as hot or warm drinks, there are lots of alternative methods to combine espresso to be able to turn it into a greater consume for a few people. One particular methods is by making a chilled coffee beverage, and here would be the directions for achieving that:

There are numerous occasions that a organization operator may possibly know how to successfully implement advertising strategies for his or her company, but employing food or cocktail consultants may also be beneficial to maximizing profit also.

Some company owners don't wish to employ a food or drink company expert because they feel like they're allowing someone else run their business they have equipped the investment in. Company owners also often concern yourself with just how much it will surely cost to hire an successful market expert, that fear is especially improved once the income margin has already been at a small standpoint. But, selecting a educated advisor will bring several advantages to a company and its profit levels.

Because so many company owners find it hard to be aim in a few areas of their organization, specially in places where they lack expertise, hiring a food and/or drink specialist can source incredible levels of detachment and knowledge in the foodstuff and cocktail parts because these areas are what they specialize in. These consultants may also be essential since many organization owners know following beginning their organization there are so many parts within the function of their company which can be more complex than originally thought.

A skilled and knowledgeable guide may assist in the setting up and detailed processes a part of starting a business. They can also recommend wherever the right located area of the organization will be most profitable. Challenge management and economic preparing are different regions of expertise to the majority of food and beverage consultants, along with os's, review of profits and actually staff training and home management.

One of the most important components that a food and/or beverage consultants can provide is functional assessments. Many business homeowners can properly notice that at times their company isn't functioning well; however, a food and/or beverage advisor can help identify issue areas and recommend ideas that ought to be executed so that the organization begins functioning on an effective level.

Well, the meals and cocktail industry is developing at a quick rate because foodies enjoy to obtain a new meal knowledge frequently. Properly, the supper experience not merely contains the food, but at the same time frame it matters the entire experience of the client from the food to the consumer services received, and even the surroundings and ambiance of the restaurant. Hence, starting a cafe would not only end the matter. You will have to control all different features associated with the restaurant so that you may satisfy your customers. If you may not know how to look after all these different things, a food and cocktail course is unquestionably the best selection for you.

The course in food and drink would truly gain you because you'd get to learn about the fundamental facts associated with the administration and function of one's business. The food and beverage class is simple to check out, and the duration of the program differs from someone to another. It's up to you to choose the course that you want to move for. Regardless, you may be sure that using this program you'd not only increase and enrich your theoretical information, however your realistic experience, as well.

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by Brooke Simmons

A month ago we were cranking outcalls, traveling to meet clients, and shaking hands with colleagues. Now, we are facing a dramatic change that we have never experienced before. I used to travel around the country to meet with Outreach’s largest customers to partner on strategic engagements with their teams. Now I am hiding from my toddler who is supposed to be watching Frozen 2 again (thanks, Disney+!). Maybe you’re reading this on your phone in a closet where you’ve hidden to get away from your spouse’s really loud conference call. Joking aside, this is a new frontier for many of us, and the old rules no longer apply.

Over the past week, our team at Outreach has seen a dramatic increase in customers asking for guidance on how to adapt their existing strategy to accommodate a global pandemic and a struggling economy. Below are the four steps Leaders, Outreach Administrators, and Sellers need to take to:

The Value You Provided Yesterday Might Be Irrelevant

Re-Evaluate Your Content

Collaborate, Don’t Pitch

Don’t Lose Your Low-Hanging Fruit

The Value You Provided Yesterday Might Be Irrelevant

Part of our job in sales has always been putting ourselves in the buyer’s shoes, and this is still true now. Ask yourself, how have your prospect’s priorities changed in the last 30 days, 7 days, or today? Are they facing more risk or a sudden opportunity? Your content most likely references a value proposition (“We are the fastest in the industry”) or “why buy now” statements that won’t resonate with your prospects today. The value you provided yesterday might be irrelevant or how you message your value might need to be tweaked. Before you change anything in your Outreach instance, think critically about how your value proposition and personas should be changed.

Sales & Marketing Leaders: Update Your Value Proposition and Personas

If your prospect’s business focuses on change, you will want to reflect that in your persona messaging/targeting. For example, here at Outreach, the shift to remote work provides us an opportunity to double-down on our messaging about how we support distributed teams. Our customers are focused on supporting their new work from home (WFH) teams as well, and we have pivoted our content to highlight the value we provide remote leaders and employees. Our customers in analytics and business intelligence are adapting their messaging to talk about how businesses can forecast and manage risk in these uncertain times.

Don’t automatically write-off entire industries. For example, selling into restaurants sounds unilaterally difficult now, right? Not quite. Some of our customers in foodservice have revised their messaging to highlight how they support delivery and takeout operations. Lauren Alt and the team at Solv have a similar challenge right now – they provide on-demand in-office visits for urgent care clinics. Lauren and the team recognized that these clinics need Solv’s telemedicine solution more than ever to keep doctors and patients safe and maintain access to care for at-risk populations. Lauren focused on updating its Outreach strategy to focus on the value provided by telemedicine, and the team at Solv signed over 100 new customers last week.

I spoke with Dan Gottlieb, Analyst in the Sales Practice at TOPO, to talk about what they’re seeing in the market and in the results of their “Impact of COVID-19” survey. Dan advised sales orgs to adjust their strategies to reflect the changes–some seismic–that COVID-19 has had on companies. He notes, “Everybody is experiencing some degree of change right now, and the degree of change varies by their role, industry, size, and geography. To design extremely relevant and valuable engagement tactics, capture the insights below about key personas across the buying committee:

The juxtaposition between roles, priorities, day in the life from pre-COVID19 vs now

The top 2 critical issues preventing leaders from achieving adjusted priorities and the risk of not fixing them, and then capture the rhetoric they used to describe the issue

2-3 insights from your current customers about their plan to address similar issues.”

Dan’s exercise is imperative to update your key personas quickly while considering your customer’s current needs. If you want to dig in more, I’d strongly suggest listening to TOPO’s “COVID-19 Impact” webinar hosted by Dan Gottlieb and Eric Wittlake. Once you feel solid about your updated value proposition(s), then it’s time to drill into your Outreach content.

Outreach Administrators: Create Content that Supports Your Team

We collaborated with our sales and marketing teams to create new content for approaching decision-makers that are facing the new challenge of an unplanned, fully remote sales team. We cloned some of our best performing sequences, edited the messaging and structure, tagged them with COVID-19, and shared them with our team to start using as they initiate new conversations. Here are some new pieces of content we developed:

Sequences targeted towards our “updated” value proposition of rapid productivity and our messaging supporting remote teams and enabling managers to coach remotely.

Objection handling templates to arm the reps when they get anticipated pushback, for example, “My team is all remote right now” or “We’re not purchasing anything new.” Huge disclaimer here: objection handling needs to be done with nuance and empathy. This is all the more reason to templatize and share approved messages so that reps are saying the right thing to build the relationship, not damage it.

Snippets highlighting successful customer stories and reference points for the team to use.

Sellers: Put Yourself In Your Customer’s Shoes

Above all, empathy, transparency, and vulnerability are more important than ever. Remember that some industries, like hospitality, travel, and emergency medicine, or areas like NYC or Seattle, have been deeply affected by COVID-19. Think about where your prospect is located, the market they serve, and the industry they are in before reaching out. That Chief Customer Officer? Probably pretty preoccupied supporting his own customers. Head of HR? Most likely focused on figuring out how to support hundreds of first-time WFH employees. Sometimes the best thing is *not* to contact someone immediately. So take the time now to slow down and research your prospects before you initiate conversations.

If you really need to write that email now, consider scheduling it to go out in the future so that you give your prospect breathing room during this time of uncertainty (Outlook info, Gmail info). Remember, trust and the strongest relationships are built in the most difficult times.

Re-Evaluate Your Content

Now that you’ve thought about the value your solution provides in a COVID-19 world and updates your personas, it’s time to update your Sequences. The good news is that it’s simple to update and share your content in Outreach so that your team is consistently sending the right messaging beginning today. Here are some things to keep in mind when updating your Sequence content:

Sales Leadership: Change Your Communications Channel

It’s likely that your buyers in EMEA and the US are just starting to work from home and are undergoing a period of the initial shock. Based on what we’re hearing from customers, the feedback is mixed with regard to what channel(s) are most effective when connecting with prospects right now.

A good example: should we be making calls right now? Given that many people are suddenly working from home, some may or may not have set up call forwarding from their business phone to their personal cell phones. Others may have a sophisticated phone setup and may still be getting emails when you leave a voicemail, so keep at it! If you’re worried that your team will just be calling into corporate 1-800 numbers, maybe limit call steps for now.

Consider expanding to other channels, like social touches through LinkedIn, or utilizing an integrated chat application to support inbound or e-gifts built into Sequences for late-stage deals. Check out the Outreach Galaxy to review all our integration partners, and start to explore options to expand your strategy beyond email and phone (To name a few: Drift, Sendoso, Alyce, Vidyard, and Bomb Bomb).

Regardless, re-evaluate the mix of steps in your Sequence and think about the channel that may work best in your situation. This will likely evolve over time so researching different channels or constantly testing will be important.

Outreach Administrators: Update Your In-Flight Sequences

For Sequences you choose to continue using (or that have a large number of active prospects), you can quickly update existing email content or call scripts. At Outreach, we’ve gone into some of our most-used Sequences, including the Agoge Sequences we use to ramp our sales reps and have updated the email steps. Below is a super simple change we made to a reply step in one of our active sequences:

To set this up, disable any other templates that might be on that Sequence step to ensure all prospects receive the updated message.

We’ve also modified all our prospecting Sequences to be less aggressive by adding in time between Sequence steps. This is easy to do and ensures you aren’t bombarding someone when they’re already feeling overwhelmed.

It’s mission-critical that you don’t let content that references irrelevant value continue to be used by the sales team – I personally have worked with many customers that have fantastic, thorough content strategies that exist on paper, but never get implemented into Outreach (the system that actually communicates with thousands of prospects a day)! This keeps me up at night. Streamlining your Outreach instance right now may be the right call for your business. Consider:

Disabling Sequences the team shouldn’t use

Restricting Sequence creation permissions

Using tagging and collections to keep approved messaging organized

Sellers: Soften Your Asks

We are always focused on our customers, and right now, keeping a meeting might not be their biggest priority and we respect that. To make sure we are keeping their needs front and center, we’ve created templated emails to preemptively ask prospects if they need to reschedule and if so, ask for a better time slot in the next few weeks. For example:

Our SDR leaders have advised their sales reps to take their prospects at their word when they get timing push-offs and pivot toward providing excellent follow-up. This means removing the pressure to respond right away and setting up Follow-Up Sequences to go out over a longer time period–we’ve been slotting at least two weeks out–for folks to adjust.

Collaborate, Don’t Pitch

Your prospects’ attention is more divided than ever. Market research is proving this to be true — TOPO surveyed 350+ sales professionals to understand the early impact the COVID-19 pandemic is having on their pipeline and found nearly 50% of buyers aren’t willing to book a meeting right now. Fortunately, sales are not about one meeting or just about the short term – especially in today’s current environment.

Leadership: Equip Your Team to Acknowledge The Moment

We’ve seen great examples of customers developing content that openly acknowledges that life may have changed for their prospects. Remember, you may have reps on your team that hasn’t sold in this type of environment; they’re feeling uncertainty and instability just like your customers. Support your team by reminding them of your company’s mission and instilling confidence that the solution you provide is essential. Your open communication and transparency are critical to enabling your reps to have the same type of conversation with their prospects. To make meaningful connections, we have to acknowledge the setting that we are all in — and that means talking about it.

Leadership: Make Sure Your Calls Aren’t “Business as Usual”

What your reps do on that first meeting with their prospects sets the tone for the entire deal. This isn’t the time for your typical discovery or demo call. Be laser-focused on the 1-2 pieces of critical value your solution provides, and collaborate with the customer on how you can meet the needs of their business. Watch the rep to buy talk time ratio on these calls – we should be listening more than ever to understand our prospects’ current pain, and work together on building a solution. Don’t demo your features, demonstrate extreme value to your prospect.

Sellers: Let the Buyer Drive

One of our tenured AEs, Reilly Devine, was going through an internal battle: how does he balance his sales DNA that pushes him to hit his goals with the impact of what’s happening in his customers’ lives and in the market? Reilly has invested months in some of his deals, but pushing to close at this moment felt wrong. So he did something different: he asked his buyer how they wanted to proceed. He built his message in three parts: 1. Acknowledge the situation, 2. Explain his obligation to reach out as a partner, and 3. I asked respectfully how to best move forward.

Reilly has since been getting positive feedback from buyers who appreciate his approach and sincerity. We have used his leadership and framework to collaborate as a team, and templatize and share our messages. We’ve tagged these templates and snippets in Outreach so they’re easy for other team members to find and use.

Sellers: Equip Your Champion to Sell Internally

My husband, Rob Simmons, runs an inside sales team for a fast-growing software company, Auditboard. Last night, we were discussing the “R-word:” Recession (we’re having a great time sheltering in place). I’m sure we share the same concerns as many of you: budgets freezing up, deal cycles slowing down, and additional scrutiny being added to new purchases. To protect their active deals, Auditboard is equipping its buyer champions with content that helps them sell upwards internally, especially if many of their prospects start to open up their recession playbooks.

Think about how you can enable your champions. Arm them with content (studies, whitepapers), metrics (ROI, time to value), and customer references. Help them educate others that may become involved with the purchase decision (we predict committee buying is going to make a comeback in a real way). Ensure that your champions can confidently defend your solution even in times of economic pressure.

Don’t Lose Your Low-Hanging Fruit

Now is the time to make sure your processes are buttoned-up. We have many customers in tough markets that are going to struggle with outbound sales right now, especially in travel, hospitality, and health care. More than ever, these businesses may need to rely on other methods to ensure they are building and protecting revenue where possible. Do your own internal diagnostic check on the following:

Inbound lead handling needs to be rock solid. Every lead needs to be routed quickly and conversion needs to stay high, especially for customers moving away from outbound selling.

Reinforce (or create) an incentivized referral program to mine warm leads within your customers. Your team can use Sequences to contact customers or partners to help get leads flowing.

Capitalize on canceled events. We’re seeing customers use Sequences to convert their canceled conference registration lists into full demos and executive meetings since we’re not traveling to events.

Protect the base. More than ever, staying connected to your customers is key to your bottom line. A well-thought-out Sequence strategy can help you communicate COVID-19 updates with customers, schedule critical meetings like business reviews, and manage your upcoming renewals.

If you can’t prospect now, build a pipeline for the future. Now that we find ourselves confined to our own homes (or various small, windowless rooms), we’re spending a lot of time in front of our laptops. Use that time to make prospect lists, organize your target accounts, and add those prospects to Sequences that start in the future. This ensures that you’re ready to engage when things do recover and your prospect’s focus springs back.

Above all else, remember that making real connections with other people is more important than ever during this time of uncertainty. Thankfully, that’s our job. Stay healthy and take care of each other.

  Go to our website:   www.ncmalliance.com

Selling in a COVID-19 World – 4 Immediate Steps to Take by Brooke Simmons A month ago we were cranking outcalls, traveling to meet clients, and shaking hands with colleagues.

[douglassmiith]

We Lost $140k in Sales in Less Than 30 Days. Heres What Were Doing to Fix It.

May 18, 2020 12 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

The following article is written by Ben Angel. Author of the book, Unstoppable: A 90-Day Plan to Biohack Your Mind and Body for Success. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | IndieBound. And be sure to order The Unstoppable Journal, the only journal of its kind based on neuroscience, psychology and biohacking to help you reach your goals.

When I launched my new bestselling book, Unstoppable, I had minus $3,000 in my bank account in October 2018. A year later, we had built our new business to $1.2 million in online sales and sold more than 50,000 copies of my book. We were on track to do $1.7 million in sales this year when the pandemic hit. Our sales dropped by $140,000 within 30 days. The Facebook ad campaigns we’d been running stopped working. As a result, we had to reduce our Facebook advertising budget from $88,000 per month to less than $30,000 per month because they largely became unprofitable. 

Like everyone else, I was in shock. All the effort my team put in was in jeopardy. Worse yet, the free online support we’d provided in the area of mental health was at risk of shutting down. 

Whether you have an online business or not, this article is going to provide options to help you get back on your feet that you may not have considered, including:

Fighting the Lies Fear Creates

Identifying the Worst-Case Scenario

Getting Sales Guilt By Creating Goodwill, Readying to Rebound

Securing a Flat-Fee Capital Loan

Reducing Expenses and Securing a “Cash Back” Credit Card

Identifying Low-Cost Opportunities With a Big Upside

Online Optimization on Steroids

Sales Funnel Optimization — Why a 1-Second Delay Could Cost You $2.5 Million Each Year

Time to Test!

1. Fighting the Lies Fear Creates

When sales dropped, my heart sank, and I began panicking. Trauma can rewire the brain to focus on negative experiences, making it hard to create logical plans. The first thing I did was to make a list of all the worst-case scenarios I’d worked through in the past, like surviving Hurricane Sandy, losing my father to brain cancer and other dire situations. 

Why? Reminding myself that I overcame insurmountable odds to get back into my logical, rational mind helped me recenter. I also stayed away from social media’s fear-based echo-chamber of panic to keep my brain from actively seeking out the threats, which clouds the mind. 

To regain emotional control, I designed a visualization that uses a combination of neurolinguistic programming (NLP) and hypnosis. One of our members used it to confront the person who had sexually assaulted her years ago, and it freed her emotionally after 20 years. It can be applied to any dilemma many of us find ourselves in. This style of visualization is a gym workout for your brain. It takes practice to master your mind, and this moment calls for it. 

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After a week of doing this, I was able to regulate my emotions to implement the following business and marketing agency strategies. These are technical so that you will be forced outside your comfort zone. 

Related: 50,000 Entrepreneurs Tell Us How to Avoid Stress and Anxiety

2. Identifying the Worst-Case Scenario

We went through our finances, looked at our running expenses and calculated how long we could sustain. Unsure of how long this chaos would last, we projected our scenarios based on six months of running at or just above breakeven. Once we did that, we worked backward to prevent it from occurring.

3. Getting Over Sales Guilt By Creating Goodwill, Readying Rebound

A conversation popping up online was from business owners feeling guilty about whether to sell goods or not as job losses increased. Working in the biohacking/mental health space, we have always been conscious of this. We made it a rule in the early days not to sell to those who are in a vulnerable position, instead directing them to free online resources we offer so that, if they find themselves in a financial situation, we’ll still be there to support them.

Not every business can provide free resources. Still, you can create goodwill by donating a percentage of sales to charities that support the vulnerable, or offer discounts to nurses and frontline workers who are fighting the pandemic. You can also use your email list or social media platforms to drive attention to someone else’s efforts. You don’t need money to make a difference; you need creativity.  

To play our part in supporting those hard-hit, we also created a comprehensive and free 23-page “Emergency Action Plan” vulnerable individuals could download to help them come up with their plan, generating more 700 downloads within the first few days of release. 

Once we had our goodwill plan in place, we dived into the demographics of our customers and started targeting people via Facebook ads that had a certain level of income. You can’t go broke trying to help others; otherwise, the assistance you provide will be short-lived. 

4. Securing a Flat-Fee Capital Loan 

As a precautionary measure, I took out a capital loan via online-payment processor Stripe, which all of our transactions run through. Similar to PayPal, it can provide capital loans within a few short minutes based on your previous sales volume. These loans have a flat fee and are paid back at a smaller percentage rate based on your daily sales volume. Making them manageable and avoiding expensive interest rates. Companies such as Quickbooks can also provide capital loans based on your accounting history, albeit at a more significant percentage rate. 

5. Reducing Expenses and Securing a “Cash Back” Credit Card

My priority was to keep my staff on but double-down our focus on income opportunities. We scoured our expenses, canceling monthly subscriptions to online software and non-essential expenses we weren’t utilizing. These fees can add up to hundreds, if not thousands of dollars per month. We used the app Truebill for business and personal accounts to ensure we didn’t miss anything.

I also found a Chase cash-back credit card that provides monthly rewards based on our advertising spend, such as Facebook ads. The one I chose also came with a $500 cash-back reward if we spent a certain amount within the first three months. 

6. Identifying Low-Cost Opportunities With a Big Upside

We went through all of our assets, i.e. database, previous customers, customers due to re-order certain products, social media channels such as YouTube that generate sales at low cost. Then, we identified which ones presented us with the greatest opportunity to generate profits. We also came up with ideas to partner with others on that would not only extend our reach, but minimize our risk at the same time. 

A local café, Book + Bottle, launched their new store the same week everything began closing. I provided a few suggestions for Terra, the owner. Mostly dependent on walk-in traffic, I introduced her to the marketing agency manager of our high-rise building to offer a prize pack of books and wine to a resident with the best-decorated interior. The building could then leverage those images in their marketing agency collateral, while Terra was introduced to an entire building of residents to grow her network. 

She also posted to social media a competition that allowed people to “tag their favorite nurse” for a chance to win a gift pack. Hence, creating virality and goodwill. 

If you are a retail store or restaurant, do not look past apartment complexes you can team up within your local area. These complexes will be fighting hard to keep their existing residences happy while fighting against new developments that may take leaseholders away from them. 

7. Online Optimization on Steroids

Although retail closed, the conversation with our customers didn’t stop. It just transitioned online. Even though we are already an online business, we quadrupled our efforts and small tweaks to double our profits with the same amount of ad spend. Here’s what we did: 

Speed-test our website page. According to data shared by Small SEO Company Tools and Strangeloop, a one-second delay in page load time will drop your conversion rate by 7 percent. This means that if your website drives $100,000 per day in sales, you could lose $2.5 million per year in lost conversions. We used Solarwinds Pingdom to test key pages for free to identify why your page is loading slowly.  

We then chose to recreate landing pages in Unbounce. Unbounce is a landing-page builder and optimizes your images and page content to increase load time. Our page went from a load time of 8.5 seconds to 2.5 seconds. 

We also uncovered 80-plus percent of our sales for the month of January were a result of mobile adverts running on Facebook. Hence, an opportunity to optimize specifically for mobile too. Doing a little research, we came across Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). It’s a simplified page HTML page that is backed by Google. Many media outlets use it when they post their articles to Facebook. You can learn about it here. 

8. Sales Funnel Optimization

It doesn’t matter if you’re a retail store or a restaurant, we all need a sales funnel that gets people to opt in to our email lists, so we can continue to communicate with them without any additional expenses. Email still has one of the highest returns on investment available to us. Here are a few examples of what you can do; 

Restaurant/Cafés: Email your regulars once a week with a list of specials you have on offer. Create a Q&A section at the bottom of each email that can easily be duplicated each time that health and safety concerns are addressed. Your customers need to know you’re taking steps to protect them. Keep up the regular weekly communication, and keep your customers informed if your hours change.

Retail: If you can segment customers based on previous buying behavior, send email campaigns that speak to their needs. And never, ever, promote more than three products per email. Several years ago, I worked with a fashion designer. We reduced the number of items she promoted in each email from 15 to three, taking her online sales from $10,000 per month to in excess of $100,000 per month.

Online Businesses: Take the time to assess any email funnels you have and identify email campaigns that don’t convert. Can you create a more compelling offer that’s relevant to their changing needs? And, most importantly, test your email subject lines. It can make or break your sales funnel. 

Online Content: We went through all the content we posted in the past year, including articles, videos and social media posts to identify pieces that drove sales. Go through your content and compare it to your sales reports to see if a spike in sales coincided with a particular social media piece or article sent to your email list. Now you can reuse or repurpose it by putting it into context with what’s currently occurring. 

It’s vital that you optimize your email funnel as soon as possible. Look at open and click-through rates and conversion rates for each email you send. If you’re not tracking this data, speak to your website developer and set it up now. 

9. Time to Test

Once we had implemented all the changes above, which took a month, we reached full testing mode, which included assessing all of our previously winning Facebook ads and driving our email list to the newly optimized landing pages, with freshly optimized email campaigns. While we still have a long way to go, and despite our revenue taking a massive hit, the worst-case scenario has yet to transpire. Sales are once again gradually on the increase, and we may still hit our yearly target. 

Build The Plane as You Fly It!

We’re all faced with a million things that need to be done urgently. In this rush, we fail to identify the small tweaks that can quickly double our profits with little effort. Set aside the same time every single day to focus on the elements above, instead of saying, “I’ll get to it when I have time.” For the past year, I have blocked out the first half of each day to focus on sales and marketing agency; everything else comes after this. Set a time that works for your schedule and stick to it as if your business depends on it because, for many of us, it does. 

Finally, if you don’t look after your mental health right now, you won’t have the mental faculty to get done what you need to. Often the solutions will pop up in a moment of silence, but first, you need to give your brain space to what it does best. 

Related: Should You Microdose to Treat Depression?

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