Kickoff and Discovery

So you’ve sold a big website project, how does your project team start? The kickoff and discovery are going to be the most important for the project manager to set the web design project up for success. Without a detailed and extensive discovery phase, the remainder of the project is riddled with unnecessary guessing, falling short of client expectations, and playing catch up on the client requirements. It’s the project manager’s job to ensure the requirements gathering not only goes smoothly, but also stays organized in a way that’s useful for the rest of the project team when it comes to project tasks and staying aligned within the project schedule. 

Keys to a successful kickoff and discovery when managing projects:

Welcome email and pre-kickoff

Goal: Complete the questionnaire and get enough information to tailor the Q&A to get conversation going around their company for the client kickoff

Send your client a website design survey that begins the basic information gathering around the design brief: Who is the main point of contact (POC)? Who are the additional stakeholders? What brand materials do they have that need to be used? Who are their competitors? Keep this high level as to not overwhelm your clients with a 30- minute questionnaire before you’ve even spoken to them

Have an internal kickoff with your team first to ensure everyone has a chance to ask the questions they need to ask regarding any task within the website project plan

The kickoff meeting

Goal: High-level project goal from the client, a sense of the brand, get them talking about the brand and product/service offering

Get them talking about their company in their own words and think about their brand in a way they may not have before 

Deep dive discovery call

Discuss the sales cycle, determine the decision makers on the consumer side, and determine the influencers of those decision makers. This is going to put you in the shoes of their main audience(s) and buyer personas

Client Communications

When are you speaking to your clients?

Is it only when you need something from them? Is it only when you have something to deliver? As the web project manager, make sure they hear from you at least once a week, regardless of the deliverables and regardless if they respond. 

How often do your clients proactively hear from you?

If they only hear from you when they reach out, you aren’t managing the project. Send your clients an email every Monday letting them know what your team is doing and what you are expecting of them. Keep client participation and collaboration high to ensure they know they are being heard and that you are there as an extension of their team.

Leaning into your expertise

The client is the expert in their industry, but as a project manager you are the expert in the product being delivered. Lean into that expertise when speaking with your clients and have the data to back it up. Let your UX designers present their designs so that the information comes straight from the expert. Let your developers participate in development functionality meetings and be client facing to establish your company’s credibility as the expert in your space.

Getting Through Development

Launching a website after the staging site is ready can sometimes drag out due to the finality that it entails. Make this process smoother and less daunting to your clients by utilizing bug/feedback collecting tools like Bugherd with your clients to enable clear communication about new website changes leading up to launch.

Once your clients are set up on Bugherd following the initial delivery of the staging site, set up a daily 15-minute stand up with them to discuss their priorities of the day. What you may not have visibility on is the amount of internal stakeholders your POC is having to speak to, and you can alleviate this stress by discussing their high priority items with them daily. If available, have your developer join as well, as cutting out the middleman can really speed things up.

Other Quick Tips

• Organization is everything. Establish patterns so that your team always knows where to find the same information for every project. Whether that’s a templated project management board, consistent folder structures, and consistent styles of communication, your team will appreciate it.
• Use collaborative documents (like Google Drive) as much as possible, whether that’s with your clients and/or your internal team. 
• Get written sign-off on phases from your clients before moving on to the next one. Wireframes dictate designs, so make sure your clients know that they are signing off on one phase in order to inform the next so that you don’t run into scope creep.
• Dig into feedback about the why behind likes and dislikes. Teach your clients how to better feedback givers.
• Own up to mistakes and move on from them, and don’t repeat them. Everyone makes mistakes, but the top performers and best partners don’t repeat them.

Website project management does not end once design is complete. Once your website project design is finalized, your project team should assess feedback and the overall outcome of your project to learn from for future projects. As a project manager, the project is your responsibility from start to finish, and then some. For more information on other website development services, contact Power Digital today! 

The post How to Project Manage a Website Build appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

The key to utilizing these landing page best practices and getting higher conversion rates requires us to be analytical with the data we are seeing with our tools like Unbounce and Hotjar/Lucky Orange (for heat mapping) and being consistent with our A/B testing. Now assuming you have a strategy for testing and have set up your tools properly, let’s dive into our CRO marketing best practices.

Best Practice #1: Have only one conversion goal and CTA

To start off this list, we have a relatively simple yet often overlooked philosophy of only having one conversion goal and a CTA button that aligns with said goal. Why do we want to only have one path to conversion on our landing page design? 

Let’s say you were running a PPC campaign with a very clear CTA that a potential customer clicks on and lands on your page that has several different CTAs and conversion possibilities. Not only is your PPC manager mad at you because their conversions are going down the drain, but your website visitor is more likely to go down another path, away from your offer. The reason we call them landing pages and not websites is because they are very specialized for one goal; adding multiple goals to a landing page is like poking holes in your straw while drinking — very inefficient and frustrating.

So when you are building out a landing page strategy, make sure you only have one concrete conversion goal and offer on the page. Not only will you see an increase in your conversion rate, but it makes creating content for said page a lot easier if everything is driving towards a singular goal. 

Best Practice #2: Make sure your offer is appropriate for the stage of the funnel

That seems like it should be common sense, but isn’t followed nearly as much. If I just heard about your brand from an article I read, I’m not likely to immediately convert to an offer that exists at the bottom of your funnel and request a quote or proposal. Now would I be willing to give you my email for an ebook or similar low-stakes offer? Potentially, if the content was relevant to me. 

When using landing pages as a part of a PPC campaign, you might not need to worry too much about a potential customer being at the right part of the funnel because a good PPC manager will make sure they are going after the right target audience. However, it’s still something you need to consider during the planning stages of your landing page optimization strategies and deciding what content would be appropriate for someone at that stage of the funnel.

Best Practice #3: Use a multi-step form

Now, this best practice is specific to a lead-generation landing page, but is crucial to increasing your conversion rates for pages that include forms with more than four input fields. In practice, a multi-step form breaks up several fields into multiple steps, hence the name “multi-step.” When a visitor completes one step of the form, they continue on to the next step, until the form is submitted.

The strategy behind multi-step forms is the idea that visitors are more likely to complete something that they’ve started. This stems from project management psychology that we as humans don’t want our efforts to go to waste once a task is started, also known as “sunk costs.” That is why we want the first step of the multi-step form to be the easiest to complete.

The key to a high-converting multi-step form is sorting your fields, starting with the fields that are least threatening (something like “How many pets do you have?”) to most (contact information, name, email, phone, etc.). The first step of the form is to use the least threatening fields to reduce the amount of friction it takes to start filling out the form, with the following steps utilizing higher threat level fields.

Best Practice #4: Personalize your landing page design

Personalizing your landing pages is something that is relatively new and becoming easier to do using dynamic keyword injection and platforms like Proof and Dynamic Yield. The idea behind personalized landing pages is to cater content to your customer and create a unique experience that connects to them and is more likely to convert. Personalization is great, but you need to exercise some restraint. People might like that content on a page being specific to them, but being too specific can have an adverse effect. For example, if you landed on a page that knew intimate details about you such as your age, race, gender, etc. and displayed it prominently, how would that make you feel? Gross? Violated? Would you convert? Not likely.

Best Practice #5: Make it load fast

Probably one of the most important aspects of an effective landing page is how fast it loads. Page speed is one of those things that is more technical, but is fairly easy to improve assuming your landing page is running on fast and stable servers.

The first step you want to take when optimizing your page speed is to optimize your image files. A landing page builder like Unbounce automatically optimizes your images when you upload them, but if you don’t have access to Unbounce or Photoshop, running your files through TinyPNG is a great way to reduce file size, and therefore improve your page speed.

Another factor to page speed that is easy to change is reducing or replacing scripts that are running on your landing page. As a digital marketing agency, we love scripts that track as much information as possible so we can improve our strategies, but having too many scripts or custom scripts can adversely affect our page speed. To check if the scripts you are running are noticeably slowing your page speed, make sure you analyze your page using Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix. Both services are free and only need the URL of your page to analyze and give you actionable insights into your load times.

The Bottom Line

These best practices are just what we have seen to work with our clients, increasing their landing page conversion rates again and again. Remember that best practices are nothing if you don’t have a consistent testing strategy to make sure that what you’re changing on the page is what’s causing your successes — or failures. We have many great articles on how to start testing your landing pages, 7 Tips for A/B Testing your Facebook Ads and Website CRO: Optimize Landing Pages With These Tips being two of my favorites. 

Now go update your existing landing pages.

The post 5 Best Practices To Supercharge Your Landing Pages appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

The Conversions API is a supplementary way to track user activity and events to the Facebook pixel. Think of it as a safety net to ensure you do not lose tracking accuracy as we face a degraded pixel world. Google and Apple are limiting their browser cookie compatibilities, so setting up a server-side tracking method is vital for the future, starting right now.

Luckily for all of you Shopify store owners, one of the first Native integrations of the Conversions API came from the e-commerce CMS giant. The Facebook App within Shopify has always existed for the pixel, but the option to turn on the Conversions API is new as of October 2020.

There are currently 3 different options to choose from on data sharing within the Facebook App:

1. Standard: Standard uses Facebook Pixel, a third-party cookie that collects and shares customers’ browsing behavior on your online store. Browser-based ad blockers can prevent the pixel from collecting data.
2. Enhanced: Enhanced uses Advanced Matching, which shares personal information about your customers, including name, location, and email. This pixel also shares customer browsing behavior on your online store. Browser-based ad blockers can prevent the pixel from collecting data.
3. Maximum: Maximum combines all data-sharing options to reach the highest amount of customers. It uses Conversions API, which shares data directly from Shopify’s servers to Facebook. This means the data can’t be blocked by ad blockers.

The setup here is easy – just make sure you have the Facebook Shopify App connected and follow these steps:

1. Choose the Facebook Page Shop option, start setup
2. Connect your Facebook account using an Admin permission account
3. Connect your Facebook Business Manager using an Admin permission account
4. Connect your designated Facebook page to your store
5. Configure and turn on pixel tracking
6. Create or connect a Facebook Commerce Account in the setup wizard
7. Go to the Settings page of the Facebook App, navigate to the data sharing tab
8. Choose “Maximum” option

And that’s it. This now sets you up with the most basic version of the Conversions API and Shopify. If you are looking to expand on the data you collect, Power Digital can help! Reach out to us today.

The post How to Configure the Facebook Conversions API with Shopify appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

Having a fast site today is a necessity. Listed below are some ways to increase your site’s performance from a digital marketing agency’s perspective.

#1 Compress Images

One of the biggest things you can do to improve site speed is to optimize your images. Images are extremely important to websites and the overall site performance. They not only bring life to your site, but also increase user engagement.  

However, if your site is full of giant, unoptimized images, they can negatively impact your site’s performance. Compressing images is a process that involves decreasing an image’s file size using a plugin or some other software. One of the best WordPress plugins for image optimization is Smush. This plugin will automatically compress your images when you upload them to the media library. You can also use this plugin to compress all of the images that are already in your media library. If you don’t want to use a plugin, you can use TinyJPG. All you need to do here is drop your images in the “Drop your.png or.jpg files here!” prompt and leave the compression to the website.  

One more thing to consider is image file types. The two main types you will be using are PNGs and JPEGs.

1. PNG – These are usually larger in file size, but are higher quality. These should be primarily used for graphics.
2. JPEG – These are smaller in file size when compared with PNGs. JPEGs should be used for photographs.

Choosing the correct format for your images can also have an impact on site performance. 

#2 Combine CSS and JS

Every CSS file and JS file on your site adds to the number of HTTP requests. A CSS contains the styling of the page while Javascript (JS) determines the dynamic and interactive elements on the page. The more HTTP request your site has, the more it will affect the loading speed of your website. Combining your JS and CSS file into a couple of files will reduce the number of HTTP requests your site makes. 

Hummingbird is an excellent plugin to assist you with asset optimization. This plugin has a user-friendly interface in the backend that you can use to choose which CSS files and JS files to combine. One thing to note when optimizing your site is that sometimes when combining a lot of files into one file, your site may be susceptible to break. This is especially true with JavaScript. To avoid this glitch, I would suggest creating a staging site first or go slowly when combining files. Combine a couple of files and then test your website performance. If everything is fine, you can keep optimizing. 

#3 Do a Plugin Audit

Plugins are excellent tools to extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress site. However, a lot of plugins will load images, JS files, and CSS files. Each one of these files is another HTTP request, and the more HTTP requests that you have, the slower your site’s loading speed will be.

Review all of your plugins. In all likelihood, there will be some plugins that you don’t necessarily need. There will also be some plugins that have been installed that you just forgot to delete. 

#4 Use a Caching Plugin

Every time you visit a website, you make a request to a server. This server then delivers the webpage to your browser with all of the files, images, and elements required to build that page. In all likelihood, your site is going to be serving the same content to users every month. Installing a caching plugin will tell the server to remember and copy the same content that it’s been serving. By delivering all of these files and assets from cache, your website performance and load speed will prove to be much faster.

#5 Update PHP

PHP is a scripting language that is used for website development services. The WordPress core, all of your plugins, and the theme you use are all built with PHP. It has been shown that PHP 7 vastly outperforms PHP 5. Overall, PHP 7 is faster, runs with less memory consumption, and can serve more requests per second. All of this will lead to a significant performance boost in website speed.   

To check what version of PHP your site is using, you will need to contact your hosting provider. If it is below PHP 7, you can ask your hosting provider to upgrade the PHP version. You will want to use the PHP Compatibility Checker plugin before upgrading to see which parts of your site won’t work with PHP 7.

Improving Site Speed

Overall, optimizing your site speed is integral to maintaining and improving traffic. Having a fast site will ensure users stay on your page rather than abandoning it due to slow loading times. By following the tips above, you should be able to see improvements to your site’s performance. 

The post Why is Site Speed Important? appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

As a full-service digital marketing agency ourselves, we have compiled the top 5 things to look for and consider when choosing the right web design company for your website project.

#1 Do they listen? 

Are they able to identify your problem and recommend a solution to achieve your end goal? 

A good agency partner will pitch you a solution specific to your problem. A good way to assess this is to: 

1. Know the right questions they should be asking you to determine the problem such as (but not limited to): 

a) What is your main point of conversion? 

b) What aspects of your site do you plan on changing or adding to make it better in this process?

c) What’s your biggest frustration with your website now?

2. Determine if their recommended solution actually addresses your problem or if it feels like a boiler-plate solution.

3. Ask if they have a recommended site design solution for determining the success of the new website (they should be able to answer this if they are asking question 1a.)

#2 What is their approach to content? Do they plan the content strategy before designing? Do they design with conversion and user experience in mind?

Your website content is ultimately the #1 reason a user is visiting your site – whether it be to purchase a product, learn more about your company, contact you, etc. Therefore, your website content should be laid out in such a way that a user is able to easily find the information they need in order to convert. If the creative marketing agency carrying out the website design and website development of your website does not develop a content marketing strategy before (or in tandem with) designs, you run the risk of ending up with a pretty website that isn’t functional for your prospective customers(and therefore doesn’t convert). Ideally, the team you choose should have a harmonious, multi-faceted approach to content, user experience, conversion, and design.

Related:  Building a Strong Content Marketing Plan & Strategy 

#3 Do they provide SEO support? What is their migration approach?

It’s no secret the Search Engine Optimization is crucial to a website’s success – it determines how often your website is found in Google search results and how high up in the search results you rank. When selecting your website development partner, be sure to ask what their approach to SEO is and how they will not only make sure your website doesn’t lose rankings upon launch, but how they can help your rankings improve. Ideally, the agency partner you choose should follow SEO best practices and be able to help you create high-ranking site content. 

Additionally, it is equally as important that the partner has a solid SEO migration strategy in place for when you transition from your old site to your new one. What does this mean exactly? In order to prevent any of your existing website pages from losing their high-ranking value, it is important that proper redirects are set up for ALL pages so search engines (and users) can easily find and index pages that may no longer exist, or have been renamed, or moved to a different location. It is not always the case that agencies execute migrations in this way, so it is important to ask what their approach is to site migrations.

Related: Questions to Ask When Hiring an SEO Agency 

#4 How manageable is the CMS once the site is done? Do you need support for ongoing maintenance and do they offer that service?

Websites are always evolving, whether it be through adding new and relevant content, testing CTAs, enhancing performance, adding new features, and so on. The problem is, who is going to do it? Is it you? Someone on your team? Or someone outside of your company? When selecting your new web design and development partner, be sure to ask them what Content Management System (CMS) they plan on using and how they manage the post-launch process. A good partner will tell you they always include a post-launch training session with your website designer team so you are armed with the tools to update content on your own. 

If you don’t have the capacity to do so internally and want to be sure you have support when problems arise, you will want a partner who offers ongoing maintenance services. Some offer these services for free while others may charge an ongoing maintenance fee. Come prepared with what you are willing to commit to.

#5 What does their portfolio look like?

A portfolio, or most often a ‘Work” page, is probably going to be the first place you look when considering a new good web design agency. However, it can be daunting and hard to navigate if you don’t know what to look for when making your decision. As you look through the agency’s portfolio, have these questions in mind to determine if their work is in line with what you are looking for:

• Is it diverse? Many agencies specialize in specific industries, and it’s only natural for this to occur. But you also want to stand out from the rest. Make sure they have experience both in your industry and a couple others. A diverse portfolio means they can utilize strategies and learnings from other industries that may enhance your site strategy.
• Do they have national or regional work? If you’re a national company you may want an agency that has done websites that reach a national audience. They will take into consideration a national SEO and content strategy that will better position your site for optimal performance (see above for more info on these matters).
• Do the sites look up-to-date with the latest UX experiences? In general, does their work seem recent and in line with other websites you’ve visited? Or does it look like they are stuck in the early 2000’s? Go with the design firm that stays up-to-date with the latest trends and functionalities that give the most optimal user experience.
• Can you find these sites in real life? Be on the lookout for any asterisks that note a site that never got launched. And don’t be afraid to ask to see the real site and how the site has performed since. Spec work is fine, but real sites are better.

Happy hunting!

The post 5 Ways to Select the Right Web Design Agency for You appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

One of the most effective ways to convert visitors into paying customers and keep those customers coming back for more is by creating a seamless, efficient, and memorable shopping experience on your website. And while you can do weeks of testing to ensure the length of your checkout form is just right or that the color of your “Add to Cart” button is as clickable as possible, you will only be scratching the surface of what is possible. 

In this blog post, we’re going to talk about personalization and how brands can use this tactic to deliver unforgettable shopping experiences and increase online conversions. Let’s dive in!

What is Personalization?  

Personalization is exactly what it sounds like – it’s the process of creating customized, or personalized, experiences for visitors on a website. Instead of providing a single experience for every website visitor, personalization allows brands to present website visitors with unique content tailored to their interests, needs, and goals. 

Personalization vs. A/B Testing: What’s the Difference?

A/B testing and personalization are both massive CVR and revenue boosters, but they have different methods of accomplishing this. 

A/B testing, as you may know, shows which versions of a page, product, image, etc. are performing better or worse by evenly splitting traffic between version A and version B. This allows companies to maximize their success by putting the top converting page in front of the user. 

Personalization accomplishes it’s CVR-boosting goal slightly differently. Have you ever Googled a product you are looking for, and suddenly began to see ads for this product on Facebook or any other site you use? Well that is exactly what personalization does for you – it puts your product specifically in front of users who are looking for the same type of product, which obviously leads to some pretty serious CVR increases. The power of personalization lies in its ability to immediately show the user exactly which of your products they are most likely to buy.

Why Personalization is So Powerful

Now let’s dive a little deeper into what kind benefits and results you can expect to see when utilizing personalization.

1. Optimized landing pages put what your customers want right in front of them. Oftentimes your customers already know what they are looking for when they come to your site – personalization makes it so your site also knows what your customer is looking for as soon as they arrive. So a personalized approach avoids the need for a lengthy search.
2. Speeds up the sales cycle. Customers rarely purchase on their first visit to an e-commerce website. Personalization speeds up this process by providing a better user experience on their first visit.
3. Introduces trust to the customer-vendor relationship. Customers are no longer just looking for products. They want to find and connect with quality brands. Personalizing your site content builds this trust by showing them that we understand them and know what they are looking for.
4. Personalization is becoming the new expectation. 86% of customers said that personalization impacted their purchase decisions. In response, nearly 70% of businesses have started to prioritize personalized experiences.

What sorts of things can you personalize? 

Ok, so you’re probably thinking right about now “Personalization sounds great, but what exactly can I personalize on my own site?”. The answer: practically everything! Don’t worry, we’re not going to leave you hanging with such a vague answer. Here are some popular use case examples of how you can use personalization on your own website. 

Personalizing your website content based on audience segmentation & campaign source

One of the big pitfalls for a growing business is when they try to extend their brand’s reach to a new audience. To do this, you not only need to increase your acquisition strategy, but typically you also need to adjust your site’s content to appeal to this new audience. This becomes an issue when the attempt to appeal to a new audience alienates your existing core audience. The German giant, Chal-tec, faced this exact problem when they evolved from a hyper focused single online store (Electronic Star) that specialized solely in DJ equipment into a multi-category online mall to compete with the likes of Amazon. While the expansion did result in an increase in online revenue and conversions, it left their core audience that frequented their site when they were purely a DJ equipment store confused about where to find all things Audio/Visual.

Chal-tec solved this by targeting a DJ enthusiast audience segment and creating a personalized experience that hid every element of the original site and replaced it with content that was geared towards DJ audio and video equipment. 

This can be easily replicated on your site by creating audience segments based on specific paid campaigns (using UTMs) you’re running or by leveraging the profile information (age, gender, region, etc.) associated with the user visiting your site.  

Product Recommendations

It’s fairly intuitive that product recommendations are important. According to Invesp, “56% of online shoppers are more likely to return to a website that recommends products”(Forbes). In today’s current e-commerce climate, however, having product recommendations alone is not enough. Findings have shown that “47% of consumers check Amazon if the brand they’re shopping with doesn’t provide product suggestions that are relevant – SmarterHQ” (Forbes). So your website not only needs to have product recommendations, but the recommendations also need to be relevant to the user. Most recommendation apps and widgets will allow you to show product recommendations based on what is most popular, related products to the currently viewed PDP, or what the user has recently viewed. While this will work fine for a portion of your site’s visitors, for the rest the recommendations will be like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

To avoid having an ineffective recommendation strategy for a large portion of your site’s visitors, tools like Dynamic Yield allow websites to recommend products using more personalized strategies like user affinity, collaborative filtering, and bought with last/recent purchase (ideal for increasing LTV of returning customers).

An effective example of this in action comes from Dynamic Yield’s case study of Sephora. According to the report:

“To help users seamlessly find the most relevant products, Sephora focused on optimizing PDPs across eight markets in Asia. In each country, users were shown recommendations based on three distinct strategies: similar items, bought together and automatic.

Since the most successful recommendation approach varied by market and KPI, Dynamic Yield’s adaptive recommendations crunched the data and deployed the highest performing strategy in each market, based on users adding items to cart and completing a purchase.

Dynamic Yield’s recommendation engine powered a CTR of more than 4%, ultimately returning direct revenue in excess of $6.50 for every $1 spent with Dynamic Yield. As a result of the massive revenue uplift and development time saved, Sephora now serves recommendations powered by Dynamic Yield to 100% of website traffic”. (Source)

Navigation Menu Personalization

The makeup brand, e.l.f., ran into a problem a lot of websites with extensive product catalogs face, lack of room in their navigation menu. How e.l.f. got around this was by using the browsing history of the user to personalize the navigation menu. New users would be shown what they determined the best high-level category menu, but returning users would be shown the subcategories of the main category they previously visited. This resulted in a 17.6% increase in CTR and exposed users to products deeper in their catalog. 

Leveraging first party data to create new detailed experiences.

The great part about tools such as Dynamic Yield is that it allows businesses to leverage their historical first party data. So if your business has detailed audience segmentation already stored in another analytics platform, DY can import those segments so your team can immediately start creating custom experiences for them (Source).

One of the ways e.l.f. took advantage of this feature was by importing their existing audience segments from customer-analytics software, Custora.

Wrapping Up

And there you have it – a brand new marketing tactic that takes advantage of the traffic you are already getting to your site to turn more website visitors into paying customers, and more first time customers into repeat buyers. Never underestimate the power of a personal touch! 

The post Personalization: The CRO Tactic You Didn’t Know You Needed (Or Could Even Do!) appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

Link to the award:

https://www.csswinner.com/profile/power-digital-marketing/761

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What are breadcrumbs?

Breadcrumbs (no Panko) are a reference to trail-based links that allows users to know where they are within the confines of a website. You’ve probably seen them in a large website and e-commerce sites with lots of categories, like the Amazons and Best Buys of the world. You’ve probably even used website breadcrumbs once or twice before without knowing what they’re called. Well, now that you do know what they’re called, it makes sense, right? If you’re familiar with the story of Hansel and Gretel, then you know that breadcrumbs were used to provide themselves with a trail to get back home. Same idea here when it comes to websites – clever huh?

Breadcrumbs come in a few different varieties as well:

• Location-based Breadcrumbs: Set of links that shows the user where they are based on the site’s structure. This method allows for easy indexing in the Search Engine Result Page.
• Attribute-based Breadcrumbs: Set of links that show specific attributes of the page the user is currently on. These are typically based on the metadata of a link, which can branch out into different paths, and is mostly incorporated in e-commerce sites.

Path-based Breadcrumbs: Set of links based on the user’s path to get to the page they’re currently on. Think of it as a set of back buttons.

Now that you know what breadcrumbs are, what they’re used for, and the variety in which they can be utilized, do we still need them in 2018?

Making the case for breadcrumbs in today’s web design

If breadcrumbs are such an “ingenious” element in web design, then what’s the case against them? For one, in modern web design they tend to become a fallback option for websites that have a less-than-optimal site navigation structure. This is particular for robust websites with lots of categories and lots of pages. However, if your site is well off in showing users how to get where they’re going without you holding their hand, then do you really need breadcrumbs in the first place? For instances where your website has a less-than-optimal navigational structure, it’s probably best if you spent your time and effort optimizing your site navigation rather than using breadcrumbs as a band-aid solution. An additional case against breadcrumbs would be regarding its position on a webpage. Although they typically don’t take up too much real estate on a page, they’re still typically placed in obtrusive areas that can compete with other conversion areas on a webpage, and even make your website look dated at times.

Despite these qualms, the reasons to use breadcrumbs and the benefits behind them outweigh the reasons you shouldn’t. Here are the reasons you should use breadcrumbs for your website:

• They’re convenient: They allow users to know exactly where they are within the navigational structure of your website.
• They enhance experience for the website visitor: This kind of goes with the previous point. Knowing where you are in a website, plus having the ability to go to a previous page or category only makes things easier for the user.
• They’re subtle: As mentioned before, they don’t take up a lot of space on your webpage. That’s definitely a positive, especially when you’re trying to get users to convert in critical areas.
• They don’t really cause issues: According to Nielsen Norman Group, breadcrumbs never misunderstand. Sure, they can go unnoticed by users, but users never have any issues using them.

Now sure, website breadcrumbs are proven to be useful and can even be considered by some to be a best practice, but knowing when and how to use them can be critical for your next web development project.

Tips for breadcrumb usage

Here are a few methods you can incorporate into your next breadcrumb design project if you want to use breadcrumbs as a secondary navigation structure:

• Know the depth of your website: Breadcrumbs are best put into practice for websites that have 3 or more levels.
• All breadcrumbs lead home: It’s important to always have the first level of your breadcrumb trail to be set to your homepage, since your homepage will typically be the hub for your site’s categories, contact, and about pages.
• Keep breadcrumbs for mobile: In order to maintain continuity across all devices, it’s best to keep breadcrumbs for mobile layouts as well. For longer trails, showing at least one step backward from the current page is a solid workaround to show users where they are in the site without having to expand the breadcrumb list to take up a lot of space on mobile.
• Consider smaller text in between the end crumbs: The space in between the home and last breadcrumbs is vital to ensuring a concise and straightforward breadcrumb trail. Consider setting up your site so that the category names are short, sweet, and straight to the point so users don’t get confused and that your breadcrumbs don’t get too drawn out.

Consider alternative placement: When thinking about a location based breadcrumb, if the typical placement at the top of the page becomes too obtrusive for users then think about putting them somewhere else. Apple does a great job of this by placing their breadcrumb links in the footer to maintain good SEO and UX practice, but also placing it somewhere it won’t be too distracting.

Conclusion

In the ever-so-fickle web design and development industry, breadcrumbs have become a mainstay, and for good reason. They offer value to users, allowing them to navigate a large website with ease. Try not to underestimate, or even overlook, these nuanced aspects of websites, as it’s likely that they’ll lead you to the right places.

The post Are Breadcrumbs Still Relevant in Modern-day Web Design? appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

Updating things always should be a positive thing, for some people might sound a scary task, and for others nothing to care about. The reality is that updating is always a good idea, but it should always be done carefully. Otherwise, it could really affect your business if you are updating a site to a non-compatible website and accidentally breaks it.
In this post, I will discuss why you should be updating and how to do it safely so it won’t give you any compatibility issues.

So… why should you update?

Security

Updates are always important not only because of the release of new features that it brings but for the security updates and enhancements that it provides. Hackers are always looking for ways into your system, and if you are not constantly updating they might be able to find a weak spot and hack your entire business. That’s because updating should always be a yes on any platform you have sensitive information, and you need it to not be accessed by the public.

New Features

Besides security, which is probably the most important reason to update. The features that each update includes could be very exciting for some people and is always nice to have, they are normally added to improve user experience and increase accessibility through any corner of a platform. As for the latest version of WP 5.0, the new updates that are included in the core are REST API improvements which are very important for developers to access the databases via REST and making the ability to create more complex applications.
Theme updates are also an exciting new feature. One update that comes with the new core is the new default theme “Twenty Nineteen”. This new theme gives the default WordPress installation a way modern look and comes optimized with the support of the new Gutenberg Editor.

The Big — Gutenberg

This version of WordPress finally comes with the well-discussed Gutenberg Editor.
This editor, being the most expected feature of WordPress, revolutionizes the way of publishing posts and pages. Its well-developed editor could beneficiate a lot to the people who want to handle their business site by themselves instead of having someone else doing it, you can review a more extensive review of the Gutenberg editor here.

Steps to Update WordPress

Now, if you feel like these update deserve a chance, here are couple steps you could follow in order to update to the last version of WordPress in a safe way without any chance of breaking the site and affecting your business.

Check that you are not in the middle of a high peak season.
First of all, it is important that your website or store is not going through a high peak season, since this update is a major one which changes lots of sensitive files within the core. I would recommend going through this update on a low season to avoid giving your users a bad experience.

Make a backup

Backup is always necessary since in case the site breaks by any reason, you have an actual copy of your current site to back it up at any chance you could. For Backup plugins, there are a couple I recommend in order to do so.

1. UpdraftPlus
2. BackupBuddy
3. BackWPUp

These three backup plugins basically provide the same service, and it let you save a complete version of your site (Database & Files) and either save it locally or any cloud storage service such as dropbox, google drive, etc.

Upgrade PHP

Upgrading your PHP version is always good when dealing with new platforms. I would recommend having any server language to its last version and that it’s compatible with the platform’s version that you are dealing with.

Update Plugins

Keep your plugins up to date is not only to get the best experience of its author, or to fix security vulnerabilities, but also to have compatibility with the new versions of the core. So it’s important that you check that your plugins are compatible with the new update, and update them to avoid any breaks or vulnerabilities.

Test on Staging Site

Before testing the WordPress update, test it on a staging site. A staging site is basically an exact version of your current site where you are able to do experimentations and any type of edits that you don’t want to the public yet. So, by performing the update on the staging site, you will be sure that the site actually works by checking every single corner of it and check that it works at its 100%.

For staging sites, I would recommend using either WP Staging or WP Stage Couch which provide an easy to use service to create simple staging sites, with easy live deployment.

Check Theme compatibility

Importantly you have to make sure that your theme is compatible with the last version of WordPress, and importantly, with Gutenberg. It’s important that if you are tied to your theme, check deeply the compatibility between those and if it’s not, download the Classic Editor, to make sure that your theme is still being compatible.

And if you are feeling like getting a theme that works at its 100% with Gutenberg, I recommend going through the post that lists out the best Gutenberg themes.

Perform a Wide Site Audit

Finally, after you have done all the steps before to update your site to WP 5.0, you just need to go through the whole site and check that works! Depending on the size of the site, I would recommend a complete audit and QA (Quality Assurance) with a team to avoid any issues in either design or functionality.

Conclusion

WordPress 5.0 is here and you should definitely get it! Although don’t be so quick about it, make sure that you follow the steps stated below in order to avoid any issues. This update is important since it changes the whole core of WordPress and it includes Gutenberg which is the biggest change that WP has had in the last couple of years. This update should be very important to everyone since it still getting good updates, and developers are already creating plugins that enhance the editor even more. If you feel like WP 5.0 and the future of WordPress is too much to understand, here is a Cheat Sheet to help you simplify everything and understand it better.

The post WordPress 5.0 and How to Safely Update appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

Unique Scrolling Experiences

With web design experiences becoming more and more mobile-focused, swipe-based gestures are becoming the wave of the future, and are starting to become incorporated into desktop-oriented websites. This leads to more horizontal scrolling experiences that translate well for both desktop, tablet, and mobile interfaces. Horizontal scrolling is more common on tablets and mobile screens; it definitely leaves an impression on a user since the internet primarily relies on vertical-scrolling. Horizontal web layouts also give the user the opportunity to process information in smaller amounts. Websites that display multiple images or show small excerpts of information are ideal for horizontal scrolling. These are examples of sites that utilize a unique scrolling experience for the user:

Source: Reputation Squad

Source: Ratscheider

Original & Creative Illustrations

Why do kids love cartoons so much? Why do most children’s books have illustrations in them? That’s because cartoons and illustrations are easy for children to understand as they develop learning skills. In a sense, this same idea applies to this latest web design trend where bold headlines are accompanied with correlating illustrations. These tend to work in tandem together to help illustrate a certain point or topic for users to understand. Think of it as a way for the company to sum up the purpose of their product/service or elaborate on their brand through images. Here are some examples of websites that use illustration to help emphasize their brand:

Source: MailChimp

Source: Lyft

Source: Slack

Source: Every Last Drop UK

Organic Shapes

There are countless websites in the digital world that follow a generic look and feel, with a lot of straight lines and grid-like structures. However, there are also sites that break away from the mold and utilize more organic shapes and structures to draw more attention. This is something that has been showing up in more sites in 2018, and will look to become more widespread in the upcoming year. These sites demonstrate the use of organic shapes along with vibrant colors to appeal to the user’s eyes:

Source: Netlify

Source: Elje Group

The Overlapping Phenomenon Continues

Asymmetrical design has become more widespread over the past few years, and there’s no sign of it stopping in 2019. Text overlapping images, as images overlap shapes – it goes against traditional web design norms from a decade ago, but it seems like it’s becoming the new standard in website design. Overlapping images and text over one another appeals to users and creates contrast when trying to accentuate a topic on a website. Here are some examples of websites that display the trendy overlapping phenomenon:

Source: AgenceMe

Source: Power Digital Marketing

Conclusion

New web design techniques and layouts are constantly emerging; it’s important for web designers to never be complacent in order to stay relevant in today’s day and age. Dive into your new year projects by putting these creative design trends to use in 2019.

The post Where Web Design is Going in 2019 appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

Here are some of the best JavaScript and CSS Animation Libraries trending in 2018.

Animate.css

As stated on its website, “animate.css is a bunch of cool, fun, and cross-browser animations for you to use in your projects. Great for emphasis, home pages, sliders, and general just-add-water-awesomeness.” This animation library comes in handy when starting a new project that needs a few simple animations. Installation is very easy, and after that, CSS classes are ready to be used!

GreenSock

GreenSock Animation Platform (GSAP) is one of the most popular animation library apps for web developers. The popularity of this frameworks comes because of its crazy speed, the number of features, and compatibility. With GSAP, you are able to perform any type of animation that comes to mind, accompanied by amazing performance to impress customers

AnimeJS

Similar to GSAP, AnimeJS is a very lightweight Javascript animation library that works with any CSS property, SVG, DOM Attributes, or Javascript Objects. The use of this kind of library will need a more advanced knowledge to put animation into use, but once you get the hang of it, you will be able to perform slick presentations.

Rellax

Rellax is a very easy library to use for the purpose of performing parallax animations within your DOM. Rellax is very lightweight, and conveniently works with most browsers and frameworks!

BarbaJS

BarbaJS is a great library to make AJAX websites. Other than that, it is able to make transitions between websites look smooth and seamless, and with a more advanced knowledge of BarbaJS, transitions will make a good impression for users. Another advantage of using Barbajs to make your AJAX website is that it will reduce the delay between pages, minimizing browser HTTP requests as well as enhancing your user’s web experience.

Vivus

SVGs are for websites, but are even greater if you are using them at its last extent. Vivus is a Javascript Class that allows you to animate SVGs, giving the site’s components the appearance of being drawn. There are a variety of different settings that you can apply to create custom draws, allowing you to modify them however you want.

ScrollMagic

ScrollMagic is a very powerful library to create interaction on the scroll. This library is great on its own, but you also have the ability to combine it with other animation libraries to create even better scrolling animations.

KuteJS

Similar to GSAP & Animate, KUTE.js secures a spot on this list because of its high potential after being released for a short time, not to mention that it is completely free. Its great engine is able to deliver top performance, memory, & modular code efficiently. With all its tools, it helps to create seamless custom animations.

Particles.JS

Particles.JS is a lightweight, dependency-free, and responsive javascript plugin for particle backgrounds. Particles.js makes this list as an animated design trend on the rise, and is a frequently used plugin for a large number of websites. This very lightweight, dependency-free plugin is able to create a great looking particle background that comes to be both very responsive and customizable at its extent. Particles.JS is super easy to implement and a great tool to start using in new projects.

Hover.css

Hover.css is a great collection of CSS3 classes, powered with a unique hover effect that can be applied to most elements such as links, buttons, logos, SVG, images, etc. It can be easily applied & modified for unique uses, and is conveniently available at CSS, SASS, and LESS.

Wrapping Up

Animations are becoming more and more frequently used these days, but remember not to overload websites with them. Choosing the right animation should be done in a smart way, strategizing what public appearance the website will have as well as considering the industry that is in. Nevertheless, whether you create animations in a subtle way or not, these serve to create more conversion & attract new clients. Animations can also help users to collect more information and to navigate through. With the animation libraries provided above, you are now able to help create a more engaging user experience throughout your future projects.

The post Trending Animation Libraries in 2018 appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

Why Use It?

Since the website design has drastically improved through different tools, animations have been part of this. Nowadays, we are trying to create eye-catching websites to create better conversions and attract users to buy, click, and view things on our websites. Animations play a fundamental role in these conversions. Animations are very useful in different ways, but improving the UX/UI of a website or web app is one way, in particular, has shown incredible conversion. Users not only feel attracted to these animated designs, but they value the innovation and smoothness placed on different steps throughout the site.

Animations are an interaction that also helps to explain simple processes since users can easily understand what to do, or what it is going on with certain images and animations since they serve as navigation and provide useful information.

There are many different kinds of animation that are very well used in websites, but here are a few that play a most important role for user experience:

Common Types

Tool Tips

Tooltips are great to show an extra information. Specially used in forms to see what is a field for, and indicates how should be filled.

Hover

Hover effects are great, especially if you are trying to extra attract a user as they pass their cursor over a certain item. This way, it catches its attention as soon as the consumer hovers an item. It is a useful way to show which elements are clickable.

Loading

Loadings are essential ways to keep the user entertained during load time, and also to inform them of the level of progress, or how much time is left. This prevents users from wrongly assuming that there may have been an internet error, and remind them that the page is continuing to load.

Inputs

Input animations are great, and are often combined with tooltips and validations. This way, the user is able to quickly fix errors and fill missing fields to complete the form.

Parallax

Parallax is often used in background sections to create a seamless effect on the page while the users are scrolling. Parallax serves as background story being told to appeal to the user as they browse.

Menus

Animations on menus play a great role on UI/UX. Menus are types of animations amaze the user and keep them interactive, allowing them to see all the content throughout the page.

Page Transitions

Page transitions are not only a great way to load a website, but they are also used for entertainment on the screen as the page is loading. As a bonus, if page transitions are done via ajax, it could reduce the page load by a ton!

Conclusion

Since web design has drastically improved, web animation plays a key role for website designers to draw more users in. Most are trying to use it more and more, not only to fill the page, but also to indicate the workflow of a page. We use animation to indicate errors in forms, where to click, improve conversions, and so much more. The attention of a user often follows animations, which is the main reason for their use. Other than that, Animation is also helpful to distract the user while the content loads, making it seem to be quicker while also allowing them to see movement or progress up front.

The post Importance of Web Animations appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

Shopify is currently one of the leading eCommerce platforms. Its name and reputation have gotten bigger and more recognizable due to its easy setup in opening an online store. This platform has come to be very attractive compared to other eCommerce platforms due to it being an all-in-one eCommerce platform, which provides multiple benefits. Once a user gets a taste of Shopify’s benefits (i.e., usability, multilanguage support, and a massive variety of themes — just to name a few), they cannot live without them. Now that we know the general idea of what Shopify is, let’s dive deeper into all-things Shopify and discuss its benefits and learn how to easily build our own store in just a few minutes.

Shopify Benefits

The biggest Shopify pro is its all-in-one platform. Shopify created a seamless dashboard adapted to sell all of your products. Within the platform, it is visible to see the countless benefits provided to you as a user.

Hosted Solution

Shopify self-hosts all of its websites, making it easier for users to focus more of their time selling and less of their time on server issues. A huge plus here as a user is not needing to worry about server configuration, security, updates, or any tech savvy issue that you may encounter in any other platform.

Thousands of Themes

Shopify Developers have already designed many professional themes, making the attractive and professional build of your store extremely. In addition, most of these themes are highly customizable, allowing you to further adjust and adapt the theme to your specific needs.

Multilanguage Support

The platform support itself comes in 6 different languages: French, German, Japanese, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish. A majority of the themes come with the same language support as well. If using one of the few themes that does not offer language support, there are plugins that could translate your storefront for you.

Related: Best Shopify Plug-in for Your eCommerce Store

Payment Methods

Shopify has a large quantity of payments methods including:

•       Stripe
•       Paypal
•       Debit Cards
•       Credit Cards
•       Amazon Pay
•       BitPay

The payment methods above name only a few of the many methods offered. You can see the full list here.

24/7 Support

Aside from the large number of articles that Shopify provides to its users for help and documentation, it also has 24/7 support via chat, email, phone, and Twitter. Depending on the urgency and complexity of your issue or question, you can choose the method of support to use. For each support channel, Shopify does a great job resolving issues at any given time.

3rd Party Integrations

The amount of integrations that Shopify has already included is pretty widescale. These integrations enable you to find apps that boost your sales, build more flexible pages, and boost SEO, among many other features. The available integrations that draw my attention are the drop shipping integrations, which allows you to have a store that is inventory-less, as everything is handled by your supplier.

Related: The SEO Advantage of Building Your First eCommerce Store With Shopify

Manage Your Store On the Go

Lastly, Shopify has created a mobile app for store owners to manage their stores and see how their business is doing on the go without needing access to a computer.

Cons

Shopify provides some great benefits and a good eCommerce fit to many of its users; however, one store will not fit everyone’s style and/or specific needs. As mentioned earlier, the All-in-One eCommerce platform feature is one of the major pros of; however, this feature can also be a con as well.

Not an Open Source

The fact that Shopify is not an open source platform means that as users, we are not able to edit its core functionality. By not being able to edit its core functionality, we have no choice but to stick to the way that Shopify already works, without having a chance to add more options within the Shopify Admin Dashboard, or complex queries on the front end.

Pricing

Personally, I do not think Shopify charges too high of a price for the services they offer. The platform’s starting price is $30, which includes hosting, maintenance, security, and all of the server configuration.

However, someone experienced in this field may not mind setting everything up (including the site) for a third of Shopify’s price with a different e-commerce platform. Plus, those open source platforms generally do charge a sales percentage — as Shopify does.

Customization

The lack of customization is definitely one of the biggest cons when it comes to analyzing or working on a Shopify store. The way that the platform is setup to manage products and order is great, but it really lacks when it comes to customizing the front-end store such as the templates and pages. It is possible to do a high customization if you are experienced with HTML, JS, CSS, & Liquid; however, without that knowledge, you have no choice but to stick with the Shopify theme you are using.

Even though Shopify already has some custom fields’ support, it is still pretty limited and not easy to use, as you are required to use Chrome extensions to make them show up. Hopefully, in the near future Shopify will help to integrate these better. In the meantime, it is not beneficial if what you need includes specific fields per product or page, as Shopify is not allowing custom dynamic data to be integrated just yet.

Setting up Your Store

Setting up a Shopify store can be extremely easy, so follow these steps!

First, go to shopify.com and click “Get Started.” There will be a popup asking for your Email, Password, and Store Name, which you will be using when logging into your store.

Once you have set this up, you will be asked for more information about yourself and your store. This information is needed in order for you to get paid.

After completing these steps, you have successfully setup your shopify store, easy right? Now let’s get to the interesting part — adding products.

Adding Products

By going to “Products” on the left-hand side menu, you can see all of the different options:

•       All Products: self-explanatory; show all the products listed in your store
•       Transfers: track and receive your incoming inventory from suppliers
•       Inventory: inventory tracking for each of your products to see when stock levels are low
•       Collections: categories in which your products could fall in
•       Gift Cards: sell gift cards to your customers

To add a new product, go to “All Products.” Next, click on “new product” and a form will show up with straightforward fields that are needed to setup the product.

General Info

•       Title
•       Description
•       Images

Organization

•       Product Type: a category for the product that you can use to manage your products
•       Vendor: the manufacturer, wholesaler, or another vendor for the product
•       Collections: the collections that a product is included in
•       Tags: searchable keywords that you can associate with your product

Pricing

•       Price: the amount that you’re charging for the product
•       Compare at price: the original price for a product that is on sale
•       Cost per item: this is the actual cost of the item which you add to track your profit margin.
•       Charge: taxes on this product

Inventory

•       SKU: a unique value for the product to help track inventory
•       Barcode: used by resellers
•       Inventory Policy: the setting for inventory tracking
•       Quantity: number of units in stock

Shipping

•       Weight: needed to calculate shipping rates
•       HS Tariff Code: for international shipping only
•       Fulfillment Service

Variants

•       These are used to show different options within the product such as sizes and colors

SEO

•       A preview of how the product will be showing on Search Engines

If you have set up each of these features correctly, you can preview your product, which should look something like this depending on the theme you have selected.

Build Up Pages

To build pages, the process is similar but less complex.

Go to Online Store à Pages. Once there, click “Add page” on the top right.

The layout for creating a page will be visible. You will notice that it is very similar to creating a product with fewer options.

Page Details

•       Title: Page’s Title
•       Content: Page’s content, it accepts HTML
•       Related: Content Marketing for eCommerce

Visibility

•       Whether you want to hide or publish your page on a different date

Template

•       If you have a custom template for a page, you might select it here

SEO

•       Same as products

Once you save this information, your page will be created. Easy, right?

Navigation

Now, that we have added our first product and created a page, let’s add them to the navigation.

Go to Online Store à Navigation.

Once in Navigation, we can see the different menus that we have registered. For this case, the menus include Footer Menu & Main menu. Focusing on the Main menu, let’s click on it.

Here, you can see a list of the current menu items, and at the bottom an “Add menu item” button, where you can add products, pages, collection, external links, etc. By typing on the link field, products and pages will be automatically populated in order to choose them.

Once you have set up your menu, go ahead and click save menu!

Now if you preview your storefront, you should be able to notice that the navigation has changed and that you are able to navigate to the product and page you just created.

The look of the Store might not look as shiny as you would expect, but the next step is all about theme customization!

Theme Customization

By navigating to Online Store à Themes, you can see that we can either customize the actual template or explore more options.

By assuming you are on the Debut Theme, which is the one that comes by default, let’s go ahead and inspect the customization for this theme.

With the theme customizer, you are able to edit most of your theme without any coding experience. Here, as you see in the screenshot, you have different options on your left which basically defines the theme. You can select different sections, add the logo, background color, text color, social media links, and much else! These settings change theme to theme, but it is definitely the first part to look at if you are trying to customize your site.

Domain

Now that we have gone through the basics of setting up a Shopify store, the last step before pushing it live would be adding a domain!

Due to integration on its platform, Shopify makes it super easy to create a domain. The only thing you need to do is, go to Online Store à Domains, and click whether you want to buy a new domain, connect to an existing one, or transfer one. Either option is pretty straightforward and has instructions of what steps to follow!

Once you have your domain setup, click on “Change primary domain” and choose the one you just added. As the last step, deactivate the password protection in preferences. Congrats, your store is live!

Conclusion

Shopify is a great platform for online stores, depending on what you are looking to have. With your technical experience, Shopify could also be a helpful platform for you too! Although Shopify may lack in areas such as customization, it definitely provides great performance on the rest of its functionalities. The fact that Shopify manages your store as a whole is probably the greatest benefit, as you do not need to worry about security, updates, server work, or anything tech savvy relate. With Shopify, just about anyone could go through the simple steps and build their own personalized page; however, if you are looking for a more personalized eCommerce store that is customized to your preference and needs, contact us.

The post A Beginners Guide to Creating Your First Shopify Store appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

What Is It?

AMP, which stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, is a project created by Google to accelerate the process of viewing websites through its search engine. Have you ever come across a slow website that takes a long time to load, has a messy design, or a confusing layout? AMP solves this issue, making these pages not only load very quickly but be organized with a simple design. Generally, this results in an extremely pleasant user experience for any visitor to your site who wants to navigate and read your content quickly with minimal distractions.

How Does it Work?

AMP works through pages that are coded with an AMP-style structure, which becomes much lighter than the original structure. Here, the term “lighter” refers to the idea that not as many elements are allowed within AMP pages, CSS it is solely allowed directly on the HTML, and JS is not allowed at all.

The main function of the AMP project is to prioritize speed and readability. AMP pages are set up with lazy loading for images, meaning that the images within the page will be shown upon scroll only. Also, AMP pages are heavily cached to show the content as fast as possible.

Why Is It Important?

If you are looking to attract and engage more visitors to your site, speed on your site is key. Most visitors will immediately leave if the site takes more than 3 seconds to load, which is why AMP is a key implementation. If you have fast site speed, plus engaging content, your SERP (Search Engine Result Pages) will increase due to the low bounce rate that you may receive.

In other words, if you have a very interesting content that people are looking for and interested in reading while having great speed, your ranking in search results will likely increase!

Getting AMP Installed

Now that you are more familiar with AMP, and intrigued on how you can implement it onto your site, I’m going to explain the easy process of “AMP-lifying” your site(s).

WordPress

For WordPress, there is a plugin to AMP your site in a matter of minutes. The plugin I heavily recommend is called AMP for WordPress, and it enables you to easily set up a complete AMP website in just a few minutes.

Once you have installed the plugin, and you get the first view of it, you may want to focus most of your attention on the two main tabs: Settings and Design.

In the Settings tab, you will be able to see the wide array of options that you have. All of the options are easy to manipulate and the capabilities of what each of the options can accomplish are extensive. Focusing on the more important (and more commonly used) settings, we will take a look at the General, SEO, Analytics & Notice Bar.

With the general setting of this plugin, you may set up your brand logo, its sizing, and more importantly, decide which pages or post types you want to make AMP pages.

The SEO setting in this plugin mainly allows you to update the SEO Metadata and implement all of the content from any SEO plugin that you are currently using on your site.

The Analytics setting will let you to add your analytic tracking ID as well as any other analytic providers, such as Facebook, Segment, and many more.

Lastly, with the Notice Bar (and the updated GDPR regulation), it is important to inform your visitors about any policy that you have. This setting allows you to easily display a notice bar with a link.

After implementing all these settings, your site is ready to be AMP; however, your site style may not correlate to the same style of your branding. This is why this plugin provides the Design tab feature.

Within the Design tab, you are able to customize the AMP extensively. Some offered design customizations include selecting different templates (Frees & Paid), customizing colors, deciding what is it shown in the header and footer, and choosing which social media icons you want to show. The options that come with the plugin are all highly customizable, but if you are looking for a deep customization for your AMP pages, you can take a look at this Starter Theme, which comes with instructions on how to build your AMP layout from scratch.

Shopify

For Shopify, I have been using the app called AMP by Shop Sheriff,  which is equally as easy to use as AMP for WordPress. The app provides a full dashboard to customize the settings and layout for your AMP pages.

This powerful dashboard does a great job at keeping things easy! It is very customizable and easy to navigate. The app enables you to customize the look of the pages and add analytics, among many other things. There are some limitations in certain settings, which can be unlocked when upgrading from the free plan.

Other

If you are looking to enable AMP for a non-CMS site, you will need to implement AMP manually by following the official guide. It is not as easy as using a plugin (as explained earlier with WordPress and Shopify), but it is possible. Although it may be more time consuming and difficult to implement, it may be more customizable than using a plugin.

Conclusion

AMP and its powerful framework seem to becoming a must for websites. The ability to load your site pages faster than ever can easily attract more users, and if you strategically take advantage of this tool, you can easily increase your site rankings within SEO. It is key to use this tool not only because it creates more engagement, but because it is also extremely simple to install within common CMS sites, such as WordPress, Shopify, or even hardcoded guides with their official documentation.

Don’t lose more time, get your site AMP-lified with us today!

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Icons (from the Greek “eikōn,” meaning “image”) are one of the most used graphic elements in our digital age but stem from the remotest antiquity. Icons have served as key points of varied information throughout history and there are extensive studies on the importance of iconography in different human civilizations.

The fundamental mission of an icon is to offer, without distracting, specific visual information. In order to successfully perform this mission, an icon must have a series of characteristics, among which the following stand out:

• Icons should be as simple as possible, but with enough details to express the intended message. If icons are too complex and/or have too many traces, they can become confusing and potentially convey the wrong message.

• It is important to be mindful of various icon models that are already widely accepted by the public in general. For example, if an error message appears when filling out a form, the alert icon that accompanies the text helps us understand that it is an important error or warning. If we would use a heart symbol it would completely confuse the user. Changing this model that users are accustomed to can cause the icon to lose clarity and lead to a failure in communication and information.

• Icons need to be perfectly designed for the specific information that it will represent.

Why Are Icons so Important?

Icons describe functions.

Although using words to explain concepts is the most direct approach, users may get bored or lose focus with too much text and skip over the message altogether. For this reason, adding icons to describe these functions and features may be an even more effective approach. Not only do they add a more variety to the section, but they also reinforce the message with a visual explanation. This makes it much easier for the user to relate the icon to the concept and understand the features or functions described.

Icons explain a story.

Icons are often used when explaining a process, as you can visually represent each step. They help us visually understand each step of a process and facilitate the visual separation and understanding of the elements they contain.

Icons help fill out forms.

A web form is one of the best ways to get prospective clients and indirectly establish a cordial relation with them. The time you spend bringing the user to your website should be complemented with the same amount of time perfecting the user experience, including your web forms.

A textual description of the data required in each field oftentimes accompanies an icon; however, in certain forms, it is possible to find related icons that are understood without the use of words. The main objective of every designer is that the web form can be completed quickly and easily. Adding both the data type and a related icon improves quick understanding.

Icons help optimize navigation.

As we already know, icons help explain concepts in a visual way. They can also be used as distinctive elements in navigating a website, such as making it is easier to locate and follow certain information throughout the site. For example, let’s say your business has 5 different services and those services are listed on the homepage with a specific icon for each of them. After clicking on one of the service icons, it will be much easier for the user to understand what service he or she is diving into if that new page has the same service logo in the hero section.

From a visual, perspective icons can provide some style to a site:

Many styles of icons exist. Some icons use shadows and reliefs, planes, linear, 3D effects, etc. By using a specific style in your icons, personality is added to the overall design. For this reason, it is important to use icons that visually fit your website aesthetics for a more corporate design.

Conclusion

The creation of icons is a complicated process — not because they require a lot of work, but because it is very difficult to represent the exact message you want to express with a simple figure.

Icons have a huge impact on a website, as each element that you place on your site can affect the overall user experience. Be mindful of the appropriateness of the icons used on your site, as it can help avoid ineffective usage of them along with mistakenly adding them to the wrong sections of the site.

Here are some recommended resources that I commonly use:

Resources:

• The noun project
• Free vectors
• Free Vector Icons

The post The Importance of Icons in Your Website Design appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

In this article, I am going to provide 8 tools that have been a game changer for me in the past few years. Although each tool takes its own approach on productivity, collectively, they have enabled me to be more productive and have a more efficient work life.

Asana

Asana is an all-in-one tool that helps teams organize and plan workflows, projects, and more. This web and mobile application improves collaboration and team management. It has multiple 3^rd party integrations, as well as very useful native ones. With Asana, team members are able to create “tasks” and assign them to anyone within their team. There are also options to set descriptions, tags, and due dates. As for projects, Asana allows you to create different boards, as Trello does, but with more flexibility and functionality. Asana also comes with the ability to implement a timeline functionality that is represented into a Gantt chart with the different tasks created for a project.

Hourstack

Hourstack is a great productivity tool and complement to using Asana. This time tracker app helps you track tasks, organize them by tags and projects, check other’s team member’s tasks, and best of all, allows you to get tasks from other management tools, including Asana!

Aside from helping me track how many hours I spend on each task, Hourstack helps me better organize my day and week, making sure I keep my top priorities upfront.

Evernote

Evernote is one of the best note taker apps I have “ever” used. This tool is super flexible and helps its users take very good notes – including audios, photos, videos, and even web articles. It also has helpful features such as reminders and the ability to see the notes across multiple devices. If you tend to be someone who is a bit unorganized, the folders and tags feature will be your new tag-along in getting things organized, prioritized, and checked off your list.

Google Drive

Google Drive is an amazing tool. Not only does it have a cloud service, allowing you to pull up items on different devices at any moment, but is comprised of different features such as docs, sheets, and slide. All of these features enable you to access, view, and edit all of your work without downloading or buying any software. It is also super easy to share documents and collaborate between multiple people. What about not being able to recover old versions of documents? A version history feature is available, which allows you to recover past work or view edits that have been made. And the best part of all – it’s FREE!

Grammarly

This was my lifesaver when I was in school. Fast-forward to today, Grammarly is still my right-hand man when it comes to checking grammar. Grammarly helps me write quickly, as I rarely have to worry about small grammatical errors. This app helps fix grammatical errors within a bulk of text. Grammarly checks can be done directly on its site, or by adding the Grammarly Chrome extension, which lets you fix mistakes almost anywhere within Google Chrome. I must admit that Grammarly has made me a bit lazy about correcting errors myself, but the time I have saved with this tool makes it completely worth it.

LastPass

If you are someone who uses one password for everything or find yourself resetting your passwords a few times a month because you forget them, this app is made for you. LastPass is a centralized hub with all of your passwords, protected by one master password. The feature that I like the most about this tool is that with its Chrome extension, it automatically fills your credentials on the specific site you are trying to log into. Since this app is in the cloud, you are able to access your passwords wherever you are — even from the mobile app — so you will never be without them.

Zapier

Zapier has the ability to integrate with more than 1,000 apps that are surrounding the web right now. With its integration, you are able to automate your work and increase productivity on a high level. Automation with Zapier takes only a couple of minutes, due to its easy process of making a “Zap.” The possibilities of what you can do with this app are endless. A basic example of something Zapier automates is the following: “When I post a new article, Zapier posts it on my social media accounts.” Although this is a very basic task within Zapier, it is a simple example of the automation process. If you are interested in learning more about this process, I recommend researching the various automation possibilities and opportunities that Zapier offers.

Slack

Slack is a great communication tool when work among teams. It facilitates real-time conversation within big or small teams. The app lets you create different channels, where you can include an unnumbered amount of people, while still being able to get the attention of all (or specific) users. There is also the ability to create a small group or to have single one-on-one conversations. Slack is great for sharing images, files, or even external links. If sharing a video, it will playable from the same direct window. Slack has a powerful API, or application programming interface, which is already implemented in multiple management software, which could help you integrate Slack into your current workflow process.

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