Bharati Ahuja

What Is A Progressive Web App (PWA) ? Why Do I Need It?

A Mobile Ready website is much more than just having a Responsive Website. Let’s explore - PWA , AMP and Responsiveness.

Today if your website needs to be called mobile-ready it needs to be:

Responsive
(Accelerated Mobile Pages) AMP Enabled &
Should also be a Progressive Web App (PWA)

Mobilegeddon & The Google Mobile Friendly Updates.

Google in November 2014 had announced the ‘mobile friendly’ labels for responsive websites in their search results.

In August 2016 Google stopped displaying these labels to keep the results uncluttered. As by then 80% of the websites in the Google index met the mobile-friendly criteria.

In August 2016 Google started showing the icon for AMP pages in search results.

What Is AMP?

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are pages which are light weight and load quickly on mobile devices. AMPs are served from the Google AMP Cache, which is a proxy-based content delivery network for delivering all valid AMP documents. It fetches AMP HTML pages, caches them, and improves page performance automatically.

AMP can load quickly but cannot retain the same low speed in case of complex functions like online payments and other, dynamic functionality.

To give a great user experience to the user usually people develop mobile apps. But to avoid the drawbacks of the native apps PWA comes to your rescue.

What are Progressive Web Apps (PWA)?

A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a web app that uses modern web capabilities to deliver an app-like experience to users. These apps meet certain requirements (checklist below), are deployed to servers, accessible through URLs, and indexed by search engines.

This can work in along with Cordova to provide a multiple deploy targets for all your users.

PWA

Why do I need a PWA ?

PWA adds the advantages of a native app to the website.
According to, Flurry Analytics, 80% of the mobile user’s time was spent inside apps and 20% on the mobile web. This continues to grow year by year.
With mobile devices becoming smarter, the time inside apps is surely going to increase.
The app needs to be installed on the mobile device which takes up a lot of storage space. PWA runs from the server leaving a lot of free space for the user on the mobile device.
According to, a test, some native apps took up 460 MB of space whereas the PWA just needed 1 MB.
In the case of an app, the user needs to be notified to update it. The PWA lives on the server so there is no update distribution lag.
PWA can work offline.
PWA, being a website fortified with the benefits of an app, is linkable, searchable, and indexable.
com had decided to discontinue their website and go app only, but that did not go well with the users.After their PWA named FlipKart Lite the statistics showed 40% returning visitors, +63 conversions from home screen visits and more time spent on FlipKart Lite.

Case Study on https://developers.google.com/web/showcase/2016/flipkart

(Walmart Inc. has announced acquisition of 77 per cent stake in Flipkart in its biggest takeover till date)

Technical Details About PWA:

To give a Fast, Integrated, Reliable and Engaging user experience PWA uses features like Service Workers, Push Notifications, and Web App Manifests.

What Is a Service Worker?

A Service Worker is a scriptable intermediate layer between the web page and the network. It is a script that the browser runs in the background, separate from a web page. It includes features like push notificationsand background sync.
A Service Worker gives access to an API that provides a programmable network proxy within the client-side context.
It makes it easier to create web applications that can handle network requests offline while browsing in varying network speeds.
At times, an HTTP request is made but a response is not received on the mobile devices, which can happen when the user goes through a tunnel, or the network varies from 2G to 3G, or the user automatically joins a saturated WiFi network. The Service Worker allows developers to cache assets when connected and offers a seamless experience when offline so user experience is maintained.

Some Technicalities to Note About a Service Worker

A Service Worker is not HTML or XML. It is a JavaScript Worker. Hence, the Service Worker does not access the DOM directly.
The script communicates with the relevant pages by responding to messages sent by using the postMessage interface, and those pages can then access the DOM if required.
A Service Worker is basically a proxy server which serves between apps, browsers, and the network when available.
It allows you to control and handle network requests from the pages.
The Service Worker script does not run when not in use, and restarts when it’s next needed. Hence, you cannot rely on global state handlers.
If there is information that you need to reuse on restart, service workers do have access to the IndexedDB API, which stores data inside the user’s browser.
Service Workers use Javascript Promiseson a large scale. Technically, a Promise is a proxy for a value not necessarily known when the promise is created.
The browser needs to support Service Workers.

Web App Manifests

The web app manifest is a JSON file. It is a simple text file which has the metadata for the app.

This JSON allows you:

to control the look and feel of the app
to control how the app is launched
to display icons for the user home screen and splash screen which is displayed while the app is loading
When the app is launched, you can specify which page gets loaded as well as the screen orientation (portrait/landscape view).

PWA Checklist:

Site is served over HTTPS
Pages are responsive on tablets & mobile devices
All app URLs load while offline
Metadata provided for Add to Home screen
First load fast even on 3G
Site works cross-browser
Page transitions don't feel like they block on the network
Each page has a URL
Site's content is indexed by Google
org metadata is provided where appropriate
Social metadata is provided where appropriate
Canonical URLs are provided when necessary
Pages use the History API
Content doesn't jump as the page loads
Pressing back from a detail page retains scroll position on the previous list page
When tapped, inputs aren't obscured by the onscreen keyboard
Content is easily shareable from standalone or full screen mode
Site is responsive across phone, tablet and desktop screen sizes
Any app install prompts are not used excessively
The Add to Home Screen prompt is intercepted
First load very fast even on 3G
Site uses cache-first networking
Site appropriately informs the user when they're offline
Provide context to the user about how notifications will be used
UI encouraging users to turn on Push Notifications must not be overly aggressive.
Push notifications must be timely, precise and relevant
Provides controls to enable and disable notifications
User is logged in across devices via Credential Management API
User can pay easily via native UI from Payment Request API.

How do I Test the PWA?

To help teams create the best possible experiences Google hasput together a checklist which breaks down all the things Google thinks it takes to be a Baseline PWA, and how to take that a step further with an Exemplary PWA by providing a more meaningful offline experience, reaching interactive even faster and taking care of many more important details.

You can run ‘Lighthouse’ which is an open-source, automated tool for improving the quality of web pages. You can run it against any web page, public or requiring authentication. It has audits for performance, accessibility, progressive web apps, and more.

You can run Lighthouse in Chrome DevTools, from the command line, or as a Node module. You give Lighthouse a URL to audit, it runs a series of audits against the page, and then it generates a report on how well the page did. From there, use the failing audits as indicators on how to improve the page. Each audit has a reference doc explaining why the audit is important, as well as how to fix it.

Can I submit a PWA to Google Play Store and App Store?

The PWAs are available through the browser on Android . However the PWA can also be submitted to the APP store and the Google Play Store after packaging it for the relevant store.

Converting your responsive website to a PWA and making it AMP enabled is the new mobile-ready website.

Related Posts:

The Benefits of Combining Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) & Progressive Web Apps (PWA)

Understanding The Google AMP Cache

How To Add Google Analytics To AMP Pages

Image credit:

http://webagility.com/posts/how-progressive-web-apps-make-the-web-great-again

Google / SEO - 07/16/2018

GDPR - General Data Protection Regulation : 20 Key Points

GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation.
Its purpose is to unify all EU member states' approaches to data regulation, so that all data protection laws are applied identically in every country within the EU.
It will protect EU citizens from organisations using their data irresponsibly.
It ensures that EU citizens are in charge of the information which is shared about them.
It also gives them the charge to know where and how it's shared.
The GDPR will come into force on 25 May - and even though the UK is due to leave Europe in the next 12 months, it will still apply to all businesses handling EU residents' data, effectively replacing the Data Protection Act 1998.
Any business found not complying to the rules could be charged fines of up to €20 million or 4% of the company's global annual turnover.
The toughest fines will be reserved for the worst data breaches or data abuse.
GDPR is a regulation, not a directive, the UK does not need to draw up new legislation - instead, it will apply automatically.
'Controllers' and 'Processors' of data need to abide by the GDPR.
Even if controllers and processors are based outside the EU, the GDPR will still apply to them so long as they're dealing with data belonging to EU residents.
All types of data organizations who collect about people, online identifiers such as IP addresses now qualify as personal data.
Other data, like economic, cultural or mental health information, are also considered personally identifiable information.
Pseudonymised personal data may also be subject to GDPR rules, depending on how easy or hard it is to identify whose data it is.
People have the right to access any information a company holds on them.
People have the right to know why that data is being processed, how long it's stored for, and who gets to see it.
Read More on Rules for the protection of personal data inside and outside the EU on https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection_en
Read More On GDPR Fines on http://www.itpro.co.uk/general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/31025/gdpr-fines-how-high-are-they-and-how-can-you-avoid
GDPR Compliance Checklist on https://gdprchecklist.io/
Questions to Consider in order to assess if you are GDPR ready - https://www.hubspot.com/data-privacy/gdpr-checklist

News / SEO - 05/24/2018

Walmart Buys 77% stake In FlipKart - Amazon in talks to buy Stake In Future Retail

On May 9^th 2018 Walmart announced that,

Walmart will pay approximately $16 billion for an initial stake of approximately 77 percent in Flipkart.

The remainder of the business will be held by some of Flipkart’s existing shareholders, including Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, Tencent Holdings Limited, Tiger Global Management LLC and Microsoft Corp.

While the immediate focus will be on serving customers and growing the business, Walmart will support Flipkart’s ambition to transition into a publicly-listed, majority-owned subsidiary in the future.

About FlipKart:

Founded in 2007, Flipkart has led India’s eCommerce revolution. The company has grown rapidly and earned customer trust, leveraging a powerful technology foundation, including artificial intelligence, and emerging as a leader in electronics, large appliances, mobile and fashion and apparel.

In 2015 FlipKart had adopted an App only strategy and had shut down their website. But, they found it difficult to provide an efficient user experience and soon shifted to a website which combined the benefits of the App and website and called their Progressive Web App as FlipKart Lite.

The FlipKart PWA resulted in :

3X more time spent on site
40% higher re-engagement rate
70% greater conversion rate among those arriving via Add to Homescreen
3X lower data usage.

Some Major Commercial Reasons Walmart shared in their Investor Presentation are:

"India is one of the most attractive retail markets in the world, given its size and growth rate, and our investment is an opportunity to partner with the company that is leading transformation of e-commerce in the market," Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said in a statement.
Flipkart has 54 million active consumers, and with this influx of money it can double this base in short period of time.
Walmart commits to sustained job creation and investment in India which is one of the largest and fastest-growing economies in the world.
Flipkart’s supply chain arm, eKart, serves more than 800 cities, making 500,000 deliveries daily.
“Flipkart has established itself as a prominent player with a strong, entrepreneurial leadership team that is a good cultural fit with Walmart,” said Judith McKenna, president and chief executive officer of Walmart International.
Over the last 10 years, Flipkart has become a market leader by focusing on customer service, technology, supply chain and a broad assortment of products.
Walmart’s investment includes $2 billion of new equity funding, which will help Flipkart accelerate growth in the future.
While Walmart and Flipkart will leverage the combined strengths of both companies, they will maintain distinct brands and operating structures.

Indian e Commerce Market

The FlipKart – Walmart deal surely scales a major success graph for the Indian eCommerce start-up but, it also passes on the control of the online retail business in India to two large American companies – Walmart and Amazon.

Soon after this announcement Amazon is said to be in talks with India’s largest brick-and-mortar retail company Future Retail, to acquire a stake.

Future Retail is the retail arm of Kishore Biyani. Future Group, owns physical retail stores such as Big Bazaar and Easy Day.

“Future has consolidated the market. There are only three big retailers left: Reliance Retail, D-Mart and Future Retail… Future is an attractive target,” said Abneesh Roy, senior vice-president (research) at ‎Edelweiss Capital.

Roy added that Future and Amazon can be of use to each other. For example, Future Retail can learn from Amazon’s global sourcing business. On the other hand, Amazon in India can take the help of Future’s supply chain. Future Group has a fully-owned subsidiary called Future Supply Chain Solutions. It has a network of 46 distribution centres, which includes four temperature-controlled centres — spread out in a ‘hubs and branches’ model, covering 11,228 PIN codes.

E-commerce / News - 05/24/2018

Influencer Marketing Campaigns - Where Brands And Content Creators Come Together

Traditional marketing usually marketed products using celebrity marketing as an ultimate tool. Marketers use celebrity endorsers in hope that the positive images of the celebrity endorser of the brand will also be passed on to the products or the brand image associated with the celebrities.

Celebrity marketing surely works in the digital marketing world too. But, it is going through an evolutionary phase with Influencer Marketing increasing extremely fast over the past years and its global value now is estimated to be 1.07 billion U.S. dollars.

Influencer Marketing

The influencer marketing space is very powerful and has the potential to have a more genuine impact. This is because the ad. Is woven in the content and does not seem like an advertisement.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is a form of marketing in which focus is placed on influential people rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential buyers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers.

How does influencer marketing work?

Influencer marketing is an offshoot of content marketing . Content marketers created content to market products/services. Quality content creators became influencers in the long run. Some have established such good reputation for themselves that when they mention a product/service in their content it has a positive impact on the sales of that product and the helps build a brand image too.

Every celebrity may not be an influencer but every influencer has the potential of becoming a celebrity.

It is the fastest growing customer acquisition channel – beating organic search, paid search and email marketing.

Who is an Influencer?

An influencer is someone who has earned a good reputed presence on social media with a sizeable no. of followers/subscribers (at least 3000 – 5000).

How can an influencer promote your products/services?

As the name suggests, influencer marketing is when a brand uses an “influencer” to promote the brand by posting about a product or service or about the brand in general. Influencer marketing is the new “word of mouth”. Of course it is a paid WOM but the way it is presented in the content of the influencer makes it trust worthy or makes it look just like another ad.

How to Implement an Influencer Marketing Campaign?

Define your goals to be achieved by the campaign.
Identify the products/services to be marketed on the relevant social media channels.
Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and Pinterest work well with a product that you can physically see. Unsurprisingly, the most common products promoted by influencers on Instagram are fashion and beauty related.
Services are less obvious because of this service brands work better with longer form. Bloggers or video bloggers are the perfect influencers in this case as they can review their experience and tell their readers a story.
Identify the influencers on those social media channels. Influencer identification and selection is without a doubt the most time-consuming step, but it is also the most imperative; this stage can make or break a campaign.
Select a relevant analytics platform. Usually the social media platforms have their insights and analytics which give you the detailed data.
If doing all this sounds like a herculean task then there are influencer marketing platforms which offer expert help in executing these tasks. To get an idea goto https://influencermarketinghub.com/influencer-marketing-agencies/ select the social media platform to get the relevant list.

Currently, YouTube and Instagram are the 2 most popular platforms for Influencer Marketing.

According to Shane Barker - Some Key Statistics Instagram vs. YouTube:

Instagram

The 50 most followed Instagram influencers have a combined follower count of 2.5 billion.
With an estimated 14.5 million sponsored posts, influencer marketing on Instagram is a $1 billion industry.
It’s estimated that tens of millions of people make money off, of Instagram. Top Instagrammers can make up to tens of thousands of dollars per post and $500,000/year.
48.4% of respondents in a survey comprising 20000+ consumers use Instagram to engage with influencer content.

YouTube

7 out of 10 YouTube subscribers relate better to their favorite YouTube content creator than to traditional television or movie stars, and 40% of millennials believe their favorite YouTuber understands them better than their friends.
Videos created by the top 25 YouTube stars were viewed 3x more, commented on 12x more, and resulted in 2x as many actions than videos from traditional celebrities.
A YouTuber with one to three million subscribers averages $125,000 per post.
24.6% of the respondents in a survey said that they prefer using YouTube to engage with sponsored content.

Others / SEO - 05/09/2018

Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn – The Men Who developed TCP/IP Receive A Franklin Institute Award.

Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn have been awarded a Franklin Institute Award for developing TCP/IP, the protocol that allows effective communication between millions of computer networks.

About Franklin Institute Award:

Since 1824, The Franklin Institute of Philadelphia has honored the legacy of Benjamin Franklin by presenting awards for outstanding achievements in science, engineering, and industry. Past laureates include Thomas Edison, Marie Curie, Claude Shannon, Jane Goodall, Nikola Tesla, Stephen Hawking, Edward Lorenz, the Wright Brothers, Bill Gates, and Albert Einstein.

What Is TCP/IP?

TCP/IP technically applies to network communications where the TCP transport is used to deliver data across IP networks. A so-called "connection-oriented" protocol, TCP works by establishing a virtual connection between two devices via a series of request and reply messages sent across the physical network.

Who Is Vint Cerf?

Vinton Gray Cerf is an American Internet pioneer, who is recognized as one of "the fathers of the Internet"
In the early days, Cerf was a manager for the United States' Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency(DARPA) funding various groups to develop TCP/IP technology.
Cerf was instrumental in the funding and formation of ICANN from the start.
Cerf is active in many organizations that are working to help the Internet deliver humanitarian value to the world. He is supportive of innovative projects that are experimenting with new approaches to global problems, including the digital divide, the gender gap, and the changing nature of jobs.
Cerf is also known for his formal attire, typically appearing in a three-piece suit daily for work—a rarity in an industry known for its casual dress norms.

Who is Robert Kahn?

After receiving a B.E.E. degree in electrical engineering from the City College of New York in 1960, Kahn went on to Princeton University where he earned a M.A. in 1962 and Ph.D. in 1964.
In 1972, he began work at the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) within Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency(DARPA).
In the fall of 1972, he demonstrated the ARPANET by connecting 20 different computers at the International Computer Communication Conference.
He then helped develop the TCP/IP protocols for connecting diverse computer networks.
He started the United States government's billion dollar Strategic Computing Initiative, the largest computer research and development program ever undertaken by the U.S. federal government.
After thirteen years with DARPA, he left to found the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) in 1986, and as of 2015 is the chairman, CEO and president.

Google / News - 04/20/2018

Secure Your Site With SSL Before Chrome Marks Your Site As “Not Secure” From July 2018 Onwards

In August 2014 Google announced that security is a top priority for us. They also added that:

“Beyond our own stuff, we’re also working to make the Internet safer more broadly. A big part of that is making sure that websites people access from Google are secure. For instance, we have created resources to help webmasters prevent and fix security breaches on their sites.

We want to go even further. At Google I/O a few months ago, we called for “HTTPS everywhere” on the web.”

Hence, HTTPS was officially acknowledged as a ranking signal in 2014.

Since then, Google has been advocating the use of SSL Certificates (HTTPS encryption) for a safe and secure web. Beginning in July 2018 with the release of Chrome 68, Chrome will mark all HTTP sites as “not secure”.

Treatment of HTTP Pages

In Chrome 68, the omnibox will display “Not secure” for all HTTP pages.

Since Google made the above announcement , HTTPS usage has already made some incredible progress. You can see all of this in the Google public Transparency Report:

64 percent of Chrome traffic on Android is now protected, up from 42 percent a year ago.
Over 75 percent of Chrome traffic on both ChromeOS and Mac is now protected, up from 60 percent on Mac and 67 percent on Chrome OS a year ago
71 of the top 100 sites on the web use HTTPS by default, up from 37 a year ago.

HTTPS is easier and cheaper than ever before, and it enables both the best performance the web offers and powerful new features that are too sensitive for HTTP.

SSL Certificates protect your customer's personal data including passwords, credit cards and identity information. Getting an SSL certificate is the easiest way to increase your customer's confidence in your online business.

Some FAQs regarding SSL Certificates:

What is an SSL Certificate?

An SSL Certificate is a digital certificate issued for a domain by a central authority called the Certificate Authority. To be issued an SSL Certificate, you must purchase an SSL Certificate and then go through a verification process conducted by the Certificate Authority.

Why should I buy an SSL Certificate?

An SSL Certificate does 2 things: a. Encrypt the information sent from your user's browser to your website b. Authenticate your website's identity.
By doing these 2 things, an SSL Certificate protects your customers and in turn increases their trust in your online business. This is especially important if your website requires users to login using passwords or enter sensitive information such as credit card details.

Do SSL Certificates work in all browsers?

SSL Certificates are compatible with all major browsers.

Do I need technical expertise to set up an SSL Certificate on my website?

While it isn't difficult to install an SSL Certificate, it does involve following a series of steps.

Want to know how Chrome will inform users about insecure pages ?

Read an in-depth article on https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-sets-https-deadline/236225/

Want to buy an SSL Certificate for your website ?

Check out the options on: http://webshop.webpro.in/digital-certificate we will be glad to help.

Google / SEO - 04/18/2018

Google Rolls Out Mobile-First Indexing – Some Important FAQs Answered.

There is no doubt that mobile search is huge and the number of searches from mobile devices are increasing exponentially day by day.

Gary Illyes, Google webmaster trends analyst, during a SMX Advanced conference in Seattle in Seattle in June 2017 had mentioned that the Mobile-First index is going to be huge.

Illyes had said:

"We don’t have a timeline for the launch yet but, we have some ideas for when this will launch, but it’s probably many quarters away. Our engineers’ timeline was initially end of 2017. Right now, we think more 2018.

On March 26th 2018, Google announced that after a year and a half of careful experimentation and testing, we’ve started migrating sites that follow the best practices for mobile-first indexing.

Some FAQs regarding mobile-first indexing are as follows:

Google Mobile First Indexing FAQs 2018

What Does Mobile First Indexing Mean?

Historically, the Google index primarily used the desktop version of a page's content when evaluating the relevance of a page to a user's query. Since majority of users now access Google via a mobile device, the index will primarily use the mobile version of a page's content going forward.

Does Google Have a Separate Mobile First Index?

No, Google continues to use only one index.

How does Google evaluate sites for Mobile First Indexing?

Google evaluates each site individually on its readiness for mobile-first indexing based on the best practices and transition the site when the site is ready.

What are the best practices for Mobile First Indexing?

If your site has separate desktop and mobile content, which means you have a dynamic serving or separate URLs (or m-dot) site, make sure you follow the best practices below to prepare for mobile-first indexing:

Your mobile site should contain the same content as your desktop site.

Structured data should be present on both versions of your site.
Metadata should be present on both versions of the site.
Verify both versions of your site in Search Console
Ensure your servers have enough capacity to a handle potential increase in crawl rate on the mobile version of your site.
Verify that your robots.txt directives work as you intended for both versions of your site. In most cases, sites should use the same directives for both mobile and desktop versions of their sites.
Make sure you have the correct rel=canonical and rel=alternate link elements between your mobile and desktop versions.
If Your site has both AMP and non-AMP versions of a page. Users see two different URLs then, Google prefers the mobile version of
the non-AMP URL for indexing.

Does Mobile First Indexing affect rankings?

Mobile-first indexing is about how we gather content, not about how content is ranked. mobile-first indexing has no ranking advantage over mobile content that’s not yet gathered this way or desktop content.

Though mobile-friendly content performs better for those who are searching on mobile. But, as always, ranking uses many factors. Google may show content to users that’s not mobile-friendly or that is slow loading if many other signals determine it as the most relevant content to show.

How does the page load time affect mobile-first indexing?

Recently Google announced that beginning in July 2018 page speed will be a ranking factor for mobile searches. Content that loads faster may perform better for both desktop and mobile searchers.

However, the “Speed Update,” as Google is calling it, will only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users and will only affect a small percentage of queries. It applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal, so a slow page may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content.

How will Google notify webmasters/site owners that their websites have been migrated to mobile-first index?

Google will notify webmasters/site owners that their sites are migrated to the mobile-first indexing process via messages in the Google Search Console. Here is a screen shot of a notification:

Mobile-First Indexing Google Search Console

Google / SEO - 04/16/2018

7 Ways Big Data Is Changing The Way Marketers Reach Their Audience

At the focal point of modern marketing is information. Without quality information, you cannot know how to get convertible leads. However, today, marketing coincides with an interesting phase of innovation where big data plays a big role in how marketers go about their business. I will look at ways big data is shaping the way marketers reach their audience.

1. Makes Targeted Marketing Possible

Reaching to the market is an art that requires foolproof targeting. With analytics, you can scan the population for your market. Apart from feasibility tests of retails stores, which require analysis of target audience, even companies targeting global customers use the same level of targeting.

If you make products for Microsoft Windows users, you can reach directly to them using targeted ads and offers. You don't have to sell to everyone else who may not be interested blindly.

7 Ways Big Data Is Changing

2. Market Information Synergy To Understand The Customer

When it is about people as customers, the information about them is usually scattered across various media, authorities, and inherent in them. With analytics, you can bring together this information together and make sense of it. Companies today can target the customer with precision.

3. It Informs On The Marketing Message

With competent information about existing solutions, one can make the message right for the customer. To do this, you need to understand the frustrations, needs, and proposals that customers put across. For example, product updates are based on feedback, without it, the improvement would not matter.

4. Customer Engagement And Consequent Growth

Information is not just about the company to its customers. Internal information and reverse communication from customers to companies is very healthy. Companies leveraging on feedback achieve tremendous growth. According to research, companies that engage customers are growing faster than their counterparts that do not. Social media is a great way to communicate. After this exchange, making use of this information separates serious companies from pretenders.

5. Tailored Customer Products

Customers are increasingly interested in custom products. If it is an enterprise software, companies want it customized for their use. Knowing how many people who would be interested in your service, you can evaluate the economies of delivering the service. In the process, you can control a niche customer base unique only to you.

6. Budgeting Decisions About Market Channels

Being frugal in your marketing budget requires perfect information lest you affect the effectiveness of your campaign. With analytics, you can confidently identify media channels effective to your cause. Without this information, you are likely to gamble with your strategy, which is not good.

7. Being Where And When You Need The Product

It might come by surprise that you will receive emails about antivirus updates mostly on the third quarter of the year. Some types of promotional emails you only get them at the beginning of the year. Why is so? Companies use big data analytics to understand general trends, and they use them to know when to come to you.

News / SEO - 11/15/2017

The Digital Entrepreneur and Social Networks

The new consumer of social networks, an opinion-former who shares in the network the brands of his or her choice, and even produces content with suggestions for your company to choose a name for a new product, a book name, movies, shows, events and other services. We are living in the age of co-creation, now it is the consumer who says which is the best product or service (no longer the store owner or manufacturer).

Business is no longer as it was before; the Internet has come to create a new world of business, a new way of selling, and innovating. The photographer innovates with cell phones, which turns digital photography in real time. The newspaper will not end because it reinvents itself. Radio has not ended the invention of TV. On the contrary, radio occupies a new space on web, and it becomes an important segmented media. Business reinvents itself all the time. Is innovation a risk?

The worst risk is not to innovate. The world calls for innovation, the signed worker walks out and takes the place of the entrepreneur: the human being capable of creating new jobs and fulfilling dreams. Surfing in new wave, the digital entrepreneur is characterized as a specialist in innovation who understands creative economics and digital identities. He/she can be a producer of website, creator of connections and interactions with brands and companies in social networks.

The Digital Entrepreneur and Social Networks

The Digital Entrepreneur is the one whose business’ processes, relationships with partners, clients and employees is carried out mainly by digital means. On average, digital entrepreneurs have been on the market for almost 2 years. Of the total, 62% are in the service sector. The most sought after sector is commerce, with 33% of answers. Industry and agriculture correspond to 5% of the total.

The proportion of digital entrepreneurs with previous experience in the offline world is inversely proportional since only 18% have stated that they have had a non-digital business. Most of the businesses (59%) are informal and do not register the employees in the portfolio (69%). The gross annual turnover of 60% of the projects was between $36 thousand and $240 thousand in 2008. What are the advantages of having a digital business? Familiarity with the environment reduced initial investment cost and less dependence on infrastructure.

Why has social networking strategies failed in many companies?

The American researcher and professor Mikotaj Jan Piskotiski, who studied more than 50 companies in various economic sectors, found a very common mistake: the companies implemented their digital strategies on social platforms to disseminate commercial messages or seek customer feedback.

The main interest of the public of social networks is not to receive commercial messages, but to know and make relationships with other people, not with companies. Therefore, the approach in social networks has to be different.

Social strategy is different from digital strategy. Social strategy is about exploring the way people really want to connect with other people, for example: Helping to improve existing relationships, establish new relationships, create new ways to address unmet social needs, and only then link proposed solutions and business goals.

Facebook is a mass network, where it is more common to add people we already know. But for the sake of privacy and security, people are now choosing to build connections on segmented social networks by developing offline relationships. Creating niche networks is a social strategy for professionals, doctors, dentists, lawyers, teachers, consultants. For the fashion lovers, the social network Fashion.me, reaches more than 1 million registered users.

There is a sea of opportunities linked to the needs and motives that lead the individual to always live in groups, going back to the times of the "tribes" today; we have the creation of segmented networks, which are a representation of the relationships between their groups with specific interests. The main purpose of niche social networks is to connect people, in chats, forums, communities, video channels, online symposia and others.

The correct strategy is to focus on the community and not the tool. Try to find out what is more useful and accessible to your niche. And above all, stimulate the engagement of the members through the exchange of information and experiences.

Social Media - 10/27/2017

43% of marketers say 75% of their content isn’t being consumed. Despite This Survey Result, Why You Should Publish Content Regularly?

A recent post on http://searchengineland.com/survey-43-percent-marketers-say-75-percent-content-not-consumed-277626 mentions:

A new survey from BrightEdge on the future of content and search marketing exposes some interesting contradictions between what enterprise marketers think and what they do. Conducted earlier this year, the survey received 252 responses from “digital marketers at Fortune 500 brands that represent a split of B2B and B2C.”

From a content marketing perspective, the top categories these marketers were focused on were:

Blogging — 69 percent
Social media — 62 percent
Video — 45 percent
Infographics — 30 percent

The metrics being used to determine the success of content marketing efforts were:

Conversion
Engagement
Traffic

Another interesting finding is that roughly 70 percent of respondents said that 50 percent or less of their content was being used or consumed by the intended audience. And 43 percent said that 75 percent of their content was NOT being consumed.

The overall picture that emerges from the survey is one of inefficiency and misalignment between where enterprise marketers think the audiences are going and what they’re doing to reach them. Furthermore, they’re pouring resources into content that they believe is not being seen or read by its intended audience.

website-planning-mistakes

My Views On This Survey Results:

I think, more than reflecting the inefficiency the results, reflect the need to pour more resources into content or at least continue with the resources already allocated for content.

Whatever the platform social or search you cannot achieve anything without content. The need to publish content or invest in content marketing as it called is the only way to get correlated to the topics, products, services, etc. for which you want to establish a web presence.

Whether it is the owned, earned or the paid platform we need content. Again, the content can be all formats images, text, videos, podcasts, etc.

As and when you publish content and share it on various platforms the outreach increases in direct proportion to the quality of content. This needs to be done on a continuous basis. If you stop publishing content, then the outreach may remain stable or may decline. This signifies no growth.

If we go by the fact that 75% of content is NOT being consumed:

If we publish 100 posts then only 25 of them are being read. If we get dejected by these results and decrease the no. of posts or stop publishing content, then there is an adverse effect on growth. If instead of 100 posts, we reduce the posts to 50 then we can assume that only 12 to 13 posts are being read.

By reducing the content marketing budget, we are even reducing our engagement, outreach and search presence and thereby traffic.

If we want to increase the content consumption, then we need to invest further in content marketing. Instead if we increase the posts from 100 to 200 and, also improve the quality of content, then we can expect 50 posts to be read. (Keeping the same percentage for consumption – 25% though this can improve marginally if the quality standard is higher)

Though the percentage is the same but this increases the engagement, outreach and the presence. The search engines also give importance to quality content and the correlation to the topics you have published increases thereby improving the search presence. 50 posts read will also increase the shares and likes on social media which further has a positive effect of social signals on search presence.

Hence, please do not get dejected by this survey, this means that to increase and improve the engagement, outreach and search presence raise the quality of the content, also increase the quantity.

When you enter a store, out of 1000s of items in the store you may buy only one and walk out of the store that does not mean the store needs to reduce on the no. of items on display. You have to go on adding content to all the web presence identities your business has online. Some people may just read, some may share, some may comment, some may just move on without any engagement but it is surely to correlate that presence to that context. This in the long run has a positive impact on the search presence and in future you never know how this whole plethora of content will be organized, correlated, archived and used by the social and search companies. Hence, regarding content its always, “More The Merrier” – but of course it is all about quality and quantity.

Once, you establish an online authority presence in your industry then gradually that percentage of consumption will also gradually increase in the long run. The only thing needed is patience and the will to go on improving.

Google - 06/24/2017

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