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Know the best marketing automation tools for your business

Posted on April 12, 2017October 16, 2019 by admin

According to HubSpot, “Marketing automation refers to the software that exists with the goal of automating marketing actions.”

Many marketing departments perform various repetitive and monotonous tasks. These tasks include, but are not limited to emails, social media, and other website actions. The marketing automation tools make these everyday jobs easier. In nonprofessional terms, marketing automation is all about optimisation. The scope of marketing automation is beyond simply automating the marketing department’s repetitive tasks. In addition, it optimises the time of your staff. It can even hint on which customers your sales team concentrates their endeavours.

Digital marketing automation has its bloodline in email marketing. However, it is way beyond email marketing. Marketing automation aids marketers to restructure various actions like generating, scoring, and nurturing leads, managing link selling, cross-selling and up-selling, customer lifecycle marketing, and others. The efficient implementation of marketing automation technology can effectively increase operational efficiency. The technology helps to grow revenue quicker by cutting your sales cycle, recovering your lead aptitude, and saving you time to focus on other important areas. However, unfortunately, these paybacks can be availed at a giant cost.

1. Infusionsoft

Clate Mask and his brother Eric Martineau, Scott jointly established Infusionsoft in 2001 at Mesa, Arizona. It caters to more than 25,000 customers. Infusionsoft is one of the most successful marketing automation tools for small businesses that already have a strong customer base and a turnover above $100,000.

Infusionsoft, a leading sales and marketing software, supports small business in getting structured, building sales, and saving time. Its user interface is very well designed. Very few marketing automation tools offer order forms, payment processing, execution, and inventory tracking directly inside the tool. Infusionsoft is one of those automation tools. In addition, it allows worldwide tracking, which makes it easy to keep a track of a contact’s behaviour across multiple marketing channels. Besides, a lot of bloggers use this software for email marketing and creating marketing campaigns & funnels.

Infusionsoft expedites the creation and execution of a sales and marketing strategy. It centralizes customer interactions, attracts new leads, meets sales quicker, and automates recurring tasks like a follow-up, contact management, billing, and payment—all from one place.

Infusionsoft charge a unique mandatory launch fee of $1999.

2. ActiveCampaign

Again, this automation tool is the best-fit solution for small businesses having the strength of less than 100. This tool is very reasonable compared to others. You would be amazed to know that it costs a maximum $150 per month. ActiveCampaign provides services like unlimited email sending, CRM and sales automation, onboarding, and unrestricted access to social data.

Though it is very affordable, the automation features that ActiveCampaign provides are robust. The features include sales team notification, cart and form abandonment, visual workflow editor, and web traffic analysis. The interface of this software is so straightforward that anyone can operate it with ease. The reason why ActiveCampaign should be preferred by small businesses is pretty obvious. The platform makes lead generation and warm lead nurturing effortless by excellent CRM and mailing solutions.

ActiveCampaign Marketing Automation Tool

3. Hubspot

In 2006, HubSpot was founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It was launched in December 2007. Since ages, HubSpot is one of the pioneers in automated digital marketing. It is an inbound marketing software company that helps businesses in modifying their marketing from outbound lead generation to inbound lead generation. It does it by allowing them to “get noticed” by more potential customers in the usual course of the way they shop and learn.

They “get” content marketing.

It provides a full suite of integrated marketing tools that comprise blogging, content management, search engine optimization, social media publishing and monitoring, email marketing, and more. HubSpot is a complete platform for developing marketing effectiveness and marketing competence.

Hubspot does have monthly packages of $200. However, their offerings cost $800/month package for marketing automation and CRM integration that includes only 1,000 contacts. The further cost grows based on the user’s contract requirements.

4. Marketo

Marketo, founded in 2006, launched its first product “Lead Management.” In 2012, Marketo acquired “Crowd Factory.” This acquisition resulted in the benefits of social media marketing capabilities. Finally, the company went public in 2013.

Marketo is easy and influential marketing software that suits an organization having the strength of 100+. It helps marketing and sales professionals drive revenue and develop marketing engagement. Most of the users usually compare this software with Pardot owing to their similar functionality.

Marketo overpowers Pardot in terms of implementation, usability, and design of their platform. Marketo provides the foremost cloud-based marketing software platform for companies of all sizes to develop and maintain engaging customer relationships. It has an outstanding integration with Salesforce. These two tools work effortlessly together through their syncing takes a considerable amount of time.

The packages of Marketo include three standard pricing tiers, at $895, $1,795, and $3,175 per month. Under each tier, various new features are available which may come at hefty prices of an additional $900 – $1,400 per month.

5. Ontraport

Ontraport is again very good for SMBs, the affordability factor is just as important as a feature. It allows accessing the full suite, along with a money-back guarantee only at $600/month. The topmost features of Ontraport include but not limited to two way SMS automation, Landing page A/B testing, ROI tracking, custom reporting dashboard, video hosting, API access for third-party development, task management automation, and lead scoring and routing.

Ontraport holds a wide range of inspiring shopping cart features. These features comprise automatic credit card payment collections and the ability to add cross-sells, upsells, and cart rejection orders.

Ontraport allows storing 25K contacts, managing 100K contacts, and sending 100K emails per month.

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6. Pardot

Pardot belongs to Salesforce. It was jointly founded by Adam Blitzer and David Cummings in 2007. In 2012, Exact Target acquired it for a reported $95 million. Later, Salesforce acquired Exact Target in 2013.

It is a full-featured and user-friendly marketing automation tool. It helps pipelines to pick up the pace and drive sales through social marketing, sales intelligence, email marketing, lead generation, lead management, and more. Other prominent features include segmentation wizard, ROI reporting, email marketing with complete branded templates, real-time sales alerts and CRM integration. It maximizes the efficiency of the sales and marketing teams and ultimately increases revenue.

The standard package provided by Pardot comes at a cost of $1000 per month. The other packages related to advanced analytics, A/B testing, dynamic content costs around $2000 per month. The ultimate package related to API access and custom user roles is of $3000 approx per month.

7. GetResponse

GetResponse Marketing Automation facilitates you to devise flexible processes that sustain your unique business style. Also, can transform your marketing database into a lead scoring activist. It is highly efficient in optimizing the sales funnel. The top features of GetResponse include but not limited to drag and drop visual workflow editor, post-purchase communication, loyalty and reward programs, tracking online activities of subscribers, cutting-edge customer scoring, and others. This platform is very simple to operate; you need to have a full-time CRM manager. Its monthly payment plans are sectioned by list size which starts at $15 per month for unlimited messages to up to 1,000 subscribers.

8. MailChimp

As an email marketing automation tool, MailChimp is a preferred choice for many SMBs.

MailChimp provides enterprise-level automation tools without any hurdles. Its prominent features include but not limited to trigger emails when customers abandon shopping carts, conversion of interested subscribers into customers, re-engaging with existing customers, integration of web services with apps, and others.

There are three pricing plans offers of Mailchimp: Forever Free, Monthly, and Pay As You Go. They also have an alternative designed to fit users’ needs.

9. AWeber

AWeber is an ideal autoresponder platform for small businesses, bloggers, and entrepreneurs. This marketing automation tool is a comfortable process to automate your emails. Its new drag and drop editor is capable to support your email automation requirements. Its prominent features include lead segmentation, web activity tracking, creating invoices, split testing, generating sales reports, and others. AWeber enables you to assemble your list with their opt-in forms. It sends out automated emails to your subscribers. If you want to get started with email marketing, AWeber is the perfect key.

10. Zoho CRM

Zoho Campaigns is an email marketing automation product that helps you create, send, track, and share your email campaigns. Its free services include 12000 emails/month, 2000 subscribers, pre-designed templates, real-time visitor tracking, template library, A/B testing, social sharing, merge tags, sign-up forms, and many more.

Zoho CRM provides a complete view of your sales cycle and pipeline. Zoho. Thereby it enables you to spot trends, marking opportunities, and further, lock more deals. Zoho’s shaped customer relationship management and marketing effectiveness procedures help you build your company into a customer-centric business. Its campaigns are integrated with internal services like Zoho Survey, Zoho CRM, Zoho Forms, Zoho Docs & Zoho Sites, Zoho Creator, and other services like LinkedIn, Shopify, SurveyMonkey, Facebook, Twitter, Eventbrite, Google Analytics, WordPress, Google Apps, and others.

Its service packages are in affordable ranges. $12/user/month package provides services of sales forecasting, reports, and dashboards. A professional package worth $20/user/month provides services of Email integration and social CRM. An enterprise package worth $35/user/month provides services of territory management and custom modules. Further, its CRM Plus package worth $50/user/month provides services of email marketing, help desk, and customer surveys.

How To Develop A Winning CRO Testing Roadmap

Posted on April 3, 2017November 6, 2019 by admin

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the practice which boosts the proportion of your website visitors who perform a preferred action on your website. Primarily, it is website optimization so that larger chunk of your traffic finds it illuminating and performs your desired action.

Need for CRO testing roadmap

A number of variables need to be tested in order to achieve your conversion goal. These variables include:

Opt-in form placement, design, and draft
Opt-in bribe (or lead magnet)
CTA (“call to action”) color and copy

Testing such variables might lead you to cash on short-term success like increasing CTR to your landing page. However, to enjoy long-term and sustained success, you need to focus on CRO testing roadmap. These long-term goals include increasing MRR. Consequently, it is must to test CRO roadmap. This is because as a business it helps you to move from tactical testing to strategic testing. Based on positive results, you can optimize your focused areas of website. Moreover, it improves organizational resource planning.

According to Emma Travis, Senior Optimization Strategist at PRWD, having a testing roadmap “helps to communicate to the wider business what the ‘plan’ is.”

The major paybacks of developing a roadmap are better alignment of teams with brand visions and strategic goals. It sharps your testing in conjunction with the widespread organization and how you accomplish your goals.

The broad reasons why you need to develop a winning CRO testing roadmap includes the following:

1. Optimize resource planning

Few areas you need to decide based on your requirements, though trial and error may require. Such areas include hiring resources over outsourcing. Content writer, web designer, developer, and other vital resources can either be hired for temporary or full time basis. Considering costs and benefits, you may opt for outsourcing the same tasks. However, to decide – hire or outsource, a roadmap helps you know exactly when to hire resources for maximum impact. For example, if your roadmap reveals that you will not be testing copy till the next quarter, you can postpone on hiring a copywriter. Such tests if performed timely and wisely can save you from over-hiring and under-hiring. Ultimately, improves targeted results and your outcome.

2. Focus on strategic goals over tactical goals

In order to achieve strategic goals, one definitely needs to achieve tactical and operational goals. All long-term strategy should be wisely segmented into tactical and operational strategies. However, it does not mean that you should divert your mindset and only focus on operational or tactical goals. For example, if your tactical goal is to increase CTR by 40% and you achieve it as well. Still, it remains your short-term success only. This is because “increasing CTR” is a tactical objective, not a strategic business goal. You may see a drastic improvement in your CTR but is possible that you end up losing on revenue. It improves a specific, remote metric (CTR) without considering long-term goals. Here, a testing roadmap fundamentally outlines these tactical goals in outlook. You know precisely how short-term, tactical goals merge with long-term strategic goals.

3. Prioritize tests

Here, you may pick up any sample page of the website, say product/service page. On this page, you may run a number of tests. Such tests include:

adding “Zoom” element,
appending a size, fit and flex rating,
detailing UGC (“user-generated content”) of product images,
attaching “Customer Q&A”,
making CTA button even more prominent

4. Perform more complex tests

Often, a user restricts him with simple tests including changing font, page colour, button colour, or even tweaking a headline. Possibly, one can make the modifications in coding as well. These changes are fairly easy to work out. On the other hand, more complex tests require a number of resources working together to run the test. In larger organizations, even a team of the tester is required to sign-off on a complex test prior to running it. Such changes include modifying checkout page design to focus on free shipping, tweaking pricing table, and others.

Again, here, a testing roadmap can let you know precisely whom you need to bring on the project. For example, if you need the designer team to sign-off on a checkout page design test, you can employ them at the appropriate time.

5. Line up the rest of your business with your vision and mission

Last but not the least, especially for larger businesses, alignment of resources with organizational vision and mission is must. CRO repeatedly requires a huge amount of modifications to your business, website, and sometimes, even your business model. Undoubtedly, a testing roadmap ensures that your entire business has perceptibility into these developments.

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How to construct a CRO Testing Roadmap

Construction of CRO testing roadmap is a subjective matter since it differs from business to business and industry to industry…

Moreover, the field of CRO has yet not fully evolved. In spite of the availability of numerous frameworks, most of the consultants use their own customized approaches to develop a testing roadmap. Experts suggest the following simple steps construct your own CRO testing roadmap:

1. Clarification of business vision and mission

As a business, it is imperative to establish your business goal. Importantly, goals need to be SMART i.e. specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and tangible. With reference to CRO testing roadmap, you need to have consent on how the goal is measured. It should be noted that goals relate to business and industry and could be completely different from one business to others. For an e-commerce company, a goal could be “reduce shopping cart abandonment,” while for a SaaS startup, it could be “reduce churn rate.”

Your business goal would be the course of action behind every test you run. Any test that does not help meet your goal in some way should not be run.

2. Drill down strategic goals to meet the business goal

Your business goal needs to be drilled down to the level of your strategic goal. For instance, if your e-commerce business goal is to “improve the shopping cart acceptation rate”, your strategic goals could be:

Augment checkout completion rate
Boost product prices
Enhance cart recovery email conversion rate

Enlisting such strategic goals with the help of various mind-mapping tools will ease your process of developing CRO testing roadmap.

3. Collate tactical goals to accomplish strategic goals

You need to achieve your tactical goals to accomplish your strategic goals. For example, suppose you own a digital marketing firm, your strategic goals and tactical goals could be as follows:

These tactical goals form the foundation of your testing idea brainstorming session.

4. Document on hand performance and set a baseline

Prior to moving towards brainstorming testing ideas, you need to set a baseline for your existing performance. It means you need to conduct a CRO audit to understand the areas which need either attention or improvement. At least, for your online business, you should be aware of the bounce rate, primary CTA & CTR, and exit rate. Such statistics should be noted down on the excel sheet or any other convenient application.

For example:

5. Devise testing thoughts

Once you reach till the previous step, your next suggested move is to come up with ideas to meet each of your tactical goals. These ideas should be accurate and precise. For example, be clear if you want to change CTA copy on your product page or you want to change the design and look of your product page. Each goal should be tested using various mind mapping tools. In case your tactical goal is to attach social proof on your product and services page, you might come up with solutions such as:

Demonstrate live purchases in numeric terms
Provide Klout / Moz score
Attach testimonials

6. Prioritize tests

Now it is time to identify which tests to run first. Experts suggest the following two approaches for the same.

Resource-first approach	Under this approach, first of all, a user takes stock of existing resources and identify which tests could be run with them. For example, if you have an in-house designer, you can prioritize testing product page and thank you page prior to testing other elements.
Results-first approach	Under this approach, first of all, a user prioritize the tests based on desired results and accordingly arrange resources.

Regardless of the approach that is being considered, the following two areas need to be measured:

Simplicity of execution	This measures how easy the test would be to put into practice. It is based on existing organizational resources, the capability to acquire future resources and technical complexity of the test.
Impact	This measures what is the expected impact of the test on your target metric. It is based on historical data, case studies of similar industries, and test target

Once this data is in place, you can use a colour-coded scale (Red = high priority, Green = low priority) to denote the priority.

7. Build up your testing hypothesis

A hypothesis is an assumption made from facts that serve as the starting point for any experiment or examination. Every flourishing A/B test typically has a hypothesis associated with it. This hypothesis has three components:

Assumption: what is assumed is true on the basis of past experience and available data
Experiment: what is being experimented is focused on a single variable and is logically consistent with the assumption
Expected outcome: need not to be precise but should be able to reveal the expected trend

For example, the assumption is CTR for the button given on the website is low since it is not prominently placed. It can be experimented by modifying the size, style, or colour of that button to test its impact. The results of the experiment could be measurable like changing CTR button resulted in a 2% lift in conversion rates.

8. Collate all in one place

In case, you have successfully travelled across the above-mentioned seven points, you would have a strategic goal, various tactics to accomplish that strategic goal and prioritized testing thoughts for each of those tactical goals. Now it is the perfect and right time for you to collate them into a testing roadmap.

At the very least, you should note the following:

Apart from the above-mentioned checkpoints, you can also consider your baseline and target for the metric you are testing (such as CTR or bounce rate).

For ease of data and derived information, it is advisable to note all of this in a separate spreadsheet at the end of your exercise. It is worthwhile to keep this document practically open-ended and flexible.

9. Plan your tests

Once the entire data is filled up in your spreadsheet along with testing ideas, it would be easy for you to implement CRO testing roadmap.

Now you know how to devise a winning CRO testing roadmap. For your online business, you now need to run a CRO audit, list your strategic and tactical goals, prioritize tests based on execution ease and at last, RUN the test!

Content marketing tools

1. Co- schedule Headline Analyzer

According to HubSpot, only 60% of people who click into an article end up reading past the headline. This explains how important your headline is for your marketing.

Co- schedule Headline Analyzer is a free tool, widely used in the field of digital marketing. This tool calculates the score for your overall headline quality and rates its ability to result in social shares, increased traffic, and SEO value. It is very simple to operate. The scoring format is also informative. An overall score of your headline is judged on the basis of four parameters; common words, uncommon words, emotional words, and power words. You should definitely use this tool to improve your article or blog headlines.

2. Content Ideator

An easy to operate the tool. Content Ideator helps you find good topics to write about e.g. blogs, articles, and others. It lets you generate content ideas that your audience reads and shares. This tool is also popularly known as a Content Forest tool. The beauty of this tool is it allows you to generate a number of blog topics and ideas in a little amount of time. Once you enter a single keyword or a phrase, it will come up with a long list of ideas out of which some may be helpful and some may not be.

3. Grammarly

Grammar is of utmost importance to avoid confusions when it comes to oral or written communication. Incorrect usage of grammar and spelling mistakes can actually slow down the overall flow of communication. Grammarly is yet another powerful tool that helps you correct your content. It highlights the most possible grammatical slipups, wordiness, and suggests better articles/prepositions strengthen your content. It also provides apt synonyms for the words that you double-click. This content tool helps you with the correction part of your content. Moreover, it also helps with the correct sentence formation part of your content if you are mistaken at any of the sentences.

4. HubSpot

This specific tool promotes inbound marketing platforms. It consists of various tools to monitor and devise effective blog posts, personalized landing pages, and other compelling content along with excellent consumer support. It also includes effective content-marketing campaign activities. HubSpot also helps social media analytics and message-scheduling so that you can advertise your content easily to your social carriers.

5. Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a great and invaluable content creation tool. The first five searches of Buzzsumo are absolutely free. If you would like to identify which online outlets or influencers are getting the most traction in your space, you should definitely look to Buzzsumo for analytics-driven insights.

Based on your search, Buzzsumo will colonize the trending content, which is most social, highest ranking, and most influential. This will give you a perfect idea of how to title your content. In addition, it will help you find out where to advertise your content based on relevant audience reach.

6. Copify

Everyone wish to create quality content. As a business, you need content for everything, from the website pages that drive sales to the blog posts that engage customers on social media. It does require a good amount of relevant research. Based on the research, you can come up with the draft content. Post that proofreading, copy editing, substantive editing, and designing finally shapes your final output. As you can see, it’s a lengthy process and a challenging job!

Imagine neither you are a professional writer nor you have an in-house writer. No need to worry, a simple solution is just a click away, Copify. As an entrepreneur, you can easily access quality copywriters through Copify. Copify helps businesses to source quality content from a network of approved writers, promptly and hassle-free. They do take responsibility for proofreading and formatting and deliver mostly within 48 hours.

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7. Outbrain

Outbrain is the best option to solve the problems in the distribution of your content. Even though it is a paid tool, it will broaden your audience to a huge extent.

With Outbrain, you can easily increase your audience engagement with your videos, articles, blogs, articles, and infographics. Your posts will be advertised as suggested posts besides other articles.

8. Canva

Struggling and juggling with the creation of images? Then you should use a tool called Canva. This is considered as one of the most preferred content marketing tools. Canva offers ready-to-use templates, custom image sizes for all social media channels. It provides a drag-and-drop interface, cool fonts, and many user-friendly features. The images created by Canva are absolutely original and exclusive that you witness on the web.

9. Hemingway editor

Hemingway Editor is yet another important tool, which you should not miss. It points out the general concerns pertaining to complex words, vague phrases, lengthy sentences, too many adverbs, too many nouns, and others. Precisely, it helps you to eliminate your language-related errors and make your content simple and easy to understand. While highlighting errors, it also gives a description that why it is an error. The only limitation is that it just points out issues, doesn’t provide solutions or alternatives.

10. ClearVoice

ClearVoice allows you great flexibility and competence; it is a complete content marketing network. You will get an inbuilt market through ClearVoice. It helps in promoting your content and brand. It allows you to create your content and get connected with the brands in order to produce quality content. The studio of ClearVoice enables the brands to recognize the influencing factors and their competitors so that they can produce the content which is both relevant and valuable.

11. Pocket

If you are looking for a perfect content curation tool, the pocket is an apt solution. This content marketing tool includes the search, arrangement, and share the function of the most relevant and high-quality digital content.

Pocket safeguards all of your articles, images, charts, and videos at a single place for reference. It aids you to bookmark your content, ranging from blogs and articles to images and posts.

Conclusion

With the growing competition of quality content, it has become necessary that you publish your posts with accuracy and efficiency. There are lots of content marketing tools available on the web that will help you optimize your content and make it perfect to be published on social channels.

How to boost traffic with content marketing?

Posted on February 7, 2017October 16, 2019 by admin

Content marketing is of utmost importance because it serves you in generating leads and building a vast community. In addition, it will not make you look like a salesperson. Ignorance of the content is ignorance of the sales.

According to Content Marketing Institute, 70% of B2B marketers plan to create more content in 2017 compared to 2016.

The below-mentioned tips do not follow any particular order, but they all are a package that will give you success in your digital marketing campaign.

Use these tips to inflate your content marketing to boost your web traffic.

1. Use various interactive platforms like Quora

Content marketing has a lot to do with social media and especially interactive platforms. There are multiple platforms where questions and queries are openly shared and millions of people truly attempt them to satisfy the query. Such platforms include Yahoo, StackExchange, Quora, and others. To boost your content knowledge and thereby raising content marketing results try to contribute to such sites and interact with people. Such platforms are growing rapidly and they can very well help you find a new audience. In addition, these sites will also help your target audience reach your website.

You can promote your content across these sites by following the simple course of action.

It is best to follow influencers. Read their posts and try to analyze the way they have written. At times, they serve as the best tutorials in finding out how to write and how to get more thumbs.
Start replying to a few relevant topics which are in line either with your services or with your blogs.
While replying to the relevant topics, you can include links to your blogs. However, in NO circumstance, it should sound self-promotion.
Initially, try to post succinct content so that anyone can read it even while surfing the page. Later on, depending on the question and comfort, you may even post lengthy content.
In case your readers will find your content interesting, engaging, and informative, they will surely follow you till your website to check out your own blogs.

2. Makeover your old blogs

Though it is true that old content can also drive traffic, it is equally important to keep your old content updated and in line with the trends. Each blog listed on your website, be it fresh or old, should have valuable, relevant, and right content.

Your main aim behind the blog posts is to convert your readers into your subscribers. When a reader visits your website for some information and what if they find that your content is stale and irrelevant? It will simply cost you by making you lose your audience. Losing a valuable visitor and subscriber is of course not a welcoming thing. On the other hand, search engines always update their algorithm. There are prominent chances that your site may get penalized if you are not up-to-date.

You can make a few amendments to your existing content in the following suggested manner:

Rectify all minor and major grammatical issues
Incorporate trends that are new and relevant to your blog title. At the same time, delete which is now not relevant based on the recent updates and algorithm workings
Only use images that are relevant and search engine friendly.
Identify the keywords that are actually performing well for higher rankings. You can use SEMrush tool for the same
Periodically moderate comments on your blog posts.
Identify the well-performing posts using blog analytics. Observe a number of views for the specific post.
Keep an eye on the number of shares of your blog on social media.
While updating the old blog post:
- Do not modify URL
- You may amend the blog title but ensure to retain the keywords.
- Assess meta-description if it can be improved.
- Provide internal links to your new posts for strengthening internal linking

3. Use compelling infographics

infographic in content marketing strategy

A picture can portray 1000 of words. This is a sort of ‘not-to-miss’ in your effective content marketing strategy.

Infographics should contain no more than 5-6 statistics/ points of information. Research by KISSmetrics found that any more than 6 and it becomes too much for the reader to consume.

Keep these guiding principles handy while creating valuable info graph:

It should be easy to embed to enable more social media shares
Use odd numbers in your title to catch attention. E.g. 243% hike (instead of 250%). Odd numbers always do better than even numbers
Instead of writing long stories, present short, crisp, and catchy phrases/sentences
If your infographic has information in list format, e.g. “5 SEO techniques ”, ensure to label each point with numbers.

4. Make your brand creative with a variety of content

No doubt content marketing is all about blogging, eBooks, articles, and other content in written format. These strategies are going to stay for long and probably forever. However, do not miss out on the new bud of content marketing; video content.

Video content will enhance revenue in 2017 and beyond. Marketers who use video grow their revenue 49% faster as compared to non-video users. According to Cisco, 69% of all consumer Internet traffic will be the result of a video. A video is for sure the future of both content marketing and SEO.

While creating effective video content that makes your brand more creative, do not miss out to ensure:

Your content voice is in line with your audience voice
The video has been designed corresponding to your goal and it serves the purpose
Video content contains the kind of emotion you need to drive with
It does have a strong CTA; it should provide a way to the user to take some desired action. Sometimes it is also better to have lead capture set up with the best possible minimum fields. For example:

Last but not least, it fulfils all possible SEO criteria, e.g. usage of relevant keywords, optimized titles, wise usage of tags, proper description, and others

Conclusion

So far, content marketing has grown from marketing activity to an approach of marketing. It is nothing but creating engaging content to inform your target audience about your offerings and drive them to your website. Follow the given guidelines and enjoy the boost of your search traffic and sales.

Most Important SEO Trends

Posted on February 3, 2017October 5, 2019 by admin

Finally, we are in 2017! New Year, new hopes, new resolutions, but the same old passion! 2016 was a passionate year, predominantly when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) trends and Google in particular. With each New Year, search engine portals develop new algorithms and rules with a view to fighting spamming links and people trying to play the system.

The SEO industry is always poignant, so it rewards to be aware of these evolutions.

An exciting year for SEO, with the following trends heightening the limelight:

1. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) will rise

Over the past few years, easy access to mobile has restructured SEO. Mobile search is growing at a rapid pace. In addition, there is not any sign of its getting slow down in the near future. There is a significant shift in website traffic. Searchers are moving away from desktop towards mobile devices. There are many websites which attract major traffic from mobile devices. Google has experienced that mobile searches surpassed desktop searches.

The same was reported in May 2015. Since then, many steps taken by Google have indicated that mobile should be measured as the default user experience. In fact, Google has initiated measures to make its index mobile-first. Google favours the websites which have switched over to AMPs. AMP is an open source initiative that aims to provide mobile-optimized content. It provides the capability of loading sites instantly on mobile devices four times faster along with eight times lesser data usage.

15 of the 24 hours in a given day, more mobile search is performed on mobile than on Desktops or tablets. searchenginejournal.

Mobile optimization is already extremely important in SEO strategies. However, it will prove to be mandatory in 2017. Experts have anticipated seeing more preference for AMPs in search results. More and more brands are anticipated to take advantage of this option.

2. Intense content will mount

Don’t optimize for keywords. Optimize your content. Readers are tired of surfing the messed up content again and again. Initially, content marketing efforts were focused on producing as much crisp content as possible. However, over the past few years, the focus has also been laid towards comprehensive content.

Interestingly, the current market is flooded with both sorts of content. The trend in 2017 will have much focus on optimized and intense content. The users will receive maximum possible information in the minimum possible space. Epic content is surely going to appeal to the readers.

3. Video Content will enhance revenue

Approximately 64% of the consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it. Video content is at its peak and it is not going anywhere soon.

According to Syndacast,74 per cent of all internet traffic in 2017 will be video.

In fact, the Facebook higher authority also stated that video will become the main type of content by 2020. Along with the development and increased usage of advanced technologies including, Snapchat, Vine, Periscope, and even Instagram, video content is going to last its impression in 2017 as well.

At present, marketers who use video grow their revenue 49% faster as compared to non-video users. Google is experimenting with video ads in the search results.

There are multiple types of video content including advertisements, webinars, tutorials, question answers, quizzes, and others. Marketers can implement such types of videos in their search marketing strategy.

4. Structured Data and Schema will have an influential role

Search engine crawlers need to understand the web content to provide the best search results. With a view to providing such information to the user, Google, Bing, Yandex, and Yahoo! collaborated to form Schema.org. The inclusion of Schema markup in a user’s HTML improves the way his page displays in SERPs by improving the rich snippets that are displayed below the page title. Schema.org provides particular set shared vocabularies that webmasters can use to markup their pages in ways that can be understood by the major search engines.Look for structured data and Schema are expected to have an influential role in SEO in 2017 and ahead.

5. Voice Search will mark a footprint

Voice search is definitely not a new thing; however, till recent past, it had no significant role to play in the industry of search engine marketing. Conversely, with the increasing usage of mobiles and other advancements in technology, voice search is gradually gaining drive.

The study, based on results obtained by 1,400 US residents, showed that 55 percent of teens use some kind of hands-free search on their smartphones every day, such as Google’s own solution, along with Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana. While voice search use is growing among older smartphone owners, 45 percent of adults in the survey claimed to fee “like a geek” when they talked to their smartphone.
Google via PR Newswire

Obviously, to search for anything rather than typing out the word or phrase, it is a lot more convenient to just speak. Searching through voice is going to grow more in 2017.

However, to optimize search engine marketing strategy, you need to ensure that you comprehend the searchers intent. Voice searches will usually be in the interrogative form and would be including question words like who, what, when, how, where, and others. The best way out to optimize if rephrasing headlines and make it look like a question rather than a statement. For example, “Tips for social media marketing” can be better rephrased as “What are the best tips for social media marketing?”

6. Influence of artificial intelligence on algorithm working

Finally, late last year, Google search algorithms got a boost on the release of Google RankBrain. Google RankBrain is a machine-learning artificial intelligence (AI) system which assists in processing search results. It is anticipated to make search smarter and more pertinent to the user. To get along with the flow, use taglines, compose compact articles and reduce the amount of the information you post.

Industry experts are expecting more machine learning updates similar to Google hummingbird in this year as well. Machine learning updates may get released in the areas of data interpretation or marketing automation. Though these are anticipations, they are unquestionably an important portion SEO trends for 2017.

Do Not Miss: to Read About Important Link Building Standards

7. Optimization for user intent

Sites which lay emphasis on enhanced user experience are always favoured by Google and other search engines. To some extent, user experience matters when it comes to SEO. It is straightforward that users will spend more time on the site if they find it user-friendly. Even though keywords and phrases are vital; in 2017, brands are also required to place significance on optimizing their digital content on the basis of user intent. In your SEO strategy for 2017, three musts are:

8. Personal branding – an undisclosed SEO strategy

A social media platform like Facebook has refined its algorithms to favour individual posts over branded posts. In addition, it is continuing doing so. This indirectly places an emphasis on personal branding. Personal branding strategy is very similar to the strategy of corporate branding.

According to Forbes, with the help of a personal brand, you’ll have an easier time securing guest posts, building user trust, and driving more traffic to your website.

Surprisingly, quite a low number of brands have actual cash on it in their SEO activities. However, it would not be incorrect to anticipate that more and more businesses will attempt to cash on personal branding. At the same time, personal branding will bring in more opportunities and more competition.

CONCLUSION

Of course, it is not an easy job to predict what exact changes Google and other search engines are going to announce this year. However, it is not that tough to anticipate that the aforesaid trends will probably widen in some consequential way. As an SEO marketer, you need not to immediately refurbish your digital marketing strategy but need to factor the upcoming trends with a prolonged vision.

The year 2017 will be an influential year in many ways. Get yourself well ready for future challenges and future opportunities.

5 Ways to Use Social Media Automation in your Marketing Strategy

Posted on January 21, 2017October 16, 2019 by admin

Automation – keeping things simple, and making them faster

We are now in 2017, and the era of Social Media automation is truly upon us. Today, we witness a number of scheduling tools for various automation tasks. Such tasks include automation of e-mail responses, automation in industries, automation in banking services – in a nutshell, and many others. A pretty big chunk of the average person’s day is dependent on automation and automated processes. Automation, in itself, is an invaluable tool to boost productivity.

Social media – Killer Shark or a Marketing Runway?

Ask anyone born post the ’90s where the real dynamism is. A great majority of them will tell you it is social media. However, over two-thirds of marketing executives cringe at the very mention of social media. This is because of the overload of social media. Its intrinsic ease of access is, strangely enough, killing marketing. However, on the other hand, it is also enabling a rebirth for marketing, in the form of social media marketing.

marketing-runway-for-social-media-marketing

Let us move towards what exactly social media marketing is. Today we see many small businesses, libraries, and stores purely run based on their social media presence. Moreover, nowadays, we see companies use various channels of social networking to create a self-sustained marketing model for themselves. The more the employees post on social media, the more potential gains the business stands to receive.

The use of social media is not quite universal—but it is getting close. 70% of the U.S. population now has at least one social networking profile, while more than half use two or more social networks. According to CMO survey, the number of global social media users is projected to grow from 2.1 billion in 2015 to 2.5 billion by 2018.

The following pie describes the impact of Social Media Marketing on businesses

A dose of insight:
Social media marketing now plays almost as large a role in purchasing decisions as does TV, and 57% of consumers say they’re influenced to think more highly of business after seeing positive comments or praise online.“

Still, some fascinating contradictions remain. Even though businesses today use social media for marketing and those efforts are expected to increase, many marketers and top executives alike find the business value difficult to quantify through this process. Today, as social media is speeding along at a lightning pace, marketing executives are huffing and puffing along in its wake. Now, it is time for marketers to catch up.

That is where the brainchild of the two – social media marketing and marketing automation – comes in. Say hello to ‘social media automation’!

When the worlds of social media and marketing automation hit into one, a union of convenience and connectivity is achieved. A broad bandwidth of experts in this domain does seem to concur with this fact. According to a recent study by Marketo, 91% of the most successful users agree that marketing automation is “very important” to the overall success of their marketing efforts across channels.

Five rules for social media automation

Today, a major amount of our time is mostly spent staring at screens. It seems that this trend is here to stay for long. The devices and their screens are getting more and more sophisticated as well. Keeping that in mind, here is the nitty-gritty of social media automation.

1)Post When Your Audience is up and surfing

The chances of getting higher traffic to your posts are obviously higher when your audience is online. Each business (and social network) is unique. The only way to know the best time to post is to dig into analytics. Once you are well versed with the knowledge of perfect posting times, it becomes easier for you to make data-driven decisions. Rather than throwing posts out hoping for an outcome, better you predict it. Based on our research, we highly recommend a tool called True Social Metrics if you need to understand when and how your audience is spending their time on the web.

bes time to post on social media marketing

Once you know your best time to post, you can then use a tool like Post Planner or Sprout Social – both are excellent social media management tools. Usage of these tools can help you plan or schedule your posts at specific intervals.

When content is added to a unique plan, it is then scheduled based on the pre-determined times. It can also help you sort out the best posting times depending on the type of content you are creating. No huffing, no puffing anymore! Just let your system do all the hard work, while you get some downtime!

The buffer is another important social media tool used to optimize social updates. which conveniently helps in scheduling posts on various other social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn, and others. It also helps in spreading scheduled posts out to publish throughout the day and engagement time.

There you go, an easy way to save a whole lot of time and effort! What are you waiting for, then?

2)Automate to drive it home: Evergreen Content

Your evergreen content is your bread and butter. This aspect of your website never gets old. In simple words, evergreen content is material that is considered fresh and exciting to your readers. It adds value to your audiences, no matter when it is posted. A tool we found to be very nifty when it comes to posting evergreen content is Tailwind. Pin your freshly churned content – be it a blog, a page, an article or a quote. Let it keep showing up on your social media pages.

3) Set up automation meetings between your heroes: multiple social networks

Perhaps another fundamental feature of automation in general, extending even to social media automation is inter-connectivity. As a marketer, you can set up a linked list of operations based on triggers. By combining one social media network with another, you can achieve greater returns and attention to your posts or websites. With a tool like IFTTT (If This Then That) you can share your Instagram post over Twitter for a wider band of users to see.

4) Set up notifications -to keep you up to speed!

Do you know that annoying pop-up which keeps appearing on your smartphone? Well, a similar feature can be implemented here as well! Except, who has the time to interact, respond, and stay engaged all the time? Timing is essence here. To stay up to speed, you need to initiate automated notifications. One such useful tool we came across is Twitonomy. Twitonomy helps you manage your mentions over Twitter, but more than that – you can see your most influential, engaged, and active users (provided you shell out the bucks for a paid version). The beauty is in its ease of use. Find a mention, click on the tweet, respond, follow, or even add to a list. Within a matter of seconds, you can interact with your audience and stay in the conversation.

This graph depicts that an average of 68% of social media fan posts is ignored. Here is where you can get ahead of the rest. Just by being responsive and responsible, all without your own precious time being wasted!

TweetDeck is a successful and totally free desktop web app. It is the best fit for those who need to manage varied accounts, follow specific hashtags, respond to lots of distinct users, and see precisely what’s being tweeted in real-time.

On the other hand, Followerwonk is used to explore and grow your social network. It does deep digging into Twitter analytics and let you know who are your followers? Where are they located? When do they tweet? Which tweet gets more fame?

5) Don’t let it do all your work!

It is easy to get carried away these days, isn’t it? Well, automation is a time-saver, perhaps a lifesaver for so many of you marketers! However, having a portion of your work automated doesn’t mean you kick back and grab a breather. Indeed, social media management tools are surely here to stay, but only because they free up your schedule from monotonous work. Use this time wisely to interact with your customers, to spread your content, and to build relationships!

Finally, since you do spend most of your time on social media anyway, why not utilize that to improve your productivity – as funny as that sounds? That is why, for growing businesses, developing a social presence through automation is perhaps a leap of faith they can afford.

Remember, It is never too late to start!

11 Marketing Automation Basics to Boost Your Business Growth

Posted on January 9, 2017November 6, 2019 by admin

Congratulate yourself if this is probably the first time you are hearing of Marketing Automation and you own an online venture or blog. Marketing is increasingly integrating with technology and as experts advice; marketers will soon be spending more on technology than Tech specialists. Marketing automation, with the help of platforms and technologies, helps marketers reach the relevant audience, analyze activation performance and deliver measurable results.

One of the biggest trends for businesses this year, marketing automation can help your online business analyze the impact and manages your marketing campaigns. It can also collate customer data to help further leads conversion. And the greatest advantage that you can gain over your competition is implementing this before them.

A Dose of Insight: Less than 5% of non-tech companies are currently using marketing automation software which opens up a wide opportunity for your business. (Source: venturebeat.com)

Here are the basics of marketing automation to get you started

Part I: Understand your customer

what-are-the-criteria-for-coustmer-tracking

Track Users with Cookies

One of the widest used marketing automation features is tracking the user across websites to nurture, qualify and finally convert a lead.

Study What Customers Do on Your Website

With predictive tools rooted in real-time data analysis, you can gather data on your customer’s purchases and habits. With a clear emerging pattern, you can act on such insights to increase conversion and subsequently sales.

Understand How Your Consumers are Different

Traditional marketers also use segmentation as a tool to understand their consumer base. This aspect of traditional marketing is equally important to consider for online marketing. With intelligence from segmentation, you know the products which might be more pertinent to a particular segment of your customers.

Reach Your Customers at the Best Time and Day

Marketing automation software can even deliver your e-mail campaigns to you customers’ inbox the time of day and day of the week when they are most likely to check their e-mails.

Part II: Engage With the Customer

Use intelligent and personalized contact forms

Marketing automation platforms enable you to collect a lot of information about the visitor on your page. Converting them or gathering the most relevant information such as their phone numbers can be easy with a customized call to action highlighting the product or service they are interested in (already clicked on).

Remarket with Customer Data

Use ad networks to talk to your customers and further your engagement with the customer. You may remind them of their last action on your website and further your lead to conversion.

Don’t Forget Offline Online Integration

If you have an offline store, to make your online pitch you must customize your online content and ads to your customer. The data from your CRM can help you segment and better advertise to the same customer online.

Never Ask Twice for the Same Information

You must never ask your customers for any information that you have. For instance, if you already have a visitor’s contact details from your marketing automation tool, make sure that the contact form does not pop up in this case.

Part III: Close the Deal with Marketing Automation

how-to-close-the-deal-in-marketing-automation

Reminders about Abandoned Transactions

The average abandonment rate for online shopping carts is at a high 67%. You can recover these lost leads and potential revenue by automating you’re tracking and setting up visual reminders on other websites or through e-mail. An automated follow-up e-mail receives a higher open, click-through and conversion rate. The conversion rate using abandoned cart e-mails can go up to 40%.

Update Customers about the Price Drops

A few of your customers may abandon cart due to the price. Automating a personalized e-mail to such customers increases the chances of conversion up to 6 times. They have already established the purchase intent and you could capitalize on it by sending them emails whenever there is a price drop on the products they inquired for.

Reward the Engaged Customer with Discounts

A new format of loyalty programs being used by online portals is adjusting discounts based on user activity on their website. For instance, a website may offer an engaged active customer who regularly visits a website. Leaves reviews and feedback with a special additional discount. Web sites may also want to e-mail discount codes, marketing offers to engage and make active some accounts which have been dormant for a long time.

Marketing automation after all this may sound like a magic wand however, these can’t be one magic glove fits all as a solution. Before you decide to buy a Marketing Automation Tool, research and understand the features you need and the features you don’t. Have a plan in place and understand both its’ strong points and limitations. From your selected vendors (each of which will have their own advantages and disadvantages), ask for free trials and plan to launch accordingly to see what works for your business. Some of the known brands in market automation include Oracle (formerly Eloqua), Pardot, Infusionsoft services, Marketo, Hubspot, and Sales manager.

Read More On: What is Marketing Automation

AngularJS Vs ReactJS: Make Your Choice

Posted on December 23, 2016November 6, 2019 by admin

Angular JS and React JS form some of the most used linguistic frameworks as far as JavaScript is concerned. However, both of them have intricate differences as well as similarities, which in turn give rise to some important considerations that need to be addressed while facing a choice between the two.

Difference-between-React-and-Angular-JS-.

What is Angular JS & React JS

Angular JavaScript is popularly known as AngularJS, Angular.js or simply Angular. Angular JS is an Open Source structural framework for creating Rich Internet Applications (RIA). Angular was created by Google and is also used by YouTube for PS3, Weather.com, freelance.com & Netflix.com, which are among some of the most popular websites or applications that have been developed by using this language.

React JavaScript is popular as ReactJS, React.js or simply React. React JS is an Open Source JavaScript Library which helps in the creation of dynamic – Single page applications. However, it differs from Angular JS from the perspective that it allows the manipulation and utilization of reusable UI components. Hence, it essentially acts as a refresh button from a conceptual point of view, which is activated every time a change is made in the underlying code. React JS is mainly maintained by websites like Facebook & Instagram. Other websites like Vimeo and Dropbox also have been crafted with the use of this particular programming language.

Angular JS V/S React JS

Once we skim through the surface of both these languages, it becomes clearer that there is a lot more than meets the eye.

1. Extensibility:

With Angular JS, web developers can extend the current functionality of the underlying HTML framework with the help of custom directives. Angular JS offers many resourceful directives and also offers readymade frameworks, which can help in the creation of new and diverse custom directives.

Custom Directives are analogous to the clothes that you wear. They can be used again and again for different occasions, but always add a particular element to your overall personality.

Custom directives are large or small sections of code, which preserve the functionalities as well as behavioural properties of the code from the perspective of semantics so that these can be used again and again.

React JS also provides the same level of functionality as far as scope for extensibility is concerned. However, being a Javascript library, it is mainly used for creating components out of the underlying code, rather than make direct changes for faster creation of applications, which is what Angular JS is for.

Word Code: The word extensibility, in development or programming realms, indicates the capability of software wherein it can be moulded regarding functionality and overall scope of the same. However, another important aspect of extensibility also includes the fact that the data flow and the internal structure does not need to be changed

2. Data Binding

Data binding is a very crucial part of the web development process. It is the process through which changes in the underlying HTML code can be initiated by making changes in the Graphic User Interface or GUI, and vice-versa. However, depending on the type of data-binding allowed by a framework, it can be mainly of two types:

One Way Data Binding: This type of data-binding allows the user to make changes the outer view or the front end by performing changes or alterations in the underlying model or code. For instance, a change in the HTML code will be reflected in the view portion of the browser.

Two-Way Data Binding: Two-Way Data Binding is more useful for the automated creation of a new model or application. This type of Data-Binding allows a user to make a change in view, which will directly be reflected in the codes, thus enabling the software framework in creating automatic templates. However, it also provides the user with the functionalities of One-Way Data-Binding, from the model or code end.

Angular JS is equipped with Two-Way Data Binding capabilities, while React JS works in a slightly different manner. In the React world of programming and computing, data flows in only one way, from the code to the program or application, which effectively makes it a one-way binding script. However, React JS can be effectively used to create data loops in case of certain types of user inputs, such as form submissions, to initiate two-way data-binding. Hence, while Angular JS is inherently equipped with two-way data-binding, React JS can be adapted to the same.

3. Speed

By comparison, any open source developer can say that React JS is way faster than Angular JS. The sole reason for this is that React JS uses virtual DOM (Document Object Model). By creating virtual DOM, any changes made to either the script or the model are reflected faster and with increased accuracy.

Why React has the better speed then Angular JS

DOM is a tree-shaped structure, which means that it represents the HTML code in the form of a tree, thereby deriving from the code itself and using essential components of the code as nodes. However, the problem with this tree structure is that if a small component or element, such as an event handler within the code, needs to be changed, a web-developer might have to dig deep and risk bug infections, just to make a small change. This is also because tree structures today have become more vast and complex than before.

Word Code: DOM is essentially an interface or platform that is language-neutral, thereby allowing both programs and scripts to initiate changes and update elements such as style, structure, and content

On the other hand, Virtual DOM is not a tree-shaped structure like conventional DOM and is instead a more simplified version of the HTML DOM. Hence, the simplification enables a React JS user to perform DOM functionalities without actually doing a lot of manual work.

4. DOM

DOM is a World Wide Consortium Standard which sets the guiding rules for accessing the XML & HTML documents. In other words, it is an API (Application Programming Interface) that guidelines the way HTML & XML files are accessed & manipulated.

Angular JS uses the browser or HTML DOM while React JS works with virtual DOM. However, even though the use of Virtual DOM by React JS enables it to provide superior speed as well as convenience to developers. Angular JS provides cross-browser compatibility. This means that Angular JS can automatically handle Javascript code that might be specific to a particular browser. Without needing to be adapted or altered for the same.

5. Rendering:

Best language for Rendering AngularJS Vs React

The reason why React JS has more popularity regarding UI creation. And refinement is that it offers server-side rendering, while Angular JS only provides client-side rendering. Server-side rendering is a lot faster than client-side rendering as it decreases page load time considerably. And affects application performance directly.

6. Learning Curve

Starting to use Angular JS as a framework for app or web development might prove to be difficult for developers with little prior knowledge about essential elements within the framework. For instance, Angular JS requires conceptual knowledge, e.g., DOM directives, filters, factories and more. You may even call Angular JS the language of professionals.

While React JS is very easy for beginners as API & Syntax used in this Javascript library are not so complex in comparison to Angular JS. React has a small and contained API, which makes development easy, fun and comprehensible.

7. Structure & Components

The structure & components of a framework or library craft the way UI and applications themselves are built. Angular JS uses linguistic components from HTML, CSS & JS. On the other hand, even though React JS uses the same languages, it also utilizes a linguistic component known as JSX. JSX can be used to integrate Javascript and HTML together, thereby allowing easier and convenient development processes. It is known as the Javascript XML syntax transform, which enables to utilize HTML-like tags within the Javascript framework. However, in simpler words, JSX can be used to create React elements. Where the same elements can be created through XML-based object representations that are similar to HTML tags.

8. Coding & Re-using Codes

Angular JS has a solid market presence as it was developed four years before the React JS. So, there are many ready-made components and elements available for Angular JS developers. However, the main of Angular JS is to create and operate complete applications. On the other hand, React JS allows more freedom as far as testing, reusing and separating existing code is concerned. The reusability of the code lies at the very heart of the conceptual framework of React JS, as the main use of this library is to create components, rather than complete applications themselves.

9. Architecture

Angular JS uses the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture. MVC is a structural design or framework which enables web applications to come alive. The MVC structures help in managing the web application by dividing it into specific parts, each with its own directives and responsibilities. However, on closer inspection, it seems that the controller aspect of Angular JS in the MVC framework is more flexible and open to adaptation. In this case, Angular developers have created a framework known as MVW. Also is known as Model-View-Whatever. Where “whatever” indicates that you can add any element which is suitable or convenient for your application.

From the perspective of the MVC model, React JS uses only the V component i.e. View. Hence, React doesn’t make use of a structure. But instead, lets you make the most of the library to tailor and customize the outer appearance or User Interface of your app or website. However, if remote data and other elements that include deep code-based functionalities are your areas of interest. You might need to use React JS along with other frameworks like Flux.

QUICK FACTS AND FINDINGS ON ANGULARJS VS REACT JS

Angular JS was developed in 2009 while React JS was made Open Source in 2013.
Historical Data of popularity comparison shows that the popularity of React JS has increased significantly. While the opposite situation was seen with Angular JS.
The Popularity of Angular JS & React JS can be found both in developed economies & emerging markets

So, we can say from formal observation that both Angular JS & React JS have their own unique features, which make them excellent tools for development. At the same time, both have their own unique limitations as well. It is up to you as to which one you would want to choose for your own developmental requirements and preferences.

Do let us know your comments and insights on this comparison.

Top Android Libraries: for Every Android App Developers

Posted on December 1, 2016November 6, 2019 by admin

Android apps are all the rage right now, considering how commonplace smartphones have become. At the same time, one needs to be constantly in search of novelty as far as such a fast-evolving industry is concerned. In such a scenario, it becomes important to know and adopt crucial hacks to increase the efficiency of the process of application development. One of these hacks includes gaining access to Android libraries, which can considerably help in giving a new edge to the process.

Here is a list of Android libraries every android app developers: rookie or expert should know:

JSON:

If your app uses Java, which it definitely might, then JSON is a must for you. It converts Java objects into the lighter JSON format. JSON is abbreviated as JavaScript Object Notation and is used to signify a particular type of format which is considerably more convenient to read and write. Once the data transfer is complete, the same can be utilized to de-serialize JSON back to the Java format. This will ensure a more efficient and quick transfer.

// Serialize
String userJSON = new Gson().toJson(user);

// Deserialize
User user = new Gson().fromJson(userJSON, User.class);

Retrofit:

Retrofit works to convert your REST API into Java format. This nullifies the lengthy coding required for the conversion. As far as finding hacks to make the practice of coding more accurate without compromising on time and energy, Retrofit is a fine hack. The updated version of Retrofit has annotations which make it easy to add the header, request body and query parameters, along with making changes to the URLs.

public interface RetrofitInterface {

// asynchronously with a callback
@GET(“/api/user”)
User getUser(@Query(“user_id”) int userId, Callback<User> callback);

// synchronously
@POST(“/api/user/register”)
User registerUser(@Body User user);
}
// example
RetrofitInterface retrofitInterface = new RestAdapter.Builder()
.setEndpoint(API.API_URL).build().create(RetrofitInterface.class);

// fetch user with id 2048
retrofitInterface.getUser(2048, new Callback<User>() {
@Override
public void success(User user, Response response) {

}

@Override
public void failure(RetrofitError retrofitError) {

}
});

Retrofit already uses GSON as default, so the combination of these won’t require additional parsing.

EventBus:

This library is an incredible resource to code the way in which different factions of your app interact with each other.

public class NetworkStateReceiver extends BroadcastReceiver {

// post event if there is no Internet connection
public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) {
super.onReceive(context, intent);
if(intent.getExtras()!=null) {
NetworkInfo ni=(NetworkInfo) intent.getExtras().get(ConnectivityManager.EXTRA_NETWORK_INFO);
if(ni!=null && ni.getState()==NetworkInfo.State.CONNECTED) {
// there is Internet connection
} else if(intent
.getBooleanExtra(ConnectivityManager.EXTRA_NO_CONNECTIVITY,Boolean.FALSE)) {
// no Internet connection, send network state changed
EventBus.getDefault().post(new NetworkStateChanged(false));
}
}

// event
public class NetworkStateChanged {

private mIsInternetConnected;

public NetworkStateChanged(boolean isInternetConnected) {
this.mIsInternetConnected = isInternetConnected;
}

public boolean isInternetConnected() {
return this.mIsInternetConnected;
}
}

public class HomeActivity extends Activity {

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

EventBus.getDefault().register(this); // register EventBus
}

@Override
protected void onDestroy() {
super.onDestroy();
EventBus.getDefault().unregister(this); // unregister EventBus
}

// method that will be called when someone posts an event NetworkStateChanged
public void onEventMainThread(NetworkStateChanged event) {
if (!event.isInternetConnected()) {
Toast.makeText(this, “No Internet connection!”, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
}
}

}

Active Android:

When you are using coding hacks, the key is to code less while getting the most out of the same. ActiveAndroid is an object-relational mapping tool, which replaces the lengthy structured query language on the database:

INSERT INTO Users (Nickname, Name, Address, City, PostalCode, Country) VALUES (‘Batman’,’Bruce W’,’Palisades 21′,’Gotham’,’40000′,USA’);

To a small little piece of code like so:
user.save();

Use GreenDAO and ORMLite as an open source alternative to ActiveAndroid.

Universal Image Loader (UIL):

Pictures or images are an important addition to the app. Many developers use Picasso for adding images. While this is an amazing app, it lacks specific configurations that are necessary for it to function efficiently. UIL remedies this problem easily and in a convenient fashion.

Coding can be quite a cumbersome task and therefore gaining access to Android open source libraries makes the process easier and more proficient.

Other than the above-mentioned libraries, here are some alternative libraries that you could use:

RxJava:

android development with java rx by qltech

RxJava is the Java version of ReactiveX API. This library can be used to modify and manipulate value streams within the functioning of the Android app by using three different patterns of coding, namely Functional Programming, the Iterator pattern, and the Observer pattern.

There are two main elements that form a part of the RxJava extension; namely Observable and Subscriber. The element known as Observable is the one through the stream of data in the functioning of the app originates from. The Subscriber is the part of the extension which makes changes to the stream of data originating from the Observable.

Glide:

Glide is an alternative to extensions such as Picasso and UIL, if neither works for you, Glide is another efficient option.

ImageView imageView = (ImageView) findViewById(R.id.my_image_view);

Glide.with(this).load(“https://placekitten.com/1920/1080 “).into(imageView);

Butterknife:

Butterknife is an amazing resource that can ease your coding troubles by reducing strain that originates from writing long strings of code. This is especially useful for the onCreate method as well as the onCreateView on Activity Fragments.

class ExampleActivity extends Activity {
@Bind(R.id.title) TextView title;
@Bind(R.id.subtitle) TextView subtitle;
@Bind(R.id.footer) TextView footer;
@Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.simple_activity);
ButterKnife.bind(this);
// TODO Use fields…
}
}

Android activities are specific components which are responsible for the creation of the UI of an application. Several activities come together to create an application. The onCreate command is used to initiate an activity and hence is the beginning point of the same.

Now that you have a list of good Android libraries and open sources for Android development, the question is how to incorporate them into your Android Studio.

Well, most of the apps can be incorporated using Maven, all you need to do is code the dependencies into the build.gradle file like shown below:

dependencies {
compile ‘com.google.code.gson:gson:2.2.4’
compile ‘com.squareup.okhttp:okhttp:1.3.0’
compile ‘com.squareup.retrofit:retrofit:1.3.0’
compile ‘de.greenrobot:eventbus:2.2.+’
compile ‘com.nostra13.universalimageloader:universal-image-loader:1.9.1’
}

Even though coding is an intricate practice, there are several ways in which the process can be made more interesting and efficient. Android libraries can be a huge contribution to the ease and efficiency of the process. Moreover, following developers and development trends on Facebook and Twitter can be a considerable help as far as creating a more proficient coding practice is concerned.

PHP Framework Development or CMS: The better choice

Posted on November 21, 2016November 6, 2019 by admin

Every business has its requirements and anything less is akin to playing the fiddle while Rome burns. The most effective one, the most versatile one, the most resourceful one – these are some of the adjectives that are preferred by businesses to search for tools for web development. They want to develop websites that are designed to catch the attention of potential customers and to convert them eventually into repeat customers. Two of the most popular ways to develop web applications nowadays are – CMS and PHP frameworks. Both these methods have their positives and negatives. We would be exploring these structures in and out through this article.

It is difficult to choose one amongst them owing to the deep intricacies in the same. Hence, we need to understand both these choices and the subtle differences between them.

What is CMS or PHP framework? How do they work?

CMS stands for Content Management System. Using CMS for website development provides various tools to help a developer manage a website and its contents. One can use the content management system for website development or e-Commerce related purposes. One can also make all the changes that are required for the same in a convenient manner. If we take the example of a Content Management System for eCommerce websites, one can change the price, layout, inventory, and more. The most popular CMS options include WordPress, Xaraya, Moodle, and Joomla among others. They are specifically tailored for ensuring that the management of a website becomes more easy and efficient.

Read More: Benefits of custom PHP web development

On the other hand, a framework can be defined as a developer-driven customized code that is created within a set of rules. Developers use core library functions to develop modules, which are tailored from the linguistic fabric known as PHP development– an art known as web development using the PHP framework. However, a layman would not be able to figure out the intricacies of the process of PHP framework development. Some of the most widely used PHP frameworks include CodeIgniter and other such tools.

What are the distinguishing features of both?

There are four critical factors that one needs to take care of while designing one’s website, which is listed below:

Security:

Security in the age of hacking is of prime importance. Every visitor needs to understand whether a website is secure enough for transactions or not. If a visitor notices the SSL lock sign on the link of a website, they will be satisfied and reassured that the purchase will occur without any discrepancies.

Being open-source platforms, the plugins and modules on CMSes are created by independent developers or groups of developers. When bugs or deficiencies are found, newer versions of code are launched after ensuring that the bug or deficiency has been removed. Installing reliable plugins on a CMS website is also an important element that needs to be considered as far as security is concerned. Due to the presence of other elements such as cross-site scripting, the security vulnerabilities on these platforms are considerably large.

The use of custom code in PHP frameworks adds a powerful layer of security to the website. Most have built-in functions for encryption and security. This makes them perfect for purposes such as corporate web development as well as the integration of complex web systems. This can be intricately tailored for ensuring a larger degree of freedom and customizability.

Verdict: We think PHP framework websites are more secure than CMS.

Flexibility:

Based upon what functionalities you are looking to add or enhance your business, its web portal may need to be integrated with various functional elements as well as with third-party applications. Dedicated PHP programmers design applications by keeping the business interests in priority.

CMS platforms have diverse functionalities as far as application goes but suffer due to limited flexibility. This gives birth to numerous restrictions as far as creative freedom is concerned. Hence, even though there are numerous modules and plugins on CMSes, the inherent flexibility as far as their usage is concerned is limited to quite an extent.

Frameworks derive heavily from libraries of functions and data, which can easily be customized based on the requirements of the business. PHP web application development is an important aspect that PHP frameworks are useful for, especially due to the immense degree of customizability that the framework provides for the users.

Verdict: For flexibility, we consider PHP frameworks to be ahead of CMSes.

Upgrades:

Getting your online portal updated to the latest standards of technical proficiency is imperative. As far as security and functionality are concerned, updating installed plugins and modules is necessary for the progress and development of the website.

CMSes get updates on a regular basis owing to the large community of developers who are a part of the development team. However, PHP frameworks do not have frequent updates when compared to CMSes.

Verdict: We think CMSes are better in this case owing to the frequent upgrades and the immediate support that is available on these platforms.

User Experience (UX):

Content Management Systems are built by taking managers and modern websites into consideration. Most CMSes make it very simple to manage website content. Due to this, most CMSes are crafted in intricate ways to maximize convenience and ease for website owners. The website host can modify elements on a website without encountering any problems with the same. CMSes mostly provide responsive themes so that the website functions can be used on mobile systems as well.

A PHP framework does not have a user-friendly interface, unlike CMSes, owing to the immense amount of knowledge about coding that is required to work with these frameworks. Moreover, in order to customize linguistic frameworks to make them more flexible, a laymen individual would require the help of dedicated PHP programmers.

Verdict: CMS is certainly a better choice when it comes to user experience and ease of use.

And the winner is…!

Choosing a platform that is just right for your website is as important as finding a perfect destination for building your house. Trying to find the best fit for your preferences involves understanding the subtle nuances of security, design, and user experience.

A platform that can provide a balance between all of these elements will be the perfect fit for your online business portal. After all, your application is judged as a whole and not by severed elements.

Every business has its preferences and requirements, the fulfilment of which will ultimately lead to the progress and growth of the online portal. So go ahead, make your choice.